Alien vs Management

After the annual birthday gig (thanks if you came) at the Light Bar, where I partook in the Texas You'll-Have-To-Hold-Them-Up-After tray of death, I was distinctly feeling my age.




Having ended the night at what I am certain must be the worst curry house in Brick Lane, despite the fact I seem to end up there relatively frequently (probably because they give us free beers with our curries), the last thing I thought I needed on Saturday was another curry. Still, the Peabodies had made plans for a curry about two months beforehand, and Sagar never lets us down, so it transpired that we found ourselves stuffing our faces in idli, upma, utthapam, channa, saag paneer, paper masala dosai and bhattura. A light meal, clearly.

We were so full up after the meal that we decided to roll on over to the Peabodies' place around the corner for a movie. Mr. P is a techno whizz and had rigged their apartment to be a sort of home cinema. By which I mean a projector, killer sound system, popcorn and make out seats. There was a massive array of films to pick from, and we eventually settled on District 9. There were a lot of things working against this film. First of all, it was set in J-burg, so all the accents were South African. Authenticism was only ever going to count against it. Strike 1. Next up was the fact that it was an alien movie. In the sense of aliens living on earth. Strike 2. Then, the impossible happened. The film was amazing. I was the only one out.

The South African element was a success for two reasons. The first was that absolutely no one said "JA" in place of full stops, question marks or affirmatives. The second was that South African culture totally suited the storyline. There were many instances of that weirdly innocent quality with regard to issues of race and segregation that I associate with South Africans and people from Zimbabwe. The film was relatively low budget in that it had no big name stars, or clever editing. It did have a load of CGI though. In some cases I thought it had borrowed CGI from Pirates of the Caribbean, but, hey, waste not, want not. In any case, it is well worth watching.

It was about eleven thirty when District 9 ended, so we thought we'd squeeze in another film. It was Management. I wouldn't bother. In fact, I'll ruin it for you right here. The best line in the entire film was "Call me if you need a partner for a game of solitaire". The best thing about it was that Steve Zahn was in it, who I love purely because he was in Reality Bites, one of the best films of all time. Ever.