Glam ~ According to the Disney email I got - here's a link to the LA theaters showing it. Sadly, it doesn't indicate if it is subtitled or dubbed

[link]

Okay, I saw District 9 and I wasn't too freaked out by it. It occurs to me that I have handled vampires being staked, a man's skin being ripped off and any number of things on Buffy and Angel - and I saw weekly beheadings in "Highlander" back in grad school, so I should have a decent tolerance for violence...

This movie's violence is graphic, but since the majority of violence is "scifi violence" instead of more realistic violence, I could take it all okay. There are some gross areas in the film (those of you affected by retching on film ought to stay away).

I was entertained by the movie, but I felt like it should have been about 20 minutes longer. I had a "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" reaction to how the movie ended - in that I wanted to see the inside of the fucking ship! Man. Offer me a bone or something.

I think the title of the movie was a bit deceiving - the movie is really about a man, rather than the district itself.

Loved the main character. His arc was very moving. As was Christopher's. I can see wanting another 20 minutes.

My sister and I just saw D9 today, and her big question was How did the aliens wind up stranded and starving when one of them could fly the ship?

Not important to the story, and/or not covered in the events of the story.

So it sounds better than Alien Nation (the movie), huh? I mean, in Alien Nation, the aliens land, Reagan welcomes them, and all of a sudden it's a buddy cop film, where the two partners are different! "One's a human, the other alien; they fight crime!"

I think it gets down to the look of the "alien". In Alien Nation the "newcomers" resemble humans more closely than the aliens so in District 9 (from what I saw in the preview).

I look forward to your review.

Look forward no more!

Loved the main character. His arc was very moving.

I agree. It was so weird to see the clip of Wikus from the beginning of the story at the end because the man we knew by then was so very different. Even discounting the whole mutation thing.

Time Travel[l]er's Wife:

Enjoyed this, but not nearly as much as the book. They didn't have time to cover everything - which I understand - but as a result, they made a movie that tells a slightly different story than the book. It was a much less traumatic story. Since the trauma and pathos are central to the book, it definitely felt like something was missing. The cast are good, though - even Eric Bana, whose casting I was bemoaning from the moment I heard about it. He isn't quite... Henry. But he's not bad.

As a metaphor for disability, the book particularly appealled to me (going to see this with my non-disabled partner was interesting, although she was mostly complaining that she had popcorn stuck in her teeth and missing the moments where I poked her) - but I saw more clearly with the film than the book that the story is about many other things, too. (I may attempt to write a paper with my colleague who studies disability and film. It would help me figure out exactly what's being said with the disability metaphor. I think I quite like it, whatever it is.)

It was so weird to see

Such a sweet, harmless, ignorant man. In some ways he winds up being almost exactly the same person at the end of his journey that he was at the beginning, save for having his ignorance lifted.

It's designed to make you think without telling you what to think.

OMG, P-C! So very much this.