Panic Attack!

Here's a fairy tale that could only happen in the movies. Man makes YouTube video. Goes to Hollywood. Gets pots of money and a movie deal. Except this story is true.

A relatively unknown producer (and most likely Visual Effects Artist) from Uruguay, Fede Alvarez, shelled out about $300 to create a video of a robot invasion in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. The four-minute short, "Ataque de Panico!" (Panic Attack) features ginormous weapon-wielding robots that blow stuff up (a lá The Iron Giant crossed with War of the Worlds).

He could follow in the footsteps of Neill Blomkamp, who made the South African-based alien mockumentary 'Alive In Joburg', and later went on to develop it into the full length feature that is "District 9".

Well, Alvarez' short film has already been viewed on YouTube over 3 million times. and hasn't gone unnoticed by Hollywood. He told BBC, "I uploaded 'Ataque de Panico!' on a Thursday and on Monday my inbox was totally full of emails from Hollywood studios." In the end he agreed to $30 million deal with Sam "Spiderman" Raimi's Ghost House Pictures.

The picture will be a sci-fi thriller set in Argentina and Uruguay, although it won't be a high budget remake of 'Panic Attack'. Alvarez says he will start from scratch.

Here's the amazing video that made him rich.

District 9 - Master of the Pron!

Watch this...

Right thats the premise out of the way...

Giant alien mothership has been suspended motionless over johannesburg for 20 years. A million malnourished and scabby aliens have been airlifted out of it and set up in their own shantytown directly underneath it. The government decide to move them all on to specially designated concentration camps outside the city and the movie kicks off with paramilitary police and contractors moving in to serve eviction notices on all the inhabitants of district 9.
But some of them dont want to go...


The aliens themselves are mostly an unsavoury lot, essentially they are a mob of intergalactic pikeys, and District 9 is like a giant squalid halting site. And like travellers, you really wouldnt want to live next door to them. They'd get sick on your lawn, eat your car tires and urinate everywhere. Actually its probably like living next door to Reaper. They are mostly - with a few more notable exceptions - a fairly grimy lot of mardy chitinous bipedal crustacean idiots who like a bit of a ruck, scrambling around the junkhills and shantytowns of D9 dossing about in the streets and trading alien weaponry for catfood with dodgy nigerian gangsters.The parallels to the travelling community are unmistakeable. Except for the whole alien Weapons thing. SOME OF THEM EVEN WEAR PINK F**KING BRAS

There were rumours of debut director Neil Blomkamp helming the long-rumoured Halo-movie. After seeing this I think it could actually work. The CG is outstanding...the aliens are perfectly realised, if a little generic - Im sure ive met these guys before in some console game - and fit seamlessly into the handheld action. The movie itself begins in a quasi-documentary style before morphing into a chase/action flick with large quantities of fantastic ultraviolence and cronenberg style body horror. The final confrontation is a particularly spectacular bloothbath involving exploding body parts, mech-suits and pig missiles. Everything flies past at a blistering pace and is so densely layered and detailed that it will really reward repeat viewings. There is room for a sequel...but I really hope that doesnt happen. The end is perfect.


Brilliant. NOW DON'T POINT YOUR FOLKING TENTACLE AT ME YOU FOLKING PRON
by Master Gi-Bag