SPECTACULAR NEW SHORT FROM THE DIRECTOR OF 'DISTRICT 9': RAKKA

We here at Future-Rocker think South African film director, Neill Blomkamp, can do no wrong. District 9, Elysium, Chappie, are all masterpieces of speculative cinema. ( Yes, even Chappie, which we consider to be way better than Ex_Machina, another A.I.-themed film that came out the same year, and which Chappie was unfavourably compared to ). We feel that nobody but Blomkamp has been able to consistently capture a science fiction landscape of a future Third World that is dirty, lived-in, and disturbingly contemporaneous. And let's face it, if you go purely by Hollywood blockbusters, it would be easy to assume that only America owns the future. Refreshingly, Blomkamp is adept at visualizing a worst case scenario for the entire Planet Earth.

20-minute Alien invasion thriller Rakka ( starring Sigourney Weaver, above ) is the first 'volume' from his new Vancouver-based Oats Studios. A year or two back, we were pretty bummed that Neill's proposed sequel to Aliens ( in which Hicks and Newt survive ), got put on the back-burner after Ridley Scott's success with The Martian. But with Scott following his polarising Prometheus with the anti-climactic performance of Alien: Covenant, we wouldn't be surprised if he will soon be moving on, and that studio heads are reconsidering Blomkamp taking the reigns. However, after seeing Rakka, where again Blomkamp uncannily blends CGI with the real world, as he did with the low-budget breakout hit District 9, do we actually want him back on the big studio treadmill? Judge for yourself...

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Oats is a loose collective of film-making experts that features all the necessary talent to create a movie, under one roof. And - uniquely - it's crowdfunded, where only the most popular ideas will be the ones to make it into full-blown production.

Check out the studio, here: 

FANTASTIC PROOF-OF-CONCEPT CLIP: 'RISE'

From up-and-coming film-maker David Karlak, and currently under development at Warners, this fantastic clip looks like a superb addition to the hot trend for 'sentient machine' movies that we flagged up last year with Ex_Machina, Chappie and Automata. Science Fiction always has a knack of cleverly assimilating contemporary fears and paranoias into the realm of fantastic fables...is there something in the air, we wonder? Clip features Star Trek's Anton Yelchin, and Man in the High Castle's Rufus Sewell.

Can't wait to see the full movie! 

David Karlak on Twitter

David Karlak Website

SENTIENCE IS CATCHING: TRENDING NOW IN SCI-FI - AUTOMATA / EX_MACHINA / CHAPPIE

Not-really-a-spoiler: I have a feeling that Melanie Griffiths being an android will be the 'big reveal' in this one..!

Alex Garland, author of The Beach, Dredd and 28 Days Later, directs ( with set design seemingly inspired by Beyond The Black Rainbow ):

Neill ( District 9 ) Blomkamp's latest speculative future epic...starring members of Future-Rocker-approved music act Die Antwoord:

JUST ADDED!

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