District 9 nomination: A sop to ‘intelligent sci-fi’, or a worthy Best Picture contender?

Does District 9 really deserve a Best Picture nomination in the Oscars? Undoubtedly it’s a fine technical piece of film-making, and the South African setting, used to dissect apartheid at one remove, was interesting at the very least. It became the story of one man’s troubled journey between human and alien, but his was a character ultimately reminiscent of the hero in
Bad Taste (‘Dereks don’t run!’). Blame the vowel similarity of the Kiwi and South African accent if you like, or the presence of Peter Jackson (producer on District 9, writer-director on Bad Taste), but that gross out movie had a lot of influence on District 9 – especially in the action sequences. And for your correspondent, this sensibility eventually showed itself as the true heart of the film, rather than the premise-based documentary dissection it purported to be.

It does, of course, have more brains than hippy tech-tubthumper Avatar – but then that was a seismic piece of cinema, whatever the quality of the story, and deserves the nod for its sheer scope. It’s nice that people recognise sci-fi, but you get the impression that District 9’s nomination was made by people who only just cottoned on to the fact that the TV Battlestar Galactica remake was pretty good, and wanted to get ‘down with the kids’. Just a thought.

FILM: X-Files sequel poses greatest mystery ever

News Hour is disturbed to note that the new X-Files movie stars Billy Connolly, apparently in the role John Hurt played in Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull – only with added eye bleeding. Did they not see The Man Who Sued God? Or do Americans hold fond memories of the Big Yin’s foray into sitcoms in the 1990s? At the very least, this is a wildly surprising piece of casting, and may distract great swathes of the British audience so much that they fail to notice that this sequel is supposed to be a ‘love story’.

A quick check of the casting’s staff’s previous form would seem appropriate.

Heike Brandstatter is an Emmy-winning casting director who works across film and TV – she worked on Juno (excellent casting, especially Jason Bateman and Allison Janney) on the original Battlestar Galactica mini-series remake (Edward James Olmos, brilliant) and 2001’s Snow Queen (Miranda Richardson, a no-brainer for the queen but great choice all the
same). She also has an X-Files background, and on its short-lived spin-off, The Lone Gunmen. All in all, perfectly sound and tending toward brilliant – although of course one can never pin down who made exactly what choice without speaking to these people.

Next, the Emmy-nominated Mindy Marin, whose CV is slightly less salubrious – the Alfie remake, Dirty Dancing 2, Snakes On A Plane and Revolver all stand out as stinkers, but it’s debatable to what extent this had anything to do with casting. One could argue this for Jude Law in Alfie but, equally, it could be said that the story was simply out of its time.
Bulletproof Monk is also technically awful; and while the casting of the leads, Seann William Scott and Chow Yun Fat, is it’s main strong point, Victoria Smurfit is – at the very least – bizarre as the Nazi villain (if admittedly easy on the eye).

Third, and finally: double Emmy-winner Coreen Mayrs, who has a similar background to Brandstatter (both have X-Files history, both are on the new Galactica prequel, Caprica).

Having lead the reader through these three blind alleys, News Hour can only apologise for not having any concrete answers. It seems plausible that Marin is the candidate behind Connolly’s casting, but we can offer nothing solid.

Still, there’s a terrible sense of foreboding about this project, at least partly because, whatever truth is ultimately out there, won’t it be one we’ve seen before? Let’s hope not. The subtitle echoes the wishes of those who still remember the TV series fondly: ‘I Want To Believe’. Given the focus on the ‘love story’ one can only imagine that they are planning to give the audience what they wanted in the 1990s (again, if memory serves)and wished for in fan fiction; all signs point to green, with David Duchovny promising ‘skin’ in the movie.

At least it was an emotional experience for him and Gillian Anderson – which is what matters, surely. Bring on the wine, fine chocolates and ‘skin’.

My, Robot: Anthropomorphising our automated chums

Robots are becoming our friends, perhaps even supplanting pets – there’s a growing trend that leaves doggy beauty pageants in the shade. This affection is more explicable when you consider that Roombas clean up mess where dogs traditionally create it. Left to roam their owners’ houses unattended, the robotic vacuums have wormed their way into human hearts by freeing them up for more creative pursuits – like dressing them up, for instance.

The company that makes them, iRobot, also makes mineclearing robots for the U.S. military. Reports suggest that soldiers too can get remarkably attached to their robotic pals, becoming distressed when the chop shop simply can’t fix them anymore. In the home vacuum models, this connection between man and machine is encouraged by a wing of marketing known as ‘emotional design’ to encourage empathy between skin and circuits. There is no return of affection, of course – rather like owning a cat, you might say – but one finds it hard to imagine the principle would be extended to cover military products. Perhaps a special new robot is under construction, to infiltrate enemy ranks and manipulate them emotionally, sowing dissent and discord by batting its silicon eyelashes and making provocative comments about rifle size.

This bond will soon be instilled at an early age. Researchers are discovering nursery-age children react well to robots than can ‘dance and giggle’. Soon all our children will be like that boy in the first Battlestar Galactica, wandering around chatting to a robot dog. Although in the 70s, Muffit II had to be played by a trained chimp – the technology wasn’t around then, y’see. Would be a different story now.

One could argue that animals are simply flesh and blood machines overlaid with instincts similar to programming, so we would be as wrong to anthropomorphise one as the other. But News Hour finds that a rather cold perspective.