District 9 is amazing. Simply brilliant. I’m not going to wax poetic about it but its quiet simply the best movie I have seen this summer. Transformers 2 was amazingly entertaining and technologically brillaint too. It lacked depth. District 9 gives you depth in spades. The movie centers around a race of aliens whose ship mysteriously stops over Johannesburg, South Africa. The aliens are “rescued” when the ship is cut open and they are discovered starving. Acting out of humanitarian good will, the “prawns” so-called due to their lobster/mantis appearance are forced to live in the squalid conditions of District 9. Winkus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is a bureaucrat at MNU (this movies evil corporation) tasked with evicting the prawns from District 9 and moving them into District 10 (a lot smaller and farther away from people).

From there the movie spins into an epic of action and sci-fi awesomeness. Winkus must breakout of an MNU lab 4 stories underground and then break back in to retrieve a mysterious fluid. But he does it with a little help. A prawn who goes by the name Christopher Johnson needs the fluid to save his people. So the two of them use kick ass alien weapons to break into MNU and get the fluid back.

The action filled finale features Winkus in a Mech Warrior suit kicking MNU’s ass. The greatest part of this movie is its story. it’s the opposite of every alien movie ever made, save for “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. District 9 shows the brutality of the human condition and the ability of one man to overcome human nature and help another race. Director Neill Blomkamp is expertly able to engender compassion for the prawns, that they quickly become objects of pity. This ability is truly remarkable and lost art among directors today. District 9 is powerful and moving but also filled with action and amazing graphics. This isn’t like some alien movies (Signs) where you rarely see the aliens themselves, and when you do, they’re horribly rendered. No, the CGI in District 9 is top notch and well done.

Without qualification I recommend this movie. It definitely is the best movie I’ve seen this year and has possibly cracked my top 10 movies of all time, but I’ll have to see it again to be sure.

I scoped the inaugural issue of CA Fighter magazine at the Fresno State Rec Center yesterday. It looks amazing. In depth articles. Fighter profiles and MMA Camp reviews. This magazine really has legs and we should be seeing great things out of it in the future. The magazine also feels like quality. It seemed like every page was thicker and more colorful then any other magazine on the market, covering any topic. MMA in California is huge and growing. CA Fighter magazine is at the forefront of this growth. I do have a couple suggestions though.

While probably not feasible anytime soon; I would love to see an MMA League that pits camp on camp a la Ultimate Fighter. The major difference is that the camps would be legitimate MMA  camps operating with real clients. The fights could take place in local venues, similar to Fresno, CA Rumble in the Park, held at the Woodward Park amphitheater. These fights would bring in revenue to the hosting venue/city during times of financial cutbacks and help promote the camps that train the fighters. Now I don’t expect CA  Fighter to do this all on their own, but the idea is something that would make since given their content. Plus, an MMA League in California could serve as a legitimate minor league system for the UFC as well as other MMA organizations.

Second, I would love to see CA Fighter do some sort of man on the street segment where they take a random, untrained guy and put him through the paces of training in MMA. It may be a year long piece, but I would love to see if a normal guy can take the punishment without quitting.

Overall, CA Fighter is a great magazine for keeping up on the MMA scene in CA as well as looking at the future of MMA nationally.