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Aug. 14th, 2011 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nonionayToday I went north to spend an afternoon with friends in honor of a certain friend's birthday, which he would have forgotten if not for me and his girlfriend. So I bought him some chocolate almonds that I know he loves, and he was most happy.
We saw Attack The Block, which is a moderate-budget British film that is totally awesome. Aliens invade a crappy part of London, and a local gang of teenaged thugs has to save the day. It's about ordinary, flawed people having to take responsibility for their actions and be badass to save their home. I must say, it's more impressive watching some kid who you know is genuinely scared shitless overcome their fear (without any sort of whining) and whack an alien over the head with a baseball bat than some shiny action hero who you know will survive a fifty foot fall without a scratch.
The aliens are both ridiculous and creepy at the same time, but they're kept simple, and I like their explanation for why the aliens are there, and why the invasion was so localized.
It's more horror than science fiction, and does a good job with it. Unlike Shark Night, which they showed a preview for, and which is so damned cliched, I thought it was a joke at first. (The black guy dies first. Seriously! Moviemakers actually still do that! You'd think they'd at least shake things up a bit and have him die second. In Attack The Block, if a black guy had died first, it actually wouldn't have bugged me, because most of the cast was black! But even that they subverted.)
But before the movie, we hung out at a playground, and I totally bashed the heck out of my legs. Going down a slide, I misjudged my speed and distance, and started to raise my legs and stand up sooner than I should. As a result, I whacked the back of my legs, right below the calf muscles, and now have twin horizontal welts. I'm sure you'll all get to see them at Worldcon, when the bruises finally show up. Which reminds me, I have to go stick some packages of frozen burritos on those things.
We saw Attack The Block, which is a moderate-budget British film that is totally awesome. Aliens invade a crappy part of London, and a local gang of teenaged thugs has to save the day. It's about ordinary, flawed people having to take responsibility for their actions and be badass to save their home. I must say, it's more impressive watching some kid who you know is genuinely scared shitless overcome their fear (without any sort of whining) and whack an alien over the head with a baseball bat than some shiny action hero who you know will survive a fifty foot fall without a scratch.
The aliens are both ridiculous and creepy at the same time, but they're kept simple, and I like their explanation for why the aliens are there, and why the invasion was so localized.
It's more horror than science fiction, and does a good job with it. Unlike Shark Night, which they showed a preview for, and which is so damned cliched, I thought it was a joke at first. (The black guy dies first. Seriously! Moviemakers actually still do that! You'd think they'd at least shake things up a bit and have him die second. In Attack The Block, if a black guy had died first, it actually wouldn't have bugged me, because most of the cast was black! But even that they subverted.)
But before the movie, we hung out at a playground, and I totally bashed the heck out of my legs. Going down a slide, I misjudged my speed and distance, and started to raise my legs and stand up sooner than I should. As a result, I whacked the back of my legs, right below the calf muscles, and now have twin horizontal welts. I'm sure you'll all get to see them at Worldcon, when the bruises finally show up. Which reminds me, I have to go stick some packages of frozen burritos on those things.
