As we can see from that early concept art, some of the alien designs were way stranger than the final version. Why were those rejected? Were you told to tone down the nastiness?

Those designs weren't necesarily rejected outright, we just evolved away from them. A huge amount of work was done designing these things. There were so many iterations, by the time the final design was nailed down, these early images were out of sight and out of mind. The technical approach to realizing the creatures was always in flux, so that affected the look. I'd like to note that the reason the aliens in the early concept art have such human eyes was because they were, at first, intended to be actors in make-up. Due to budgetary constraints, we didn't think the aliens could be done as pure CG, which is what they ended up being. They were originally conceived as practical make-up with digital replacement over certain parts.

Neill actually encouraged us to make the aliens gross and unpleasant. He was very keen that the aliens should look revolting when they were eating, and left it up to us as to what that meant exactly. So I did my take of what an open alien mouth would look like, and some viewers have been disturbed by it! They took note of the genitalia-like aspect. It's my job to disturb people sometimes, and to be honest, I was only a little worried that genitaliia-esque aliens were old hat. But I think they continue getting such visceral responses because they remind the viewer of his or her own vulnerability, not because of the shock value. In the end, that aspect didn't make it into the final alien, possibly due to censorship issues, but as I said, these illustrations were old news by then. Oh well, it's all good.

It seems like a lot of the meaning of the story changes depending on how aggressive or how loveable the aliens appear. Was there ever any talk of making them cuter? Or more scary and soldier-like?

Definitely for the little child alien, Neill wanted to make him very cute. I collaborated on the child alien with Jamie Beswarick, and Neill encouraged us to play up the big eyes and rounded head, etc. For the the general alien populace, Neill wanted them to be intimidating due to physical strength and size, and off-putting. I think the endearing quality of the generic aliens was due to their ineptness and victim status, one felt sorry for their plight. There was another design phase of the Prawns I personally liked, where they looked very much like those early concept images, but with larger bug eyes. That evolved further into the final aliens. Neill really pushed the eyes to be bigger and bigger, which I initially wasn't sure about, but upon seeing the final movie, I understand the decision. A lot of people seemed to prefer that. It seemed so obvious to have big puppy dog eyes, but without them, perhaps no one would care about Christopher Johnson and his kid.

So the aliens were pure CG, not a mixture of CG and practical effects as you'd considered. How would that mixture have worked? And were any of the alien body parts still done with practical effects?

The Prawns themselves were entirely CG, from head to foot. The alien parts on Wikus were prosthetics built and applied by Weta Workshop (Sarah Rubano and Joe Dunckley took care of the make-up work on location), and there were various alien corpses that we fabricated physically, such as in the laboratory dissection scene. Initially, the aliens were to be an actor in a suit, who would then be augmented with digital replacement in some areas, at an earlier stage we considered mechanical puppetry mixed with prosthetics. Ultimately the decision was made to have them be pure CG.

The aliens in D9 are amazingly expressive — they do a lot of "acting" with their eyes and mandibles. It seems like the biggest problem for a really alien creature is getting human audiences to identify with it or feel its emotions. How did you approach this problem?

That credit should mainly go to the animators and Neill Blomkamp. They solved how this thing we designed should move and emote. But from a design standpoint, it would go back to the eyes. Throughout most of the design process, the aliens had mammalian eyes with pupils and sclera, etc., so we always knew they would be able to emote warm-blooded emotions. Neill didn't go with our versions of the eyes as solid black or cephalapod pupils, so they retained a relatable humanity to them.

Obviously, a lot of the press about D9 focused on its low budget. How do you create aliens who look more convincing and interesting than most big-budget movie monsters, on such a low budget?

Of course, that credit goes to Neill's filmmaking sensibilities. I was part of an initially larger team of designers who were later scaled down to Greg Broadmore, Leri Greer and myself. I worked as lead creature designer, concentrating on the organic creatures. Greg designed all the robots, bio-suits, weaponry, vehicles, the mothership, etc., and was the lead concept designer. In his role as art director, he also contributed studies of the alien's body coloration, as well as some subtle last minute tweaking on the final version aliens. Leri did the graphic design, logos and costumes. With Neill directing me, I just offered up as many possibilities as I could, bearing in mind that it had to be relatable to human audiences and based around a roughly humanoid shape. Initially, we tried not to heed any budgetary or technical constraints, so as not to become creatively impaired, but those things factored in later on. Eventually, time just ran out.

The aliens in the film are standing in for South Africans during Apartheid, but they don't act or appear like any human ethnic group — did you have any discussions about avoiding the "Jar Jar Binks" effect, and making them look less like members of a human ethnicity and more like real aliens?

I don't remember that we did. They spoke in an utterly inhuman language and were so insectile, they didn't really run the risk of mirroring any human ethnic group. Personally, I never thought our space lobsters would strike anyone as ethnic caricatures!

In the film, we got very little information about the aliens' social structure and how they came to be in such bad shape. Were you told anything more about this, during the design phase? Is it true that most of the aliens on Earth were worker drones? Did you have any ideas about what other aliens, like their Queen, might have looked like?

I think the idea was that the vast majority of the aliens were workers, and that Christopher Johnson was much brighter than most. Which sort of explained why the overall population were so lost and ineffectual. There was definitely talk of the social structure of the aliens during the design phase. It factored into how we designed them. There was a lot of stuff designed and talked about that never made it into the film. It's possible that Neill may want to save some of these ideas for other future projects, so I don't know if I should talk about it.

According to entertainment site Pajiba, not only is original director Peter Berg exiting the large Dune remake, but he was also secretly meeting up with Robert Patinson to discuss lead roles in the film.

Now that Pattinson is no longer interested in the project, Berg is looking to leave and Paramount is desperate for a new director and hoping to entice Neil Marshall, director of The Descent, or Neill Blomkamp, director of District 9, into taking over. Marshall is their number-one pick.

While we're taking this report with a giant heaping of salt, we have to say it makes sense and is getting us a little excited.

I think we're all in agreement that Neill Blomkamp would be gangbusters for this film, that's obvious. His passionate love of science fiction alone would at least mean he'd give his all at recreating a successful scifi film. But since Neil Marshall is the studio favorite, probably because he's cheaper, and Blomkamp has a lot of his own work he wants accomplished, let's talk Marshall.

First off Marshall can do more with less: he proved that with the tiny budget film The Descent. Since Paramount wants to make this film for an alleged $175 million, he probably has a few ideas. Also, Marshall is a fan of the genre. He loves aliens, plagues, Mad Max, monsters and conspiracies, and he will take care of the subject material or at least attempt to respect it. Even though Peter Berg's films are pretty to look at and very flashy, they're usually empty or devoid of feelings (witness Hancock). And finally, no matter how crazy and ridiculous Marshall's cult gem Doomsday got, it still wasn't Hitch or Hancock, sorry I hate both those movies equally.

[Via Cinematical]

Variety is reporting that not only is Blomkamp's next scifi feature getting money, but he's getting creative freedom and a larger budget than the $30 million District 9 was allotted. (But the budget will still be "modest" by Hollywood blockbuster standards.) Still, we all know he can make a winner without a ton of money.

"Hopefully, this will be a bit unique, very much a reflection of me. It is absolutely another science fiction film, quite different from `District 9,' but some of the blending of genres and the tone might be within the same realm."

And rumor has it the untitled feature takes place entirely on an alien world. Blomkamp is also committed to directing the District 9 sequel, but that comes after this next project.

The shaky cam, which finds its origins relatively recently, has become synonymous with mockumentaries and "realistic" approaches to fiction.

Movies that use the shaky camera technique strive for a realistic approach to better "connect" with the audience. Sure, in theory it's realistic. People move and so do our eyeballs. But our eyes are so well adapted that trying to replicate them is useless. No camera even comes close to capturing the details our eyes can.

The Good:

The beauty of film for me has always been seeing and picking up on things you wouldn't in everyday life. Shaky cams are agonizing because you miss as much as you get from a film. Most films that use the technique require atleast a rewatch or even a careful inspection of stills.

That being said, there do exist films which use the realism to their advantage.

District 9 used the shaky cam well, sparingly using the camera to "replicate" the human eye. When it did use the realistic technique, it wasn't distracting and actually added to the storyline.

The camera is not as shaky as in other films and even serves to enhance the viewing as it switches from a relatively still camera taking documentary statements to the 1980s-esque hand held shaky cam.

Even with these action-packed clips from D9, even with their more distracting movements, you don't miss any of the action.

Director Neill Blomkamp keeps the action front and center, never sacrificing the story for "authenticity." Perhaps that's why his shaky cam is less distracting, because Blomkamp seems to understand that while some movement is accepted by the human eye, too much loses viewers as they look away to readjust their eyes.

The recent reincarnation of Battlestar Galactica was critically hailed for it's inventive use of the shaky cam realism, featuring jumps and surprise zooms and using the camera as a translator of the action.

It was quick and fast and yet you never felt as though you missed any part of the important action scenes. Again, a careful juxtaposition of still and shaky shots combined to give us an easy, even pleasant to watch story. BSG and Firefly put shaky cam back on the map for inventiveness and District 9 is taking it even further by using it as an actual enhancement instead of an authenticity booster.

Too often filmmakers seem overly excited by the thought of realism and forget that some people want to watch a movie for the fiction of it all; but yes, the realistic shaky cam does have its advantages.

The Bad:

Remember when Paul Greengrass was set to direct Watchmen? It would have been an entirely different movie if the master of shaky cam action sequences had been at the helm of the greatest graphic novel film. Instead, he tackled the Bourne trilogy.

Greengrass's The Bourne Ultimatum is filled with shaky, "realistic" jumps and serves and zooms. And while, they're not always as bad as those in previously mentioned mockumentaries, there's still something lacking, there's still some action you're missing out on.

The film isn't half as distracting as Cloverfield, but it still never seems to stop moving. There's no break, no pause, very few still shots. With so much movement, you can assume Greengrass wants his audience involved in the action, engaged and invested with his hero. And yet, if I can't see the man I'm supposed to be supporting, how can I root for him?

Bourne is better at giving the audience a glance at the actual action, and yet there's still something missing. An improvement over the shaken more in post-production fests of above, but still not quite perfection. And the problem is that many have tried to imitate what didn't work even for Bourne and end up shelved in the Ugly section.

The Ugly:

The ugliest shaky cam abusers are those which have little regard for the actual film they're making and instead are more concerned with the look and visceral feel of the movie.

Mockumentaries have a terrible habit of using the shaky cam to its shakiest to make a scene scarier or more believable. Instead they merely make you angry you're missing what they're supposed to be documenting.

Ever watch an actual documentary? They don't shake half as much as these mocking films would have you believe.

Quarantine coupled the shaky cam with a terrible night vision green hue giving you not only jerky, hard to follow camera shots, but a sickly color throughout much of the film. Of course the camera was often not focused on the scary source of crazy sounds to build suspense and fear, but when it was focused on the action it wasn't even worth it.

Cloverfield is another mockumentary that relied on it's jerking camera shots to make it's realism wildly apparent.

In this clip, the camera is constantly tilted and always moving to remind us that this is "found footage" from a dig site and it was recorded by an regular human being instead of, say, a photographer with a steady hand.

Why eschew established filming techniques in an effort to ruin my experience? Cloverfield had one of the best premises for a monster movie in recent history, the story was engaging and mysterious and required a lot of imagination and extrapolation. It was inventive and steeped in the same lore than makes serials such as Lost work.

So why'd that get thrown out the window when it came time to film the movie? Director Matt Reeves constantly threw around the word "authenticity" when discussing the filming.

If this camera feature is supposed to be so authentic and realistic, how come I always feel like I'm missing so much of the action? Action movies are great; the adrenaline, the jumps, the fights. But with a shaky cam, I feel as though the movement detracts from the pivotal action. I want to see the bad guy getting his face kicked and during car chases; I want to see the car we're supposed to be chasing; I definitely want to see the monster I've been waiting for all movie.

So where do you draw the line; when does realism impede getting the shot?

I'm not discounting every use of shaky cam ever, simply asking for it to be used sparingly, especially with shows like Stargate Universe and the threat of movies like Cloverfield 2 and another Blair Witch on the horizon. Until filmmakers learn to keep us engaged and literally unable to look away, I vote for a moratorium on shaky cam use.

We've seen a lot of stellar shorts here; some are simply wonderful as brief visits with strange beings and strange worlds, and some are already being adapted as feature films (like Sundance-winning Tomo and possibly Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog). These are just a few of the short films that could make for wonderful, fun, or strange feature films:

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello
Notes: Jasper Morello proved a film festival darling, taking top prizes at the Australian Film Institute Awards, Flickerfest, and Dragon Con, and received an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short Film.

Synopsis: Jasper Morello, a disgraced airman, lives in a city plagued by a terrible and incurable sickness. He is called to be a navigator on a mission carrying an unusual passenger, the eccentric physician Claude Belgon, who is studying airmen in hopes of devising a cure. During the voyage, his wife back home, a nurse, develops the sickness, but the crew finds a strange beast whose flesh can cure the sickness. Unfortunately, the creature has a taste for human blood.

How it could be expanded: Already 26 minutes long, Jasper Morello wouldn't need much expanding once we get a bit more into Jasper's background and the personalities of the crew. But in an expanded Jasper Morello, Claude Belgon could commission an air mission on behalf of the Royal Academy to find a mysterious treasure long rumored by airmen to exist on a far off island, one closely guarded by air pirates. Belgon is fully aware of the treasure's true nature: it is a deadly monster that could potentially cure the sickness. When the airship reaches the island, they are nearly thwarted by the air pirates, but they manage to defeat them, taking one unconscious pirate hostage. They find several of the monster cocoons and take them aboard, but then crew members start disappearing. It is not until the air pirate wakes that it is revealed that Belgon has been feeding the crewmen to the growing monsters. From there, the remaining crew would have to evade Belgon and the monsters (and keep the ship afloat). In the final confrontation, it would be revealed that Belgon chose Morello specifically for this mission because he knew of Morello's disgrace and his wife's likelihood of contracting the sickness, and believed it would make him easy to manipulate. The film ends not with Morello trapped in a cavern feeding the beast, but him steering the monster-filled airship home after killing Belgon, knowing full well that, in trying to save his wife, he could be condemning the entire city.

What could kill it: Much of the short's charm comes from its silhouette animation, which might not translate well to a feature-length film. A live action, or perhaps stop motion, film would have to stay close to the look and feel of the original.

After District 9 screened in Johannesburg, many noted that the "prawns" — as the aliens are contemptuously referred to by many humans — are a reference to Parktown Prawns, a common and much-loathed creature often found in Johannesburg homes. Parktown Prawns are not, in fact, prawns, but a species of king cricket that has likely been around since prehistoric times. The critters can grow up to 10 centimeters in length, and sport barbed legs and powerful mandibles.

But it's more than their name and their insect-like appearance that the District 9 aliens borrow from the South African bugs. One of the Parktown Prawn's less endearing qualities is its tendency to spew a noxious black sludge, which one commenter on the William Gibson discussion board points out is likely the inspiration for the black alien liquid that is central to the movie's plot.

As for human interactions with the Prawns, a New York Times article from a decade ago relates a story of a woman who screamed upon spotting a Parktown Prawn, prompting the confused creepy crawly to leap into her mouth, and was summarily rushed to the hospital after chocking on the barbed legs. But the commenter from the William Gibson boards takes a much calmer approach:

[T]he real secret is to TALK to your Prawn — I would always say, "Hello, Prawn, well, I know this is a nice house but really, you belong outside in the garden, so just stay calm, and I'll pick you up and put you there." It really works, if you ever encounter a Prawn, try it.

The film's military contractor, Multinational United, would likely be impressed, since they advise a similar approach:

When dealing with aliens, try to be polite, but firm. And always remember that a smile is cheaper than a bullet.

[William Gibson Discussion Board via Reddit]
These Streets Belong to the Pre-Millennium Bug [NY Times via Reddit]

In an interview with scifimoviepage Blomkamp agreed that he would love to make a sequel to his acclaimed directorial debut:

"I would totally make a sequel," he told scifimoviepage.com. "I've got an inclination but it's not really fleshed out yet. Now that it's done well, I think it would be cool. The studio have definitely said they want one, it's just a question of what the hell it is."

So where do you go after District 9's carnage? Blomkamp explains that the sequel may deal with some of the questions the first film left open, like: Will Wikus be transformed back? But first, he wants to make another film set entirely on an alien planet. So we may have to wait before returning to the alien slums of Johannesburg.

After the District 9 roundtable and a one-on-one with director Neill Blomkamp, we found out a lot about what went on behind the scenes while making the alien feature. And some of the District 9 fact we uncovered may shock you, all quotes are from Blomkamp:

One actor plays all of the talking aliens.

It's only one actor who plays every alien, it's Jason Cope. He plays every single alien.

Most, if not all, of the alien interaction and dialogue with Wikus during the eviction scene was improvised by Jason Cope or the actor Sharlto Copely (Wikus).

So we would film the two of them and then we would go to a different shack. And he'd pretend to evict a new alien. Then we'd go somewhere else and somewhere else. So it was just the two of them. It's the conversations between those two, the actual dialogue and what actually came out of them was totally improved. Any details in words and the language between the two happened right there on the day of shooting. That what makes it feel like they are really communicating...

But stuff like when he walks up in to the shack and says, "this is a gang sign, we're in a gang area right here," we would draw the sign on the wall and he would randomly say it's a gang area. And that meant because he's walking up to a shack that has an alien in it with a whole story that we've written with those guys distilling their fluid and I'm like, "that's interesting you just said that the supporting alien character is a gangster." But if it works, we keep going.

The District 9 alien homes were actually shot in a recently evacuated area of impoverished housing. The homes you see the aliens getting evicted from were homes that humans had recently been kicked out of, for real.

There was a very weird cross over between the film and the reality of filming. We filmed in an area called Chiawelo, which is a suburb of Soweto, which is sort of a suburb of Johannesburg. And there is this thing in Africa called RDP housing, which are government-subsidised housing. Where they will build you a brick house in a different area of the city. And you get put put on a waiting list if you're a South African impoverished resident, until you are able to get one of these houses. So the area we filmed the movie in, what plays as District 9, every single resident in that area was being removed to be put into RDP housing. Although not all of them had been given the green light on the RDP housing, most of them had, but all of them were going to be moved, whether they liked it or not. So we ended up with this open piece of land with all these shacks on it...each day we came to set, there were fewer and fewer people.

As you may know, District 9 was inspired by Neill Blomkamp's short film Alive In Joburg. But what many people don't realize is that he created Alive In Joburg's footage of people being interviewed about aliens, by using real interviews.

I was asking black South Africans about black Nigerians and Zimbabweans. That's actually where the idea came from was there are aliens living in South Africa, I asked "What do you feel about Zimbabwean Africans living here?" And those answers — they weren't actors, those are real answers...

The "Prawn" are from the Andromeda Galaxy.

I think that they [the Prawn] do have a home planet, it's pretty far away probably in the Andromeda Galaxy, but what I like is that they'll live on the ship for thousands of years. Obviously, there's much more of a population on the main planet, but the ships will go out and get the minerals and the ore and whatever resources they need and then bring them all back home.

There were a lot of splattered humans and aliens in this movie. It reminded me a lot of early Peter Jackson. Was it your idea or his to make the victim just explode when they get hit by the alien guns?

No, that was definitely me. But I think that he appreciates it. I think that he likes that stuff. And it's not surprising that I was hired to do Halo, [since] we may have the same sensibilities, in a lot of ways. So it's not a surprise that, that splatter exists in a film with both of our names on it.

Why did you decide to make the people or aliens explode into bits in the film, as opposed to chunks? It's quite violent.

Yeah, it is violent. Usually, it's that energy weapon that's making that happen. It has that electric Tesla arc, that was hitting the people. Even though there's a lot more fantasy in the film than I like to believe — it's less science fiction and more fantasy really — but when we were designing the weapons, we did try to apply some kind of scientific thought to it. So the idea of those Tesla coils hitting the guy, what would happen would just be some sort of violent almost like molecular level of shredding, where everything just gets pulled apart. If that's what it is on a conceptual level, then the visual way to achieve that would be just obliterating whatever the target was.

Was it always going to be rated R?

Yeah there was no discussion about anything else. I think within a day or two of us deciding to do District 9, I said to Pete that I wanted it to be rated R. And then he just totally agreed.

Was there anything you thought up that you decided was too violent?

[Pauses, thinks] No. If anything, I always think that there isn't enough.

See the coil action here:

This essay will contain spoilers. I have already said that I think District 9 is one of the best science fiction movies of the year, and indeed maybe one of the best SF movies of all time. You can read my spoiler-free review of it here. In this post, I'm going to analyze the movie critically, not because the film is bad but because it's so rich that it deserves critical engagement.

Wikus is a recently-promoted bureaucrat with Multinational United, or MNU, a company whose tentacles seem to stretch into all aspects of the paramilitary industry, from armed interventions to weapons development. His new job is to evict every single alien from the Johannesburg slum, and relocate them to what he later describes as "a concentration camp" about 50 kilometers away from the city. As District 9 opens, a series of interviews and news clips hint that something has gone terribly wrong with Wilkus' operation.

Director Niell Blomkamp uses a pseudo-documentary style for the film, which has the effect of immediately plunging us into the media and pundit culture of his alternate reality. In this version of Earth, aliens have occupied the lowest rung of the social ladder in South Africa for the past 20 years. A sociologist explains how they simply showed up one day in an enormous generation ship, which hung in the air for weeks until UN troops cut into the hull and discovered the mysteriously wasted, diseased remnants of a shipboard city.

Eventually the aliens are relocated to living quarters outside Johannesburg, which quickly devolves into a slum. As another commentator explains, the aliens seem uninterested in work and spend all their time obsessively eating catfood and rubber tires. Nigerian gansters move into the slum with them, trading catfood for the alien's superpowerful weapons. And the city of Johannesburg is slowly papered over with "humans only" signs, while the locals take to calling the aliens "prawns."

The film is at its most intriguing when it focuses on Wikus' relationship to the aliens, whom he treats like cattle and refers to openly as prawns. Put into his current position because his father-in-law is an executive at MNU, Wikus is incredibly naïve about the alien relocation project. When the aliens violently resist him, attacking and murdering the people who come into their slums, he's genuinely shocked. And this shock transforms him from an ignorant bigot into a vaguely enlightened jerk.

There is no simplistic moment of enlightenment here, where the white dude suddenly embraces alien culture and learns something about himself. Wikus is selfish and stupid until the end, stumbling into heroic acts rather than authoring them. We get hints that he's not as horrifyingly cruel as his superiors at MNU, but that's not much of a recommendation. He's the kind of guy who approves of concentration camps, but draws the line at senseless torture.

Wikus is drawn into the aliens' world when he accidentally stumbles on an artifact in one of the shanties that he's trying to purge. It turns out he's fallen into an alien mad scientist lab that belongs to the one alien who seems devoted to getting off Earth and back home. Unfortunately Wikus confiscates the energy cell required, and squirts himself with alien fuel goo in the process.

And that's when things get ugly. The goo slowly turns Wikus into an alien, and that means he's the most valuable guy on the planet to MNU. All those alien weapons they've been confiscating can only be operated by the aliens themselves – they're triggered by alien DNA – and Wikus' half-alien body could be the weapon-trigger they've been looking for. The film's air of social satire crumbles into social horror as the MNU scientists force a now-imprisoned Wikus to test weapons for them, on an increasingly disturbing range of targets.

This is in many ways a classic scenario for framing tales of white guilt, where a clueless or possibly even racist white guy realizes people of color are people too. And then he's given a chance to reform and make up for his previous mistakes. District 9 never takes this easy route; even when Wikus realizes that his body is alien, and that the only place he's safe is in the alien ghetto, he never repents for what he's doing to the only home the aliens have on Earth. He's willing to forge an alliance with the alien scientist, but only because he so desperately wants to be human again. Any selfless acts he commits are based on selfishness.

While the portrait of Wikus is nuanced, the film's treatment of the aliens isn't nearly as sharp. Indeed, if there is any flaw in the movie it is the portrayal of the aliens. While there's a satisfying mystery surrounding their arrival, the mystery of their condition isn't so much ambiguous as it is simply confused. If these aliens have such amazing technology and weaponry, why don't they use it to fight back when the humans try to relocate them? We know they've learned to understand English, and it's never satisfactorily explained why they can't integrate themselves into human society. Surely, out of over a million aliens, there must be a few diplomats?

It's possible the aliens have been damaged in some way: We know they were sick and starving when they arrived. But we also know that the alien scientist still has his wits about him and has created an entire lab beneath his shanty. So clearly not all the aliens have lost the capacity for reason, though we see most of them spending all their time fighting and getting high on catfood.

We're left with a kind of bellyflop allegory as a result. District 9's aliens don't represent an oppressed race in South Africa, but instead embody the stereotype of outcast slum-dweller. They seem incapable of integrating themselves into human society due to something intrinsic to their natures, rather than anti-alien feeling among the citizens of Johannesburg.

District 9 doesn't ever need to resolve this issue because it falls back on the rules of the action film, sucking us into a fast-paced second and third act where Wikus runs from the law, uses alien gundam armor to awesome effect, and barely survives a harrowing gunfight in the alien ghetto. Heads explode, people barf extravagantly, and there is a good time to be had for anyone who likes fights and doesn't give a crap about politics. So the high-octane part of District 9 both rescues it from being a treacly message movie, but it also allows Blomkamp to wiggle out of grappling realistically with why certain groups remain ghettoized even when they have talents and technologies that are useful to the society that has cast them out.

Still, there is something deeply pleasing about a movie that manages to be both action-packed and thoughtful. Rarely do we find a film that entertains and provokes, and I don't want to suggest that the explosions get dialed back in favor of Meaningful Dialog about oppression. But as it stands, District 9 generates what you might call CGI politics, a kind of glossy simulation of political engagement. We are given no easy answers, and no cardboard cutout heroes. In the end, the focus of the whole film – the aliens – remain a mere special effect, something cool to look at rather than understand.

The politically charged and very graphic film will be released this Friday.

Because of the budget did a lot of things in District 9 that had to be cut?

Peter Jackson: Everything that Neill wanted to put into the film, we tried to make happen for him. We didn't have to compromise. It's weird because it was a relatively large budget film, i mean relative, $30 million is still a lot of money. It was enough money to be able to put on screen the story that Neil wanted to - it helped it largely by the style that he shot it in, which was very documentary, realism style. So we didn't have to put a gloss on it like some of the bigger budget movies have. We could be down and dirty and seem like some of it was shot with a handy cam, we had that ability which helped the budget immensely. It gives the film a vibrancy and a feeling of being improvised, it has that quality about it.

Would you ever consider making another alien film?

Possibly; I have no plans or rules about doing anything in particular. I just operate from some kind of instinct, that if I read a book or think of a story idea that I get excited about that ... it becomes a film that I want to make. At the moment I'm concentrating on The Hobbit, which we are shooting two movies back-to-back [that] I'm producing and Guillermo Del Toro is directing. And and I've got Tintin with Steven [Spielberg]... But beyond that, we'll see; I don't know the project for the future. It could be aliens, I've got no issues with aliens, happy to shoot some more movies with aliens.

Two great clips have been released that truly show you exactly how District 9 is filmed, and set up. It relies fairly heavy on the shaky cam, but I can tell you it won't distract you from a thing. D9 will be in theaters this Friday.

At Comic-Con, we interviewed Neill on camera, and he mentioned his hive mind concept about the aliens of District 9. Later on, we got to press further about the entire alien world that Neill had built around his alien creatures, past the hive.

What is your own back story for these aliens? What's their home planet like? Why did the end up on Earth?

The hive mind [concept] is the most important thing to me, because I love the idea of a civilization that can build all of that technology and then, at the same time, just have a massive population that was just drones that needed direction, and were absolutely incapable of building that stuff on their own. I found that to be a really interesting concept. Also, it sort of explains why they don't turn on the humans. Individually, they may be feeling oppressed, but they don't have it together enough to form a resistance and back one another. So I found that really interesting.

I think that they do have a home planet, it's pretty far away probably in the Andromeda Galaxy, but what I like is that they'll live on the ship for thousands of years. Obviously, there's much more of a population on the main planet, but the ships will go out and get the minerals and the ore and whatever resources they need and then bring them all back home.

The other thing is that the ship was meant to clip together with other ships. So there's, like, vast amounts of resources that they're bringing to the parent planet. And the ship, when the army generals or the queen of that particular ship died off by some sort of virus or bacteria that they picked up on some other planet, that killed them off. And it didn't effect these sort of resilient, hardy sort of drone workers. Then the technology is usually the thing that they relied on to save them, but in this case it sort of screwed them because it brought them to a planet that kind of treated them pretty badly, but it was the ship that realized that, unless it gets to a life sustaining planet everything is going to die, which is a cool idea. So the ship just auto pilots to the closest one in the Goldilocks band, and it's our planet and then pulls up and hits the breaks.

Where does this leave Christopher Johnson [an abnormally smart prawn who sparks a bit of a revolution... Not to give too much away]?

I think it's taken 20 years. I think because there is a subconscious hive mind happening, really what they should do is lay one egg that has a different embryo in it that grows into a Queen or being someone that dictates direction. But I think in the interim, because they may have done that, there may be an egg out there with that, but as that being is growing, I just like the idea that he may have been a lot more directionless in the beginning. But the hive structure of their society may just pick one or two that starts to become the leader. Like the overall structure of his brain may change because the hive may want that to happen. So he starts having a direction and a goal. Which is an interesting idea and it's just enough to kick start them to be able to get to the ship to get back.

Excited now? Looks like it's going to be an alien-gun-happy, explosive thrill ride, not so much with the "apartheid was wrong, mmmkay?" District 9 will be in theaters August 14th.

I hope the retelling of alien landings becomes my generation's defining moment of "I'll never forget where I was when I heard..." Should be interesting to see how District 9 handles this sort of mentality, but I know I'm ready for it. It's time for a better caliber of summer movie, and my money is on D9 to deliver it.

So apparently the aliens have invented a spray that turns jumpy MNU agents into "one of us" — delightful. Also, there are little baby bug aliens, and now we know how they are spawned. Plus secret underground space ships that the aliens are most likely using to get the hell off this godforsaken rock.

District 9 will be out on August 15th. Check out the high def version over at Yahoo.

Hard to believe that Mohammad has never come to this particular mountain before, but then, Jackson's usually in the editing bay until the last minute, and it's a long way from New Zealand to San Diego. "After all these years, I'm thrilled that I finally have the opportunity to visit San Diego for Comic-Con. I am especially excited that I am attending to support District 9," Jackson said in a press release on Friday, which noted that the alien-internment thriller's director Neill Blomkamp and star Sharito Copley would sit on a panel with him. "Neill is a tremendously talented young director and he's made an extraordinary film, so it was important to me to come to San Diego to spread the word. I look forward to attending my first ever Comic-Con and I know that those who visit us on July 24th in Hall H will be in for quite a ride."

Eight paragraphs down in its report about Jackson's visit to Comic-Con, the New York Times casually notes that Jackson's visit might be upstaged by Cameron if 20th Century Fox decides to send him to Comic-Con to preview Avatar. (And why wouldn't they?) Not even Hall H may be big enough to contain all the fanboy enthusiasm sparked by having both the King of the World and the Ruler of Middle-earth at the convention.

Here are a few screengrabs from the new trailer. I'm pretty shocked by how much emotion is being expressed on that bug-like alien face. It's heartbreaking.

First Showing has the summer movie report from the current Rolling Stone which exposes a little bit of MNU violence. For those of you who are not aware, MNU (Multi-National United) is the team of police sent to govern over D9, and they appear ready to use force when necessary.

In the article, director Neill Blomkamp reveals a little bit more about his downtrodden aliens:

These aliens arrived 20 years ago in a dead, derelict mothership, which hovers above Johannesburg. It's enormous, like the size of 10 football fields. The aliens have ended up in a Soweto-style township beneath the ship. It's clear that they're not really integrating into society. They like to scavenge things, rip up train tracks. So the authorities shift them 200 miles away, into the African belt. They've built a concentration camp." Obviously, the concentration camp is known as ‘District 9′

D9 will be released on August 14.

[Pictture via ">District9News]

The mockumentary-looking film focuses on the slums we force an unfortunate alien race to live in on Earth, and our not so human response to their presence. If this film is anything like we've seen from Blomkamp before it promises to be an incredibly challenging and thought provoking feature, with the visual appeal of producer Peter Jackson. D9 will be released on August 14.