Great D12s of Fire [Review: Bender's Game]

District 9 update: there's a link to Neill Blomkamp's short film "Alive in Joburg" here - (thanks Molly Brown).

Bender's Game is a feature-length Futurama episode. The plot revolves around waste-of-space robot Bender who becomes addicted to Dungeons and Dragons and starts to confuse reality with the game. Meanwhile Fry and the crew are searching for an energy crystal that could end Ma's domination of the Universe's fuel supply, which has naturally enough been disguised as a D12.

This episode is enjoyable and witty enough but suffers from the same problem as the Simpsons Movie - it differs from the regular episodes only in length. This could easily have been compressed to the regular length without too much loss, and there's no sense of either higher production values or of the greater scope that you might want from a feature. Half-way through, having lost their battle with Ma, the crew are transported into an alternate universe where they get to fight the battle again through D&D analogues of the previous events and characters - this is a clever structure but in places the repetition skirts a little too close to the boring frontier.

As with other Futurama and Simpsons episodes, the best parts are often the throwaway comments or scenes least relevant to the plot. Here, an early sequence where Layla participates in a spaceship demolition derby sees Lego and Meccano spaceships collide, while the heads of George Takei and Scott Bakula argue over who has done the most damage to the Star Trek franchise; later Bender's D&D addiction takes him to a robot psychiatric hospital for a brief parody of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - the robot versions of individual and group psychotherapy are hilarious.

Review: District 9

2009 is proving to be an extraordinary year for science fiction cinema - and there may be more surprises to come.

District 9, directed by Neill Blomkamp and produced by Peter Jackson, is refreshing for so many different reasons - not least the complete absence of a single American or British accent or familiar face amongst the cast. Sharlto Copley plays the lead role, Wikus van der Merwe, as a delightful anti-hero - a civillian office worker suddenly promoted beyond his ability and put in charge of an army squadron who clearly hate him. There's more than a touch of David Brent about his character and while - naturally - he learns the error of his ways through a series of ironic plot twists, his unthinking prejudice and utter cowardice is a huge part of the story.

We've also moved way beyond the sci-fi blockbuster as just a series of national monuments to be trashed (unless, that is, we happen to be Roland Emmerich) - this is a blockbuster with plenty of action, particularly as Wikus' two man army storms MNU headquarters, but also extremely strong on character, story and the striking Johannesburg location. And this film doesn't just have great special effects - it knows how to use them. The Independence-Day style mothership is a good example: rather than being the focus of the action it's beautifully composited into the background of every other shot.

District 9 made me think about persecution in general and a particularly abhorrent recurrent event in history - forced relocations of entire populations such as the Trail of Tears. While falling short of literal genocide, relocation is still a particularly dehumanizing act, both because the victims are often processed more like farm livestock than humans, and because the act tears people away from their homes, possessions and familiar places that form the foundations of a culture.