I thoroughly enjoyed District 9. It was the funniest movie I've seen this year. As a bloody buddy film successor to Lethal Weapon, I thought it was the best mix of flash, gore and absurdity since Starship Troopers. Both exploit a weighty, thinly conceived and quickly abandoned "message". District 9 challenges race relations. If it did so straight-faced, it would be nauseating and outrageous. The central metaphor of human-alien relations is laughably inappropriate and barely explored. Instead, I think it's meta-satire. It doesn't satirize race relations, but how a safe, unoriginal, exploitative, poorly crafted and tacked on message can impel critics to fight their way out of the theater to be the first to type and publish a slavering review about a film's "genius".
Of course, no one else was laughing.
I would make a horrible film critic. I don't much like movies. I love sports. I love the spontaneity, the complexity and especially the sincerity. However much rubbish the mainstream media wallpapers it with, sports are defiantly true to their own storyline. If one team scores big in the first quarter, that team will most likely win. The progression of a game is logical. The endings often a dragging bore. The unpredictable is truly unpredictable and the satisfaction reaped from the improbable comeback, the upset and the surprise contender is true. Sport is not contrived.
In football, the offense makes the first move. It dictates pace, it gets first movement off the snap and it works from a plan. The offense is creating something. The defense has a plan, but it must change that plan in real-time. It reacts, adjusts, counters and counter-attacks. The defense is the resistance. It doesn't progress. It delays progress. It must overthrow the offense.
Today we look at Seattle's new defense. Yesterday's look at the Seahawks offense was serial. This will be episodic. We don't need the setup, just the punch line. We don't need the doe-eyed alien holding a bizarre-but-cute alien child, we just need the too-earnest human shouting "Go on without me!"
It wasn't a great preseason for defensive execution. Seattle went 4-0, but never dominated. Its defense battled Kyle Orton, Jeff Garcia and Matt Cassel's backup. It didn't overthrow so much as be on the field when the king died. But I'll see what I can find. Jim Mora promised a new and varied playbook. Did we see hints of it in the preseason? Was what we saw in the preseason it?