Tsotsi-



http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/tsotsi/trailer1/

I've had a change of heart on this one. I was thinking about Kidulthood and how it's been compared to City of God and this film. Now what do they all have in common?

Just because City of God and Tsotsi aren't filmed in this country it's like they suddenly have 'cool' status. But they are all the same. Black people the world over suffering and people have time to glorify it. Really, we all know the majority of black people are oppressed, depressed and repressed throughout the world and there is a large back catalogue of films telling this story. It's not like it isn't worthy (it seems to me there are arguments for and against on this one) but filmmakers could be taking a different approach to bring something FRESH, INSIRING and UPLIFTING to the table.



Cinema: It's proper sad, man (Source: timesonline)

Kevin Maher

These 'authentic' films from the mean streets are simply middle-class voyeurism SAM, ALISA AND BECKY are the feral adolescent protagonists of a new teen movie set in London, Kidulthood. As they suffer the slings of hormonal fury and daily aggravation, they have fist fights in the classroom, cocaine in the kitchen and casual sex wherever they want. They’re streetwise, they’re not afraid of guns and they say “proper� a lot — as in: “That was proper sad, man!� And in their brash recalcitrance they represent, according to the film’s publicity material: “A powerful snapshot of 21st-century London in its true state of social crisis.� Sam, Alisa and Becky are not alone. They will soon be joined on the mean streets of cinematic London by the young cast of The Lives of Saints, set in and around the hard-knock environs of Haringey, and by the ex-con and So Solid Crew front-man Ashley Walters in Life ’n’ Lyrics, a tale of tribal conflict between DJs in North and South London.
If you were to believe the rhetoric of publicists and tastemakers these films together represent nothing less than a rough, rejuvenating wave of authenticity that’s about to sweep through stale British cinema. They are “getting to grips with the city’s streets in all their grimy glory,� according to a ten-page cover story in this month’s style magazine Dazed and Confused. “Kidulthood incredibly captures an ugly UK urban underbelly!� says the film’s loudest poster quote (from Xfm, no less). While the same movie’s publicity pages portentously conclude: “Based on real kids. Real stories. This is real life.� OK. We get. The message.
This is all arch media hypocrisy. Irrespective of the stories that fuel Kidulthood’s narrative, the movie itself is steeped in genre fiction. It takes the form of a teenage noir, and one that’s liberally scattered with populist gross-out comedy gags (watch out for the premature ejaculation scene, it’s a hoot!).
Similarly, The Lives of Saints is a decidedly unreal movie-cum-fashion-show hybrid in which the entire cast is kitted out in Melting Pot clothing; the Italian jeans brand is “sponsoring� the film, which is co-directed by the photographer Rankin, who is Melting Pot’s creative director and joint publisher of Dazed and Confused (are we getting the picture yet?). Meanwhile Life ’n’ Lyrics unashamedly acknowledges its debts to both Romeo and Juliet and Eminem’s feel-good fantasy rap-athon 8 Mile.
What these films represent is not a wave of edgy, streetwise authenticity, but the middle-class media’s craven desire to be perceived as edgy, streetwise and authentic. The film industry — like the wider media — increasingly displays a fawning, reverential, approach to creative representations of poverty, crime and working-class deprivation. In this new value system, built entirely around the crass concept of “keeping it real�, the hard-edged voice of hip-hop is more credible than the sugary sweetness of pop; the mean-streets literary memoir is more profound than populist novels; TV shows such as Shameless are more worthy of being taken seriously than soaps; and a movie such as Gary Oldman’s unflinching quasi-autobiographical Nil by Mouth is more esteemed than Four Weddings and a Funeral (although, surely, for a sizeable chunk of the population Hugh Grant’s polite and diffident screen persona is actually keeping it as real as it gets?).
Movies are especially vulnerable to this elevating of authenticity above fantasy. They employ armies of technicians to create the impression that reality is naturally observed, rather than artificially created. The fiction is that the mean-street movie thus emerges, untouched by human hands, straight from the grimy bowels of the ghetto. It speaks directly to the middle classes about what is genuinely (scarily) rough and real.
It is hardly surprising, then, when the gun-crime drama Bullet Boy, set in Hackney, was released last year, The Guardian cooed excitedly about its “authenticity� and how the movie created “a real feeling of how it is�. (Like they’d know!) This same class tourism can partially explain why this year’s favourite for the best foreign language film Oscar is Tsotsi, a gritty saga of poverty and crime set in Johannesburg, why the Belgian Dardenne brothers won the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival with the story of a homeless petty thief in L’Enfant, and why the recent Brazilian gangster flick City of God, based in the favela squatter settlements, remain the touchstone for hipster cineastes obsessed with the need to keep it real.
And yet, despite the claims of meretricious style mags and guilt-ridden awards juries, these movies show us nothing of “reality�. Instead, they provide us, the viewers, with an orchestrated and entertaining two-hour excursion into the tough, working-class quarters of the cinematic imagination. This is strictly photo-safari stuff — look, over there, drug addict! And over there, mugger!
But when we suppose that ghetto movies are “real� and “honest� and “proper grimy� what we’re actually saying is that they nicely conform to our stereotypical beliefs in the behaviour of an entire underclass. When we say that the racial violence in these movies is “authentic�, we are referring to our own prejudicial concepts of race and class. And when we crow, in the words of Jarvis Cocker, that “poor is cool�, we are revealing that we, clearly, are not.

It was playing at a theater close to my house this weekend--and I missed it. blktears Hopefully, I'll catch it soon.

seen it

its really cool film

ohhh and it won an Oscar

I kinda feel the leading man just nailed it

Thanks for this Coltrane - I've been looking forward to this movie...... release date in the UK is 17 March 2006 (after payday so I'm definitely there). niceone.gif

Idon't likethe way they pronounce Tsotsi, though!

Post some feedback, I am looking forward to seeing the movie.

Seems interesting gonna catch it, I have one concern, I saw the Oscars and the director seems like one of those "Rainbow Nation" muthas, who would probably have been living it up in the apartheid era - are there no black South African directors? Having said that if it's anything like hijack stories http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0215841/ it will probably be good.

Newstyle....everyone involved in that movie, excluding the Actors, is white South African. This is begining to look stupid!:X

All i know is, none of them dutty scum bags is EVER having a penny from me....even if they push African faces in front of me. Nope, i am not giving them dutty Neathertals my money.

I am really, really losing my patience with some Africans in SA, how they work with those murderers is beyond me....the story is even writen by them dutty things I digres.

ohh lord

Where've I been? I heard 'movie out of South Africa' and assumed...well... that the folks who directed, wrote, etc, were the folks who I think of when I think of South Africa. Hmmm...

That said, I am not sure I will rule out the prospect of seeing it all together (we'll see) but what it meansis that I willneed to do more researchon things likebackground, portrayal, treatment, before I decide whether to show up at the theater.

Tells you about coming here and getting informed, if Mez hadn't pointed it out, I wouldn't have known.

Disappointing.

Classic film