Fernando Meirelles' "City of God"; an entirely different choreographed set piece from the last time Elton John's 1973 original featured here on SibLINGSHOT ON THE BLEACHERS.
Even though you might never have physically set foot in the favelas of Rio De Janeiro, you will be acquainted with the routine savagery of a community left to police itself.
Its slow dive from more optimistic beginnings into socially engineered neglect.
With unschooled natural talent fostered in Vidigal and Cidade de Deus itself, writers Paulo Lins and Bráulio Mantovani navigate us reluctantly deep into the festering heart of life on the hill. Its relentless cycle of nominal alliance and indiscriminate retribution.
Underpinned by Rocket's fascination for the camera, the lens leads us this way and that like truffling pigs. A city of children simultaneously bent on projecting a tenuous identity while walking in perpetual fear of exposure.
Benny's tale is just one more unravelled thread.
▼ THE BEASTIE BOYS: BENNY AND THE JETS from "Anthology: Sounds Of Science" CD (Grand Royal) 1999 (US)
7 comments:
The Beastie Boys cover was first released in 1995 as a flexi freebie with issue #2 of 'Grand Royal Magazine'; the same issue justly for the superbly illustrated article, "Mulling Over the Mullet".
The Boys' label itself went under in 2001.
Anto. The first away win in 12 years, eh ?
It's assuredly as down to the law of averages as skilled tenacity.
Actually. The one and only time I played rugby at school I was banned from the field for booting another boy to the turf in retaliation for a filthy tackle. A cynical foul, as some are fond of saying.
I was especially skinny as an adolescent, although I've thickened out a good deal since.
Never amounting to much as a team player, even during football I was given to hovering on the periphery of the action. Slinking back deep into my own defence to spark up a cigarette on a wintry day when the smoke could be passed off as natural exhalation.
The Biz Markie cover is sheer class. A good pal of mine had the flexi and magazine. It was a cause of amusement that I was always rather enamoured with some of Elton John's earliest shit. Before he swore off the coke.
Thanks for the Stooges link.
It is downloading as we speak. Slowly. The fair usage policy makers have strangled my bandwith again, I think.
All the young girls love Alice.
Alice Braga ?
Both her mother and her aunt, I see, were fairly well established actresses. Born in São Paulo, I am assuming she was one of the few professionally trained actors in "City of God" , although it was certainly her first big role.
Well. A better response, maybe, than "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore".
I meant Alice ala Elton Yellow Brick Road.
Hmmmmm....
I think I'll go with Ms. Braga.
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