*Strokes chin*

[Capt Schti]

mmhm...

AVC: Why did you leave Johannesburg for Canada?

NB: Well, my family immigrated there. And I was at the point where I would have gone to university or art college or something, probably in the U.S., so I think I would have left anyway. But it just so happened that my family immigrated to Vancouver, and I’ve got a younger brother and sisters, and South Africa was pretty dodgy in the late ’90s, so—actually, it’s dodgy now. It’ll just be continuously dodgy, but we moved so that they could not be in a state of violence all the time.

AVC: What was it like shooting there?

NB: It was really grueling, but that was because the environment we were in was so abrasive. The actual area we were in, the people were very impoverished, but they’re very warm. That often happens in Johannesburg—people are super-warm, even though it’s a high-crime area. So when we got to the set, I was okay, but the thing that was psychologically having a go at me was that the big crime in Joburg is hijacking. Carjacking is the number-one thing. And this convoy of us going into this part of Soweto called Chiawelo was like an hour’s drive, each way, every single day… You don’t get a convoy of vehicles like that coming into impoverished areas. It just doesn’t happen, right? We were this moving target the whole time. And my driver one night dropped me off at my hotel, and after he left, he got hijacked. And they had a 9mm to his head, and they tried to take his girlfriend, and the car did get taken, so he had another rental car the next day. So my fear was the transport, not our location. Though Chiawelo, that area—like I said, the people are warm, but the environment is so caustic and unbelievably disgusting to be in. The crew were realizing that people live like this every day, while we were battling just to be there for two months. Every single thing is difficult. There’s broken gla** everywhere, there’s rusted barbed wire everywhere, the level of pollution is insane. And then in that environment, you’re trying to be creative as well. But of course, that gave birth to the creativity, so it kind of goes both ways.


http://www.avclub.com/articles/district-9-director-neill-blomkamp,31606/

It qiute here over weekends so I guess the debate begins Monday. 

[Capt Schti]

From Armond White:
It’s been 33 years since South Africa’s Soweto riots stirred the world’s disgust with that country’s regime where legal segregation kept blacks “apart” and in “hoods” (thus, Apartheid) unequal to whites. District 9’s sci-fi concept celebrates—yes, that’s the word—Soweto’s legacy by ignoring the issues of self-determination (where a ma** demonstration by African students on June 16, 1976, protested their refusal to learn the dominant culture’s Afrikaans language). District 9 also trivializes the bloody outcome where an estimated 500 students were killed, by ignoring that complex history and enjoying its chaos. Let’s see if the Spielberg bashers put-off by the metaphysics in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be as offended by District 9’s mangled anthropology.

District 9 represents the sloppiest and dopiest pop cinema—the kind that comes from a second-rate film culture. No surprise, this South African fantasia from director Neill Blomkamp was produced by the intellectually juvenile New Zealander Peter Jackson. It idiotically combines sci-fi wonderment with the inane “realism” of a mockumentary to show the South African government’s xenophobic response to a global threa

This contemporaryset dystopic, sci-fi flick never becomes fun. (Michael Bay bashers who stupidly complain about the cultural-status of the twin Autobots in Transformers 2 should park their rectitude here.) Instead, District 9 illustrates the strange new state of racial and political identity. It suggests some lingering Afrikaans’ fear or, possibly, how Jackson really thinks about the Maori and Aborigines.

[Capt Schti]

Another one,

 http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/feature/2009/08/12/blomkamp/index.html

[Capt Schti]

I guess I should start....

For me it's not a race thing.
Or "How can he not be patriotic" bile.

Fact one is he left the country.
Fact two it's true we live in a violent, poor "disgusting" country.
Somewhere there you make your own opinion. 

I'll speak from an artistic point of view, as a writer or any artist you do your art for the sake of humanity, even if you're showing their worst side.

From the two interview he seems very exploitative, he came to the Safari to take a picture of these disgusting people and their disgusting lives, but didn't really much explore and probe the human conditions and reasons.
Which, I believe, is a true artist's job.
 
Of course not every movie is supposed to be a thesis on human nature. I was prepared to allow this to be just an action picture that's set in Jozi.

But by the way this kid sells his picture by painting an all grim and bleak picture is quite disappointing. No where between saying what country he feels we are, does he acknowledge our past.

For me he's chilling with his new friends and pointing at us and laughing.   

Again not every movie needs to have a message and be real, but to use real and true situations to serve yourself (sell a movie) but not engage and explore those themes fully in a movie is exploitation.

Like making black American pimps, thugs and uneducated but not explaining why they are uneducated and had to resort to being thugs...       

f*** the more I think about the more sad I become sad...

*Drinking time*