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Blomkamp pours his clever notions into a familiar mold: a story of extraterrestrials who come to Earth and are treated like outlaws. Sound schizophrenic? Not to Blomkamp, who grew up in South Africa (before moving to Vancouver at 18 to work in special effects) and who knew from boyhood that he wanted to be a filmmaker. "On one side of my mind you have this place with a crazy racial background, and on the other side of my brain you have this science-fiction geek," he says. "And then one day the two just mixed, and I decided I wanted...
...giant spaceship hovers over a world capital, just as in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Only this time it's Johannesburg, not Washington. And the beings that emerge aren't elegant, superior dudes like Michael Rennie and Keanu Reeves; they're large, icky insect types, with wriggling worms where their noses might be. Nor do they issue the lofty proclamation that the peoples of the world must resolve to live in peace (or we'll all be killed). Instead, these space things, more than a million of them, hang around for 20 years in a ratty part of Joburg...
...weather-related inventions. Like the bicycle, for instance. That's my favorite one. That grew out of the Year Without Summer [1816]. There was quite a lot of volcanic activity for several years prior to that, and it created a cloud of dust high up in the atmosphere. The earth cooled very quickly, at least in the northern hemisphere. And crops started to fail. So [German inventor Karl Drais] saw that it was more and more expensive to feed a horse, and he came up with what was originally called a Draisine. It was really a scooter that eventually evolved...
...grew up hooked to Los Angeles’s oldies radio station—K-EARTH 101. By the time I was five, I knew the lyrics to every Motown hit, every Beatles tune, every Supremes single. So, although I have long grown out of my childhood obsession with the 1960s, I couldn’t pass up the Hatch Shell’s free, outdoor concert series, sponsored by Oldies 103.3. And when I found out that on July 25, in the height of summer, the most quintessential So-Cal band would take the stage? Well, it didn?...
...sort of Norman Rockwell-ish enclave that tries to embody the most idealized notion of American family values: The houses are large and traditional, the lawns green and resplendent, and the children blonde and bike-prone. It likes to propagate its image as the most down-to-earth of Dallas’s affluent neighborhoods (especially in comparison to the adjacent “Park Cities,” where social intrigue is king). But don’t be fooled. Many of Dallas’s richest and biggest-name residents live in Preston Hollow’s enormous...