Re: [Marxism] District 9
Personally, I'm afraid I'll never see another medieval battle scene without waiting to see Peter Cook as Richard III wandering around like he did in Black Adder. ML YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] District 9
David McDonald wrote: > Behold, you anti-shaky camera fucks, and weep: > > http://www.strimoo.com/video/15601236/Chimes-at-Midnight-1965-by-Orson-Welles-Veoh.html > big deal, so Orson Welles watched Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky one day and decided to try a battle scene himself (a guess)... "Best sequence ever" as if Les, who watched The Third Man today and who's hair stands on end watching Citizen Kane YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] District 9
Behold, you anti-shaky camera fucks, and weep: http://www.strimoo.com/video/15601236/Chimes-at-Midnight-1965-by-Orson-Welles-Veoh.html YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] District 9
The Bourne Supremacy drove me insane with it, but it didn't too bother me during District 9. On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 3:02 PM, Louis Proyect wrote: > gregoryabut...@aol.com wrote: > > > > Apparently, I saw a different "District 9" than Prarie Miller and Armond > White did! > > After seeing Simon Abrams's reference > (http://extendedcut.blogspot.com/2009/08/255-district-9-2009.html)to the > "faux-doc style shaky cam" in this film, I decided to pass on it. > Furthermore, the directors responsible for foisting this horrible > technique on the world should all be taken out and horsewhipped. It is > the most annoying thing in movies next to product placements. It seems > to be much more egregious in action movies but who knows. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] District 9
gregoryabut...@aol.com wrote: > > Apparently, I saw a different "District 9" than Prarie Miller and Armond > White did! After seeing Simon Abrams's reference (http://extendedcut.blogspot.com/2009/08/255-district-9-2009.html)to the "faux-doc style shaky cam" in this film, I decided to pass on it. Furthermore, the directors responsible for foisting this horrible technique on the world should all be taken out and horsewhipped. It is the most annoying thing in movies next to product placements. It seems to be much more egregious in action movies but who knows. Maybe it will begin showing up in Merchant-Ivory movies. Can't you see a costume drama with people sipping tea in a Venice palazzo while the shaking camera makes them look like one of those scenes in the old Star Trek TV show when the starship Enterprise is being attacked by Romulans? YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] District 9
Apparently, I saw a different "District 9" than Prarie Miller and Armond White did! I won't spoil the movie - it's a film best seen "cold" with no foreknowedge of the storyline - but it's one of the most anti racist mainstream films I've ever seen - AND it's an EXCELLENT Sci-Fi movie, where they manage to make the fantastical (aliens from space on the streets of Johannesburg) seem - normal and mundane! I would recommend any Sci-Fi fan - or anti racist - run out and see this picture! I happen to know Prarie Miller - we were in the Communist Party USA together and we were briefly collegeues during my short tenure as a general assignment rewrite guy for the "People's Weekly World" - and I see her movie reviews are as didactic, tone deaf and closed minded now as they were then. I don't know Armond White personally but his editor is one of my neighbors. Based on years of reading (or trying to read) White's almost unreadably bad movie reviews in the New York Press, White has always been a pretentious windbag, a Hollywood asskisser and a self hating Negro, so I'm not surprised he'd hate a movie that's an allegory about Apartheid. But perhaps they were hoodwinked - maybe they saw some other movie called "District 9" (perhaps they brought a bootleg DVD on the street and it said "District 9" on the wrapper but was some other, really bad, movie on the actual disk?) - Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 12:08:35 -0400 From: Louis Proyect Subject: [Marxism] District 9 To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition Message-ID: <4a898083.2050...@panix.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed I have not seen this movie yet, but two of my colleagues in NYFCO did not care for it very much. Prairie Miller, a hard-core leftist like me, wrote: Relentlessly clunky and grating in the extreme, District 9 takes its cue from Cloverfield's contrived artsy vertigo to situate the futuristic tall tale combining premeditated pseudo-disorganized camera and surveillance video footage, as supposedly hyper-real journalistic racial profiling panic in the here and now. Sharlto Copley is Wilkus van der Merwe, the public face of private mercenaries contracted by the South African government to evict and relocate to a concentration camp, the surging population of Johannesburg District 9 aliens from outer space. Those refusing to be ordered out of the teeming slum as Merwe cheerfully hands them notices to vacate on camera, are summarily shot dead to the delight of black viewers of the evening news. But in the course of Merwe's elated pursuit of his fifteen minutes of photo op small screen fame, he contracts an alien virus which to his initial dismay, harvests the host creature and his superpowers within which, well, turns him into a pregnant man. And while Merwe spends the rest of the future as now thriller fleeing mercenaries and hiding out among his new odd couple alien allies in District 9, real South African blacks express relief on camera about alien removal and extinction. The distasteful joke here being perpetrated by director Neill Blomkamp, is that he fooled his subjects into talking about their aversion to the swelling immigrant population from other African countries, particularly Nigeria, and then, so to speak, photo-shopped them into his politically odious victims-as-villains movie. Clever. At the same time, the Nigerians are depicted as despicable when not depraved bottom feeder hustlers and homicidal gangs financially exploiting the aliens, when not forcing the females into cross-species sex for sale. This, while the white dominated government is simply perplexed. full: http://newsblaze.com/story/20090807123235mill.nb/topstory.html Meanwhile, Armond White, an African-American reviewer who does not suffer foolish movies lightly, wrote this: It?s been 33 years since South Africa?s Soweto riots stirred the world?s disgust with that country?s regime where legal segregation kept blacks ?apart? and in ?hoods? (thus, Apartheid) unequal to whites. District 9?s sci-fi concept celebrates?yes, that?s the word?Soweto?s legacy by ignoring the issues of self-determination (where a mass demonstration by African students on June 16, 1976, protested their refusal to learn the dominant culture?s Afrikaans language). District 9 also trivializes the bloody outcome where an estimated 500 students were killed, by ignoring that complex history and enjoying its chaos. Let?s see if the Spielberg bashers put-off by the metaphysics in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be as offended by District 9?s mangled anthropology. District 9 represents the sloppiest and dopiest pop cinema?the kind that comes from a second-rate film culture. No surprise, this South African fantasia from director Neill Blomkamp was produced by the intellectually juven
Re: [Marxism] District 9
Adrian Bankhead wrote: > We pity the prawns for being forced to live in the townships, but we regard > the townships are the proper home for the Nigerians. > by the way, the director stated clearly in an interview that his portrayal of Nigerians in S. Africa was "realistic" and implied that viewers had to face the facts about Nigerian gangs. Les YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] District 9
Adrian Bankhead wrote: > Despite their bizarre appearance, the prawns are immediately anthomorphized, > so we are made to feel pity for C.J. - the child prawn, and we come to > identify with the wise and smart Christopher. We feel no such pity for the > Nigerians all well said, i am glad someone can make good sense of this movie... Les YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] District 9
Did anyone notice that the true aliens are not the prawns but the Nigerians? Despite their bizarre appearance, the prawns are immediately anthomorphized, so we are made to feel pity for C.J. - the child prawn, and we come to identify with the wise and smart Christopher. We feel no such pity for the Nigerians - who are exoticized so completely with their cannibalism and witchcraft with we can hardly identify them as human. We pity the prawns for being forced to live in the townships, but we regard the townships are the proper home for the Nigerians. Of course, below even the Nigerians (who at least have the benefit of being from some other place) are the completely genocided (disappeared) South African blacks. The movie is worse than a failed satire of race. It attempts rather to fantasize about a white-only South Africa that is colonized by outsiders, including prawns and blacks. But we are made to identify with the prawns exactly because they are not black. As such, this movie fits within the genocidal agenda of most cinema from the settler states. --- On Mon, 17/8/09, Louis Proyect wrote: From: Louis Proyect Subject: [Marxism] District 9 To: "Adrian Bankhead" Date: Monday, 17 August, 2009, 9:08 AM I have not seen this movie yet, but two of my colleagues in NYFCO did not care for it very much. Prairie Miller, a hard-core leftist like me, wrote: Relentlessly clunky and grating in the extreme, District 9 takes its cue from Cloverfield's contrived artsy vertigo to situate the futuristic tall tale combining premeditated pseudo-disorganized camera and surveillance video footage, as supposedly hyper-real journalistic racial profiling panic in the here and now. Sharlto Copley is Wilkus van der Merwe, the public face of private mercenaries contracted by the South African government to evict and relocate to a concentration camp, the surging population of Johannesburg District 9 aliens from outer space. Those refusing to be ordered out of the teeming slum as Merwe cheerfully hands them notices to vacate on camera, are summarily shot dead to the delight of black viewers of the evening news. But in the course of Merwe's elated pursuit of his fifteen minutes of photo op small screen fame, he contracts an alien virus which to his initial dismay, harvests the host creature and his superpowers within which, well, turns him into a pregnant man. And while Merwe spends the rest of the future as now thriller fleeing mercenaries and hiding out among his new odd couple alien allies in District 9, real South African blacks express relief on camera about alien removal and extinction. The distasteful joke here being perpetrated by director Neill Blomkamp, is that he fooled his subjects into talking about their aversion to the swelling immigrant population from other African countries, particularly Nigeria, and then, so to speak, photo-shopped them into his politically odious victims-as-villains movie. Clever. At the same time, the Nigerians are depicted as despicable when not depraved bottom feeder hustlers and homicidal gangs financially exploiting the aliens, when not forcing the females into cross-species sex for sale. This, while the white dominated government is simply perplexed. full: http://newsblaze.com/story/20090807123235mill.nb/topstory.html Meanwhile, Armond White, an African-American reviewer who does not suffer foolish movies lightly, wrote this: It’s been 33 years since South Africa’s Soweto riots stirred the world’s disgust with that country’s regime where legal segregation kept blacks “apart” and in “hoods” (thus, Apartheid) unequal to whites. District 9’s sci-fi concept celebrates—yes, that’s the word—Soweto’s legacy by ignoring the issues of self-determination (where a mass demonstration by African students on June 16, 1976, protested their refusal to learn the dominant culture’s Afrikaans language). District 9 also trivializes the bloody outcome where an estimated 500 students were killed, by ignoring that complex history and enjoying its chaos. Let’s see if the Spielberg bashers put-off by the metaphysics in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be as offended by District 9’s mangled anthropology. District 9 represents the sloppiest and dopiest pop cinema—the kind that comes from a second-rate film culture. No surprise, this South African fantasia from director Neill Blomkamp was produced by the intellectually juvenile New Zealander Peter Jackson. It idiotically combines sci-fi wonderment with the inane “realism” of a mockumentary to show the South African government’s xenophobic response to a global threat: Alien-on-earth population has reached one million, all housed—like Katrina refugees or Soweto protesters—in restricted territories. “Before we knew it, it was a slum,” says Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley, a nervous, Daniel Day-Lewis type) who is a white executive for multinational corporat
Re: [Marxism] District 9
I saw the whole movie. I have mixed feelings about it. I agree with the comment that the person who wrote/produced this was immature politically. The very obvious comparison with Apartheid was the main comparison, combined with a sort of faux-Nazi approach as a "Final Solution" to the "Alien Problem". Duh, it was so transparent to be dumb. Film making has gotten so good now that it really looked like a giant space craft floating over Johannesburg, the Aliens look real and believable, and like giant prawns they were modeled on. I would agree that the filmmaker wanted to make 'regular township' residents seem like bigots and Nigerians like cannibalistic criminal gangs to the last person. The second half of the movie is definitely better and they could of almost started it about 40 minutes in and it would of been better besides the lame political points, which probably would of been better contextualized though. David YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] District 9
As an allegory to apartheid the film for me was a complete failure.But compared to other mainstream films, it was a rather entertaining sci-fi movie. Les-- that was an unusual point to walk out on a film. I didn't see the overt Nazi comparison, but even if I did I still don't quite understand why you found that to be especially objectionable given its context--- it was an act of violence by the films military-private-contractors antagonists. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] District 9
Louis Proyect wrote: > full: http://newsblaze.com/story/20090807123235mill.nb/topstory.html > > Meanwhile, Armond White, an African-American reviewer who does not > suffer foolish movies lightly, wrote wow, great review there were several deeply disturbing scenes in the first half of the movie that made me sick to my stomach ... but the way these scenes were embedded within the structure of the film convinced me the filmmaker was an apolitical jackass, and some reviews i read with him afterwards sealed the deal for me. i suppose the coming attractions didnt help either: one was for a movie about angels that come to earth to destroy its people. the coming attraction showed an sweet elderly grandmotherly woman suddenly baring her teeth/fangs and attacking some truck driver (or whatever he was) ... i thought to myself how fitting to make an elderly woman the face of an enemy in an age where the health care system was becoming ever more fragile for the elderly; why not play them as evil. then there was a preview of yet another Final Destination, where some kid sees the future death of people and so we are treated to a spectacle of ways to die grossly. the third coming attraction was a Woody Harrelson flick about zombies, and featured scene after scene of ways to kill ghoulish characters with maximum blood spray. the fourth coming attraction was for a movie called Sorority Row, where some young college age women plan a prank against a college age man who cheated on one of the sorority sisters. the prank goes awry and one sorority sister gets killed, and ghoulish mayhem follows. somehow the films snippets were made to seem every bit as apocalyptic as the other three movies. in that context sprang District 9. i walked out halfway through, when an alien was led up to a firing range and the main character of the film was forced to murder him, with an alien weapon finally rendered activated so that some capitalists could make billions on new weapons systems. the image of this alien being lead to his death still haunts me 24 hours later ... as it was intended to, being a play on Nazi experimentation in the concentration camps (this was made explicit in the film). i curse filmmakers like the one who made District 9, who play with these kinds of sensibilities simply to get ahead in the Hollywood power game. Les YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] District 9
Louis Proyect wrote: > I have not seen this movie yet, but two of my colleagues in NYFCO did > not care for it very much. > went to see it yesterday, it's the first movie i have walked out on since i walked out on Cujo in 1983. District 9 is a very very evocative film ... see it if you want your ultra-leftist feelings evoked otherwise, the movie has a ton of problems ... though i am told the second half that i missed was better. Les YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] District 9
I have not seen this movie yet, but two of my colleagues in NYFCO did not care for it very much. Prairie Miller, a hard-core leftist like me, wrote: Relentlessly clunky and grating in the extreme, District 9 takes its cue from Cloverfield's contrived artsy vertigo to situate the futuristic tall tale combining premeditated pseudo-disorganized camera and surveillance video footage, as supposedly hyper-real journalistic racial profiling panic in the here and now. Sharlto Copley is Wilkus van der Merwe, the public face of private mercenaries contracted by the South African government to evict and relocate to a concentration camp, the surging population of Johannesburg District 9 aliens from outer space. Those refusing to be ordered out of the teeming slum as Merwe cheerfully hands them notices to vacate on camera, are summarily shot dead to the delight of black viewers of the evening news. But in the course of Merwe's elated pursuit of his fifteen minutes of photo op small screen fame, he contracts an alien virus which to his initial dismay, harvests the host creature and his superpowers within which, well, turns him into a pregnant man. And while Merwe spends the rest of the future as now thriller fleeing mercenaries and hiding out among his new odd couple alien allies in District 9, real South African blacks express relief on camera about alien removal and extinction. The distasteful joke here being perpetrated by director Neill Blomkamp, is that he fooled his subjects into talking about their aversion to the swelling immigrant population from other African countries, particularly Nigeria, and then, so to speak, photo-shopped them into his politically odious victims-as-villains movie. Clever. At the same time, the Nigerians are depicted as despicable when not depraved bottom feeder hustlers and homicidal gangs financially exploiting the aliens, when not forcing the females into cross-species sex for sale. This, while the white dominated government is simply perplexed. full: http://newsblaze.com/story/20090807123235mill.nb/topstory.html Meanwhile, Armond White, an African-American reviewer who does not suffer foolish movies lightly, wrote this: It’s been 33 years since South Africa’s Soweto riots stirred the world’s disgust with that country’s regime where legal segregation kept blacks “apart” and in “hoods” (thus, Apartheid) unequal to whites. District 9’s sci-fi concept celebrates—yes, that’s the word—Soweto’s legacy by ignoring the issues of self-determination (where a mass demonstration by African students on June 16, 1976, protested their refusal to learn the dominant culture’s Afrikaans language). District 9 also trivializes the bloody outcome where an estimated 500 students were killed, by ignoring that complex history and enjoying its chaos. Let’s see if the Spielberg bashers put-off by the metaphysics in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be as offended by District 9’s mangled anthropology. District 9 represents the sloppiest and dopiest pop cinema—the kind that comes from a second-rate film culture. No surprise, this South African fantasia from director Neill Blomkamp was produced by the intellectually juvenile New Zealander Peter Jackson. It idiotically combines sci-fi wonderment with the inane “realism” of a mockumentary to show the South African government’s xenophobic response to a global threat: Alien-on-earth population has reached one million, all housed—like Katrina refugees or Soweto protesters—in restricted territories. “Before we knew it, it was a slum,” says Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley, a nervous, Daniel Day-Lewis type) who is a white executive for multinational corporation MNU. He brings a camera crew when he serves eviction notices to relocate the aliens. These restless, hostile (thus dangerous) foreigners resemble bi-ped crustaceans and are derisively referred to as “prawns” just as South African blacks were derogatively tagged “kaffi.” Wikus tells the camera, “The prawn doesn’t understand. One has to say ‘This is our land. Please, will you go?’” full: http://www.nypress.com/article-20206-from-mothership-to-bullship.html Apparently Armond's review struck a raw nerve since he has gotten hundreds of angry comments on Rotten Tomatoes. I am really envious! Here's one of them: Armond White you are the worst kind of film reviewer - ie one using his elitist so called educated "opinion" as a vehicle for poorly formed social commentary. If you ever met a South African (black or white) you may be ashamed of what you have written here (but by all accounts your arrogance is so large that you feel unaccountable). The complexities of South Africa cannot be explained in one little Sci-fi film - and nor I expect it too -Does the NYP realise that it gets a third rate social commentator along with a third rate film reviewer?? Oh and I think to call in to question what Peter Jackson thinks about Aborigines or Maoris is tota
