Friday, May 28, 2010

BD impressions: District 9

6:11 PM / BD Impressions / Comments8 Comments

BD Impressions
Blu-ray

Once again, I'm somewhat late to the party. Virtually everyone I know has seen DISTRICT 9, and given what a major talking point it has proven to be, having to patiently explain to people that I hadn't actually seen it (followed by the inevitable "Well, when WILL you?") did get a bit old. In the end, though, the wait was worth it: DISTRICT 9 does have its problems, and I don't think it's quite the revelation that many saw it as, but on the whole it's an excellent piece of work and, for my money, a vastly superior sci-fi/human issues parable than AVATAR, released just four months later.

As some have pointed out, this is very much a film of two halves, with the less than subtle apartheid parallels giving way a more straightforward gun-toting action movie at around the half-way point. I've read some reviews that were critical of this shift, but personally I didn't have a problem with it. Indeed, given that writer/director Neill Blomkamp's rather heavy-handed approach to the allegorical material, the shift to a more direct, straightforwardly entertaining mode of storytelling actually results in a welcome change of pace.

I can't say I was entirely convinced by the alien CGI, which at times has a rather stilted quality, but for the most part it integrates reasonably well with the live action footage, and the use of interview footage and amateur camerawork to creates a mockumentary aesthetic is impressively convincing. The digital photography, meanwhile, may not be exactly pretty, but is certainly appropriate given the aesthetic Blomkamp was going for. A solid piece of work on the whole, if not an out-and-out genre-defining masterpiece.

Image quality: Shot in 4k resolution with the Red One camera, in many ways critiquing DISTRICT 9's image quality seems beside the point, because it's such a mish-mash of deliberately degraded documentary footage and more conventional "pristine" material that it becomes hard to pinpoint where intentional flaws end and unintentional ones begin. For instance, it can look incredibly detailed (see Example 14), but this is inconsistent, and wide shots in particular often have a flat, textureless look. I have no reason to believe that Sony's AVC encode is anything less than a faithful representation of the source material - as with AVATAR, any apparent flaws are either deliberate or the result of the technology itself.

District 9
studio: Sony Pictures; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 22.8 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 29.09 Mbit/sec

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8 Comments

1. ChuckZ said:

I think the picture quality is very good considering that this was shot with an earlier firmware build. The RED One has had better colorimetry and dynamic range since builds 16 and 20. I think they're up to build 30 now. (They skip a few for public stable releases.)

(Posted on Friday, May 28, 2010 at 8:43 PM)

2. Kram Sacul said:

Only two fuzzy shot of the prawns? Aww man.

The film/video hybrid look works really well with this film.

(Posted on Saturday, May 29, 2010 at 3:06 AM)

3. Author Profile Page Michael said:

To be honest all the shots of the Prawns have a somewhat fuzzy look, which I assume is a deliberate attempt to blend the CGI better with the live action.

(Posted on Saturday, May 29, 2010 at 7:03 AM)

4. Marcus said:

I agree: Very good movie but not exactly a masterpiece. Time will not be kind to the CGI effects and the parallels with South African history are overdrawn... but after watching the great Earth-loving peaceful people of planet Pandora take down the evil right wing gun-owning nature-hating Republicans monsters in AVATAR, DISTRICT 9 is pretty subtle social commentary.

Personally I would not have minded the entire film being done in "mockumentary" mode as the trailer suggested (and as I thought it would be), but I didn't mind the action portions.

(Posted on Saturday, May 29, 2010 at 5:09 PM)

5. Bleddyn Williams said:

Having seen this in theatres and twice on blu-ray, I have to say this is a constantly entertaining movie with very strong rewatch factor.

Sharlo Copley as Wikis is definitely one of the most endearing underdog leading men in a long time and your emphasising with him carries the film a long way.

(Posted on Saturday, May 29, 2010 at 6:17 PM)

6. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Confession time: I thought the Wikus character was pretty much consistently loathsome and I found it very hard to feel any sympathy for him at all.

(Posted on Saturday, May 29, 2010 at 6:37 PM)

7. Bleddyn Williams said:

LOL! Really?

(Posted on Saturday, May 29, 2010 at 11:46 PM)

8. Tyler said:

He is really loathsome for most of the film, but it's hard not to feel sorry for him at the right moments. He can be selfish and evil and stupid, but scenes like when he was target-practicing against his will were pretty horrifying. And the end, despite his mistreatment of Christopher.

(Posted on Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 4:04 AM)

 
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