OnelargeprawnThanks to our friends at a store, we have two styling Death Head t-shirts to give away, and if you haven’t done so already, this is just a quick reminder to head over to our competition post and get your entries in.
This competition will run until midnight September 12th. Good luck :clover:
Apparently everyone is talking about Avatar. I obviously missed that memo. I really should fire my non-existent yet big bosomed secretary.
Written and directed by James Cameron (Terminator 2, Aliens, Titanic) Avatar has nothing in common with the animated series, “Avatar: The Last Airbender” – Cameron wrote the script a decade for the Nickelodeon show, and hence retained the right to use the word as his film’s title. After spending almost two full years in post-production, Avatar is supposedly one of the most technically sophisticated movies yet seen.
It sees a paraplegic war veteran (Sam Worthington) who gets shipped out to the planet of Pandora where the meddlesome humans at odds with the planet’s inhabitants, the long-limbed, elven-eared Na’vi race. See the epic trailer below or watch the special effects bonanza in HD at Apple Trailers.
Maybe it’s because I’m not drunk yet, but I feel a little underwhelmed. What do you think of it?
[via Mashable]
An aliens-among-us story by a first time director has topped the American box office, raking in US$37 million this past weekend!
Helmed by 29-year-old South African born director, Niell Blomkamp, District 9 has no big name stars – in fact, the lead actor (Sharlto Copley) had never acted in a movie before – but that didn’t prevent the film from outgrossing G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra by a whopping USD 14.5 million! District 9 is no slouch in the ratings either, scoring a solid 88% at Rotten Tomatoes.
We South Africans have to wait a bit longer to watch Wikus Van De Merwe and “prawn” friend Christopher Johnson taking the fight to the seedy MNU corporation. District 9 releases officially in local theatres on August 28th, but word is that Joburg will see a premiere screening this Wednesday, August 19th, at the Zone in Rosebank – full details are available at SterKinekor. Canal Walk in Cape Town might be hosting a premiere too, but no details have surfaced as yet. We’ll keep you posted though.
BONUS: Vanity Fair had a chat with Sharlto Copley about working on District 9. Read the Q&A HERE.
LEAP is a short film by Dan Gaud about a man who can travel between two parallel worlds, and the consequences of his actions. Gaud did pretty much everything on the project – writing, storyboarding, shooting, editing, color correction, and all the visual effects. The only thing he wasn’t responsible for was the sound and music.
He shot the film in two days with a RED One camera, which incidentally was the same type of camera used to film Neil Blomkamp’s film District 9. It took Gaud a year to do all the visual effects, and he has just released a mysterious, compelling teaser. See it below or watch it in high quality at YouTube.
The full 6-minute short should be available next month. Gaud is planning to take his creation to film festivals, hoping for investors to turn it into a full-length feature film.
[via io9]
The hills are alive with the sound of music extraterrestrials. Franco Brambilla, an Italian sci-fi artist, has created a series of vintage postcards where cute aliens are invading your grandpa’s postcards.
See more at Brambilla’s Invading The Vintage Flickr set.
[via BoingBoing]
In case you missed our last post on District 9, here’s an extended featurette where the producer, director, and actors discuss the upcoming sci-fi flick.
District 9 will be invading South African shores on Friday, August 28th according to SterKinekor.
So the final season of Battlestar Galactica on it’s way and a new Star Trek movie due out this year. Not being a fan of neither, it’s unsurprising that I’ve never wondered which vessel from the two franchises would win out in a ship-to-ship match. Thankfully, the interweb is awash with sci-fi fans nerds all too ready to flex their brain muscle, comparing and contrasting the tech on both ships, and choosing a winner.
So join DVICE in their inaugural sci-fi tech contest – Starship Enterprise vs Battlestar Galactica.
Hit the jump if you just want to know who the winner is.
If the likes of Roger Ebert and the stoutly Barry Ronge can review movies, I don’t think it’s a far stretch for me to try my hand at it.
So, with brevity in mind, and a not-so-solid grasp of the English language, behold my movie review!
What it should have been called: The Day The Brain Stood Still
The plot: We puny humans are horrible caretakers and as a result global warming is killing the Earth. Some alien elders are not pleased about this, and send a spaceship to Earth, bearing an emissary Klaatu and his large robot, GORT.
Klaatu has come to assess whether humanity can reverse the environmental damage we’ve done to the planet. His mind gets practically made up when he gets shot by the military and detained. Using cunning alien trickery he escapes and decides that the humans need to be destroyed to save the earth.
It is now up to astrobiologist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly), her obnoxious step-son Jacob (Jaden Smith), and altruism expert Professor Barnhardt (a cameo by John Cleese) to try dissuade him. It doesn’t take a brain scientist to guess the outcome.