HALO what?

Well, I finally saw "District 9" last night. Amazing. A few years ago I came across "Alive in Joburg" online and fell in love with it. There was a stroke of brilliance in it that I hoped would one day translate to a full film by that director. I never could have expected that it would be a feature length version of Joburg. For the past 30 years every genre film has basically tried to be Star Wars or Alien/s, I'm so happy to see someone develop a new aesthetic for other people to rip off for a while.

I'm also glad that we are moving past Music Video directors getting feature films and back to commercial directors. People like Blomkamp and Kosinski (Tron 2) who have actually had to tell some form of story in their previous work for hire rather than just make it look good (which they also accomplish). I feel I have been burned far too many times by the "it" music video directors who have made some of my favorite videos coming to feature films and making aimless, pointlessly depressing, and ultimately plotless character studies about hipster assholes, that never lived up to the visual potential introduced by their previous work. You guys all know who you are.

In any case, I was excited when I heard that Blomkamp was going to do Halo. I've never played Halo, but the guy visually had the chops. I'm insanely glad that it fell through because, and again I only know the broadstrokes of the story, I doubt Halo would've allowed for as personal and well fleshed out story as D9. BUT! As I was watching D9 unfold one video game lept to mind that I would love to see him do, and it ain't Halo. It was all solidified when Wickus picked up a pig with what I could only describe as a Gravity Gun and send it flying into a soldier, that I could loosely describe as a Combine. Let's get this guy on Half Life, pronto. Forget Halo. And I imagine it would look a little bit like the image above. (edit: yeah, I did it, you can see a little GD in the corner, thats me!!! :) And here is the original if you are curious...

-GD