District 9

After being really excited for this during the summer, I finally saw this at the end of September...



More than any other movie I've seen this year, this was the victim of some serious over-hype. At it's core, District 9 is a decent little sci-fi action movie with some not-at-all subtle political allegory thrown in. The action scenes are nice, the aliens look pretty creepy, and the pseudo-documentary style cinematography keeps the story moving forward. However, despite the fact that there are extended sequences featuring mercenaries fighting alien mecha, I found myself getting bored. Despite the documentary feel, nothing is really explained adequately and the characters just aren't very interesting.

I think the weird mix of political allegory and sci-fi action adventure ultimately hurts the film. Pursuing either direction would have probably resulted in a better (or at least more coherent) film. As it stands now, District 9 feels a bit like someone wanted to write a movie about apartheid and then decided to play Halo instead. It's not bad, but I don't think it's as good as everyone's been saying.

There will be content soon

I promise.

Mixtapes

When I can't sleep I sometimes start making mixtapes. Instead of helping me sleep this inevitably causes me to stay up late experimenting with different song orders and listening to a ton of weird music.

I also do this when I have a bunch of free time. Such as on a long weekend where I've decided not to go into lab for once.

XPlanes

XPlanes is a cool little website that I've spent far too long looking at today.

See all manner of weird, experimental, and downright cool aeromachines here.

I'm pretty bad at this blogging thing

We went out to the wineries yesterday and apparently nature does exist on Long Island. It's not all strip malls, Olive Gardens, and people with small dogs after all. There were farms with vegetable stands and horses and everything.

I forgot my camera.

Also, it turns out that wine grapes taste terrible if you eat them right off the vine. This was news to me.