BOTO salutes the Democratic Party’s greatest soldier and the heart of the liberal movement, Ted Kennedy, who passed long before his time. We need him now as much as ever. Read more »
Movies. Television. Music. Everybody has an opinion about what you should see or watch or listen to—why shouldn’t we?
The Internet is chock-full of unsolicited political commentary and theories. Ours are just superior in every way.
Remember those computer nerds that you used to beat up back in high school? They earn ten times what you do now. This is why.
New York. Ivy League. Effete, elitist, intellectual. Find out how people are living both inside and outside of the bubble.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, moving pictures must be worth a million. And anything that verbose has a home at BOTO.
District 9 is pretty damn close to universally liked, if not loved, at this point. It has an 89% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 81 rating on Metacritic (classified as “universal acclaim”), the two most reliable movie review aggregators on the internet. It seems to be doing even better among the literati on Twitter. And when I say that, I mean that the negative reviews on the trending topic seem to be overwhelmingly along the lines of “jsut saw distrit 9 and it blew lolz”. And that’s not to say that District 9 is a movie only for smart people. I don’t think it is at all. I think that the people who seem to consider their opinions more seem to like it more. Whatever message that sends, I have no idea.
The fact is, one can like or love District 9 for a host of different reasons. It’s very politically charged, it does action extremely well, has superb special effects that blend in with the world, and has a great performance by the lead actor. I want to say that this movie becomes more than the sum of its parts, but I don’t think it does. Frankly, it doesn’t need to be, considering the sum of its parts is a politically charged, brilliantly staged, shot and acted action movie. With super cool aliens. Can one reasonably ask for anything more?
But I’ve heard people call it the best sci-fi movie of the decade. First of all, no. It’s not even the best sci-fi movie of the year – I would give that to little-seen Moon, which basically is Sam Rockwell taking acting behind the high school bleachers and making dear, sweet love to it. In fact, I would probably put Star Trek ahead of District 9 as far as sci-fi, though I think that the latter is a better movie. To crown a movie the king of the genre should probably require that movie to fulfill the ideals of the genre – in this case, I would say a film that immerses the viewer in another universe that differs from our own through some technological, spatial or temporal means. District 9 is filled with possibility and is absolutely refreshing in the way it tweaks the present day. But it really isn’t that immersing, and it shouldn’t be – the film is at its best when it is disorienting the viewer with its difference from how the world is, with that difference still being a believable world. I do think that District 9 is the best action movie this year. Read more »
BOTO salutes the Democratic Party’s greatest soldier and the heart of the liberal movement, Ted Kennedy, who passed long before his time. We need him now as much as ever.
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