Just so you can see that Hollywood ain't all fun and games ... the MV Cast will be filming in Cuidad del Este. I guess MM really loves realism . Charming place.

This is taken from Comebackalive.com

Brazil - Ciudad del Este, Paraguay

 

This smugglers' boomtown is technically in Paraguay along the border with Brazil and Argentina, but may as well be in Brazil. This is a major base for drug traffickers smuggling Bolivian cocaine via hidden landing strips cut out of the jungle. More than US$12 billion moves through here a year. As the Brazilian drug lords have been pushed out of the shantytowns of Rio, they've found a convenient base in Ciudad del Este. In fact, this place has it all-murder, mayhem and even Islamic fundamentalist guerrillas, who are suspected of using the city to launch bombing attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets in Argentina. There are about 200 murders a year in this city of 100,000, most of the executions identical in appearance with Brazilian gangland slayings. It costs US$500 to bribe a customs official in Ciudad del Este, and a bogus passport can be had for US$5,000. The city is also a channel for smuggled electronics goods and computers from Miami and stolen cars from Brazil. It's estimated that half the cars on Paraguay's roads were stolen in Brazil.

Ciudad del Este is a tax-free center and popular with Paraguayans for its bargains on consumer goods. The 400-yard bridge is usually packed with trucks and passenger cars stuffed with brand-new goods bought in Brazil. It is also a great place to pick up bogus U.S. dollars, antiaircraft guns, rare and endangered animals, weapons and drugs. The area is also called the "Triangle"-the frontier area between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay-a South American Barbary Coast rough-and-ready area with a Shiite Muslim community of about 6,000 people. Lebanese, Syrians and Iranians came here in the early 1980s and brought with them a New World cell of Hezbollah. Hezbollah trains local recruits in the jungles around the main city of Foz do Iguacu and gets its support from both the local merchants and Iran. To combat Ciudad del Este's emergence as the globe's hub of nastiness, the FBI is opening an office in Brasilia. But Ciudad del Este makes Waco look like a warehouse for Mormon pamphlets.

http://www.comebackalive.com/df/dplaces/brazil/index.htm

Earthtonelesss,

hey pal....something personal? Or some service you did to feel yourself useful today?

Do you want i put some links about your country here? My country is not perfect as urs is not wonderland, Alice.
I wont start here a sociologic study about my country and urs.

Ciudad del Este is located in Paraguay or in Brazil, bootlicker??

I bet u dont know even where is located ur button belly.
Not, you are wrong, its not behind you. Thats another thing.

That jerk can talk about my country. I dont have anything to hide. But remember, theres more brazillians here than me. And again, the problem is talk feeling him/herself perfect.

Hey son of a b*tch...

   Before you point saying we have skinheads....tell me how many KKK offices you have on ur street...

And just to finish....if u want of course...or someone ban me...

My sensitive side (the front side) can be conected with your sensitive side (the back side), but i dont want it, though you beg me, cos you like it..

Man....trying to explain again.....

I just got pist because i know USA and other countries has much more good things to offer than bad, and you go look for a website...named comebackalive....and just bad things, not bad, the worst things, found in a police section of a newspaper. Sounds kinda easy to show and easy to make it general. Well, with such site name, u know what you are looking for.

Next time show the good things too. I never had to jump into bad subjects or statistics like that to say the colombians are those, or the argentinians are that..or the paraguayans those ones... or the brazilians sux.

The stereotypes are made up, thats enough. The problem is around me though i dont live in a s**thole (yet)...do you want more what? To probe it? To specify it? I know its sad enough for them (or for us if its to generalize) to have such stereotype. LIke I said, the story is made up. Lets watch the show or the movie.

Who was someone here saying MV was a cop show not so bloody? I dont need see splashing blood to see someone is dead. So..save me of our dirty details. Though my nick is Calderon, you can bet im with C and T.

And please, i would like to apologize myself about my heavy words even to you, or even to be read here. If will be banned, all right go ahead, if i deserve.

Mr. C...jeez dude, chill.

I'll probably live to regret getting involved in this but...here goes...

Earthtoneless did nothing to insult you or your country. The facts speak for themselves...Ciudad del Este is a lawless, sh+*thole of a place regardless of where it is located and it is located in Paraguay near the Brazilian border.

As a Miamian, I should be highly insulted that my city was portrayed as an, antyhing goes haven for dopers and crime! I don't really care because it was TRUE!

Sometimes the truth hurts but it is not a reflection on you or the majority of your countrymen.

MM is shooting there for the EXACT reasons depicted in the article. He is going for the realism of a lawless society. For Christ's sake, when they went to scout, the Police took them to the edge of a town where they were handed over to a bunch of kids with AK 47s who then escorted them through their town to the other side where the Police picked them up again!

What does that tell you, when even the cops don't have the authority or resources to protect them?

Take a look at how many police officers are killed yearly in Brazil, (Between 1992 and 1998, some 940 police officers were whacked in the line of duty in Sao Paulo alone. Nearly 14,700 were injured. Now that's protecting and serving.)...not very reassuring is it?

They have even hired a private "security" firm to protect the cast and crew during this journey.

Hell, go to the site that is linked and scroll to the USA and you'll find as much if not more than Brazil! There are nasty, dangerous places everywhere you go, don't take it so personally. I really don't believe this was any kind of attack...again, just the facts.

Damn Mr. C, I can't believe it is you on the other end of this post, it seems more like Tubby Tubbs, or HugoBoss! What happened to the Mr. C we all love?

I think he's been kidnapped along with Srobak!!!

Come on guys, this is really a bulls**t argument over nothing.

RB

Rick...im not saying its a lie...Crockett and Tubbs like i said time ago...wouldnt survive here for the sequel, or the ferrari would be stolen before the first commercial interval lol.

But i said already. Even apologizing, "comebackalive" its a damn infamous name for a website. The facts are true, but packed in that way...heck what will they think i live?
Violence is true but wait there, we arent violence only.

Well, I felt myself portraited that way in that site linked from here, and i agree i had to express my fury not here but by sending an e-mail to them.

My sincere apologies again, to earthtoneless and to all vice nation.

Now stop fighting and do what the man says.

Man ... I'm a newbie and I am already in my second clusterbleep !!!!

When I posted the article the last thing on my mind was to disparage Brasil ... i wasn't even thinking of the international implications. I just wanted to point out how serious M. Mann is about creating a realism in his films. Where some Hollywood honchos might choose a location that has a nice beach for tanning and good shopping for their wives , MM choose to get the real thang, regardless how dangerous it is for him and his crew. Francis Ford Coppola fought tooth and nail with Paramount Pictures to go to Sicily to film certain parts of the Godfather Pt II. Now Coppola says that those scences filmed in Sicily are one of the reasons Pt II was such a big hit AND considered a film classic.

Let tell you a story that might make you less offended. Over the Labor Day Weekend (sorry , it's a US holiday) I was making a connection thru Miami to go back home. As we started boarding the plane, the ticket agent yells out to us (the passengers) ... " You guys must be a depressed bunch ... who the hell wants to leave Miami and go to Detroit !!!!). Yep ... I'm from Detroit ... the butt end of all jokes, the murder capitol of the USA, Beruit West etc etc etc. When I hear the jokes about the Motor City, and that's often, I just laugh. What else can I do ? Especially when most of what is said is true ... but thanks to you guys my evening Mojito makes things just a little bit better.

I am very sorry I offended you but that was never my intention.