This is Neill Blomkamp's Alive in Joburg. It is one of my favorite short films.

I've blogged about Blomkamp before, back when he was tapped to do some work on the mega-popular Halo franchise. (Back then, then-exec producer Peter Jackson hired Blomkamp to direct the ill-fated Halo movie, and when that went to shit--causing many a geek tear to be shed onto many a Star Wars pillowcase--Blomkamp ended up making some commercials for the Halo 3 game.)

Word broke late last year that Blomkamp and Jackson were teaming up again (hopefully with better results), to create District 9, a live-action feature. Little else was known about the project--until, that is, last week at Comic-Con, where an advertising campaign for the film took over much of the San Diego Convention Center. It was an ARG--a sort of really big viral marketing campaign, much like the one concocted for The Dark Knight--and this sort of stuff always just gives me a huge fucking headache. I'm not quite obsessive compulsive enough to get sucked into these massive, obscure, and relentlessly detail-oriented puzzles created by crafty ad execs. Luckily, the excellent sci-fi blog io9 has done a killer job going through all of District 9's inventive/sneaky ad campaign, and they've rooted out all the interesting parts.

As far as I can tell, District 9 looks like a descendant of/expansion of Alive in Joburg--and in theory, that sounds like a great thing. That's an incredibly potent and dense short film, not to mention a really inventive and sharp piece of science fiction, and while I'm not entirely convinced the concept and style could hold up for a couple of hours, I've also seen enough great shorts from Blomkamp to trust the guy, or at least to make me really curious about what he'll do with a feature. There's no word yet on a release date for District 9, but in the meantime, at least, it looks like there'll be plenty of stuff around to keep those who're interested in the film engaged. Ah, the tempting, creepy power of advertising.