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The One Ring Forums:
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Sunflower
Doriath
Aug 29 2009, 1:24pm
Views: 1355
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Buchanicus, I enjoyed your description of the screening as well. I wish Avatar had a different studio. Fox wouldn't kinow how to market a film if an instruction manuel was shoved in front of their nose. Look at the awful job they did with Watchmen...I'n surprised that film did as well as it did.
It's funny, I was in the library a week or so ago--I live right around the corner from one, and am often in there, on the way home from work or whatever, thank God for their excellent DVD catalog!--and I was there to drop off my gardening books I had checked out (hehe, a gardener, yep, target audience for a film like D9, lol ) and I noticed a book on a shelf right next to the desk, where staff recommendations and new books were featured. It was called "Bring Me My Machine Gun: The Battle For The Soul Of South Africa From Mandela To Zuma" by Alec Russell. He was the Johannesburg beareau chief for the Financial Times (of London) for many years, and he had recently spent some time in the "new" South Africa. Fascinated, and with the film still very much on my mind, I decided to check it out. Sheepishly, the told the lady at the desk why, and mentioning and talking about D9 and urging her to go see it, she said, "You know, you're the 2nd person who has said that in 2 days."
I'm halfway throught the book now, and can really see where this film came from. I am reading it in order to appreciate the world of the film and b/c it will having its SA premiere very soon. Based on what I am reading, when it hits SA all hell should break loose. SA must be one of the strangest places on earth...I can't say more without getting into SA politics and society and no more political issues here. But you can really see who Blomkamp is and where he came from. And where the film comes from, so to speak. And I haven't even gotten to the heavy-duty chapters yet--on the Afkikaners, the AIDS epidemic, and the huge problem of the Zimbabwean immigrants/ refugees W(hom the aliens are loosely based on.) I can guaruntee you that any whites who choose to see the film will be in for quite a shock as ther non-white world is something that continues to be barely seen by most of them. One things Blomkmap has said repeadedly that is sailing right over Americans' heas is that this is NOT an aparthied allegory, but a post-aprartied one; it's a film about SA today--and, he says, the world we all will face in the future of rescource depletion and climate change. Scarily, it made such an impressiuon on me not just b/c of Wikus and Christopher, but for that reason--it mat not be all fantasy.
I highly recommend the book, it was published just this year. Russell was probably prowling the country the exact same time Blomkamp was filming. Normally I read books by authors like this with a bit of caution since on certain subject they still have a colonial mindset, but the book is surprisingly even-handed amd brutally honest.
(This post was edited by Sunflower on Aug 29 2009, 1:27pm)
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Edit Log:
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Post edited by Sunflower
(Doriath) on Aug 29 2009, 1:26pm
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Post edited by Sunflower
(Doriath) on Aug 29 2009, 1:27pm
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