Off the screen magazine july 2013

July 2013 www.offthescreenmagazine.com

Spud Returns Star of the first Spud film Troye Sivan talks to us about reprising his role in Spud 2: The Madness Continues, and we speak to the girls of Spud Alex McGregor and Genna Blair

Dancing Away We talk to the stars, Louw Venter and Antoinette Louw, as well as the director and writer Deon Meyer and musician Geo Hoehn about their new Afrikaans thriller, Die Laaste Tango

____________________________________________________________________

Content s Cover Story:

12 The Madness Continues Star of the hit South African film Spud talks to us about reprising the role of John “Spud� Milton in the sequel, Spud 2: The Madness Continues

Features: 6 The Spudettes We sat down with the female stars of the new hit sequel Spud 2: The Madness Continues to discuss their roles, their lives and their loves

12

Cover: Troye Sivan tell us all about his reprising his role in Spud 2: The Madness Continues

18 Dancing Around

The two stars of the new crime thriller Die Laaste Tango Louw Venter and Antoinette Louw talk to us about their roles and the dancing in this new film

24 Directing and

Orchestrating the Dance World famous novelist Deon Meyer talks to us about his directorial debut, and musician Geo Hoehn tells about writing the score for the new Afrikaans thriller Die Laaste Tango

From The Wings Features

30 Feeling the Music

The two stars of the new stage production, Rockville 2069, Shaun V and Caitlin Clerk, talk to us about their roles in the new rock spectacular

Off The Screen Magazine

2

____________________________________________________________________

6 30

24 Reviews: Film

38 After Earth 39 Broken City 40 Despicable Me 2 41 Die Laaste Tango 42 Epic 43 Killer Joe 44 Man of Steel

18 45 Monsters University 46 Song for Marion 47 Spud 2: The Madness Continues 48 White House Down DVD

50 Verraaiers Silver Linings Playbook The Words

51 Red Dawn

Dino Time Django Unchained Barricade

Off the Screen Magazine

3

____________________________________________________________________

Editor Jon Broeke jon.broeke@gmail.com

Deputy Editor Annette Bayne annette.bayne@gmail.com

Photo Credits Nu Metro, Ster Kinekor, Getty Images, UPI.com, Jon Broeke, Google Images, imdb.com

Contact us offthescreenmagazine@gmail.com

Or www.offthescreenmagazine.com

Online at www.offthescreenmagazine.com

Published by www.issuu.com

Join us on Facebook www.facebook.com/ offthescreenmagazine

Editors Letter Here we are at the beginning of another month, and you’ll see that things are a little different this month. We’ve scaled down the magazine a little, but we still have some great content for you.

We spoke to Spud 2: The Madness Continues stars Troye Sivan, Alex McGregor and Genna Blair, as well as Die Laaste Tango stars Louw Venter and Antoinette Louw, and the director of the film author Deon Meyer.

We also have all our reviews, which you should have a look at.

Also please visit our website, www.offthescreenmagazine.com for more reviews, interviews and film news.

Have a great month and we’ll see you in August.

Best Wishes Jon Broeke Editor

Off the Screen Magazine

4

___________________________________________________________________________

Feature

The Spudettes

Off The Screen Magazine

6

___________________________________________________________________________

Feature

The madness continues as Genna Blair and Alex McGregor reprise their roles in Spud 2: The Madness Continues. Jon Broeke caught up with them to chat about being back in the Spud universe.

G

enna Blair and Alex McGregor reprise their roles of Mermaid and Christine, respectively, this month in the sequel to the hit South African film Spud, Spud2: The Madness Continues. I caught up with them at the Pallazzo Hotel at Montecasino recently while they were there to promote the film and asked them about what’s happening with their characters in this chapter of the series.

“Mermaid,” Blair begins. She’s wearing a pretty floral dress and has kicked off her high heels for the interview. “Obviously, she’s grown up quite a bit, so she’s going through her teen years and I think, I wouldn’t say she’s rebelling, but she’s not portrayed as innocent as she was in the first one. You’re going to get to see her do some things…”

“Bitchy things,” McGregor adds. She’s wearing a short blue dress and black anklet boots.

“Yeah, some things you don’t expect from the Mermaid,” Blair continues as McGregor growls playfully in the background.

“But I think she a little bit confused, as I think most teenage girls are, with regards to their love life.”

Christine in this film has a changed a bunch. No more braces, no more fuzzy, crazy hair, but instead a quaffed mane and a pretty face.

“I was actually kind of disappointed,” McGregor comments about her characters transformation. “I loved having the fake

braces and the bushy hair, I felt like I really was becoming a completely different character, so that was a lot of fun,” she says about Christine with braces and extremely unruly bushy hair in the first Spud film. “But you know, it’s nice to be the sexy slut, I guess,” she and Blair both laugh. “It was a lot of fun.”

What she means is that Christine’s look may have changed, but her character hasn’t all that much, she’s still snogging boys backstage.

“Basically in looks and that’s it,” McGregor says about how her character changed. “Otherwise she’s still promiscuous and crazy, so nothing much has actually changed.”

The film follows the further adventures if John “Spud” Milton, reprised by Troye Sivan, as he starts his second year at boarding school.

Obviously the girls play a big part, in real life and in poor Spud’s dreams as we get to see in the opening scene of the film where Spud, dressed as Tarzan in a loin cloth, saves the Mermaid from the evil prefects, played

by Daniel Fisher and Anderson, Callan Gallacher and Emberton and Harold Hendricks and Death Breath, but since this is a boy’s dream the outfits the girls are wearing are somewhat revealing. I asked the girls what their first reactions were to the outfits.

“I wasn’t too blown away,” says Blair, who wears the most conservative of all the outfits in the scene, including Sivan’s.

“It was nothing that took me by shock. It was just an angel tutu. I was quite jealous because they both had these like sexy, skin tight leather bikinis, and I was like, ‘Okay, a poofy tutu. It’s all good’, but it was really a fun scene to shoot.”

Off The Screen Magazine

7

Genna with Troye Sivan, who plays Spud

___________________________________________________________________________ The ‘They’ she refers to are McGregor and co-star Charlbi Kriek, who’s outfits were more than a little more risqué.

“Best scene ever,” Alex adds. “Had so much fun. My outfit was out of this world. I loved it.” She and Genna laugh again. The outfit in question was a skin tight, and I do mean skin tight, leather cat suit cut all the way from her naval to her neck and showing an exceptional amount of cleavage. “It was crazy. I had to go for so many fittings because it was made just for my body shape, fit perfectly. It was… Yes… Very tight and revealing and… I think everyone was a bit shocked at the outfit. I don’t think the director expected it to be so,” she makes a sound of a zip being undone to emphasise the sexiness of the outfit as Blair continues to laugh in the background. “When I walked out he was kind of like, ‘Oh… Well… Um… Okay…

So…” she says this while averting her eyes, portraying the director’s reluctance to look at her cleavage. “That was a lot of the reactions I was getting a lot of the crew were like, ‘Alex, we need you to come…” she says it averting her eyes again, continuing the joke. It must have been an interesting day on the set. I asked her what it was like seeing her boobs on the big screen.

“You know, I don’t mind it at all,” she says, noncommittally.

“It’s a character you’re putting on for everyone to see, so I don’t mind.

I loved it. It was fun.

I actually hate watching myself though.” Blair nods in agreement. “I can’t stand

Feature

seeing myself on screen, so I just cringe at everything.”

She doesn’t need to worry too much, she looks incredible, besides moments later it’s Sivan the audience is looking at, being beaten with whips by Blair, McGregor and Kriek. I asked them about that.

“It was a laugh,” McGregor says as she does just that. “I really had fun with that scene.”

“I felt so bad for him,” Blair adds.

“Because it was really dehumanising.”

“We were really whipping him,” McGregor adds.

“Yes,” Continues Blair. “Once we really got into it we were like,” she makes the sound of the whip hitting the poor actor on the back and I suddenly feel a little bad for him, but only a little, being whipped by a couple of beautiful girls is something a lot of guys pay for, but that was only a dream and in the reality of the film a few scenes later Mermaid breaks up with Spud, breaking his poor heart, and getting him a little obsessed with the girl, even getting into a drunken haze and breaking her window, not on purpose, but still. I asked the girls if they’d ever experienced anything like that.

“It’s actually so funny,” Blair says.

“Because I always feel like I’ve been in relationships

Alex with Travis Hornsby, who plays Boggo in the film Off The Screen Magazine

8

___________________________________________________________________________

“[Mermaid has] grown up quite a bit, so she’s going through her teen years and I think, I wouldn’t say she’s rebelling, but she’s not portrayed as innocent as she was in the first one.” where I’ve felt like I have the upper hand, not in a bad way, but I just feel like I’ve had control over where it goes. It’s so funny because the minute you go for someone and you feel like you like them more, you feel like they have more control over everything. Now, recently, I’ve actually felt like that with someone. I call him, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, why am I calling him?’ It’s like he doesn’t really pay as much attention as, not what I’m used to, but in previous relationships I’ve never felt like I’ve had to really…” she looks to McGregor for help. “How do you say it without sounding arrogant?” she just laughs at her. “I don’t know I’ve never had to…”

“Stress so much,” McGregor offers a suggestion.

“Yes,” Blair agrees. “Had to run after someone, but I guess when you get to a point that you feel like there’s that chase, the other person automatically has more control, which I think has happened here. He sees me kissing another guy and he becomes somewhat obsessed, and that’s something that she ends up doing, it’s crazy what you do.”

“But I think you actually experience both in Spud 2,” McGregor says, referring to Blair’s character in the film. “Because you do that to Spud and you have the upper hand, but then see him with Amanda and you kind of like…” she makes the sound of Mermaid losing her cool, which happens in the film.

“It’s exactly how it really works in real life,” Blair agrees.

Feature

I asked them if either of them had ever had a guy obsess over them.

“Actually,” McGregor comments.

“Recently I’ve been chasing the boys away. I let out my inner Christine on Friday night and I literally had someone, a guy, run away from me,” she says as Blair collapse into hysterics again. “He literally ran. What’s worse is that I ran after him. I pulled a Christine. It was intense. The next day I wanted to crawl into a hole and just hide away.”

I make a comment about the guy being an idiot running from a beautiful woman like McGregor, which gets a thank you, before Blair faces the question.

“I wouldn’t say obsessed,” she says.

“But a few months back I had been dating a guy for a while and he moved to Cape Town this year, he’s studying at Rhodes, and obviously distance and stuff, so I thought it would be better if I came here on my own, didn’t have anything to worry about it’s just me, and yes, he did become, not obsessed, but… It’s funny because at the beginning of

“I loved having the fake braces and the bushy hair, I felt like I really was becoming a completely different character, so that was a lot of fun, but you know, it’s nice to be the sexy slut, I guess.” that relationship I was always the one that was,” she makes a sound denoting that she called and texted and sms’d and everything.

“But as soon as I couldn’t he just didn’t want to give up. It’s funny how things work.”

“I had a guy obsess over me,”

Off The Screen Magazine

9

___________________________________________________________________________

McGregor adds. “He told everyone we were dating and he’d spread rumours and he’d show up at my house and serenade me. My mom and my dad got a little worried at one stage because he would show up at night and it was weird, but this was about 4, 5 years ago, and he did some crazy things. He actually proposed to me and he’d give me tons of poems. It was really flattering, but it did get a bit much, like him showing up at my house.”

Something along the lines of Spud himself. The girls are obviously older now, both in their 20’s, so their lives have changed.

Blair is currently studying at CityVarsity in Cape Town after moving there earlier this year. She’s studying Acting for Film and looking to hone her craft. McGregor on the other hand got the opportunity to act with some of the biggest stars in the world when she starred alongside Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult recently in Young Ones, which shot in the Karoo.

“I actually have no words,” she says when I asked her about the experience.

“When I found out I got the role nothing could bring me down for days, even though we were filming in Springbok and it was so hot, but just being in that environment and working with those actors, and everyone, Elle, Nick, Kodi, Michael Shannon, everyone was so down to Earth and easy to get along with. No one acted as if they were higher than anyone else. Elle and I were the only females, except for the extra parts, so we got really close. She is just amazing. She just turned 15, but she’s so mature for her age, obviously that comes with acting. When speaking to her she seems much older and we got on really well, but every now and again she would let out a, ‘I can’t wait to play with my dolls’, and you

Feature

realise that she’s so young. She made me think of mermaids and unicorns, she just so sweet. She bought every member of the cast a crew a little gift at the end of filming and wrote them all a little card as well saying how happy she was to meet us, it was wonderful.”

She’s also got some interesting future projects going.

“After Spud 3 I’m filming Echo Beach,” McGregor says. “It’s my first lead role, and really exciting.”

Of course the film Spud 2 looks at Spud’s love life, so I asked the question every guy in South Africa wants to know about these two incredibly beautiful women, what kind of guy would you go for? The surfer bad boy, or the artistic Spud?

“Honestly I can’t really say,” McGregor answers. “Because a lot of the time you’ll look at someone and get a thought about them, but when you get to know them they’re completely different. So it depends on what they’re like when you hang out with them, I couldn’t tell before. The bad boy could end up being good as gold, but the good guy could end up being a creep.”

Blair hesitates, thinking about her answer. “I don’t know if I have a type,” she says. “It’s little things that draw me to someone. I go through phases. I think I’ve dated all kinds of guys, but since I’ve moved to Cape Town I think I prefer the more arty, mysterious guy, but when I was in high school I dated jocks, but not anymore. I think they’re more emotional.”

“They’re more deep,” McGregor adds and Blair nods in agreement. “Someone that doesn’t like hair gel more than you.”

At that I pat my, well-gelled hair down to more laughter, and the interview comes to a close. The girls are amazing, go and see them in Spud 2: The Madness Continues now, and know that any guy has a chance with a beautiful girl, even Spud, and they’re both single guys, so maybe take a chance.

Off The Screen Magazine

10

___________________________________________________________________________

Feature

The Madness Continues Off The Screen Magazine

12

___________________________________________________________________________

Feature

In Spud 2: the Madness Continues Troye Sivan is back as the lead character. We chatted to him recently about coming back to South Africa to play the role the made him famous.

T

roye Sivan found his way into the hearts of South African film goers when he portrayed John “Spud” Milton in the the film adaption of John van de Ruit’s book Spud. This month he returns to our screens in the sequel, Spud 2: The Madness Continues, and in the film it does just that.

Spud is back in his second year at boarding school, and he and the crazy 8 are up to their usual tricks, but this year their housemaster, Sparerib, played by Jason Cope, will not rest until he manages to get all of them expelled, and he decides to do this by threatening to cancel Spud’s scholarship, putting him in an awful position as he and the other boys go to all-out war against the man..

I sat down with Sivan at the Pallazzo Hotel at Montecasino recently to chat about the film and he told me about the hard journey that Spud takes in this film, and the hard decisions he needs to make.

“I think it’s an important journey,” he tells me as we sit in one of the suites at the hotel. He’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt and looks the part of an ordinary young man. “I think it’s a very, very crazy one, which is what people expect from the series. I think this time we’re really delivering what the people want and it funny, it’s quick and I’m really proud of the film, but as a journey that he goes on as a character, I think for me it was important to show a lot of growth. I think he has grown a lot throughout the first one, and he grows a lot throughout this one as well.

That comradary is there with his friends, and I think that grows stronger as the film goes on.

They all kind of make a collective decision together to kind of rebel against everything that the school stands for, and kind of take a stand. It’s a very cool journey.”

Spud finds himself in a very sticky situation indeed, on one hand trying to be

true to his friends, and himself, but on the other afraid to lose everything he’s worked for. It’s a lot more complicated than his first year where all he needed to do was survive his roommates, the infamous Crazy 8. They are reprised by the original cast again in this film, Rambo, played by Sven Ruygrok, Mad Dog, played by Josh Goddard, Boggo, played Off The Screen Magazine

13

___________________________________________________________________________

by Travis Hornsby, Fatty, played by Blessing Xaba, Vern, played by Tom Burne and Simon, played by Byron Langley. I asked Troye how he felt this film differed from the first.

“I think at the end of the first film Spud kind of gained that self-confidence,” he says. “And he became accepted into the group and I think we start off the second film, the first shot we see of the crazy 8 are them coming and tackling Spud as he gets to school and it’s this big celebration that they’re back together, so right from the get go he’s back in the crowd, 100%, it’s just that he doesn’t want to lose that, so as soon as he’s given a really tough decision in this film, he has to choose between his scholarship and his friends, and it’s a tough position for anyone to be in, and to be honest, I have no idea what would have done in that situation, so I take my hat off to him for just trying to cope, and his way of coping is by doing stuff with the crazy 8 that he probably wouldn’t have done before, but at the same time he also decides to do some stuff to try and keep his scholarship, he’s in a very difficult predicament, and I think it goes both ways, but the friendship that he’s got there what the crazy 8, that was built in the first film and it’s definitely still there. Now there’s nothing that can break them, I don’t think. They go through a lot in the movie and they’re still kind of strong, so…”

They all seem to be best friends on the screen, so I asked him if they have fun together on the set.

“Definitely,” he tells me.

“Probably more fun off set than

Feature

we do on set. It’s a very real relationship that you see. The relationship that you see on screen 100% follows through into real life.

I then asked if, with them in South Africa and him living in Australia, if they had any contact between films.

“Yes, all the time,” he answered. “We Skype and Facebook and Whatsapp all the time. I’m very thankful for technology.”

Also reprising their roles in this film are the girls in Spud’s life, Christine, played by Alex McGregor, Amanda, played by Charlbi Kriek and Spud’s on-again, off-again girlfriend, Mermaid, played by Genna Blair. In this sequel Sivan gets to kiss Kriek and Blair. I asked him what it was like to be able to kiss two of the most beautiful girls in the country.

“It’s fun,” he tells me. “It’s always a bit awkward though, because, first of all, we’ve spent a lot of time together so it’s like you’re in the friend zone a little bit, because we’re all mates here, and then you’ve got the experience of having 60 crew members all gawking at you while you’re kissing the girl.

It’s always a little bit awkward, I don’t think it’s as romantic as people think it is.”

One of the most interesting scenes in the entire film involves the three girls and Spud, wearing a loin cloth and being beaten, but the girls, with whips. I asked him what his first reaction was when he saw the loin cloth they expected him to wear.

“I think I blushed harder than I’ve ever blushed in my entire life,” he tells me

Off The Screen Magazine

14

___________________________________________________________________________

“I think it’s a very, very crazy [journey], which is what people expect from the series. I think this time we’re really delivering what the people want and it funny, it’s quick and I’m really proud of the film, but as a journey that he goes on as a character, I think for me it was important to show a lot of growth.” after letting out a low whistle at the memory.

“And didn’t stop blushing that entire day, but yeah. It’s interesting. It was intense, and it was real. The whipping, it was real, there was no movie magic there, it was,” he makes the sound of the whip hitting him on the back, laughing. “The whole day. It was interesting.”

A large part of the story in Spud 2 has to do with his mother’s insistence in immigrating to England, something Spud would rather die than do. I asked Sivan, as an immigrant in his own right, he was born here but moved to Australia at a very early age, how he would feel put in Spud’s shoes.

“I don’t know,” he tells me, thinking about it. “I was really young when I immigrated, like you said, so I don’t really remember the process, but I can’t imagine it’s an easy one. I can’t imagine anyone’s too keen to move, to pick up their whole life and

Feature

move away. I find it hard to go away from my friends and family for a couple of weeks at a time, so I don’t think I’d enjoy the actual experience of immigrating, as for moving away from South Africa, I love Cape Town so I think it would be tough, I don’t know if it’s something I’d be too keen on doing to be honest. I just think it’s a huge challenge for anyone, so like anyone, I don’t think I’d be too keen.”

He loves Cape Town, so I asked if that was where he was born.

“I was born in Johannesburg,” he says.

“But we shot Spud 2 in Cape Town and I was there last week, we only got here this week, and I’ll go back to make Spud 3, I go back in about a week, so I’m going back there for a couple of weeks again. It’s just one of my favourite cities in the world.”

I’m sure it’s the mountain. The other big part of the film is the practical jokes the boys play to try and get Sparerib before he can get them. I asked Sivan about his schooling, and whether he was carving his name in any desks, you’ll have to watch the film, or read the book, to understand that reference, or if he was a good boy.

“I went to a private day school,” he says “Up until year 9, so I was 14, and then I started getting home schooled, because of all the travelling, and the movies and stuff. I think there was a little bit of a rebellious spark in me, but I don’t think I ever had the guts to follow through with it. I think I bunked school once and went and sat in the boys toilets with my mates, that was pretty fun, but that’s about as crazy as it got for me.”

Well, he’s making up for it with his role in the Spud films. If you haven’t seen it yet go and check out Spud 2: The Madness Continues and we look forward to seeing Sivan reprise the role in Spud 3, shooting soon, and hopefully coming to a cinema near you next years some time.

Off The Screen Magazine

15

___________________________________________________________________________

Feature

Dancing Around Off The Screen Magazine

18

___________________________________________________________________________

Feature

Well-known Afrikaans actors Louw Venter and Antoinette Louw star in the new Afrikaans thriller Die Laaste Tango. Jon Broeke spoke to them recently about the dancing their way through the roles.

D

ance films are not uncommon.

From the Step Up series to Centre Stage they have come at us in the last few years in torrents, but when a film maker uses a dance, such as a tango, to illustrate something more than the dance itself, and puts it in the middle of a serial killer thriller, then it’s time to sit up and take notice. That’s exactly what happened with Deon Meyer’s directorial debut, Die Laaste Tango.

The film tells the tale of a South African police captain who beats a suspect almost to death. He sent to a small Karoo town to hide out and wait for the heat to blow over and gets roped into learngin how to tanog, being taught by a beautiful young woman with terminal cancer. The captain is played by Louw Venter and the woman by Antoinette Louw. I sat down with the two of them recently at the Garden Court Hotel in Hatfield for a lunch junket to discuss the film,

and immediately I knew this wasn’t going to be a simple interview, especially with a person as funny as Venter. The two of them started passing comments about each other before they even sat down, and didn’t stop untilt eh day was over. I could feel such camaraderie between them I thought they must have known each other since they were children, but they didn’t.

“No, we didn’t,” Venter tells me when I ask if they knew each other before filming. “I met her on the first day of set.”

“We were Facebook friends,” Louw adds. “If that means anything to you,” we all laugh at the comment. “But Louw has like 3000 friends, so I was just one of those.”

“And those are just my personal friends,” Venter adds. “My close friends. No. We only met on the movie. We did several weeks of tango lessons, which left a variety of physical and mental scars,” At which point Louw collapses into hysterical laughter. “So, I don’t think it surprising that she’s as bitter…”

Off The Screen Magazine

19

___________________________________________________________________________

“And intellectual and spiritual scars,” Louw intercedes.

“It is true, though,” Venter says, starting to try and be serious. “We did several weeks of lessons.”

It shows in the film, when they actually perform the tango near the end, moving and gliding across the floor, but they don’t start that way. We see Venter’s character learning the steps, and Louw’s character trying to teach him.

“It’s all about getting there, right?” he asks Louw. She agrees.

“It’s all about the journey towards the tango,” she says. “And the tango is a story between the relationship, the courtship, between a man and a woman, the games that people play with each other. The woman, for example, always looks away, but now and then she looks at him, like she plays with him.”

She knows what she’s talking about, so does he for that matter, they both spent seven weeks in studio learning how to do the tango before they went onto the set to start filming, and all the trainging they did was done before hand, nothing while they were filming.

“We shot this entire film in 19 days,” Venter says. “Which is an extremely short time actually, so there was no time for training. No, we did extensive training. The reality is that the tango is a really advanced kind of dance. It’s a complex, vast thing. You spend your life learning to tango properly, so in order for us to approximate some vague level of skill we had to really, really train and by the end of the seven weeks we, were

Feature

training daily. It was very hard. I, at the end of training, two days, we started on a Monday night, and I woke up on the Saturday morning with a ruptured disk in my back. I had to go to hospital, it was very intense. For the male part of the dance you need to be quite strong, because you steer the dance. He steers the woman the whole time, you can see there’s a lot of weight bearing and stuff.”

“He’s saying I’m fat,” Louw comments.

“Yes,” Venter continues, pretending he didn’t hear her. “What I’m saying is the fact that she’s as obese as she is,” he laughs as he says it. “Made it very difficult.” He switches back to being serious. “No, it was very hard work. It wasn’t something you could try and do on set.”

And after all that work Venter had to go back and pretend that he didn’t know what he was doing for a large portion of the film. I asked him what his thought process was in doing that.

Off The Screen Magazine

20

___________________________________________________________________________

“I felt that I didn’t have a right to portray something so serious, I’m just an actress, but then one woman said to me, ‘Antoinette.

You’ve got the talent, I’ve got the story, please go and tell my story’, I just hope that I have.”

“Apart from going through it ourselves,” he tells me. “We also had an opportunity to see, well I saw a couple of guys that were complete novices, and remembering all the things you did wrong, which are all the things you need to concentrate on when you’re doing it right, so it was just reverting to that stuff, hamming it up a bit, but it’s not that difficult for me to dance bad, if you know what I mean,” they all laugh.

“I can vouch for him,” Louw comments as they laugh more.

“It’s very unnatural,” Venter continues. “It’s very specific stuff you have to do, so if you need to revert back to being bad all you need to do is the stuff you normally would do. There was no way that we could match real tango dancers, so what we aimed to do was to try and attain, at least, the emotional intensity of the dance, what you’re supposed to emote throughout the dance.

The quality of it, because that’s what it’s about. It’s not something you can do solo, it’s very much about a man and a woman moving together in a space and there are these contradictions and these arguments and then a moment of harmony, a moment of balance, it’s a play between those things, which is why it’s such an important metaphor in the film.

Feature

It’s the central metaphor of the film, because it’s about what happens to these characters, conflict, love, sexuality, all those things that generally happen between men and woman.”

The tango makes up a huge part of the film, including the title, but it’s also about the battle between the cop and the killer, another dance of sorts.

“In some way that’s absolutely true,” Venter says about his character dancing with the serial killer, played by Stian Bam, throughout the film. “Because there’s this dance of possibility and the storylines intersecting, eventually, and coming to the climax. It’s interesting that you say that because I’ve never really thought about it that way, but it does happen. Not so much with my character, Herkules, but with the police as a whole. The police, the two more junior policemen, they’re more hands on with the chase of this criminal, until he finally meets up with Herkules, so it’s kind of like the killer versus the law as well. There’s also this personal conflict between Stian’s character and my character, this clash of wills, the very strong energies trying to come out on top, but in a way it’s also very much not the tango, because the tango is very much about the female and male energy.”

The characters the two actors portray are very layered and complex. What you’d expect from a writer like Meyer. Louw’s character is suffering from terminal cancer. I asked her how she prepared for this aspect of her character.

“I spoke to a lot of woman who have, and have had, cancer,” she says, “I went to the chemo wards and spoke to woman there.

It doesn’t show, it doesn’t say in the script what kind of cancer she has, but I decided on breast cancer because it really has an impact on a woman’s femininity and how she feels as a woman, and I had woman showing me their mastectomies, and telling me stories of how it touches their sexuality and their sensuality, and it’s one of the things that comes across for Ella, that she thinks that Herkules doesn’t want to touch her because she’s broken, she has a broken body.”

“That is a heart breaking scene, the scene where that comes through,” Venter Off The Screen Magazine

21

___________________________________________________________________________ says, wholeheartedly. Louw agrees with a nod before she continues. “What I did see in all of them was such an amazing strength. They didn’t sit back and say, ‘Oh, woe is me’, it’s the complete opposite, so I really focused on the positive energy, because you can’t when you’re dying, because there’s always hope.

There are stories of a woman, she died the following day, but she sat out a pair of shoes because she absolutely believed that she was going to wear them the next day. It was just too traumatic to think otherwise. Also, I had very long hair, down to here,” she motions to half way down her back. “I shaved off my hair.

For me as a person it was very liberating, but I know with chemo you don’t have an option.”

“It also kind of left you without many choices,” Venter intercedes. “As a woman actor shaving your hair off is a huge level of commitment, because it cuts you out of a huge amount of potential work, so it’s a huge deal, aesthetics aside, it’s no small sacrifice, it’s a big deal. Luckily it grows ridiculously fast,” he says, switching back to the jokes.

Feature

“The other thing that came up for me,” Louw continues. “I did and amazing amount of physical training, in the beginning, I’ve known people with cancer, but there’s this Hollywood myth that people who play people with cancer must be skinny, but that’s not true. I didn’t have to lose like ten kilo’s, because these women, apart from their hair falling out, they look healthy. It was such an honour, for lack of a better word, for these women to share their stories with me, but I felt that I didn’t have a right to portray something so serious, I’m just an actress, but then one woman said to me, ‘Antoinette.

You’ve got the talent, I’ve got the story, please go and tell my story’, I just hope that I have.”

Go and see Die Laaste Tango at theatres now and decide for yourself is Louw has lived up to the mammoth task she laid for herself, and see Venter in a way you’ve never seen him before as a burnt out cop.

Off The Screen Magazine

22

___________________________________________________________________________

Feature

Directing and Orchestrating the Dance

Off The Screen Magazine

24

___________________________________________________________________________

Feature

Making his directorial debut this month is award winning author Deon Meyer. We sat down with him earlier this month, along with the musical director of his new film, Die Laaste Tango, to discuss everything about the film.

B

ecoming a best-selling author is no mean feat, believe me, I’ve tried, so when someone does manage to crack the success egg and create some wonderful book people sit up and take notice. When that same person stands up and directs a feature film, people jump up and down and applaud, and that’s exactly what bestselling author Deon Meyer has just done.

Known for his crime thrillers Meyer penned, and recently directed, the Afrikaans thriller, Die Laaste Tango. I sat down with him, and the musical director of the film Geo Hoehn, recently at the Garden Court Hotel in Hatfield to discuss the film. The first thing I wanted to know was, out of all the stories he’s already toldm and the countless more he has up his sleeve, what was it about this one that made him want to direct it.

“Because I loved it,” he told me simply. “Because I had to tell it. I always have several story ideas and I go with the one that I feel most passionate about, and I really felt passionate about this one. I wanted to tell it, I wanted to share it.”

For a man who’s a best-selling author moving into the movie industry is a risk, possibly an unnecessary one. I asked him why he didn’t just tell the story in the form of a new novel.

“Because it’s not a novel,” he tells ma, again simply. “There are story ideas that are novels, there are ideas that are short stories, there are ideas that are movies, and this was a movie idea from the beginning. I wanted to direct because it’s something I’ve wanted to do all my life, and this was an opportunity to do that.”

This isn’t the authors first foray into film, he’s penned other scripts before, most notably Jakhalsdans, directed by Darrell Roodt. I asked Meyer why he waited this long

to direct, if it was something he’d always wanted to do.

“Because I had to wait until I was ready,” he says. “I did a helluva a lot of research, I had to prepare very well, and back then I was simply too stupid. Not that I’m that much less stupid now, but at least I felt I am well prepared enough now to try, and it was a huge learning curve. You can get all the theory that you can, you can study as much as you want, you can work with other people, but when you do it hands on for the first time, you’re going to learn a helluva a lot, and I did.

I learned so much, and now one feels that you want to take the knowledge that you gleaned and do it better next time.”

He is currently working on more projects at the moment, some of which are being released later this very year.

“I wrote two scripts last year,” he tells me. “Last Tango was one, and we’ve already shot the other one called Die Ballade van Robbie De Wee, that’s going to be out in September, and two others, we’re actually in production with the fourth movie of the year, called Alles Wat Mal Is. My Partner, Diony Kempen, and I want to do four movies a year.”

And they see to be well on their way to that target. Something an author, and a scriptwriter, needs to think about are his characters. I asked Meyer how he develops his characters.

“I do that in my head,” he says. “I think about them a lot, I sort out their backstories and their psychology, what happened in their lives that turned them, made them into the people we meet when the movie opens, and that’s really it. I spend months thinking about them, and then through the writing process they keep developing as well, so I will write a first draft Off The Screen Magazine

25

___________________________________________________________________________

“I wrote two scripts last year. Last Tango was one, and we’ve already shot the other one called Die Ballade van Robbie De Wee, that’s going to be out in September, and two others, we’re actually in production with the fourth movie of the year, called Alles Wat Mal Is.” and then come back, and every time you rewrite you get to know them better, so you’ll keep coming back and doing adjustments to stay honest and more true to the characters.”

Of course the characters change throughout the process and even more so when they’re put into that hands of the actors.

“They made them come alive,” Meyer says about Louw Venter and Antoinette Louw, the two actors that lead Die Laaste Tango.

“They gave them very specific personality, and that’s something that a script cannot do, you can create the framework, but I think it’s important that, even though the script writer goes to a lot of trouble to try and make the characters as real as possible, they need a good actor to breathe life into them, and that’s what they did. We had a lot of discussions about it, both separately, me with both of the actors, and then all of us together about the character. They gave their thoughts and eventually, we came to something that was so much better, deeper and more human than I envisioned with the writing. That’s what making movies is all about, making a movie is a collaborate effort of a lot of creative people.

Each brings their talent to this project, and

Feature

enriches it tremendously, to make it much more than just what the writer had in mind.”

I asked the author if the characters changed as the actors portrayed them, and if they turned out quite differently from the way he originally envisioned.

“I wouldn’t say a lot differently,” Meyer tells me. “Just a lot more alive. The interesting thing is the interaction between story and character. For the story to work the characters need to be who they are, and my job as a director is to be sure that the characters that are being portrayed still tell the story, so when they breathed life into the characters they changed them from what I envisioned, but when I wrote the script I had no idea who was going to play the role, so they became the faces of these characters, they became the personalities, but eventually it was still the characters in the story. It’s a difficult question to answer, because once they became the character I couldn’t remember what I had in mind when I wrote them, because their performances were so strong that they just became the characters.”

As an author Meyer has had a lot of success, locally as well as internationally. I asked him about his films being optioned by international production companies, something that has been commented on quite a lot in the media, the fact that the books, which have South African stories, aren’t going to be made by South African film makers.

“Most of my books have been in option for years,” he says. “One of my books was optioned about three years ago by a German company, but what did happen last year is that one of my books, Thirteen Hours, the movie rights were sold out right to a British production company, but that’s the only one.”

I asked him why he made the decision to sell the rights at all, let alone to an international company, especially since he makes films now himself.

“Eventually it’s a business decision,” he says. “I’m translated into 27 languages, and most of my income comes from Europe and North America. Having a movie made for the international market will sell a helluva lot more books than a South African movie that’s Off The Screen Magazine

26

___________________________________________________________________________ only released in South Africa. It would just be stupid, and I’m not that stupid.”

At this point in the interview I turn to Geo Hoehn, the musical director of the film, who’s been sitting listening to the discussion that Meyer and I have been having and I get him into the conversation. I ask him about the big names that have come on board to share their music with the film.

“I think Deon was responsible for attracting the names,” Hoehn tells me. “I really got involved once Deon already had earmarked the individual artists that he envisioned forming part of the story, and obviously I was very honoured to be considered at that stage to be brought into the process, and it was my responsibility to bring it all together, to create an integrated score involving all the artists, which was great fun and a great privilege. I was inspired by Lize Beekman, Zanne Stapelberg and Kathleen Tagg who are versed in classical music which my background too. The reference music Deon gave me to write the score, which we developed into themes for the film which we then used to hone in on the feeling in the scenes, to capture the soul of the story, the soul of the characters with the music. Karin De Waal, who was the co-composer, also created some beautiful themes for the film.”

Of course the most important song in a film called the Last Tango is the song that the lead characters actually dacne the tango too. I asked Hoehn and Meyer how they decided which song would be used for this important moment.

Feature

“It was a tango that Karin De Waal wrote,” Meyer tells me. “She’s a very young composer who has just finished her studies in Boston in America. She wrote two tangos for us, and she performs them herself, she has a beautiful voice. They are stunningly beautiful.”

He passes glory for finding the song to the musical director.

“Geo has impeccable taste,” he says.

“And he did the filtering and decided what we’d use. Obviously I had the final say, but I trusted him and he suggested the song, so I was with him the whole way.”

I turn back to Hoehn and ask him what it was about the song that caught his attention, and if it was a straight off thing.

“Karin has a wonderful voice,” he says. “And at a certain point in the process she started to compose themes she would sing. The moment we heard her we were mesmerised. She had the soul, she just captured it. Her voice, her ability to put her soul into the theme, that was basically the point where we said, ‘More of this’, and she just nailed it. When we did the live string recording of it we knew it was going to be fantastic. When the recording came through and it was finished we knew that it was the song for that scene. We always knew the magic was there, but when we heard it we knew we needed to have it in the scene.”

And the music lends a great weight to the film, it’s really wonderful. You can see Die Laaste Tango at cinemas now, and listen for yourself.

Off The Screen Magazine

27

From left: Geo Hoehn, Deon Meyer, Lize-Marie Swart, Antoinette Louw and Louw Venter

From the Wings ______________________ Feature

Feeling the Music

Off The Screen Magazine

30

From the Wings ______________________ Feature Caitlin Clerk and Shaun V head up the ensemble cast in the new rock musical Rockville 2069. We chatted to the actors at a rehearsal recently about each other, their roles and the music.

I

n the new, original show Rockville 2069, the ensemble cast is head up by two people, not strangers to the limelight, but not on the stage in a musical.

Shaun V has been a well-known face in the South African music industry for years, since he was a founding member of the boy band Hi-5. Since then he’s performed on stages all over South Africa and the world.

Caitlin Clerk is known to many as one of the great dancers in our country, having performed with the then South African Ballet Theatre as well as on stage in Phantom of the Opera.

They are both on the stage now in singing and acting and dancing roles as they perform Johnny Reb and Danielle, respectively. I caught up with the two of them during a rehearsal at the State Theatre in Pretoria recently and asked them, what exactly is Rockville, and what’s it all about.

“Rockville,” Shaun tells me. “Is an original South African

written musical, based in 2069, that is structured around things that are happening in real life, it’s not a parallel universe, it’s real life, and we are dealing with real life situations, like if we look at the economy, we look at our nature, all those kinds of things, the turmoil we deal with, the destruction, and we, as a group of musicians, that are standing on a stage Woodstock in 2069, being hit by a catastrophic earthquake, and not knowing what’s going to happen in the future, dealing with the turmoil within ourselves, an d love, peace and music being the answer, and each character having their own journeys to deal with, so with us all sticking together with music we can overcome what has happened. In a nutshell, it takes a long time to explain it.”

“It takes issues that we’re looking at now,” Clerk adds. “Things that have been drummed into us, and things that we’re not really taking notice of, and putting us in the future that everyone says we’re going to be. Showing us Off The Screen Magazine

31

From the Wings ______________________ Feature that if we are going to ignore it then something’s going to happen, and it shows us that.”

Clerk plays Danielle in the show, the daughter of Momma and Poppa, the leaders of the rag tag group. I asked her about her character.

“Danielle is an interesting character,” she says. “She is a hippy by birth, but she has a terrible temper, so she’s quite a complex character to gel into because she has all these ideals and all these ways of thinking and being and she wants to be, but she isn’t that at all. I think that’s where she’s interesting as well.”

Shaun plays the rebellious outsider and typical rock and roller, Johnny Reb. I asked him to lay out his character for me.

“Johnny Reb… Is… exactly…” he hesitates, not sure how to start.

“An a**hole,” Clerk offers. Shaun raises his eyebrows as he looks at her.

“Yes, well,” he replies. “Thank you.

He’s very liberal and he’s very thinking, he’s a very angsty, outgoing type of person, but his mind is slow clear to what’s going on around us that he, with the anger and frustration that he has, he wants everyone to notice what we’re doing as

a human race to the Earth, and where it’s going to lead to, but half way through he falls in love with Danielle, and has to calm down all the aggression and angst to sit back and realise that with love and peace we can all come to together and that’s a better to deal with what’s happening, especially in their situation.”

Johnny and Danielle fall madly in love in the show, but at first, in the song that I watched during the rehearsal, they don’t seem to like each other very much. Think the smart, book girl and the jock and you get the picture. I asked Clerk about this dynamic.

“No,” she says, agreeing that they don’t like each other much at first.

“I’m not sure how much she likes him the whole way through actually,” she laughs. “I think, after the earthquake and the aftermath of that, she has to reconsider where she is, but she has no idea how to engage with Johnny, other than that, so it’s backwards and forwards with aggression and bantering, but it’s the only way that she can talk to him. It goes that way for a long time until something breaks it.”

Off The Screen Magazine

32

From the Wings ______________________ Feature “There’s a difference between a ballet dancer and a dancer, and I wanted to be a ballet dancer, and I went about it a long time, but eventually did Phantom of the Opera and decided that I really didn’t want to be a ballet dancer again.”

Of course in real life the two actors get on really well, and I could tell in just a few moments of watching them interact in the wings, so to speak, that they’re good friends.

“Yes, very much,” Shaun says, agreeing with me. “There’s a little of both characters in both of us in a way of pushing each-others buttons and knowing exactly how to irritate each other, but yes, we do get on very well. Well, I’m not sure what she says behind my back.” Clerk just laughs.

In researching for this interview I found that Shaun travelled over to Los Angeles to pursue his career. I asked him about it.

“Music is a funny business,” he says.

“I’m still very much in contact with the people that side, I’ve been very lucky to have come back to South Africa and automatically been involved in other projects, a lot of them original stuff like this. It’s such a great opportunity because it’s a South African original. The L.A stuff is definitely still there, I still speak to them, it’s just when you come back, just after a recession hits the world, you just need to take stock and when the times right I’ll definitely go back. There are still lots of talks and stuff happening, but there’s no time frame for music. It would be amazing to

put a timeline on things and on you own raise 2 million rand and go and do it, but it’s not as easy as that. It’s a great collaboration if you look at it that way, because I get to write great music with great people over there.”

Getting involved in Rockville was something that Shaun wanted the moment he learned about the show and was approached.

“I love working, creating new stuff,” he tells me. “So when I got the call I really wanted to be involved, basically because it is South African. It’s an original South African show at a theatre I grew up in. My mother worked in this theatre when I was 8 years old, but it’s the first time I get to perform in it. I’ve performed all over South Africa, but never here. I looked at the whole show and desperately, I mean, I get to sing rock and roll music and break things, so I needed to be there.”

Caitlin obviously has been dancing for years, but this is her first singing, dancing and acting role. I asked her what it was that made her want to make the change.

“My dad used to tell me it was something I should do,” she tells me. “But we never listen to our dad’s. My mind was so set on being a dancer, but actually I don’t have the physique for it. I don’t have the turnout, I don’t have the legs I can gooi up into the air…”

“That’s not what it looks like in warm up,” Shaun comments, causing Clerk to laugh before she continues.

“There’s a difference between a ballet dancer and a dancer, and I wanted to be a ballet dancer, and I went about it a long time, but eventually did Phantom of the Opera and decided that I really didn’t want to be a ballet dancer again. So I decided that, I knew I could sing, I’ve always sung, so I decided I should change that.”

I pressed, asking what it was about the show Phantom that made her not want to be a dancer anymore.

“I loved the show,” she says. “But I was frustrated .I knew there was more that I could do and I was just a dancer.”

“You fell in love with the industry and just wanted to do everything in it,” Shaun suggests. Clerk completely agrees.

Off The Screen Magazine

33

From the Wings ______________________ Feature

“I did, I did,” she says.

Rockville is a unique production in that the show’s songs were recorded and released on CD before the stage production was even begun. I asked Shaun if they were involved in the original recordings.

“No,” he says. “From the production I think Joseph Clark is the only one that was involved with the original recording, but we each got a copy of it and it opened our minds to how amazing it could be, especially with a seventeen piece band behind us and the talents, a lot of commercial voices were used for the recording.”

Joseph Clark plays Clerk’s dad in the show. Since neither of them were on the original recording I asked if they had any fear in being compared to the voices that are.

“I think when I got into this production I was scared of being compared to anyone,” Clerk says. “Because people know me as a dancer and they’re going to be surprised and judge me quite harshly because they know what I’ve done. I wasn’t concerned about the recording, as much as I was about performing in general before the industry big wigs.”

“It didn’t really cross my mind,” Shaun adds. “I just wanted to rock it out. I think the songs are written beautifully, there are incredible melodies that I just wanted to sing.”

“What you realise when you’re singing,” Clerk adds. “Is that you never sound like someone else. You always sound unique and that’s what makes people hire you. I’ve

tried as much as I can to sing it that way I would sing it, even though I know the recording very well. You have to embrace being compared, but just be you.”

Well, she sounded just like her when I heard her in the rehearsals, unfortunately the show was cancelled in Pretoria recently, so I didn’t get a chance to see the entire show on the stage, but they are performing in Durban in July and then in Bloemfontein in October, and hopefully will be coming back our way in the new year.

Off The Screen Magazine

34

Film Review After Earth 5/10

_______________________________________________________________________

Starring Will Smith, Jaden Smith and Sophie Okonedo Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

I

t’s been 1000 years since humanity had to evacuate Earth for a new planet, Nova Prime, but no sooner had we arrived that we discovered that we weren’t the only ones that wanted it and the aliens want to destroy mankind completely.

To this end they release a monster race known as Ursa. Totally blind, the Ursa can smell a man’s fear and track him to the end of Nova Prime. To battle these creatures, and their alien masters, a new class of warrior is created, the rangers, and they are led by a man who discovers a way to defeat the Ursa, to have no fear. The man, Cypher Raige (Will Smith) develops ghosting, a technique where he can feel no fear, thus totally blinding the Ursa. Using this technique the ranger’s get the upper hand, but they are still at war. During a mission to take an Ursa to a distant planet to train new rangers Raige decides to take his son, Kitai (Jaden Smith). The two have grown apart, especially now that Kitai has been refused ranger training, but when the ship crashes on the most dangerous planet in the universe, Earth, it falls on Kitai to face his issues and save his injured father, while Cypher needs to learn to trust his son.

I have enjoyed every film made by Will Smith, from Independence Day to his dramatic work to Men in Black I think he’s great, but this film is, unfortunately lacking.

The story was devised by Smith and it’s an interesting story, except for the whole no fear thing. People have fear for a very real reason, the only people without fear are psychopaths, and they’re not the kind of people you want running your army, but anyway… The story plods along, trying desperately to be emotional in moments, but not really accomplishing it. Both Smith’s give interesting performances, but Will is almost unconscious, or lacking emotion for the character half the time, and Jaden is just not a good enough actor, add to that the strangest accent I’ve heard since Matt Damon’s Afrikaans one in Invictus and he falls on his face a little. The effects are good and the tech is great, but even that can’t save the film form seriously lacking in the people element. A bit of a pity.

Off The Screen Magazine 38

_______________________________________________________________________

Film Review

Broken City 6/10

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe and Catherine Zeta-Jones Directed by Allen Hughes

A

fter killing a man who got off on a technicality detective Billy Taggart (Mark Wahlberg) is let off too after a specific piece of evidence is lost. Seven years later he’s working as a private detective, but is struggling to make ends meet, when he is hired by Mayor Hostetler (Russell Crowe), the man who made the evidence disappear all those years ago, to follow his wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) who he thinks is having an affair.

Taggart takes the job without a second thought and discovers that the mayor’s wife is seeing a man. He takes photos of the two of them together and gives them to the mayor, but when the man, who happens to be the campaign coordinator for the mayor’s opposition, winds up dead Taggart finds

himself caught up in a twist web of corruption lies and murder that he’s not sure he’ll be able to get out of, especially since the evidence that disappeared is still in the mayor’s possession.

This comes across as a good film, and it’s interesting from the start, but it’s a very slow, plodding along plot, which is a pity. I tried as I could to like this film, but found myself wondering when it was going to end.

The performances by Wahlberg and Crowe are alright, but we expect so much more from these actors now that okay just isn’t good enough. Zeta-Jones is also good, but has such a little amount of screen time she doesn’t really get to shine too much. If they’d made this film tighter and, say, twenty minutes shorter it might have been good, but it’s too just long.

1

___________________________________________________________________

__ Film Review

Despicable Me 2 6/10 Starring the voices of Steve Carrell, Miranda Cosgrove and Ken Jeong Directed by Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud

A

fter a secret lab is stolen, along with a formula that turns fluffy white bunnies into giant purple ravenous bunnies, yes you read that right, Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) is recruited by the AVL, the Anti-Villain League, to infiltrate the shopping mall where they’re convinced the culprit is hiding and find him, as well as the formula. At first Gru is reluctant to get involved, but soon he longs for the days of blasters and racing cars and agrees. He’s less happy about being partnered with Lucy Wilde (voiced by Kristen Wiig), a young impossibly enthusiastic agent. Meanwhile at home Agnes (voiced by Elsie Fisher), the youngest of the girls, and Edith (voiced by Dana Gaier), the second youngest, are very much the same, except Agnes has been talking a lot about a new mother lately, but Margo (voiced by Miranda Cosgrave) is getting older and looking at boys, much to Gru’s horror, but when Gru thinks he’s discovered the villain, El Macho, a former bad guy long thought dead,

he’s mortified to discover that the boy Margo likes is in fact the son of his nemesis. His personal and professional life collides as he tries to protect the world and his family from the same evil, and then his minions start disappearing.

While I enjoyed this film, and found a lot of moments to laugh at, I feel that the film makers fell into the trap that a lot of sequels fall into. They took what was funny, what worked in the original and did it more in this film, thinking that would make the fans happy. The problem is that it’s just too much.

The minions are funny at first, but after a while they begin to get on your nerves. A lot of the jokes are heavy handed and, like the minions, are funny at first, but get tedious after a while. This is not to say that it’s a bad film. The story is fun, the characters are sweet and the animation is grand, but it all became a little much for me close to the end. The kids will adore it, but parents just beware.

Film Review Die Laaste Tango 5/10

_______________________________________________________________________

A

fter almost beating a serial killer suspect, Basson (Stian Bam), to death, Captain Herkules De Wet (Louw Venter) is sent to the small Karoo town of Loxton to lie low for a while until the killer wakes up and can be arrested. Officially he’s there to investigate the disappearance of a constable, unofficially he’s there to try and relax, and maybe put the killings behind him. He sets about doing odd jobs on the surrounding farms, ordered to not investigate for at least a few days, and it’s through these jobs that he meets Ella (Antoinette Louw), a woman living in Loxton who asks him to do an odd job for her. He agrees, only to discover that the odd job is learning to tango so he can tango with her before she dies of cancer. He reluctantly agrees, and the two begin their lessons, and he begins to see the world a little differently as his feelings for the woman begin to grow, but when he starts investigating the missing constable he uncovers secrets that may pull them, and the whole town apart. Then Basson wakes up and goes looking for the captain.

This is the directorial debut of Deon Meyer, an award winning and very successful author, and while the story is complex and

Starring Louw Venter, Antoinette Louw and Marius Weyers Directed by Deon Meyer interesting, what you’d expect from a Meyer written story, it seems to miss the mark. I think the problem is that there’s simply too much in the film. A novel can have a main plot and several dozen sub-plots, which the author can spend pages and pages explaining, a film can’t. Too many sub-plots simply complicate a film and steal away from the main plot that the audience should be focused on. In this film I found the main plot, the serial killer, superfluous. I would have preferred the main plot to be the missing constable, and the serial killer to be left off. I found the missing constable a far more compelling plotline and much more interesting. It didn’t help that the serial killer was about as dimensional as a piece of paper. He had no real character, nothing was explained of him, he was just some guy killing girls, with no reason, not compelling as an antagonist at all. I liked Louw and Venter when they were separate, even though some of the emotional scenes were really forced, but together there’s just no chemistry between the two. I was really looking forward to this title, but left disappointed, even though they’re on the right track it missed it’s mark.

_______________________________________________________________________

Film Review

Epic 8/10

Starring the voices of Colin Farrell, Josh Hutcherson and Beyoncé Knowles Directed by Chris Wedge When her mother dies Mary Katherine (voiced

by Amanda Seyfried) moves in with her father, a scientist who the rest of the scientific think is crazy because he believes that a tiny race of advanced people are living in the forest that surrounds his house. Of course MK, as she’s know, thinks he’s crazy too, so plan to leave, but a series of events, including chasing the three legged family dog into the forest, leads to her find the dying queen of the leaf men (voiced by Beyoncé Knowles), the very advanced race of miniature people her father was looking for. She shrinks MK and gives her the task of protecting a flower bulb, the source of all the life in the forest, from the evil Dagda (voiced by Blake Anderson), an evil sprite who wants to rot the entire forest. MK is aided on her quest by Ronin (voiced by Collin Farrell), the leader of the leaf men, Nod (voiced by Josh Hutcherson), a young leaf man who is supposed to be a soldier but would rather be racing birds than fighting, and Mub

(voiced by Aziz Ansari) and Grub (voiced by Chris O'Dowd) a snail and a slug who protect the bulbs, and together they set off to protect the bulb, make sure it blooms in the moonlight and save the entire forest, and get MK back to her proper size if they can.

Another great animated film for the whole family. This one has a very definite theme of saving the planet from pollution, and that’s okay, it’s not pushed down your throat and the story covers it nicely. It’s a sweet film with a god story, but I drew a lot of comparisons to other films, especially Ferngully, the 1992 animated film, and Arthur and the Invisibles, the 2006 live action and animation crossover. Epic has a lot of the same elements as both of these film, both very good, but there’s enough difference, and the animation and story is good enough, to overlook this. Your kids will adore it, and it’s not a chore to watch either.

_______________________________________________________________________

Film Review

Killer Joe 3/10

W

hen Chris (Emile Hirsch) finds himself owing a lot of money to the wrong kind of people, he comes up with the plan to kill his alcoholic, abusive mother for her life insurance, which is set to go to his somewhat mentally stilted sister, Dotty (Juno Temple).

He and his father (Thomas Haden Church) the hire Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a Dallas police officer who moonlights as an assassin, to do the deed, but realise that they don’t have the $25 000 to pay him, so they make him an offer to pay him after they receive the money for the insurance, he accepts their terms on condition that he can have a retainer for the job, and that retainer is Dotty, a deal they make, but as the man begins to become a more permanent feature in their lives they realise what a huge mistake they have just made.

Starring Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch and Juno Temple Directed by William Friedkin I wasn’t sure what to expect from this film, but it wasn’t what I got. The entire thing creeped me out from beginning to end.

Firstly, the characters are crass and disgusting.

They’re all hill billy rejects that make Honey Boo Boo look like she’s attending Oxford, but that’s not the worst of it, the film is so crass that it made me cringe. The extreme violence and sex, especially between McConaughey and Temple’s characters almost turned my stomach, and I’ll never be able to look at a KFC drumstick the same way again. The entire film is just too much. It’s too violent and too incestual and too much stupid, sick people doing stupid, sick stuff. There are some moments of levity where the humour, which is severely dark, made me laugh, especially thanks to Haden Church, but the raw nature of the other scenes far over shadows anything else I can recall about the film. If you want to be grossed and creeped and generally made to feel uncomfortable, you may enjoy film, but I wouldn’t suggest against it.

Off The Screen Magazine

43

_______________________________________________________________________

Film Review

Man of Steel 9/10

Starring Henry Cavill, Amy Adams and Michael Shannon Directed by Zach Snyder

O

n the far planet of Krypton Jor El (Russell Crowe) argues with the council to escape the world, which is dying since they tapped its core for energy, but in the middle of the argument the building they’re in is attacked. The leader of Krypton’s military, General Zod (Michael Shannon), has started a coup to claim power over the planet.

Jor El escapes and sends his only son, the first true natural birth in a century, off on a space ship, along with the Kryptonian codex. Zod tries to stop the ship, but cannot, and the coup is put down. Zod and his followers are condemned and sent into a black hole, the phantom zone, moments before the planet is destroyed. Fast forward about 30 years and Clark Kent (Henry Cavill), the son that Jor El sent off, is living on Earth as one of us, but he’s not one of us. He has amazing strength and can hear and see better than any human.

He uses these powers when it’s necessary, to save people, but then needs to run away again.Sso he lives his life on the run, moving from one place to another, until he gets a job in Antarctica, in the middle of an expedition to discover a hidden object beneath the ice.

On the same dig site is Lois Lane (Amy Adams) a reporter from Metropolis, and when Clark goes down into the ice, he thinks alone, to discover the object, Lois follows, only to discover a Kryptonian ship. When she’s hurt Clark helps her, but then leaves her on the ice as he flies the ship away, but that’s not the end for Lois. She follows clues all the way to Clark’s front door, where she discovers who he really is, but she decides not to run the story and to keep her mouth shut. It doesn’t do any good though, because soon after Zod, having escaped from the phantom zone, finds

his way to Earth, looking for Clark. Clark has no choice but to go out in the open and reveal himself to mankind, hoping that they won’t turn their back on him, his father’s (Kevin Costner) worst fear. And so the showdown begins, between the Man of Steel, the general and the world, which isn’t ready for a person with the powers of a god.

Superman is one of the most loved and revered characters in comic book history.

He has become an icon for many people, and as such is a very dangerous character to change, and this is a very different take on Superman. In essence he’s the same character, honest, fighting for right in the face of insane odds, but this film is more about the man behind the Man of Steel. He knows right from wrong, and tries to do right, but lives in constant fear of what the world will think, a fear put in him by his father, even going so far as to tell his son to let someone die if saving him would reveal his powers. A hard thing for someone like Clark to do. This film sees him moving around, hiding in the shadows, helping, but having to run afterwards. Then he discovers his true identity and things change. I was also interested in the new take on the relationship between Clark and Lois. It’s very different than anything I’ve seen before, not bad different, but just different. The story is a lot more based in reality, which is good. Of course there are issues, and I understand all the controversy about the film, but at the end of the day I think Snyder, and the rest of the crew, stayed true to the character, and I look forward to the next chapter, which should be great. For Superman fans, watch the film with an open mind and consider the situation before you judge. Think about the reality of the person that is Clark and you’ll see it for what it is, a great superhero film laying the foundations for more great superhero films which I, personally, can’t wait for.

_______________________________________________________________________

Film Review

Monsters University 7/10

Starring the voices of Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi Directed by Dan Scanlon

B

efore Sully (voiced by John Goodman) and Mike (voiced by Billy Crystal) were best friends working at Monster’s Inc. and they met the little girl, Boo, who changed their lives they were young students at the university where they learned it all, Monsters University. We meet Mike, a young monster who wants nothing more than to be a scarer, but who everyone thinks isn’t scary, and Sully, the only son of one of the greatest scarers who feels he doesn’t need to study to be a great scarer, that it’s in his blood. When they both get into big trouble in scare school at the university and the head mistress, Dean Hardscrabble (voiced by Helen Mirren), kicks them both out of the school Mike makes her a deal. If he, along with Sully, and other monsters from a very looked down upon sorority, Squishy (voiced by Peter Sohn), Don (voiced by Joel Murray), the two headed Terri (voiced by Sean Hayes) and his second head Terry (voiced by Dave Foley) and Art (voiced by

Charlie Day) win the annual Scare competition, beating the heavy favourite sororities, she will let them back into the scare program. She accepts and so they begin training, trying to prove to everyone else what they believe in themselves, that anyone can be scary.

The prequel to the 2001 hit Monsters Inc. is almost as good as the original. The concept is good and the characters are just as wonderful as they were in the original. It’s lovely to see how these characters developed.

From being the studious roommate of Mike, Randy, voiced by Steve Buscemi again, becomes Sully’s nemesis in the original, from being a full of himself party animal to being the stalwart of Monsters Inc. Sully changes too. Mike stays the same throughout, only his dreams change. I will say it doesn’t have quite the same impact as the original, feeling a lot less original this time, not because it’s the same characters, but because the story line has been seen before. Even so it is good fun, and the kids always love animated films.

Film Review Song for Marion 10/10

_______________________________________________________________________

Starring Vanessa Redgrave, Terrence Stamp and Gemma Arterton Directed by Paul Andrew Williams

A

rthur (Terrence Stamp) is the epitome of an old fart. He’s crotchety, annoyed at everyone and everything and doesn’t bite his tongue for anyone, but he’s madly in love with his wife of many years, Marion (Vanessa Redgrave) and is, secretly, a sweet heart, though no one would know it. His life is turned upside down when he and Marion are told that she is going to die from the cancer that has plagued her for years. He tries to protect her, and himself, by trying to pull her away from a choir group that she takes part in, thinking it will sap her energy and take her sooner, but she won’t hear of, enjoying the singing too much. Much to his annoyance he

even needs to attend the rehearsals for her when she’s too sick to go herself, and he begins to enjoy it, forming a friendship with the young woman that runs the choir, Elizabeth (Gemma Arterton), but when Marion dies Arthur is left with nothing, and he pulls away again, but it’s in the choir that he finds a reason again, even joining, feeling closer to Marion as he sings.

This is one of the sweetest, most moving films I’ve seen all year. It’s touching in a way a lot of films aren’t nowadays, in that it has real soul. You really feel for these characters, because they could be you in 40 years, or your parents, or your parents parent’s, it can just touch right down to your heart. The performances by Redgrave, Stamp and Arterton are fantastic, coming together to weave a truly emotional rollercoaster, especially after her death. If you love tear jerkers, and be sure it will touch a well or two, check out this film. Once you’ve seen it you’ll want to watch it again and again.

_______________________________________________________________________

Film Review

Spud 2: The Madness Continues 8/10

I

t's John "Spud" Milton's (Troye Sivan) second year at boarding school and if he wants to survive the year he's going to need all the help he can get, especially since the housemaster, Sparerib (Jason Cope), has got it in for Spud and his friends, the Crazy 8, and wants nothing more than to get the bunch of them expelled. Add to that woman trouble, starting with Mermaid (Genna Blair) who dumps poor Spud, and Amanda (Charlbi Kriek) who keeps finding Spud and making his life difficult. He also has to deal with a father (Aaron McIlroy), who is still insane, and a mother (Julie Summers), who is desperate to immigrate. Can Spud survive his second year, or will it all be too much for our young hero?

Starring Troye Sivan, John Cleese and Jeremy Crutchley Directed by Donovan Marsh Picking up where the first film kicked off Spud: The Madness Continues is the next chapter in John Milton's life, and it's full of excitement.

The whole film has the same look and feel of the first, which is good, if you enjoyed the first. The original cast is back, including Sivan as Spud, John Cleese as the Guv and the entire young cast making up the Crazy 8 and the girls. The action is bigger, the pranks are better and it's all a lot of fun. Keep an eye out for Jeremy Crutchley who is great in his role as a headmaster pushed to the limits, and McIlroy who makes the most out of every scene he’s in. His anthem and his car problems are some of the funniest moments in the film.

Film Review White House Down 7/10

_______________________________________________________________________

Starring Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx and Joey King Directed by Roland Emmerich

O

n the day that Capital police officer Cale (Channing Tatum) takes his eleven year old daughter, Emily (Joey King) on a tour of the White House to try and make up for missing her school talent show, everything goes very wrong. In the middle of the tour heavily armed men take control of the White House, right when Emily has gone to the bathroom.

Cale manages to escape, going in search of Emily, but then discovers that the President (Jamie Foxx) is being held by these people.

Now, not only does Cale need to protect his daughter, he also has to protect the President, but when truth of what the men, and the man in charge of them, a man who used to run the secret service that protected the President (James Woods), he discovers that the free world might be in just as much danger as the people in the house.

This film is exactly what you expect it to be. It’s fun, full of action and explosions and fight scenes and crashing helicopters and, well, it’s an action film to the core. Tatum is great as a man trying to do more with his life.

A man who used to be at loose ends, he now has a plan, but isn’t sure he’s going to be able to fulfil that plan, add to that a daughter who has no time for him anymore. She’s played beautifully by King, though all she does is cry through most of the film, she does it convincingly, and the moments of courage are touching. Woods is compelling as the bad guy and I loved Jamie Foxx as the president. He’s charming and intelligent, even with keeping his street cred intact, I loved the shoes. There are a few moments of nauseating patriotism, but you expect it from this kind of film, and being set in the White House, can you really avoid that? This is fun if you like action films.

Visit www.offthescreenmagazine.com for more DVD reviews

______________________________________________________________________

DVD Reviews

Verraaiers 7/10

The Words 6/10

Starring Gys de Villiers, Vilje Maritz and Andrew Thompson Directed by Paul Eilers After hearing that the British are about to start a scorched Earth policy during the AngloBoer war a Boer Soldier (Gys De Villiers) abandons the army, with many others, to go home and protect his family, but the Boers don’t like this. To make an example they arrest the man and try him for treason against the Boer state, a crime punishable by death.

This is a wonderful Afrikaans film about a piece of history that I didn’t even know existed. The film is aided by wonderful performances by De Villiers as well as Vilje Maritz as his son, who is also arrested, Neil Bennett Grib as his Scottish son-in-law who is also arrested and Rika Sennett as his wife. The directing was a little annoying close to the end when the director decided to fade in and out of every scene, but besides that it’s great.

Starring Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana and Jeremy Irons Directed by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal Three stories merge in this interesting film about stolen lives and dreams. Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) is an author reading from his new book. The story is about a writer, Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper), who just can’t get published until he finds a manuscript in a briefcase his wife buys him. He sends it to a publisher and is published leading to an insane amount of success for a book he didn’t write, but put his name on. Then the man that did write it finds him and begins to tell him his story as Rory’s life begins to unravel.

I didn’t get this film to be honest. I thought it was a fantastic concept and could have been really compelling as a you’ve-donewrong-now- you-need-to-pay story, but it doesn’t quite get there. It’s also a little complicated in the way it’s put together, with the three stories running simultaneously and you’re not quite sure which one you’re in.

Have a look and see what you think.

Silver Linings Playbook 8/10 Starring Brendon Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro Directed by David O. Russell After being released from a mental institution Pat (Bradley Cooper) moves back in with his parents to try and reconcile with his ex-wife, a woman that had an affair which he found out about, which was the reason he was in the institution. He meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a strange girl with many problems, but she knows his ex, so he makes a deal with her to dance with her in a competition is she’ll get a letter to his ex. At first it works fine, but then things start to develop between the two as they try and get on with their lives.

A compelling and interesting work driven by stellar performances by Cooper and Lawrence, even warranting an Oscar nomination for Lawrence. I will say that the screaming fights, especially between Cooper and Robert De Niro, who plays his father, get a little taxing after a while, but it’s a great film that all film fans should see. It’ll be a set work within five years.

Win a copy of The Words on DVD. All you need to do is: 1. Find our Facebook page, Off The Screen Magazine 2. like it, 3. find The Words Poster, and

‘Words’

4. leave the word in the comments and you could win a copy of the DVD, The Words This competition is open until midnight

on Friday August 3rd 2013 and for South African’s residents only.

Off The Screen Magazine

50

Visit www.offthescreenmagazine.com for more DVD reviews ______________________________________________________________________

DVD Reviews

Red Dawn 6/10

Django Unchained 8/10

Starring Chris Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson and Josh Peck Directed by Dan Bradley When foreign troops stage a full scale invasion in a small American town a group of teenagers, led by Jed (Chris Hemsworth), a soldier visiting his family, manage to escape and flee into the woods. They have no idea what to do, but when Jed and his brother Matt (Josh Peck) see their father killed by the insurgents they decide to fight back and create the revolutionary force, the Wolverines, to take back their home.

Based on the 1984 version of the film starring Patrick Swayze, this film is a little farfetched, especially the reason America can’t launch nuclear weapons, but it is a lot of fun.

The performances are okay, nothing wonderful, but believable, and the effects are good, with lots of explosions and fights throughout the film. If you like action, and you enjoyed the original, you should get something out of this one.

Starring Jamie Foxx, Cristophe Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio Directed by Quentin Tarantino Django (Jamie Foxx) is a slave on his way to be sold when he’s rescued by Dr King Schultz (Christophe Waltz) a bounty hunter who needs Django’s help to identify two marks.

After the slave helps him they partner up to hunt bad guys, and in return the Dr agrees to help Django save his wife, Brumhillda (Kerry Washington), but when they discover that she’s at the plantation of a power hungry cotton farmer, Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), they set about trying to rescue her.

A fascinating film helped in no small way by stellar performances by Foxx, Waltz, who got an Oscar for the role, and DiCaprio, not to mention Samuel L. Jackson who plays the most despicable character I’ve seen in a while. Be warned though, it is very violent and won’t be everyone’s taste.

Dino Time 7/10 Starring the voices of Melanie Griffith, Jane Lynch and William Baldwin Directed by Yoon S, Choi and John Kafka Ernie (voiced by Pamela Adlon) is a fun, adventure loving kid, who wants to get away from the small town where he lives so badly, so when he discovers that his friend’s dad had created a time machine, he sees his way out, and too adventure, but the machine doesn’t work, that is until they spill something on the controls and it comes to life. They find themselves in prehistoric times where they’re taken in by a mommy dinosaur who thinks they’re orphans that she need to protect, but there are forces that are trying to rid themselves of the dinosaur so they can rule the valley. In the meantime Ernie’s mom tries to get her kids back.

This is a sweet animated film for the kids. The animation doesn’t quite add up to the Dreamworks or Disney animation we’re used to, but it’s cute and the kids will love it.

Barricade 7/10 Starring Eric McCormack, Jody Thompson and Connor Dwelly Directed by Andrew Currie After their mother dies, Terrance Shade (Eric McCormack) takes his kids, Cynthia (Connor Dwelly) and Jake (Jody Thompson) into the wilderness, to her favourite cabin, to have a white Christmas, but as soon as the arrive strange things begin to happen. They all develop a bad cough followed by seeing things in the trees, having doors move by themselves and a feeling of terror. Soon Terrance is fighting to protect his kids from an unseen terror, but does he have any hope of saving them, if he can’t save himself?

This is a straight to DVD title, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve liked McCormack since Will and Grace days, and he shines in this film. The kids are also good, cute and frightening at the same time, and the use of shadows and flickering lights make the scary scenes scary. Good fun for a Saturday night.

Off The Screen Magazine

51

Watch it jump

Off The Screen For all your film and theatre interviews and reviews

Find it at www.facebook.com/offthescreenmagazine