Around the Horns

Everyone keeps talking about how great District 9 is. I saw the movie and was fairly dissapointed. However, I am most surpised on its Oscar nomination based on i) action/CGI movies rarely garner the Academy’s attention and ii) again, I don’t understand what makes the movie so good.

What is your take? Is it the novelty of the story line and the social commentary that really gave this movie some legs?

Then again, I unfortunately enjoyed Avatar…so what do I know

Too lazy to confirm it, but I’m almost positive Kriegel was a camp pick by Mack pre-Muschamp.

McWhorter has had his absolute pick of the litter the past 5-6 years, save for a few kids. I’ll concede the challenges in projecting a HS OL, but still – this is the best we can do? Hall and Tanner? Basically you could take Ketch’s fantasy picks based on film snippets and Gerry Hamilton’s leftover crib notes and you wouldn’t end up much worse than what McWhorter has produced. 30 or so years of coaching one position at elite programs and he doesn’t have a better eye than your random message boarder? (Not addressing attitude and development which I’ll stipulate are crucial, just talent evaluation. One is predicated on the other). Just baffling.

I like District 9 in part for it’s social commentary, the way it uses unknown actors to facilitate the documentary feel, and how compelling the 2 main alien characters were.
Of course, the action half of it turned out to be pretty awesome as well. I doubt it’s the best movie made this year just my personal favorite. I haven’t seen up in the air, hurt locker, or several others.
I saw Inglorious Basterds and thought it was supremely well crafted but I couldn’t really get behind a movie that was all about revenge.

ESPN is reporting that the Big 10 and UT are in "preliminary exchanges" about joining the league: http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2010/feb/11/big-ten-making-overtures-texas/?sports
Crazy

Its a longshot, but damn that would mean I would never get to go to another road game!

I was less disappointed by District 9 than by The Hurt Locker. I kept waiting for some point in the Hurt Locker that hadn’t been made better by HBO’s Generation Kill. I know it’s probably not fair to compare a two hour movie with an eight hour mini-series, but still.

Anyway, feeling it on the Horns baseball team crushing my hopes. After the BCS Championship and the basketball disasters, I am almost reluctant to wear my Longhorn gear in public.

Hopefully the big 10 is leverage so we go to the Pac 10 and clean house.

Texas to Big10: will. never. happen. period. end. of. story. stop.

i was awed a bit by the craft of District 9, but typically offended by its racial undertones, ie. a white male protagonist is seemingly the only facilitator of equality and justice, fittingly in a post apartheid South Africa.

i get that their attempt at social justice was in fact a sugary enough pill to swallow for four-quadrant audiences, it was bad medicine for astute viewers. basically, dont talk down to me bitch!

OL troubles will persist as long as Mac is their coach, motivator and head recruiter. my fear is that espinosa turns into a teddy bear while on the 40 acres.

Within a couple of years Espinosa will be Manny from ‘Modern Family.’

district 9 and avatar were the same old story about how western civilization is destroying the world, but some white kid learns a lesson and saves the day in the end

so the lesson is, learn your lesson

I don’t think District 9 was as racist as all that. The aliens are portrayed in a positive light, better even than the white guy. They don’t represent white people in real life though do they?

Reminds me of one of the best Chappelle’s Show jokes ever:

“The Last N***** on Earth,” starring Tom Hanks

What almost everyone has missed about “District 9” is that it was very much inspired by the Afrikaner director’s experience living as an expatriate in Canada after his family fled the increasing violence and decay of South Africa. It’s a lament for the ethnic cleansing of the Afrikaners.

I didn’t see District 9 as a reprise of Hilary Clinton’s version of The White Man’s Burden, or as western civilization destroying the world. To me it was a story about the value of empathy and perspective-taking. The whites and blacks of South Africa were united behind a common cause – someone even more different. The protagonist could have been either color. He totally lacked perspective for the aliens until he had to walk a mile in their shoes.

It’s no different from people today who are angry at illegal immigrants to the U.S. It’s the employers and foreign governments they should be upset with. People want cheap beef and it’s a high-risk, crappy job to work in a slaughterhouse, so employers hire undocumented workers, pay them very little, and keep them from filing worker’s comp. I think they would feel different if they didn’t have unemployment insurance, SSA’s disability programs, etc. to keep them from starving.

Agree with Sugarpants, I never got the vibe that you could get from Dances with Smurfs about the white man learning and then saving. In fact, the hero to me was the alien named Christopher and his son. He was both noble and compassionate, while it took that white dude more than three quarters of the movie to start thinking about the other aliens/people at risk in the situation and do anything based on a conviction that went beyond him returning to normality (which I didn’t blame him too much for, I’d be freaking out like a nut and yelling at everyone in his position too, most likely).

All that to say, I think it’s an easy cop out to try and look at District 9 as another Dances with Wolves storyline rehashed. District 9 presented a far more complex setting where different ethnicities were joining together in their dislike of the aliens. Kudos to the filmmaker for making the aliens very un-avatar. Not pretty, gross, and completely, well, alien. District 9 didn’t seek to manipulate audience members into choosing it’s POV, instead D9 seemed to present questions to ask yourself. Far more respectiable. It also blew a lot of stuff up and looked cool.

Very different from Avatar and its main character who was pretty much a blank canvas for audience members to project themselves on. “Oh yeah, I’d totally rock that blue avatar in his place. Yeah, that’s what I’d do too! I’d totally save them all and hook up with the hot one!”

*I added the last sentence of the 2nd paragraph after finishing it. So to be clear, the “very different from avatar” sentence was referring to everything BUT the line preceeding it about blowing stuff up. In that regard they were quite similar.

IMO “The Hurt Locker” was very overrated.

Dances with Smurfs? How about Bombing the Smurfs?

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