Your Future Immigration Problems

(Photo: Dan Simpson /LA Times Online/'Your Scene' 8/19/09)

And you thought it was complicated now: I watched District 9 over the weekend and recommend it. Much better than that Tarantino whatever-it-is that just opened; I don't know about you, but if it's a choice between hours of watching Brad Pitt (my DVD of Benjamin Button came with a razor blade and instructions), and hours of watching Space Aliens that look like six-foot Tiger Shrimp -- it's the Aliens, hands-down every time.


Will commit ritual suicide if forced to see photos of Angelina Jolie

Plus, I have a little problem with Quentin poking a little fun at the Second World War. Yeah; I know -- when The Producers (the Zero Mostel / Gene Wilder / Kenneth Mars edition, which [with Silver Streak] made me want to be Gene Wilder) was first released in 1968, it was one of two occasions when, laughing so hard, I actually wet myself.


BLOOM: Actors aren't animals; they're human beings!
BIALYSTOCK: They are? Have you ever eaten with one?
LIEBKIND: Ze Aktors. Ja; I Must Desthroy ze Aktors...

The film was ground-breaking: 23 years after the end of The Worst Modern War Ever, lampooning the Third Reich became possible, and only Mel Brooks found a way to do it, because he's a genius -- Little Quent, on the other hand, makes movies which are not funny, unless you enjoy schadenfreude. Egregious violence just to make some postmodern punk point about the arbitrary mechanics of fate in a godless universe went out when Kurt Cobain decided to do The Hemingway. In one dog's opinion, Tarantino peaked with Pulp Fiction.

And, there are some things that just aren't funny, and cannot be funny, ever. Europe under the nazis is one of them. But, I'm only a dog, and no one listens to me.

As if we don't already have enough problems trying to teach tolerance and cooperation to our own species (which seems bent on self-destruction), try to imagine an "Alien Nation" scenario where hundreds of thousands of beings from Somewhere Else show up and can't leave -- the Galactic equivalent of, "Dude, I like just had my car do something brutal and now it won't work and it's like raining and one in the morning and I think I'm, like, over the legal limit; so can I like crash on your couch until I can figure out how to get home? Excellent!"

What would be most likely to happen? Suddenly, humans everywhere would stop oppressing, hating and killing each other, and gang up on actual Aliens! Plus, we'd see lots of swell signs like the one above. Report All Non-Humans!

Boy. We'd sure all come together as one species, then, right? Just like Woodstock, or, you know; somethin'. Epic!

Uh-huh.