District 9

No blog yesterday because by the time I got home from District 9 I was too wiped to write anything. I am not going to give away any details about the movie because I hate it when people do that but I am going to say this:

Go to see this movie.

It was the best science fiction movie made this decade.

Seriously.

The best.

Hands down.

I do like hard Sci Fi. I really do (unsurprising for a Sci Fi author I suppose) and I have seen a lot of science fiction movies. This beat nearly all of them. It did so by doing what Science Fiction does best: taking contemporary, down to earth issues, and then expressing them through a lense of the fantastic.

Now, fair warning, this is a thinking man's splatterfest. This movie is gory and make no mistake about that. But if those who like intelligent Sci Fi can deal with the gore they will find one of the most effectively crafted tales to come out of the genre in a good long time.

For the fans of the pretty explosions and zappy lazers fair warning must also be given. This movie occasionally stops the relentless tides of violence to demonstrate the basic humanity of the protagonists and to provide well-handled social commentary on contemporary issues such as racism, poverty and genocide.

I will say that Neil Blokamp and Peter Jackson have crafted an uncompromising movie. It is unsurprising that some critics have panned it. I have to express my disagreement with them.
Regardless of how they are percieved by Mr. White, the Prawns are not Spielberg-type aliens. I would say more but that might provide spoilers.

Anyway, I fully intend to get the DVD as soon as it comes out. This is a movie to watch more than once.

In other news, I finished another two chapters in the endless saga of copy-editing my novel. I have my edit-copy coil bound in two volumes and these two chapters represent the end of editing of the first of these volumes. I am also getting feedback from beta-readers about the book which leaves me very optimistic for it's eventual fate while (thankfully) providing me with lots of useful stuff to consider for the second draft.

I've already decided to rewrite the first three chapters in order to include two of the protagonists who were previously introduced in chapter 5 earlier.

Finally I have finally got a response about the writer's group I have been trying to form. Looks like this thing might actually go somewhere after all!