Father Geek here with the regular Friday morning Africa-AICN column from Doctor SOTHA and Associates down near Capetown. Just as I was preparing this intro the following report came in from Token White Guy #1, so I'll cut off my rap and turn you over to him...
TOKEN WHITE GUY ALMOST LIKES "POOTIE TANG"
Hi, this is Token White Guy#2. I saw "Pootie Tang" on the Sony lot Sunday night. The audience was mostly African-American and everyone seemed to hate the film - except me. Over a dozen people walked out, but I take great satisfaction in knowing that I survived the 90-minute film.
I've never seen any of the Pootie Tang sketches on The Chris Rock Show, so I had no idea that Pootie, a crime-fighting music star, spoke in an indecipherable language. When Pootie was a kid, we learn, his father (Chris Rock in one of his many roles in this film) always slapped him with his belt if he thought he was gonna do something wrong. So, when his father is mauled by a gorilla at work in one of the craziest scenes in the movie, he inherits the "magical" belt, which makes him, he thinks, untouchable.
The movie is creative and well-acted for the most part, but it drags in several areas. There were several scenes that had me laughing my ass off, but just as many (if not more)scenes that bored me to tears. The film is only 90 minutes, yes, but it feels like it's a good thirty minutes longer than it is.
Oh, one more thing.
The IMDB lists Conan O'Brien and Andy Richter as costars, but Conan doesn't even have one line and is only in it for about three seconds, literally. Andy, a cool guy in my book, isn't in the film much longer. He plays a record executive, and really doesn't have much to do.
And you might be surprised to hear that Gwyenth Paltrow makes a 3-second cameo in this flick. She accompanies Pootie to a premiere or an event of some kind. That really surprised me that she was in it. I wonder if they blackmailed her? JK.
So, overall, a mediocre film with one or two moments of greatness.
Father Geek back just long enough to say: "Here's Dr. SOTHA and this weeks Africa-AICN..."
"And the time will come one day when even the electrical shock pads won't work" said a great mentor once.
DR. SOTHA here, seems he underestimated the power of a film charge crossover! Let me explain. I had a patient who was close to death this week flirting with the afterlife. I didn't for one moment think he was going to die, even after we had used the electrical pads. So I wheeled him into the last five minutes of Lars Von Trier's "Dancer in the Dark", and would you believe it, the man's now doing the 100 meter sprints in under 10 seconds.
Now e-mail me your shocking Lars Von Trier breakdowns at Africaaicn@hotmail.com
Yes Nurse, it is the 20th edition of Africa-AICN, and yes that is an appropriate way to celebrate.
SOUTH AFRICA
* The South African-made documentary feature, The Great Dance - A Hunter's Story has walked off with three prestigious Panda Awards and two nominations from the WildScreen 2000 Awards Ceremony this past weekend. WildScreen is the world s largest forum for Natural History Films and takes place bi-annualy in Bristol (UK). The Great Dance won the WWF Golden Panda Award for Best Film. It was playing against steep competition, including the BBC/Discovery Channel s Walking With Dinosaurs and Sir David Attenborough s Life of Birds. The film also won the Delegate's Choice Award for their favourite entry and Production Crafts Award for Best Script (other nominations in this category included John Cleese s Operation Lemus and Attenborough's Life of Birds). This is the first time that any one film received so many nominations at WildScreen, which is also known as the Oscars of Natural History filmmaking. No other film won this many Awards at the 2000 event and only one other film received more than one award (Warriors of the Monkey God from BBC NHU). The Great Dance also received nominations in the following two categories: Animal Planet Human & Animal Award (for the production that best explores an aspect of the relationship between humans and animals be it beneficial or not) and the Production Crafts Award for Best Music.
* Admittedly this story is a week old, but I only came across it this week. Nikki Webster (she sang at the Olympics opening and closing ceremonies) will star in VANILLA GORILLA for director Randal Kleiser (GREASE, BIG TOP PEE WEE) about a captured albino gorilla who uses sign language to communicate to a young girl. (Wasn't this like an early draft of Congo? - DR. SOTHA) Shooting begins in February in South Africa.
* More than 50 short and feature films entered this year's Southern Africa Film Festival (SAFF) which took place in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe recently. The South African feature film, "A Reasonable Man" directed by Gavin Hood (already reviewed with acclaim in this column - DR. SOTHA) was voted Best Film. Hood also won the Best Actor award. Another South African, Neal Sundstrom, was voted Best Director for Inside Out. The Best Short Film award went to Brian Tilley for Lucky Day (one of the Short & Curlies series). Richard Pakleppa won the Best Documentary Award for "I Have Seen - Nda Mona". One of SAFF's achievements has been inspiring the birth of the National Film Forum which is currently working towards the setting up of the first ever Zimbabwe National Film Fund.
* The official list of delegates attending this year's Sithengi, the Southern African Film & Television Market, as well as the provisional program of events, will be available on the Sithengi 2000 website from Friday 20th October 2000. Delegates who register by Wednesday 18 could still be included on the official Sithengi 2000 delegates list. Sithengi takes place from 13 to 16 November at the Spier Estate, just outside Cape Town. To access the Sithengi 2000 website, go to: Right Here . For further info contact write: This Spot , or you can Mail Here or call 27 021 430 8160.
* The new number one earner on the South African box office is the Michelle Pfeiffer / Harrison Ford thriller, "What Lies Beneath", which has amassed R1 664 983 in its first week. Jackie Chan's Shanghai Noon is at number two followed by the sci-fi film, X-Men, the comedy Keeping The Faith, and the horror flick, Urban Legends: The Final Cut. (God Damn let's get some South African product into the top ten? - DR. SOTHA)
* Hollywood actress Charlize Theron appreciates the knee injury that squashed her ballet career - because without it she would never have tried acting. The gorgeous South African wanted nothing else but to be a professional ballerina - and admits she was destroyed when that career had to end. She explains, "I thought I would be a dancer my entire life. It wasn't like I grew up and thought I was gonna be an actor. I was a ballerina and that's all I wanted to be because I got to go on stage and tell stories and entertain. When I was in New York in '93, I realized that my knees were not going to keep up with me anymore. You're 18 years old, and all of a sudden you feel like you're sixty and your first career is over and they're calling you a hag! That was a pretty bad time for me to realize that I was only 18 and my whole life was in front of me and I had to just go and take that journey." (I think everyone is letting out a sigh of relief that your knees went - DR. SOTHA)
NORTH AFRICA
* African novelist Sycobie Maduda is busy working on his first screenplay titled "DOOPSHA" about a group of European tourists who visit a mysterious East African Island that is said to shift inches to the mainland every six months. There's also a myth amongst the locals that say special World forces built a huge covert lair back in the early 50's, and have since been instrumental in manipulating wars across the world, with this Island as their base. The tourists happen to come across the Island, even as they are warned by the locals not to go. It's set to go into production in Central Africa at the beginning of next year.
* Time for Rigobert Song:
Good day readers.
I have a contemporary African classic for you to digest today. Try and find it, this could easibly pass for the mainstream Hollywood crowd. "Ca Twiste a' Poponguine" (Rocking Poponguine) This is perhaps one of the few African films with overtly mainstream ideals. This bittersweet, coming of age story is a kind of African equivalent of George Lucas' "American Graffiti", Spike Lee's "Crooklyn" or Godard's "Masculin". These Senegalese teenagers living it up on the beach may also remind less discriminating viewers of Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon in "Beach Blanket Bingo". Director Moussa Sene Absa's comedy is set during the weeks before Christmas, 1964, in a seaside village, where the local teenagers are divided into rival culture camps. The "Ins" have adopted the names of French pop stars - Johnny Halliday, Sylvie Vartan, "Clo Clo" and Eddie Mitchell. Their clique attends school, has a female auxillary, exchanges fervent love poetry - but they don't own a record player. The Kings, on the other hand, style themselves after African American Rhythm and Blues Legends - Otis Redding, Ray Charles and James Brown. They work as fishermen, don't have any girls but they do have a record player.
The story of their rivalry is told through the memories of Bacc, a husky voiced, street smart little boy who acts as a messenger for the older kids. Abandoned by his father and mother, he's been adopted by the whole village. His grandmother, Madame Castiloor, keeper of local tales predicts that he will become a famous story teller throughout Africa one day. Her counterpart is M. Benoit, the gruff but well loved, French teacher, who continues to propagate French culture in the post colonial period. He makes his students memorize the fables of Jean de la Fontaine. Beneath it's genial surface 'Poponguine' is about the importance and ultimate fragility of dreams. The film reveals how young Africans have always created overlapping, identities, blending elements of American and French pop culture into their daily lives. Chubby Checker's let's twist again, sung in French, wafting over a Senegalese village just emerging from feudalism, offers a quintessentially post-modern moment. The film is at the same time a fond evocation of the 1960's, the decade when any dream seemed possible. The soundtrack is full of soul favourites such as James Brown's 'Sex Machine', Ray Charles 'What I say', and Otis Redding's "Dock of the Bay". In retrospect the gaudy Carnaby Street fashions seem more like costumes than clothing, transforming every day life into fantasy.
In contrast to the younger generation, M Benoit seems imprisoned by his memories of France - particularly a lost love, Marceline. As it gets closer to his Christmas vacation, he begins to drink heavily, becomes increasingly dissatisfied with his life, but doesn't seem to want to return to France either. Concerned by his depression, the entire village, sing a praise song to him in the hope that he will stay. Meanwhile, the 'INS' realizing their exclusivity has divided Popenguine, persuade a visiting French crooner to host a dance party for the whole village. In one of the small epiphanies the film celebrates, old and young dance together to the strains of a James Brown ballad. An epilogue tells us that in the years that followed the "Ins" drifted apart: the girls married managers in the city, "Clo Clo" joined the army, Johnny dissappeared and Bacc is living somewhere in Paris - presumably the filmmaker himself. You want African film you can sit and wistfully pass the time by, and reminisce of a bygone era? This is the ticket. This film reminds me of those times when I'd go out into pitch black darkness, and all I could see from one end of the universe to the other was a menagerie of twinkling stars, shooting stars, tiny worm like comets fleeting in between astro rock, Mars, Venus, and all this with your favourite girl. This is Africa's version of feel good cinema. E-mail me at Rigobertsong@hotmail.com and we can talk African Film.
* The 2000 SACOD Forum will be held from the 22 28th of October 2000 at Midgard Culture & Congress Centre in Windhoek Namibia. This will be the third SACOD Film Forum. This year s theme will be Race, Gender Equality and Cultural Identity. The programme for the Forum will consist of four days of screenings and discussion and a fifth day set aside for networking. SACOD expects a total number of 65 delegates to attend the Forum. A wider geographic coverage is expected as compared to last year. SACOD members will be represented from Zambia, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho, Angola, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia & Tanzania. SACOD members programmes to be screened will include: "A Widow's Inheritance" by Sol Carvalho; "The Spirit of Malombo" by David Max Brown; "What s Going On" by Khubu Meth; "Travelling" (Viajar) by Francois Gonot; "Tides of Gold" by Ingrid Sinclair. For more details visit our website on www.sacod.org.za
AFRICAN AMERICAN
* Sony seem to have a farce on their hands over their handling of the Muhammed Ali Biopic. Columbia Pictures execs and director Michael Mann are due to continue discussions this week over the studio's reported decision last week to pull the plug on a planned biopic of Muhammad Ali, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Other publications also reported that the film appeared to be doomed, including Daily Variety, which broke the story on Monday. Wednesday's New York Post commented that the film "is on the ropes, apparently KO'd by its own $100-million-plus budget.")The Times reported that during a meeting with studio execs on Monday, Mann presented a list of financial concessions he was willing to make. These reportedly included cutting some expensive location shooting and agreeing to take a cut in upfront fees. Mann also indicated that star Will Smith and producer Jon Peters had also agreed to take fee cuts. In reporting on the latest developments, the Times commented, "The Sony-Columbia brass may look smart for trying to rein in a director on a very expensive movie. But they mismanaged the situation by publicly putting the studio at odds with one of Hollywood's biggest stars and biggest directors and embarrassing everyone." (I say everyone needs to get back in the ring and let Don King adjudicate accordingly - DR. SOTHA)
* Sticking with Ali and Billy Crystal is to host a star-studded event to raise money for a center honoring Muhammad Ali. Billy will kick off Roast This!: An Evening with Muhammad Ali and Friends on November 16 (00), where numerous family members and friends will turn out to honor the boxing legend at a gala dinner in Los Angeles' exclusive Century Plaza Hotel. The $1,000-a-plate fete will raise funds for the construction of the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky - a state-of-the-art facility to teach Ali's ideals of "courage, humanity, convictions and passion for excellence."
* According to published reports, Jada Pinkett Smith, who's co-starring in Spike Lee's "Bamboozled," is currently in negotiations to star in the second and third installments of the Warner Bros./Village Roadshow Pictures' 1999 sci-fi film ``The Matrix.'' While the storylines are top secret, if Pinkett Smith signs on the dotted line she would play Niobi, the love interest to Laurence Fishburne's character. In addition to Fishburne reviving his role as the powerful Morpheus, the other original cast members Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss and Hugo Weaving are also back on tap for the super-successful hit. The sequel is slated to begin production in March in Australia, with an expected release date of 2002. The third installment is scheduled to go into production immediately after the second's production slate is finished.
* Melvin Van Peebles did it in the seventies. Spike Lee did it in the eighties. Practically ignored by major Hollywood studios, both men financed and distributed their own films, and provided us with refreshing takes on the black experience. BLACKFILMFESTAMERICA (BFFA), a national tour showcasing independent black films, is doing it for the new millennium. Conceived by Jeff Friday, president of UniWorld Films and the man behind the highly successful Acapulco Black Film Festival, BFFA has just completed its run in New York, Newark,Chicago,Washington, DC and Atlanta. Next stop, Cleveland and Houston, where Friday hopes the festival will "build a general awareness and appreciation for independent black films among black people." Showing from October 20 to November 5 at the Magic Johnson Theaters in both cities, BFFA will feature two films which can both be seen as alternatives to "cookie cutter" black films centered on violence or buffoonery.
AFRICAN COAXIAL
* One of the most exciting and talked about new groups to emerge in the last decade, BLK Sonshine (Masauko Chipembere and Neo Muyanga), will be featured on the SABC satellite channel, Africa2Africa on Monday 23 October 2000 at 12h00, with a repeat broadcast at 20h00. This group blends melodic and sometimes percussive acoustic guitars with hiphop, jazz and folk influences, as well as a huge helping of soul from their African motherland. Their debut album "BLK Sonshine" was recorded at House of Blues, Encino California, during a US tour that saw them performing at the Tribute to Archbishop Desmond Tutu concert in Los Angeles alongside Stevie Wonder, Joan Baez and Hugh Masekela.
* The New York International Fringe Festival is wanting to contact performing arts companies (theatre, dance, musical) from the African continent. The fifth Fringe NYC will take place in August 2001 in New York and is the biggest multicultural festival in North America. Addresses of performing arts companies from South Africa can be emailed to: This Location, or visit Their Site .
Nurses for Answers it is. Last weeks question was a trick question, you see there isn't any horror film out there in Africa that's considered to be the best. That is to say, I believe Africa doesn't deem itself worthy to make horror films, afterall we are the "Dark" continent. The nurses kindly asked for a week off, But they're available again this week if you can answer this question, 'Which African American director directed the drama "One True Thing" with Meryl Streep?'
