Courtesy of Sony Pictures

Image from "District 9."

You don't expect much from a sci-fi spectacle flick to be released in August -- traditional dumping ground for lice-infested studio rubbish -- but "District 9," the forthcoming alien-apartheid actioner produced by "Lord of the Rings" godhead Peter Jackson and directed by South African effects wizard Neill Blomkamp, definitely has the Internets abuzz. In large part, of course, that's because most summer cinema is so unbelievably dumb that any marginal sign of life is greeted by fans as a latter-day dispensation of loaves and fishes.

Over at SpoutBlog, Christopher Campbell has a nifty roundup of reactions to the new "District 9" trailer from fan-type bloggers and so-called journalistic professionals alike. My own reaction is that it's impressive how many people devote significant chunks of their lives to jesuitical, reading-the-tea-leaves study of unreleased and probably crappy genre movies -- where, oh where, I plead, are the blogs devoted to parsing the details of Tsai Ming-liang and Béla Tarr's forthcoming films? -- but let's move on.

Actually, my reaction is more like this: "District 9" looks really cool, up to a point. There's an entire tradition of big-screen science fiction that begins with a sinister and/or satirical premise and then degenerates, suddenly or gradually, into standard chase-and-kill. Come to think of it, virtually all sci-fi movies, good or bad, work that way. On the evidence, Blomkamp and Jackson are clearly trying to balance venerable sci-fi allegory -- using the uneasy cohabitation of humans and aliens to comment on human civilization -- and the hiney-kickin' demands of popcorn cinema. In the universe of "District 9," a race of insectoid newcomers (blogger Brian Prisco describes them as a cross between cockroaches and toasters) have been living alongside humans for almost 30 years, but are exiled to walled-in shantytowns, barred from public transport and "human-only" areas and generally treated like, you know, occupied Palestinians or Arabs after 9/11 or Jews under Hitler or blacks under Jim Crow or pick-your-favorite-pariah.

Blomkamp's quasi-documentary framing looks interesting, as do the echoes of recent political history and the paranoid conspiracy theories. I don't feel confident, from the film's trailer, about whether its South African setting and apartheid-era references are cleverly handled or Michael Bay-grade obvious. Ben Child of the Guardian wonders whether "District 9" could turn out to be "a late-era addition to the canon of classic 'Soylent Green'-esque sociological sci-fi," which is quite a mouthful. Owen Williams of Empire sees it as just another summer '09 humans vs. robots throwdown, after the latest installments in the "Terminator" and "Transformers" franchises. Hell, even a halfway smart attempt to split the difference between those two poles -- which is what I smell Jackson and Blomkamp cooking here -- ought to make it the best sci-fi flick of the summer.

Then there's the question of whither Jackson will steer his Sudafrikan protégé next, which might be back to their long-delayed "Halo," a screen adaptation of the fanboy-beloved Microsoft vidgame. If this one clicks, then etc.

I'm developing symptoms of nonexistent-summer-movie overdose here, and need to get back to watching some languorous, out-of-focus flick about bisexual bank robbers, preferably really long and in Albanian (with some stop-motion animation, of course). Oh, but wait! Here's the "District 9" trailer, via Yahoo:

Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard in "Humpday."

It looks to me as if Seattle filmmaker Lynn Shelton's adroit comedy "Humpday" -- a Sundance hit last winter that's now being released by Magnolia Pictures -- is in some danger of being swallowed by its own premise. On one hand, you couldn't ask for better publicity for a low-budget indie film that was based on improvisation and shot without a screenplay. Some lazy critics will classify "Humpday" as a "mumblecore" movie, but that term never meant much and has now become a pejorative. Nobody wanders aimlessly through this film; Shelton is a sharp and perceptive director and storyteller who suggests Nicole Holofcener or early Mike Leigh.

Now, if "Humpday" isn't a mumblecore movie, it also isn't a movie about homosexuality or bisexuality or any other kind of sexuality. That despite the widely-disseminated fact that its protagonists, onetime college hell-raisin' pals Ben (Mark Duplass) and Andrew (Joshua Leonard), who are struggling to reconnect, get really drunk at some hipster chick's house and dare each other to make a porn film. Together. With nobody else in the room. Indeed, Ben and Andrew do end up behind closed doors at the "Bonin' Motel" (Ben's felicitous phrase) with a video camera. But what happens in there is a plot point in a story about two old friends, one a married guy in pleated pants, the other a rootless drifter. It isn't the point of the entire film.

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Criterion Collection

"The Seventh Seal"

Deep in an audio interview that's half-buried among the extras on the Criterion Collection's new double-disc DVD set of "The Seventh Seal," Max von Sydow drops an odd little film-history bombshell. When Ingmar Bergman first contacted him about a role in that 1957 film, von Sydow says, Bergman first suggested that he should play Jof, the lovable clown and family man who survives the Black Death together with his wife and child. How might the entire history of art-house cinema -- and von Sydow's subsequent career playing Nazi officers, tormented intellectuals and Jesus Christ -- have been different?

Ultimately, a boyish comic actor named Nils Poppe took the role of Jof, and von Sydow was reassigned to play Antonius Block, the brooding knight who is returning from the Crusades, alongside his wisecracking, cynical squire (Gunnar Björnstrand, in a performance that may outdo von Sydow's). Tormented by religious doubt and fear, Block plays a memorable game of chess with Death, buying just enough time for Jof's family to escape the latter's clutches. This seemingly insignificant casting detail offers an important clue to "The Seventh Seal," the movie that launched the international art-house movement -- and a movie that has acquired, as a direct result of its iconic stature, a totally unjustified reputation for humorlessness, obscurantism and difficulty.

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Twentieth-Century Fox

Megan Fox in "Jennifer's Body."

During my largely vain efforts to escape the totalitarian cultural hegemony of That Lady and That Dead Guy -- I haven't yet seen a video of Sarah Palin moonwalking or the "Thriller" video mashed up with her campaign appearances, but that's only because I haven't looked -- I have found the perfect antidote, a long, cool drink of Stygian pop-culture brew that will drive Jacko and Hockey Mom from your consciousness. Admittedly, the name Diablo Cody fills me with a mixture of admiration, exasperation and terror, and the only thing I know about Megan Fox is that she represents the hot apogee of hottie hotness in a movie I will never see. Yet their potent and perverse union in the upcoming teen-horror vehicle "Jennifer's Body" (set for September release) fills me with enormous yearning.

There's been a lot of totally uninformed Internet back-and-forth about whether director Karyn Kusama -- formerly an up-and-coming talent who seemed to flame out after "Æon Flux" in 2005 -- and producer Jason Reitman (who directed "Juno") would somehow render Cody's script cheesy and trashy. I'm sorry, but those are dumb complaints. If anything, Cody could use some cheesy and trashy. And anyway, this is a movie about a demon-inhabited cheerleader who kills boys! It is not Chekhov, and it is not "Let the Right One In," excellent as that was. It is self-evidently a movie that's trying to claim a place in a cheesy, trashy American teen-movie idiom; trying to make it into some kind of brooding and dark auteurist vision would be a dire categorical mistake.

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Alfredo Castro in "Tony Manero."

"Tony Manero" is one of those movies that sneaks up on you from behind and takes a pickaxe to your head. Arguably I shouldn't be writing about it at all, except to say that if you dig the terrain where dark comedy, horror movie and political allegory mix, and if you appreciate having your mind well and truly messed with, you should check it out.

There's no question that "Tony Manero" has maximum impact if you don't know what you're in for. You might say that Pablo Larraín, the film's 32-year-old Chilean director, is preying on false expectations. After the movie's premiere at Cannes last year, one studio executive told me that several of her colleagues had emerged from the screening violently angry. While Larraín presumably did not make the film just to piss off a bunch of rich Americans who might theoretically be interested in giving him money, it's nonetheless an accomplishment in which he can take pride. (He eventually found a United States distributor in Lorber Films, the latest creation of indie-industry veteran Richard Lorber.)

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AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian, file

In this Feb. 22, 2004 file photo, actor Karl Malden accepts the life achievement award at the 10th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles.

Amid the celebrity death party of the last few days, let's spare at least a brief thought for Karl Malden, the iconic broken-nosed character actor and American Express pitchman whose pugnacious working-class demeanor kept him going in show business for more than 50 years. Malden died Wednesday at age 97, which means he was 46 years old when Michael Jackson was born in 1958.

For someone of my generation, Malden will always be identified with Lt. Mike Stone of the long-running 1970s TV series "The Streets of San Francisco" (whose sidekick was played by Michael Douglas). For younger viewers, I guess he'll always be the "Don't leave home without it" guy from more than 20 years of American Express commercials. But of course Malden was an established film actor long before those gigs. He played opposite Marlon Brando several times, winning an Oscar as the likable Mitch in "A Streetcar Named Desire" and playing the sympathetic priest in "On the Waterfront." He also played Gen. Omar Bradley in "Patton" and the prison warden in "Birdman of Alcatraz," but my personal favorite is probably Malden's vicious crook-turned-sheriff in the terrific revenge western "One-Eyed Jacks" (another Brando film, and the only one he ever directed).

Malden was born in Chicago as Mladen Sekulovich, the son of a Serbian father and Czech mother, and spoke no English until he went to school. This heritage is the source of his great gift to pop-culture trivia collectors, since Malden went to great lengths to include his original name in the dialogue of his films and TV shows. In "The Streets of San Francisco," Stone frequently employed an informer called Sekulovich. In the courtroom scene of "On the Waterfront," one of the union officials' names read aloud is Mladen Sekulovich. Under fire in Sicily, Malden's Gen. Bradley in "Patton" barks, "Hand me that helmet, Sekulovich." And so on. There are a few other examples in Malden's Wikipedia entry, but I just know somebody out there must have a definitive list.

Go in peace, Sekulovich. I don't think they take American Express cards where you're going. Just this once, it was OK to leave home without it.

If she wanted to play the role, Kathryn Bigelow could easily present herself as Exhibit A of the enduring sexism of Hollywood. Beginning with her vampire cult-fave "Near Dark" in 1987 and then the 1991 surf-heist classic "Point Break," Bigelow has directed some of the most visually inventive and exciting films in recent action-cinema history. (Yes, I am willing and even eager to defend "Strange Days" and "K-19: The Widowmaker." Let's leave that for another time.) She has virtually no interest in the kinds of talky, intimate dramas the world expects female filmmakers to crank out (and her one, only partially successful attempt to move in that direction, "The Weight of Water" in 2000, suggests she shouldn't bother).

Bigelow has paid for her eccentricity. Early in her career, it was often assumed that she only had access to the industry because of her brief marriage to James Cameron, whom she hadn't even met when she made "Near Dark." She's had constant difficulty in raising money and getting projects launched, and has made just seven features across 22 years (along with music videos and episodes of "Wild Palms," "Homicide" and "Karen Sisco"). Throughout it all, she's never sounded bitter or come anywhere close to playing the victim. When I meet Bigelow and writer-producer Mark Boal in New York to talk about "The Hurt Locker," their riveting Baghdad bomb-squad drama (and Bigelow's first film in seven years), she's a friendly and relaxed conversationalist, clearly delighted with the movie's reception so far.

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Courtesy New York Asian Film Festival

Image from "Dream."

Last weekend brought the opening of this year's New York Asian Film Festival, a wonderfully rich and strange event that's become a highlight of the Gotham summer for movie buffs. Although the NYAFF began in 2000 as a scruffy, fanboy-oriented celebration of old-school Hong Kong kung-fu flicks, it has evolved into the leading North American showcase for East Asian pop cinema. Now overlapping with the somewhat artier Japan Cuts festival (hosted by New York's Japan Society), the NYAFF has become downright respectable, with airline and hotel sponsors, relationships with the Hong Kong and Korean film-export officials, and other trappings of success.

This year's festival kicked off with the world premiere of Hong Kong writer-director Wong Ka-fai's "Written By," a delirious supernatural melodrama with overtones of Charlie Kaufman-style meta-ness. It's precisely the kind of Asian film some Hollywood producer will try to remake (and undoubtedly will screw up): A grand, quasi-Buddhist meditation on life, death, love and the inescapable nature of suffering, awash with hilariously literal-minded special effects and frank sentimentality. A girl who's been blinded in the car accident that killed her father writes a story to cheer up her widowed mom. In her story, dad survives the crash while mother and daughter die, so he writes a story within the story to keep up his spirits and ... You see where this is going.

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AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, file

Forest Whitaker, left, and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Sid Ganis announce the best picture nominations for the 81st Academy Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Jan. 22, 2009.

In a turn of events that's been a long time brewing, one imagines, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences  announced on Wednesday that the 2009 Oscar race will yield 10 best-picture nominees, rather than the long-standing quota of five. Academy president Sid Ganis was careful to describe this as a return to ancient Hollywood tradition, since -- as absolutely no one remembers -- there were 10 nominees a year from 1936 to 1943 (and an erratic number, ranging from 8 to 12, in the years before that).

Actually, the Hollywood tradition to which Ganis is reverting is the one about placating producers of big-budget projects that make plenty of dough but don't win awards. He might as well call those five extra slots the We're So Sorry About "The Dark Knight" Memorial Nominations. The near-total Academy brushoff of that bat-scale blockbuster this year brought long-simmering industry grumping about the Oscars to a head, with many Hollywood suits convinced that the awards had been permanently hijacked by mid-level Indiewood films that do well in coastal metropolitan regions but fail to pack 'em in at heartland multiplexes. ("Slumdog Millionaire" and "No Country for Old Men" being the paradigmatic examples.)

I quote herewith from the AMPAS press release: "'Having 10 best-picture nominees is going allow [sic] Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize,' commented Ganis. 'I can’t wait to see what that list of 10 looks like when the nominees are announced in February.'"

Well, me neither, Sid! Twitterers are already competing to come up with the most ludicrous potential 2009 nominees; "So 'Hotel for Dogs' has a chance!" someone chirped moments after the announcement was made. Indeed it does, and so does the forthcoming Kelsey Grammer-Bebe Neuwirth remake of "Fame," which I dread more than any other motion picture in history. But aren't we just likely to see more nods for quasi-quirky projects involving Diablo Cody and/or Steven Soderbergh? What say ye, Salon readers? Nominations, please. 

Courtesy The Fish Film, Open Eye Pictures, IFC Films

Images from "The End of the Line," left, "Under Our Skin," and "Dead Snow."

Gone are the days when advocacy documentaries -- films aimed at rallying public support around a controversial or little-known issue -- were grainy, boxy videotapes full of earnest people talking. In the wake of Michael Moore and "Inconvenient Truth," issue-oriented docs have to look and feel cinematic, and follow a rigorous formula: two-thirds rage and despair, one-third inspiration. We've got two sterling examples this week, and they're handsomely reported and photographed works, easy to watch and emotionally engaging even if you're not personally involved with the topic. (See also the excellent "Food Inc.," now in theaters.)

But does this more polished delivery system actually make movies like "The End of the Line" (which is about the overfishing crisis) or "Under Our Skin" (about the controversy surrounding Lyme disease) more effective? I think the jury's out on that one. Both are worth seeing -- but doesn't the simultaneous release of two well-crafted movies that see the end of the world approaching from different directions risk audience fatigue or apocalypse overload? These films convinced me that I should care about the fate of the bluefin tuna and about the suffering of people with misdiagnosed Lyme disease, but they didn't leave me any more able to hold those things in my head amid the infoglut of our civilization.

Amid the fjords and mountains of Norway's Arctic northlands, they've got a different apocalyptic problem, apparently: undead Nazis. Maybe the horror film "Dead Snow" is about the end of the world too, in a more allegorical fashion. Or maybe it's about undead Nazis.

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