Crickets Vs Cats - The Conclusion

Part 3 of Things In Jars Oscar Special

So far we’ve taken a look at Best Picture nominees District 9 and Avatar (post is here), looked at their similarities and differences (here) and now, to stop this entry from being as long as the Oscar broadcast itself, I’m going to reveal who I’d like to see win the top spot.

If it were up to me the Oscar would go to…. *drumroll*



District 9!

Why? The short answer is it reminded me why I love movies and why I want to work in the film industry.

I went into District 9 not really knowing anything about it other than it was produced by Peter Jackson, and I came out stunned. I found it a good, even blend of action and cool effects, with drama and realistic characters when I'd started to believe the focus in a film had to be on one or the other. The summer of 2009 was particularly bad for "turn off your brain" blockbusters where the public seemed ready to accept the most incomprehensible mess of a movie as long as there were lots of explosions. Not only accept it but the attitude seemed to be that there was no point in expecting anything more from a summer genre movie. So I walked into D9 disenchanted with the state of the movie industry (and genre films in particular) and I came out all excited about movies again. In fact I was quite torn because on the one hand I'd been deeply moved by the story and the characters and just wanted to sit there in shock and on the other hand I wanted to jump up and down in fangirlish glee because damn that had been a cool ride!

Thus it was a bit of a let down to turn around and find that Avatar, the film that was supposed to "revolutionize" film-making, was back to the same old Hollywood model. It’s not that the story is that bad – it’s not a movie that requires you to forget you have brain cells by any stretch of the imagination – and is well constructed for what it is. In fact I probably would have liked Avatar a lot more if I hadn't seen District 9 first. But given how close the stories are (as we’ve seen) I just found Avatar to be a very plain, cookie cutter plot in comparison to D9’s fresh take on things. In fact I remember watching Avatar thinking "There are normally two ways this type of story ends ... meaning the only question left is - is this going to be the happy ‘Fern Gully’ ending or the sad ‘Dances With Wolves’ ending?" I walked out, completely unsurprised going ... "well... at least it was pretty."

Because Avatar IS pretty. SO pretty! I am so envious of the design team because, come on, how cool must it have been to get to design an entire world as awesome as Pandora? The flora, the fauna, the geography – all mind blowing (I want a whirly-gig gecko of my own gosh darn-it!). Avatar is going to sweep the technical Oscars and it completely and utterly deserves to if only for the fact there were several scenes where I wish they’d just said “screw it” to the story and taken us on a “walking” tour of Pandora instead, so rich was the environment they’d created.

But the Oscar for Best Picture is supposed to go to the film that is the best across the most fields - and between D9 and Avatar the more rounded film is definitely District 9. Its juxtaposition of sci-fi strange with the utterly mundane had me going “wow – I could totally see this happening in real life” and by the end of the film it had be re-thinking my own attitudes to other people and cultures. So for not only giving me an adrenaline rush but also making me think, I vote District 9 the best movie of 2009.