Word: halo
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Sometimes bad breaks can bring great fortune. A few years ago, Peter Jackson, the Lord of the Rings movies, planned a big-screen version of the Halo video-game universe and tapped Neill Blomkamp to direct it. When that project collapsed after a few months, Jackson proposed that Blomkamp turn his science-fiction short Alive in Joburg into his first feature film. It would be set in Blomkamp's native South Africa, focus on the country's traumatic tradition of apartheid, have characters who speak in unfamiliar accents or unknown languages, boast no star power - the lead actor had never...
Blomkamp, who directed three shorts in the Halo video-game universe, was hired by Jackson to make a Halo feature. That project foundered after a few months, and Jackson proposed that Blomkamp make a different feature right away. He resuscitated the Alive in Joburg idea, expanding and improving it into District 9. Jackson even let Blomkamp cast Copley, a high school pal who had never acted, in the lead. Amazingly, Copley carries the film, bringing to a most demanding role the scheming dimness of Harry Dean Stanton mixed with the dogged, unwarranted optimism of Steve Carell. Jackson, says Blomkamp...
Lots of people, adults and kids, are watching in the room with me. On the screen, Gandalf the Grey returns to the Fellowship as Gandalf the White. He casts a blinding white light, his face hidden behind a halo. Someone blurts out, "Imam zaman e?!" (Is it the Imam?!) It is a reference, of course, to the white-bearded Ayatullah Khomeini, who is respectfully called Imam Khomeini. But "Imam" is at the same time a title of the Mahdi, a messianic figure that Muslims believe will come to save true believers from powerful evildoers at the time of the apocalypse...
...smoke of the village cooking fires mingles with the evening mist rising off the Kameng River as two Indian engineers appear on the balcony of the Dewana Hotel. Our heads are surrounded by a hungry halo of mosquitoes, and on the street below, a Nishi tribesman wielding a sword wanders drunkenly among yapping dogs - until a half-century ago, his people had engaged in the quaint practice of headhunting. "You're perfectly mad to come here for a holiday," one of the engineers bellows. "For us, this is a punishment posting...
...screen will never grace the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Nonetheless, the industry has shown signs of growing away from its less favorable stereotypes. “The boundaries of video games have expanded beyond just the typical hardcore gamer that sits in his basement and plays Halo,” Sweet says. “There are also people in nursing homes playing Wii Fit, sisters playing Nintendogs for Nintendo DS.”And indeed, musicians are not the only ones benefiting from the opportunities this kind of space can offer.“The video game industry...