The stars are aligned: Owen and I are on the same planet about District 9.
Meanwhile, all our talk about lousy living conditions for the movie's unwanted aliens--both in their crippled spaceship and in their South African ghetto--has made me nostalgic for other space-age movies in which accommodations are less than gleaming. No disrespect to the great, streamlined interior decorating aboard the USS Enterprise in Star Trek, but I what I really love are movies where the interiors look just as funky as you know they're bound to be when people (or aliens) are cooped up for long periods of time with limited changes of underwear.
Along those lines, I 've always loved the grunginess of the Western-style galactic showdown Outland--it's High Noon on a volcanic moon of Jupiter, with Sean Connery in the Gary Cooper role as marshal. You can almost smell the B.O. (In particular, I love when strung-out workers blow up inside their space suits, for reasons integral to the plot. But that's just me.)
What are your favorite sci-fi movies in which housekeeping services aren't up to snuff?
District 9 has no stars, a rookie director, and a $30 million price tag. Yet with an inventive marketing campaign, glowing reviews, and a blogosphere already championing this unique film, District 9 is on its way to being the surprise hit of the summer. From director Neill Blomkamp and producer Peter Jackson, the low-budget South African sci-fi flick is sure to be the box office winner of the weekend. How high it goes depends on how pervasive its strong word-of-mouth will be, and if those sci-fi geeks can get their ladies into the theater. That’s going to be a challenge considering the adaptation of the HUGE best-selling novel The Time Traveler’s Wife also bows this weekend and though reviews aren’t as glowing, romance is one genre that’s been largely underserved this summer. Disney also unveils its widest release of a Hayao Miyazaki film: Ponyo. But with little marketing push, not even the voices of Matt Damon, Tina Fey, and Liam Neeson are going to do much to get audiences into theaters.
In the two hours of unreleased, never-before-seen concert footage that are part of the 40th anniversary DVD edition of Woodstock, the Who come out on stage to perform “My Generation,” which Pete Townshend introduces by saying that it’s “kind of our hymn.” He says, “It’s a song about you and me,” and then, with a sheepish smirk, he adds, “It’s getting’ a bit old now.”
How do you follow up a little movie like Titanic? Most directors would probably grab their knees, curl into a fetal ball, and rock back and forth babbling “I’m the king of the world.” But James Cameron is no ordinary director. Granted, it’s been 12 years since Jack and Rose made goo-goo eyes on the Lido Deck, but Cameron hasn’t forgotten how to crank up the hype machine. Last month, he unveiled 25 minutes of footage of his latest film, the $200 million-and-change 3-D sci-fi epic 
Here’s a date in history so grisly it would almost be wrong to acknowledge it with the word “anniversary.” Forty years ago, on August 9 and 10, 1969 (starting around midnight on the 9th), the Tate/LaBianca murders commenced — the gruesome slaughter of innocents masterminded by Charles Manson. So why am I bringing this up on ew.com? Because Manson, in addition to being one of the most monstrous figures of the 20th century — the hippie-psycho cult-killer equivalent of Adolf Hitler — also became, in the very extremity and fascination of his evil, a part of popular culture. 
One month after the 
