Werner Herzog, whose movie Nosferatu the Vampyre I saw over a long train ride a couple of weeks ago, talks at length about film-making, his new movie Into the Abyss, his hatred of capital punishment (one of the reasons he doesn’t want to apply for American citizenship), and how movies don’t change anything (he says that his… Read More »
A movie set in Kinshasa, by Congolese director Djo Tunda Wa Munga, Viva Riva last week won the Best Africa Movie at the MTV movies award. I saw an interview with the director on Al Jazeera’s movie programme The Fabulous Picture Show (you should consider watching the programme. It mostly features non-blockbuster European, Middle-Eastern and (sometimes)… Read More »
Via Africasacountry
Nicholas Barber at The Economist’s Prospero blog: No one would begrudge Colin Firth his Best Actor trophy: as well as putting in a tremendous performance in the film, his acceptance speeches are, time and time again, so gracious and fluent that all future nominees should be sent DVDs of them to study. But the choice… Read More »
A friend dragged me to a small arthouse cinema last Friday to see Kinshasa Symphony, a documentary about Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste, a Kinshasa-based symphony orchestra. I thought it would be cheesy and all bleeding hearts, but it wasn’t. It shows the passion of some people who love classical music in a country that is not… Read More »
CLINT EASTWOOD’S “Invictus” has given Morgan Freeman, a 72-year-old ever-rising cinematic star from Memphis, Tennessee, his best chance yet to show what a canny actor he is. The year is 1995, just 14 months after South Africa’s first multiracial elections. Nelson Mandela wants to use the rugby World Cup, for white South Africans the absolute… Read More »
If you like movies, or if you are in any way interested in them, you should be listening to Mark Kermode‘s film review on BBC 5 live. Kermode wrote a PhD thesis on horror fiction, and his best movie is The Exorcist. The passion with which he rants about movies he hates is matched by… Read More »