Alive in Joburg

Today marks the opening of District 9 in box offices across America, and from what I've heard, it's getting rave reviews. We may even have a sci-fi classic on our hands. I really want to see it - it looks fantastic.

A little known fact about District 9 is that it all started out as a short film by director Neil Blomkamp in 2005 known as Alive in Joburg (or Johannesburg, whichever it was supposed to be.) It's a six-minute short about a peaceful group of aliens who land in South Africa around 1990, only to be met by xenophobia and intolerance (insert not-so-subtle apartheid reference here.) But this was the project from which the supposed gem that is District 9 stemmed. For all I know, it might even be sort of an extended trailer, four years in advance. Either way, it's a fun, interesting little short.

Tempbot

I've stumbled across a short (15 minute) film called Tempbot, which I found myself very moved by. The plot is a bit odd - it's about a robot that works as a temporary worker in some company, and it describes his life and his forays into the emotions that robots simply can't seem to understand. To use the description from director Neill Blommkamp,

Tempbot is an experimental robot, designed to perform ordinary office jobs (but with an efficiency inaccessible for men) and to act as well as a normal human beings, including the way he relates with the opposite sex. Obviously, things will go very bad...

The CG effects for the robot itself are pretty stunning, and I found it to be very moving. The end left me very sad. Really worth the watch, I think.

TEMPBOT