If Amores Perros was the Mexican Pulp Fiction, then City Of God is the Brazillian Goodfellas

Sometimes, the producers would even make up the names of newspapers and reviewers, to be able to put more comments throughout the ad.

In the last few years, many of the papers involved started suing the movie's producers left and right to get the practise to stop.

For what its worth I'll tell you my little niggling problem with the film. It's Rocket as the centre of the narrative when he is the least involved and least interesting person there. By painting him as the moral core and having good and bad gangs and gangsters we are lead to believe that there is an out from the situation. And if there is an out, the situation shouldn't be as desperate as it is.

Minor quibble though.

How is the ILE viewership of this excellent film going?

"You want to raise that issue? Yeah, so do we, that's why we made a movie about it."

Also it's to some extent based on a true story, and the true story is presumably Rocket's. And Rocket is hardly a moral touchstone: he just wants to survive and be a photographer. He'll go down the moral path as long as it suits his interests, but, for example, he's not going to expose police corruption (by making his photographs available) because he has a healthy regard for his own skin. Exposing it in more general terms in the movie, without identifying individuals, offers an acceptably low level of risk, and gets some added anti-establishment kudos, so the cost-benefit analysis works out this time.

Pete I've not read the book. Whose is the point of view in the book?
(If it's a true story, when the movie says, "Rocket had evidence that could have incriminated members of the police but decided it was too dangerous to use" Rocket must stand for a person or persons who were in that position? If not it's a fairly gauche and pointless tack-on.)

The book is about 700 pages long and I haven't read it, just seen bits of the portuguese original translated for me and discussed it with Brazillians.

HSE stands for the Health & Safety Executive - they agree that our tube trains are fine and the the engines fall off.

I should have recognised what HSE meant.

has anyone one bought the sleazy soundtrack album for this film.

I did. Great soundtrack. Why do you think it's ''sleazy''? Do you mean that in a good or a bad way?

That Raul Seixas song -- Metamorfose Ambulante -- is fire.

all the kids in this movie dressed so fly

i want all of this striped shirts

loved this btw, so many creative shots and sequences - thought the tangent stories were v tarantino, esp loved the same-shot "apartment story"

city of god is like 10 billion times more awesome than amores perros btw

and goodfellas.

don't understand hate for constant gardener either, thought that was a pretty good film

I liked the constant gardener too

but it is a po-faced affair, especially with that drip ralph fiennes greasing up the screen

city of god is like 10 billion times more awesome than amores perros btw

― YOUR POLLS SHIT THE BED (jjjusten), Tuesday, April 21, 2009 2:06 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

oh god yes to compare these movies in any way is retarded.

hugely hugely overrated

i enjoyed the hell out of City of God. I don't remember much about Amores Perros, except being annoyed by that lady and her dog stuck under the house (izzat right? )

this movie has spawned a lot of bad brazilian movies

which one? didn't like AP much but city of god was incredible

xps

Since this is as good a thread as any to discuss another Brazilian film centered around crime in the favelas of Rio I may as well bring up Tropa De Elite, which I attempted to watch today. Got about fifteen minutes in and there had already been an extra-judicial killing (it's ordered and you hear the shot, the voice-over moves on, trying to make it look cool really) and a voice-over saying that a cop protagonist who overlooks his university classmates, who don't know he's a cop, smoking weed in front of him is "soft" and that he should have arrested them. I don't really know if I can go on.

yeah i saw a movie set in a brazilian prison (name ehhh) that tried so hard to humanize the inmates it basically turned into hogan's heroes.

Since this is as good a thread as any to discuss another Brazilian film centered around crime in the favelas of Rio I may as well bring up Tropa De Elite, which I attempted to watch today. Got about fifteen minutes in and there had already been an extra-judicial killing (it's ordered and you hear the shot, the voice-over moves on, trying to make it look cool really) and a voice-over saying that a cop protagonist who overlooks his university classmates, who don't know he's a cop, smoking weed in front of him is "soft" and that he should have arrested them. I don't really know if I can go on.

― Suggesteban Cambiasso (jim), Tuesday, April 21, 2009 2:33 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ya. this is one of the ones i was tlaking about.

biggest movie ever in Brazil as well apparently!

no, in fact i'm misremembering. Just googled.

yeah i saw a movie set in a brazilian prison (name ehhh) that tried so hard to humanize the inmates it basically turned into hogan's heroes.

― goole, Tuesday, April 21, 2009 10:34 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

was it almost brothers? cuz I was going to watch that one.

I still haven't seen city of men

i honestly can't remember. there's a tranny in it, and a riot at the end.

you've just described 500 brazilian films

Carandiru.

Which I liked, and although it does humanize the inmates, it also has things like an inmate killing his friend by pouring a pot of boiling water on his friend while out his mind on drugs.

Do we have, or should we have (probably not to both questions) any sort of general Latin American cinema thread? Seeing this a week on Friday and saw this, which I liked but was unrelentingly grim last week.

probably no to both questions, gah, typo fiend.

this film that I mentioned, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1223975/, Tony Manero was pretty good. Really fucking grim tho.