So just in case you haven’t heard these two beauties squeak by in the webernets, there are a couple of movies coming out this year that look to be real groundbreakers, and they share a numeral.
First is a little ditty called simply 9. This looks to be something I’ve fervently been waiting for – a darker-themed CG movie. Sure, I heart Wall-E so hard it hurts, but that doesn’t mean I don’t thirst for some boo! to go with my heart goo. 9 looks like it just may deliver.
Based off a short film by Shane Acker, this thing is just rife with good names. Produced by some guy named Tim Burton, directed by Timur Bekmambetov (who directed Wanted and next weeks Hey Have You Seen…, Night Watch), and starring Elijah Wood and Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer, Crispin Glover, and on and on and on, it looks to be overflowing with talent to go along with the absolutely beautiful animation. This thing looks to be worth its weight in burlap.
Check the trailer for 9 here.
Then there’s this:
The trailer for District-9, the next project by Neill Blomkamp, who made those amazing Halo shorts and was said to be helming the film adaptation of the Halo franchise. It utilizes that same on-the-ground, documentary style that was in the Halo shorts, and it creates an odd sense of…well, I’d almost call it sadness. The xenophobia and dislike and feelings of superiority are so easy to apply to any one race from another…what about an entirely different species?
That’s District-9, where the non-humans have been corralled into a sort of ghetto. This film looks to be exploring that dynamic, and there’s a sense of foreboding that leads me to believe that someone on the human side of things may push it too far, and the results won’t be pretty.
See the District-9 trailer here.
Is it too much of a stretch to say that Inglorious Basterds counts for year Nein? See what I did there? See? Ah boy…good times.