Off The Screen Magazine March 2013

March 2013

Reaching For Russian Stars We talk to Chantalle De Jager, a young ballerina making waves on the international stage

Searching For Love Isidingo star Jay Anstey tells us about her new role in the psychological thriller, Sleepers Wake

A Traitorous Past TV icon Gys De Villiers talks to us about his role in the new Afrikaans period film, Verraaiers

Love is Blind Eduaan van Jaarsveldt and Zethu Dlomo speak to us about their starring roles in the new romantic comedy, Fanie Fourie’s Lobola

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Cover: Jay Anstey as Jackie in Sleepers Wake. Photo by Blid Alsbirk

Contents Cover Story: Searching for Love

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Features: Reaching For Russian Stars And the Oscar Goes To… The Real Mentalist A Traitorous Past Hiding from the Past Our Very Own Nominations Those That Dance Together, Stay Together

6 13 26 31 38 43 46

Reviews: Feature Reviews These Creatures are Beautiful It is a Good Day Film Fanie Fourie’s Lobola Guilt Trip Quartet Verraaiers The Impossible Sleepers Wake

52 58 62 63 64

Contents Reviews: (cont’d) The Last Stand Snitch The Sessions 10 Years Zero Dark Thirty Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters Theatre The Dogs are Back It’s an Experience 25th Anniversary Umbrella It’s All in the Mind DVD Frankenweenie The Possession A Thousand Words True Justice: Angel of Death Beat the World The Apparition Gabe, the Cupid Dog Rosewood Lane

65 66 67 68 74 78 81

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Editors Letter It’s March already and film award season is on us.

We have the winners of the Oscars in this month’s issue as well as the film nominations for our very own awards show, the South African Film and Television awards, or SAFTA’s, a lot of which we’ve featured in previous issues.

We also spoke to the leads of the new romantic comedy Fanie Fourie’s Lobola, Eduaan van Jaarsveldt and Zethu Dlomo, the leads from the new dramatic thriller, Sleepers Wake, Jay Anstey and Lionel Newton, and the lead of the new period Afrikaans

drama Verraaiers, Gys de Villiers. We also have an interview with Chantalle De Jager, a young ballerina making waves on the international stage. As you can tell it’s a bumper issue again this month.

I would like to take this opportunity to pass on my, and the entire staff of Off The Screen Magazine’s, condolence to the families of Reeva Steenkamp and Oscar Pretorius. We all wish everyone involved the best and hope that the truth comes out in the end.

Make sure to pick up the next issue first Monday of April.

Best Wishes Jon Broeke Editor

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Off The Screen Magazine Or you have an event you’d like us to cover Email us at:

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Reaching for Russian Stars Photos by Jon Broeke

Chantalle De Jager is an impressive young ballet dancer that’s making a name for herself on the international Russian stage.

Jon Broeke sat down with her to discuss her recent trip to Spain to dance with the Imperial Russian Ballet.

Y

ou can tell Chantalle De Jager is a ballet dancer by just looking at her. She’s tall, she’s thin, she holds herself in a certain way that screams ballet, she’s beautiful, basically, she’s everything that a ballet dancer should be. If you opened a dictionary and looked for the definition of ballerina there should be a picture of this wonderful young woman.

I met up with her at her studio on the West Rand of Johannesburg and was immediately taken with her.

She’s funny, and shy, in a good way, and simply gorgeous. I’m not the only person who thinks so though considering the fact that she was recently asked to go to Spain to dance alongside the Imperial Russian Ballet during their tour there, and that brings me to the point of our meeting.

“It was an

experience,” she tells me sitting outside the studio. She’s wearing her rehearsal clothes as I catch her between classes. “And it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot, especially the dancing part. It’s quite different to when you come and just do class, ‘cause there you do class, but it’s more about performing. So where you would learn something in class, like this is the technique.

This is the way you do it, where there you have to over-exaggerate everything and you have to, like, change it, so that was something new for me that I learned.

Also the language, the Russian, that was quite fun. I learned a few words before I went, but learning how to communicate with them was quite different.

Some of them could understand English, others not so much, so that was also where the fun part came in, learning new words and learning how to interact with them. They’re such nice people. They’re so different then how people expect Russians to be and they help you a lot, they’re always there for you, they’re never all full of themselves like some dancers are, so they’re a lot different. It was really a good experience. I would go again.”

The trip was over the December period and she was in Spain for a month and a half, a full

48 days, only returning at the end of January.

It seems like a long time, but she was busy the whole time.

“A lot,” she laughs when I ask how many performances she did during her time in Spain. “I did mostly Nutcracker and then I did Swan Lake as well, but not that much dancing because there wasn’t time really for me to prepare and dance with them, but Nutcracker, mostly everything. A lot of quick changes.”

I asked what exactly in Nutcracker, the famous ballet about the Nutcracker doll that comes to life taking the naïve Clara on an adventure with him, did she perform.

“Act 1 with the parents,” she tells me. “And then in Act 2 the waltz, and then the Arabian dance and also the finale.”

A lot for someone as young as Chantalle, who is only 17, but it wasn’t all performances, she also had

full days while she was there.

“First of all, because performances only start at about half past 8, not normal time like 6 or 7 o’clock, you’ll only arrive home, or at the hotel, about midnight,” she says, telling me about a regular day that she experienced while overseas. “Then you have to eat, obviously, because your eating schedules are all different. Then you would get up about 11, half past 11 the next day.

Eat breakfast, then you do have the time alone to go walk around, do some shopping if you like, go see the city. Then class would start at 4.

Class would be about two hour’s maybe, then after that, rehearsals which lead until the performance starts. Some of us were even late sometimes, arriving just in time to walk on stage.”

This was an incredible opportunity that a lot of ballet dancers never get.

I asked her how it all came about.

“I dance with Madame Slou,” she says. “At the Russian Ballet Academy in Pretoria. We had our gala function and opening the Youth Imperial

“I think I would first go and see what’s out there, and then come back. I don’t want to just stay here when I know there are a lot of great opportunities out there.”

Dance Company. The director, Gediminas Taranda, from the Russian Imperial Ballet Company was invited, obviously, because this is a way for us to bond with them. He was watching the performances. Afterwards, I was not with, I did not know about anything, my parents went with him because they’re on the board. They went to take him back to his hotel, and they had a talk in the car. When they came home my teacher came with them.

I was a little unexpected, why’s my teacher coming back with them? I thought they would drop her at home. You could see something was going on. They then broke the news to me that he invited me to come and tour Spain with [the company]. A lot of tears obviously and grateful. Before I left he called Madame Slou to ask if I could stay for six months, instead of just a month and a half. Obviously, I still have to finish school this year, and it’s my first time going away on my own, and for that long, so… There will definitely be a next time.”

The Madame Slou is Slou Saparovna Akimguereeva head of the Russian Ballet Academy in Centurion and ballet mistress of the Youth Imperial Dance Company. This isn’t the first time Chantalle has appeared on stage. She’s been on South African stages before when she has performed with South African Mzansi Ballet, or SAMB. “SABT,” she corrects me, before realising her mistake and correcting herself.

“Uh… Yes.” SABT, or South African Ballet Theatre is one of the two companies that merged to create SAMB, the other being Mzansi Productions. She’s danced with both companies separately, as well as with the new merged company.

“I danced Le Corsaire with them when they first merged,” she tells me. “That was auditions and stuff. I did Don Quixote with Mzansi [Productions], but also auditions, and after that again Le Corsaire.”

All this dance ability didn’t just happen overnight. Chantalle has been working very hard for a very long time to be who she is now.

“I’ve danced with Genevieve [Madden] since the age of six, I would say,” she tells me. “My first year without [Genevieve] was last year when she left for

Australia, so before that I danced with just [Genevieve]. Madame Slou I started with last year. She’s in Centurion, Pretoria.”

This is a lot of dancing, but Chantalle is committed to her art. And her parents support her as well allowing the girl to do home schooling for the last two years since she was sixteen. This is a popular turn in kids wanting to break into show business, dancers, actors, musicians, etc. but not so much in South Africa. I asked her if she feels that her home schooling has helped her career, and if she thinks other kids wanting into show biz should consider it.

“I would say yes,” she answers without a moments hesitation. “If you put the work effort in and make sure, and not just the school part, but if you want to go do something, and that’s your dream, you have to do it. You can’t just expect, ‘Okay, now I’m going to do home schooling so there should be more time, but you’re not doing anything about it’. For me school became… No, school’s still important, but it’s starting to be worked in around dancing instead of dancing around school. So, for me, because, for dancing I don’t know about other careers, but for dancing I would say definitely it is worth it.”

She feels it’s made a big difference in her career already.

“I would not have made Madame Slou if I didn’t do home schooling,” she says. “And I had a full year with [Genevieve] as well, before she left, with her, doing home school, so that gave me a little bit of up. It gave a lot more hours, yes, hard work, but it pays off in the end.”

It certainly does, this exceptional young woman is going to reach those stars, there’s no doubt in my mind, but will those stars be South African, or will they be Russian?

“I don’t know,” she says about whether she’ll dance overseas or back home.

“I think I would first go and see what’s out there, and then come back. I don’t want to just stay here when I know there are a lot of great opportunities out there.”

And the Oscar Goes To‌

The evening we wait all year for is over and the awards have been handed out. Now Jon Broeke looks at the big names, and not so big names, that walked away with awards at the 85th Annual Academy Awards.

N

ormally at the Oscars there’s one film that stands out among the rest. It’s normally the film that walks away with Best Picture, the Best Actor and Actress and Best Director. This year was a little different. There were several films that were very good and the awards have been spread among them. It’s not the first time this has happened, but it is the first time in recent history. I put this down to the fact that there were so many good films in contention this year, that there was no clear favourite, among the crowd, or among the academy itself, so everyone won something.

But, because the awards are spread it makes my job a little more difficult to look at the winners, so… Let’s begin with the granddaddy of all the awards. The one that everyone wants to win.

Best Picture went to Ben Affleck’s masterpiece Argo. It wasn’t a surprise to me that this film won the award, but it came as a little shock considering that it hadn’t won anything else really substantial. Yes, it won Best Film Editing and Chris Terrio won for Best Adapted Screenplay, but these aren’t normally the awards we look at for the winner of this category, normally it’s Best Director and the Acting awards, but hey, it’s good to shake things up, and Argo definitely deserved to win. The film tells the true story of C.I.A agent Tony Mendez, who Affleck plays in the film, as he pretends to be a film producer to sneak into Iran, just after the government was overthrown and the workers at the US embassy were taken hostage, to help six people who escaped from the embassy to get back to America. It is compelling and thrilling and an amazing film. Add to that great

performances by the entire cast, worthy of their Screen Actors Guild Award for Ensemble cast, especially by Alan Arkin, who was nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category and you can tell why this film won. Of course, being the jaded South African I am, I’m sure the praise of American ingenuity and praise of their intelligence service didn’t hurt.

The next big award, Best Director, was given to Ang Lee for his incredible film Life of Pi. Now, if I was putting money down on the winners before they’d been announced my money would have been on Life of Pi to win Best Picture, especially after Lee won Best Director, but it goes to show, you just can’t tell. Lee won this because of the film he’s created. It is moving and extraordinary. The amount of times I was sitting just gape jawed in this film just because of the incredible visuals that Lee and his team managed to

create, and make completely believable. The film is about a young Indian boy that gets stranded in the middle of the ocean when the boat he’s on sinks, but he’s not alone. He’s got the company of a full grown Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, and the two need to learn to tolerate each other if they’re going to survive. The tiger is C.G.I in most of the shots, but I dare you to guess which ones, because it is so well done, it’s astounding. Add the fish and the colours and the ship sinking and it’s a visual masterpiece. The film also won the Oscars for Best Cinematography, going to Claudio Miranda, Best Visual Effects, going to Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron and Donald R. Elliot, and Best Original Score, going to Mychael Danna, whose music just pulled the entire film together.

The Oscar for Best Actor went to Daniel Day-Lewis for his role as Abraham Lincoln in the film Lincoln. Day-Lewis was the

obvious choice for this award, having won at the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild already. His portrayl of the 16th president of America, during his hardest time as he tries to ratify the 16 amendment to abolish slavery once and for all is among the best of his career. He is strong and moving and embodies the characters, while being completely respectful of a great man and making him look human and conflicted in what he should do. You see, the crux of the character is that he can stop the civil war early if he stops the amendment, but that would mean a return to slavery. He has to weigh up the good and the bad and make a decision on what to do, and you can really feel his struggle with this dilemma that would crush any lesser man. Day-Lewis brings it onto the screen effortlessly and it’s amazing to watch. Of course some of the credit for this goes to Steven Spielberg, the film’s director, but the performance is Day-Lewis’, and so is the statuette. It’s also interesting to know that Day-Lewis is now the only actor to win in this category three times, first for My Left Foot in 1989, then for There Will be Blood in 2007 and now for Lincoln, making him one of the greatest actors of all time, not just his generation.

Best Actress went to Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Lining’s Playbook. This is Jennifer’s first win after being nominated for the first time in 2010 for Winter’s Bone. This time she plays a crazy, recovering sex addict who befriends Bradley Cooper’s insane recently released mental patient and blackmails him into joining her in a dance competition.

She is wonderful in

this role inhabiting the unstable Tiffany, making her not only completely unhinged, but sympathetic at the same time. You really feel for this girl and understand why she’s doing what she’s doing, if not always her method.

She plays off very well with Cooper, who was also nominated for an Oscar. The two of them seem to gel on screen and the scenes, especially when she’s slapping him or screaming at him, or dancing with him are the most enjoyable of the entire film. He scenes with Robert De Niro, who plays Cooper’s father in the film, are also electrifying, and the scene where she explains to him why Cooper should be dancing, and it has to do with the Philadelphia Eagles football team winning, is a marvel to see.

Best Actress in a Supporting Role went to Anne Hathaway. Her role as Fantine in the screen version of the much loved musical Les Miserables was astounding. Her emotions as she sings and acts her way through the miserable life that is Fantine’s is heart breaking. In the film Fantine lives in turn of the century France, and after being fired from her job at a factory, she’s forced to do whatever it takes to be able to send money to the people that care for her child, Cousette, including

cutting off her beautiful hair, getting her teeth pulled out by one of the nastiest looking dentists I’ve ever seen, and finally, after all else is exhausted, turning to prostitution.

She’s taken pity on by the mayor of the town, actually an escaped ex-con, but he cares for her and vows to protect her child before she dies. It’s a harrowing role played with such poise and grace hat it’s no wonder she won.

The fact that she did all her own singing in the film, along with everyone else in the film, and her rendition of I Dreamed a Dream, one of the most loved songs in all musicals, is unforgettable and stunning. It was a real treat as well to see her on the stage at the ceremony singing One Day More with the rest of the cast. It was truly an Oscar moment for the history books. The film also won Best Makeup and Hairstyling, going to Lisa Westcott and Julie Dartnell, and Best Sound Mixing, going to Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson and Simon Hayes.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role went to Christoph Waltz for his role in Django Unchained. This is the second time that he’s won in this category and the second time with the same director. In 2010 he won for his role in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards and now again in Quentin Tarantino’s new work.

In this film Waltz plays the role of Dr King Schultz, a trained dentist who now works as a bounty hunter. When he frees a slave named Django, played by Jamie Foxx, to help him capture a few men, you see Django knows what they look like, while the doctor does not, he gets a partner out of the deal and the two develop a friendship, culminating in the doctor agreeing to help Django get his wife, another slave, back from Calvin Candie,

played by Leonardo DiCaprio, a cotton plantation owner who bought her, Bloodshed and insanity ensues. Waltz is wonderful in this role. He’s a man out of place, a foreigner in a world that he doesn’t really understand. He sees the atrocities done in the name of slavery and hates it, but doesn’t do anything about it. He abhors violence, but is willing to kill a man for money. He’s intelligent and educated and refined, but he’s also a murderer and a bit of a savage. It’s a fantastic role, played very well by a fantastic actor. The scene when he tells Django the story of Brumhilda, the mythical princess from Norse mythology, is one of the most captivating scenes I’ve ever watched. Quentin Tarantino also won a well-deserved Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for the film which is an homage to spaghetti westerns and is wonderfully gory and violent and so Tarantino.

Other films that won in this year’s Oscars are Brave, about a Scottish princess who wants to escape her life, for Best Animated Feature, Amour for Best Foreign Language Film and Searching For Sugarman, which has real South African connections, about two men in search of the fabled rock legnd, Rodriguez, for Best Feature Documentary. Adele’s song Skyfall, which was the theme for maybe the best James Bond film since Dr No itself, won the Oscar for Best Original Song. The other surprise of this year’s Oscars was the tie for Best Sound Editing between Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty. There have only been five other ties in the history of the Oscars, the most famous was the tie between Barbra Streisand and Katharine Hepburn when they tied for the Best Actress awards back in 1969.

For the full list of winners look below, and see you at the next Oscars.

Best Picture "Argo" Best Actress Jennifer Lawrence, "Silver Linings Playbook" Best Actor Daniel Day-Lewis, "Lincoln" Best Supporting Actress Anne Hathaway, "Les Miserables" Best Supporting Actor Christoph Waltz, "Django Unchained" Best Director Ang Lee, "Life of Pi" Best Original Screenplay Quentin Tarantino, "Django Unchained" Best Adapted Screenplay Chris Terrio, "Argo" Best Animated Feature "Brave" Best Foreign Feature "Amour" (France) Best Cinematography Claudio Miranda, "Life of Pi" Best Costume Design Jacqueline Durran, "Anna Karenina" Best Documentary Feature "Searching for Sugar Man"

Best Documentary Short Sean Fine, Andrea Nix Fine,"Inocente" Best Film Editing William Goldenberg, "Argo" Best Make-Up Lisa Westcott, Julie Dartnell, "Les Miserables" Best Original Score Mychael Danna, "Life of Pi" Best Original Song "Skyfall" from "Skyfall" Music and Lyric by Adele Adkins and Paul Epworth Best Animated Short Film John Kahrs, "Paperman" Best Live-Action Short Film Shawn Christensen, "Curfew" Best Visual Effects Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, , Donald R. Elliot, "Life of Pi" Best Sound Editing TIE Per Hallberg, Karen Baker Landers, "Skyfall" Paul N.J. Ottosson, "Zero Dark Thirty" Best Sound Mixing Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson, Simon Hayes, "Les Miserables"

Searching For Love

Jay Anstey, best known for her role as Charlie in Isidingo, branches onto the big screen this month with a leading role in the new thriller Sleepers Wake.

Jon Broeke caught up with her to chat about this demanding role.

J

ay Anstey looks more like a rock star than an actress when I meet up with her at the Universal International Pictures offices in Sandton. She’s wearing a leather jacket and ripped jeans and looks everything the part, however she doesn’t act like a rock star. She’s down to Earth and sweet and a joy to speak with. I’m talking to her about her new film, Sleepers Wake, in which she plays someone very much unlike the lovely, normal girl I’m talking too.

“Jackie is very confused. I would not want to be friends with her,” she laughs. “She has gone through something excruciating, and her way of working through it is by becoming this wild child, and almost using the thing that happened to her as a way of getting back at herself, and using it as punishment. So she gets involved with John as punishment to herself. That’s what I got out of it.”

John is played by screen and stage legend Lionel Newton, a man old enough to be her father. And the two have a couple of interesting scenes together in the film. I asked her how she got involved in the project.

“I went to the Attic is Parkhurst with my sister one night,” she tells me. “And Barry [Burke, the director] was at at the Attic as well, and he said, ‘Hey You’, and I was like, ‘This guy’s so weird’, telling me he’s a director and I was like, ‘Sure buddy’,” she laughs again thinking back on the meeting with the man that would direct the film. “And then he said

I’ve got this film, and I said, ‘Okay, I’m not sure how I feel about this nude scene. The last thing I want to be doing is nude scenes’, but then I heard it was with Moonyeen [Lee] and heard the people that were working on it and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is amazing’, so that’s sort of how I got involved. I auditioned and got it.”

The film involves nude scenes, not only from Jay, but Lionel as well. It wasn’t something she keen on doing.

“I never wanted to do nude scenes,” she says. “I’d never done nude scenes or sex scenes before. My dad’s an actor and I spoke to him about it, I was like, ‘I’m only twenty. Do you think I’m shooting myself in the foot here?’ and he said, ‘Just go for it. Do it.

Experience it’. It was something that I deliberated on a lot, but because of Barry I trusted him enough and I decided, it’s time to go.”

She didn’t just walk onto set and do it though, she and Barry got together many time before hand to rehearse the scenes and discuss the nudity.

“That’s something I love about Barry,” Jay says about the director’s working method.

“The work before the film was more intense than even the film itself. Every day, he gave me exercises to do every day where I would have to wake up every day and have a thought about Jackie and everything I did I had to think about those sorts of things. We practised the rape scene even, at Baseline at one of the abandoned places in Baseline with

“I was like, ‘You know what, everyone’s got a body. We’ve all got the same bits. Might look different, but…’ I just had to breathe.”

the two actors. It was very, very intense. But when it came to shooting the scenes, the nude scenes, I was petrified, but it was good. I trusted everyone on set.”

I asked her what it was like the first she actually got her kit off on the set.

“I was freaking out,” she tells me with an awkward laugh. “I was like, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ but luckily I have hippy parents, who have the philosophy of just live and just do and never to be embarrassed by yourself or your body or anything like that, so I had that in my mind. I was like, ‘You know what, everyone’s got a body. We’ve all got the same bits.

Might look different, but…’ I just had to breathe. It was weird because, obviously there’s sound department over there and people are watching on the monitor, and I was going like, ‘God, this is so strange’, but it was cool. I did it, so…”

Jay is known for her out of the ordinary roles, best known for the bi-sexual Charlie in Isidingo, and now for the mentally unstable Jackie. I asked her if she sought out roles like this, of if she just got lucky.

“Or unlucky,” she laughs as she jokes about her roles.

“I don’t know.

This was the third rape story that I’ve done, ‘cause Isidingo had a rape thing, this had a rape thing, I did something on Snitch that ad a rape scene. I’m forever having to do these scenes, I don’t know why I’m trapped in this.

Do I look like the type of person who should be raped? What’s going on? But I prefer these sorts of roles, but now I just want to do something happy. I was thinking about it and if you have to pretend to be something every day for three months, or like Isidingo for three years, it sort of starts effecting you. When I

first started Isidingo I had to be happy all the time. Charlie was uber-happy, and it really affected me and I was generally very happy, and now I over think things, but I really enjoy these types of roles because they’re more fun, and you have to dig deeper, and it’s not surface.”

After being on Isidingo, on the small screen, for so long, I asked her if she preferred the big screen of the wanted to stay on the small one.

“I much prefer film,” she confided.

“It’s something I always want to do. I don’t want to do soap operas for the rest of my life, because you have to play the one person, and even though you have different situations within that character, you still have to play that character, and it sort of becomes monotonous. Also, I want get involved with everything that has to do with film. I went to the Toronto Film Festival, with Ken [Kaplan, the producer], and I got to meet people who actually make the films. There you think the actors are the big stars, not at all, the people who make the films are the people you want to get to know, so that was amazing for me to see the people and talk to them and hear what they’re saying. It opened my mind up to so many things. I feel like film touches people the way soap operas can’t really.

Even though it’s a daily thing, I don’t know, film has more of an impact, but I’m so grateful for Isidingo. Super grateful.”

The South African film industry is growing as well. I asked her if she thought it was on its way up, or if it wasn’t going to go anywhere.

“I really hope so,” she says, positive about the countries film industry. “And I do think we’re getting there we just need the support of the country. I just feel like South African audiences are

always going on about, ‘Why don’t we make good films?’ We do, you just don’t go and watch them. That’s the only problem. You choose to go and watch other films that aren’t ours. There are amazing films that are coming out. Deon [Lotz] is in Verraaiers, he’s been in Roepman, so many amazing films, but you need to go and watch them. I also think the audience needs to be accepting, like Sleepers Wake, I’m not sure how the audience is going to take it, because it’s a hard story to watch and because you’re in a South African accent and it’s about South African people, they almost feel uncomfortable about it, and they take it too much to heart, whereas if you watch an American film that’s gripping, you go, ‘Oh wow, look it’s a movie’, so I’m very curious about how Sleepers Wake is going to do actually. Audiences just need to go and support it I think, that’s the big thing.”

She won’t be around to see it though, deciding to do something a little different this year.

“This year I decided I wanted to have a spiritual year,” she says. “So I am working on Isidingo, but I’m actually going to do a pilgrimage, so I’m walking from France to Spain. It’s going to take me a month and a half to do that, and I think I just want to clear my head and see what I want to do, if I want to still do the soap opera, if I want to go into film, if I want to keep acting, what I want to do. I just want to take this year to see. I’m I also think the audience needs to be accepting, like Sleepers Wake, I’m not sure how the audience is going to take it, because young and I have time and I can do whatever,so…”

She’s not going alone, technically, but will be spending most of the time on her own, walking the pathways of France and Spain.

“I’m going with my parents,” she tells me.

“But the whole thing, it’s the Camino, so you sort of walk on your own and you meet u with the people you’re going with on the way. It’s not really to go trekking with people.”

The pilgrimage, the Camino De Santiago is well known in Europe, and has been walked by film stars for years.

Shirley MacClaine even wrote a book about it, but not to worry Charlie will be back on our

“It’s a hard story to watch and because you’re in a South African accent and it’s about South African people, they almost feel uncomfortable about it.” screens soon. I asked her if she knows what’s going to happen to the much loved character while she’s gone.

“Yes,” there’s silence after the answer until Jay starts laughing. It’s all she’s allowed to tell me. “I just found out like, last week and I was like, ‘Wow, that’s awesome. I wish I was Charlie right now’. Some interesting things, but they’re giving me this gap to have my time.”

Well, we wish her well and look forward to seeing her on the screen again after she gets back as Charlie. In the meantime you can see her on the small screen still, and on the big screen for Sleepers Wake, not looking like a rock star, but still amazing.

The Real Mentalist

Can he really read my mind, or is it all a trick? Jon Broeke sat down with mentalist Michael Abrahamson to discuss his new show, Visage, to chat about why he got into mentalism, and to see if he really can read a person’s mind.

W

hen most of hear the term Mentalist we think of Patrick Jane, the character played by Simon Baker in the TV series The Mentalist. Truth is, that’s exactly what I thought, and when I got to sit down with Michael Abrahamson, a real life mentalist, I’ve got to tell you that they’re not far off from the truth, except for the chasing a serial killer part.

“A mentalist,” Michael tells me when I sit down with him after his show at the UJ Arts Centre. He’s a completely normal guy with glasses and his shirt un-tucked. “Is somebody that uses the five senses to create the illusion of a sixth sense, sometimes an illusion, sometimes not an illusion, but you’re tapping into all your senses and all your communication skills and memory skills and mind power skills and mathematical skills to try and read people and try and create effects that use the mind.”

It seems that Michael was meant for this job, born with an uncanny ability in maths and statistics.

“For maths yes, definitely for maths, not so much psychology,” he says when I ask if he always had a penchant for math and psychology, or if he had to develop them.

“Psychology is something that I’ve looked at in recent times because I’ve been doing these shows more and more and you need to have some kind of psychology element, to guide people and pick up things and suggest things to people, otherwise they won’t respond, so

psychology is important, but for me my background is more maths and statistics.”

Michael started off wanting to be a magician before moving into mentalism.

“The appeal of magic,” he says. “Is that my cousin had a birthday party, my younger cousin, and I helped a magician out doing a trick in his show, just as an audience volunteer, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is incredible. This is a lot of fun’. I went to magic school for a while and I learned all the tricks, but then I thought, ‘This is boring’. Every night you take a rabbit out of a hat or you change a hanky into a different colour, so I thought, ‘Okay it’s fun, but it gets a bit much after a while. It’s secret compartments and… There’s no fun in it’. And then I started teaching memory courses, study skills and memory courses, and then I went to see a mentalist that came to South Africa and I thought, ‘Wow, this fits in exactly with what I do on my courses, and what I teach and I thought, ‘This is geared towards me’. We didn’t know much about mentalism. There are only three of us in South Africa. I thought, ‘Let me try and design a show around this’. At the beginning I didn’t know what to put in, and gradually we developed it, and developed it, and now this is the product of about ten years of work.”

I wasn’t aware that we had a magic school in South Africa.

“We had a little magic school,” he tells me. “That opened up in Johannesburg, this was the early 80’s, and I learned a few things. It was nothing fantastic, it was just

“A mentalist is somebody that uses the five senses to create the illusion of a sixth sense, sometimes an illusion, sometimes not an illusion.�

basically to learn how to do card tricks and secret moves, but I don’t use and magic in this show.”

The best known magic school in the world is the Magic Castle in Los Angeles, a place you need to be invited to before you’re allowed through the door. Michael got such an invitation.

“I was at the magic castle in Los Angeles in June and July,” he says. “I went there last year to do a little bit of studying and talk to some visiting mentalists, try to learn a bit more about the act.”

With all this talk of schools of magic, I asked if there was such a place that he went to study the mentalism side that he know does.

“It’s more observation,” he says about the training he’s done to become as proficient in mentalism as he is. “A lot of its self-taught, most of it’s self-taught in fact. When I sit at airports I watch people, I study people all the time. I teach a lot of students, I study the way they respond, and I try to watch people all the time to try and pick up things, but as you can see it’s not fool proof, at the beginning we wanted that colours to match perfectly, but it didn’t because she didn’t listening, she was pulling out pens at random and doing other thing, and you can’t legislate for that.

Hopefully most of the time you can try and get the audience to do more or less what you want them to do, but sometimes they do their own thing.”

The picture in question was one of a girl which an audience member was supposed to colour. The picture was then supposed to match Michael’s assistant who was sitting on stage, covered by a sheet, in the clothes similar to the picture. The colours about half matched, but it was pretty close. This was just the beginning of the remarkable stage show that I watched before the interview. It’s not the first one that Michael has put together, but I think it’s the best.

“It’s not the first stage show,” he says.

“It’s the first stage show with a director. I think I needed someone to add theatrical appeal. This is now a theatrical show with the coloured lights and the chairs and everything, the music. In the past I was trying to do it all

“I don’t want to make mentalists in South Africa.

I’m not here to try and get young people to become mentalists and read, because they won’t succeed, It’s a very, very hard thing to do, and it’s taken years of practise, but I try and teach them to use the mind productively in their day to day lives.” and there’s no way I can produce the show, direct the show and be the main person in the show. I needed an outside person to just look at it and say, ‘I think we need to do this, I think we need to do that. Let’s do this walk.

Let’s have the father time outfit. Let’s whatever…’ Just little things that make it a theatrically appealing show.”

The director of the show is Richard Nosworthy, who is well known as a director for stage and television. The show relies heavily on audience participation. If there’s no one on stage there’s no one for Michael to read, but it’s not always easy to get those people to come onto the stage.

“Especially in a corporate environment,” he tells me about the reluctance of audience to participate.

“Everybody in a corporate setting they don’t want to try and show that they want to participate. They’re a bit reserved. In this show not so much, but I think the way we choose the people, with the masks, made it as random as possible because, obviously, I know a lot of people in the audience. I’ve got friends, I’ve got family I’ve got media members and I know them, so I tried not to choose them wherever possible, tried to get other people, but you know, if the masks end up on those people, it’s just the luck of the draw. They don’t know what I’m going to do anyway so, they’re up there, but they haven’t been primed on anything.”

The other side of the coin is the audience member that tries to challenge Micahel during the show.

“Yes, all the time,” he says about how often someone tries to challenge him during the show. “The guy who came up during the interval, Dale, he was trying to sort of do his own thing, so I had to get him to focus a bit more. You try, but you can’t succeed all the time. You make a few mistakes it’s natural.

Every show is going to have mistakes, and it’s expected, because you can’t be 100% all the time. It’s fun for me actually.”

But does it make them harder to read?

“Yes and no,” he answers. “In a way because they’re trying so many things they’re switched off to the suggestions I’m trying to give them, but in a way they are so busy worrying about being entertaining that they make obvious things, so it works both ways.”

When Michael is not on stage he runs courses for school children to teach them to use the tricks he uses for his show in their everyday lives for exams and such.

“They’re to teach people how to study,” he says. “I don’t want to make mentalists in South Africa. I’m not here to try and get young people to become mentalists and read, because they won’t succeed, It’s a very, very hard thing to do, and it’s taken years of practise, but I try and teach them to use the mind productively in their day to day lives, how you would, for example: you have to study large volumes of material and lock that in, how you would be able to prepare for exams, how not to panic, what happens if you find yourself panicking, how you would cope in that situation, and I teach that.”

Even part of the show, where he memorizes the running order of a full pack of cards in 45 seconds, is part of the course he teaches.

“The cards I teach them,” he says.

“It’s compartmentalising the brain, so you’re using the left brain and the right brain and using it together. So it’s just training them on how to use the brain connectively in a particular experiment.”

So if you want to make studying easier, or get better marks, or if you want to become a mentalist yourself, check out Michael’s course. If you’d rather stay in the audience and just enjoy the show check him out when he’s back on stage. He’s a great showman.

A Traitorous Past

The new film Verraaiers explores what it is to be a traitor and what acts are considered traitorous or not. Afrikaans actor Gys de Villiers star in the film and chatted to us about the role, the costumes and what it mean to explore history in South African cinema.

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sometimes think that people in South Africa have forgotten that we had years and years of history before Apartheid even started. From Jan van Riebeek’s landing, to the British coming, to the Groot Trek, which we learned about extensively when I was in primary school before the fall, a lot of stuff happened in this country before the history that we all remember, and lament, so much. I feel that it’s important to remember all the historical events in a countries history, be them good or bad, black or white or Indian or whatever, if you want to move into a brighter future. Thankfully there are some people have not forgotten the other aspects that make up our beautiful country and are making films that reflect our past.

One such film was Die Wonderwerker, which was released last year.

Another, releasing this month at cinemas nationwide, is Verraaiers.

Verraaiers tells the story of a chapter of the Angle-Boer war that is not well known.

In about the middle of the war Pretoria and Bloemfontein have fallen to the British and most of those fighting on the side of the Boers think that the war is virtually over. They then discover that a new commander is being appointed for the British, a man named Kitchener, and he’s going to implement the scorched Earth policy, whereby the British will burn all the Boers farms and capture their families. A bunch of Boers decide to leave the

war and go home to protect their families, one such Boer is Jacobus van Aswegan, played

by Gys de Villiers.

“Jacobus is a farmer,” Gys told me about his character. “Who loves his family and his country. He fights for the Boers against the Brits. He is commandant and is a loyal and fair leader of his men. We meet him later in the war were he realizes that it is a losing battle.

When his superior gives him the ultimatum to keep on fighting or to go home and protect his family; this was in the time that the scorched earth policy came into being. Jacobus decides to go home and protect his family and farm. This action labels him as a traitor and he gets executed.”

Gys can relate to the character he portrays and understands what he must have gone through.

“I believe that in any conflict situation,” Gys said. “One gets to a point where you have to decide if you carry on fighting for the cause, or do you stop fighting and protect your family. A very sad situation indeed.”

The film was directed

by Paul Eilers, who made a name for himself directing the critically acclaimed Afrikaans drama Roepman last year. Gys had worked with the director before.

“I was contacted by the director Paul Eilers directly,” he told me when I ask how he got involved in the project.

“He was also the first person to use me in a short film in 1983 when I was a very young 23 year old actor. So when he asked if I would like to

“I believe that in any conflict situation,” Gys said. “One gets to a point where you have to decide if you carry on fighting for the cause, or do you stop fighting and protect your family. A very sad situation indeed.”

play this part, I could say yes, even before reading the script. He told me it was about a Boer commandant and that I would play the lead. Although I have played many leads on TV I have never had the opportunity to be a lead in a feature film. This felt like destiny and I had to do it. Also I am a proud Afrikaner and this is in my home language. I believe the parts one must play also comes your way, especially in South Africa. It is not like we as actors have enough clout to go to producers and ask them to see their projects and then we choose. Usually I just need to work and then I can still make a choice once a part has been offered. Or we simply go and audition.

But when someone like Paul calls me, whom I trust, it is an easy choice.”

Gys didn’t know the story of Jacobus before sitting down to read the script, but the script was all he needed to get into the characters mind and create a memorable performance.

“I just learned my lines,” he told me when I asked about his research for the role.

“And tried to get the emotions of the man into my body and mind. I leave it to the costume and set designers to research the period. Me as an actor am responsible to portray the emotion of a character and that is what I concentrate on. I trust the director and my fellow actors to help us all to tell one story.”

Following that method worked very well. The film is set in a time before they had a cars or even trains, at least in South Africa, so there was a lot of horse riding in the film. I asked Gys if he had any experience on horseback before filming.

“Yes,” He said. “I have been on horses on and off in my life, but when I read the script and saw the horse riding I tried to remember when last I was on a horse and realized it was 15 years ago. So I went for 2 short lessons here in Honeydew and when we arrived on set I had my second day free to go and meet my particular horse that I would be using in the film. I spend 3 hours riding him and that was a

great help. Our horse wrangler was also very hands on and helped. But still it takes a lot of focus to ride and act and not look like an ass.”

The costumes in the film are wonderful, both the outfits worn by the Boer and British soldiers, and the dresses worn by the woman characters.

“The costumes help a lot to imagine the world that one moves in,” Gys told me about his impression of them. “I am spoiled in that my Father shot a series called Arende.

That was in the same period, so it felt familiar.

But if one reads Denys Reitz’s book that he wrote just after the war, I can't remember the name, one feels for them living in the same clothes in the veldt for weeks at a time. So I could draw on the memory of that book.”

Gys is very busy at the moment, not only starring in film, but producing them as well.

“I am working on my own film,” he told me. “And am at the point of getting some money signed. But last year I also played FW de Klerk in Long Walk to Freedom and this will release some time. As well as parts in: Jimmy in Pink, Durban Poison and Vehicle 19. All these films will be released in this year.”

He agrees with my feelings about remembering the past of our country as well.

“Yes,” he answered when I asked if he thinks it’s important for people in South Africa to know this story. “It is an important story in that we can also show the Afrikaner as not only the apartheid perpetrator, but also as a nation that had to make difficult choices. Also my previous answer that it is a terrible thing, this war business that we as humans keep on perpetrating. We do not learn from our mistakes or the past. Power hungry we remain.”

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Hiding from the Past

In the new film Sleepers Wake screen legend Lionel Newton plays an interesting, nit always very nice, man. Jon Broeke sat down with him to discuss the role, nudity and baboons.

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John is an unhinged, broken, piece of walking scar tissue,” Lionel Newton tells me about his new character John Wraith in the new film Sleepers Wake when I meet up with him at the offices of Universal International Pictures in Sandton for an interview. The TV icon is wearing a black t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans as he tells me about the man. “We meet him in the beginning of the film where he wakes up from a horrendous accident, and he’s basically coming out of a coma, so it’s the beginnings of cognitive thinking, with not much memory so, there’s a mixture, and over a process of time he becomes aware of the fact that his wife and his daughter are dead.

In an attempt to make sense of his future he seeks refuge at the coast at his sister’s holiday apartment. While acquiescing there, and drinking lots of alcohol and, I guess, going through some sort of emotional slumber, he meets a beautiful young woman who herself, he realises over a period of time, is a victim of a terrible incident, and herself is trying to make sense of her future. Her mother’s been murdered and she was almost raped, and in this dialogue that occurs between them is the narrative. It’s what they find and take from each other, and the complications that arise from that, her being old enough to be his daughter, her having some kind of pathological, sexual attraction to him, his awkwardness and yet need. So that resonates in a whole lot of other complications through her relationship with her father, who is emotionally stunted, through her brother who runs away, in this ghost village on the coast. In a nutshell.”

The girl, Jackie, is played by Isidingo star, Jay Anstey and in the film both characters are a mess. A real mess, the kind of mess that takes years of therapy to even crack. I asked Lionel how you prepare that kind of role.

“First I panicked,” he jokes. “I thought, ‘Where do you start to give that character any kind of toolbox of in or out? I think he has one smile in the whole movie. He is incapable of speech. He doesn’t have the emotional toolbox to navigate past anything but a bottle of wine and a peanut butter

“It’s my 27 year of acting and I’m one of those actors who’s fortunate to act in many different styles and genres, and I’m primarily a stage actor, so I’d like to think that every single workshop, every role that I’ve played before was part of the preparation.” sarmi, I suppose. I went to a trauma clinic, for a start, and discovered that being injured on various sides of your brain can have various effects on your recovery. So I spent quite a bit of time at a brains recovery clinic. I also, and I often get this question, , more specifically, I guess, It’s difficult to explain, but I went for three weeks before the film, I went into this deep depression. I didn’t really realise it at the moment. I suffer from depression anyway, in fact I haven’t been on anti-depressants for 2 and a half years after having taken for 19, it was only afterward, quite a while, after shooting, because the shooting was really intense, that I realised that that period had in some way been trying to align my emotional innards, or landscape, to that of [John’s]. I was almost unconsciously bringing myself down into an emotional meridian in which I could tap very quickly,” he clicks his fingers while he speaks. “Impulsively into anything. I could cry in one eye, there, or do you want it with two drops or one. So you’ve got to get yourself, for a role like that, you’ve got to get yourself so primed. How to prepare for that, I’m not entirely sure, it’s all a bit of an alchemy and a mystery. And yet I’ve studied and teach. My sister committed suicide seven years ago, so

that in a way, was an inspiration, because it took me back to a place where I couldn’t make sense of the tragedy that had blown up in front of me. I guess emotional preparation would have constituted the biggest part of trying to create a character that is multilayered, and yet the dialogue is so simple, so everything is so nuanced, maybe for some people too nuanced, it came out a bit bland, I don’t know.”

The film was directed by Barry Burke, well known for his work on the South African soap opera scene, but this was indeed an independent film.

Small budget, small shooting schedule, and no amenities.

“Independent filmmaking is chaos,” Lionel tells me about his experience on the set. “There’s no chair to sit on, there’s no umbrella, you’re sharing a bottle of water with the makeup artist, you know, it’s hectic. I’ve just done The Miser at the Baxter. There you rehearse for four weeks from nine to five. There’s a whole ritual of processes of getting yourself emotionally into a position where you can play it for real,” he clicks again. “[Here], the lights going down, it’s fading, we’ve got five seconds, they’re all freaking out because the red’s going mad, and you know you’ve

just got to focus and you’re shivering because the water’s [freezing]. You know there are so many things calling so you have to have an emotional reserve that’s on such a fine line that you can give exactly what Barry wants on that particular shot. To the point that I can remember, in every single scene, I can tell which take he’s used. Number two, and he’s used number three there, or why didn’t he use number four? Four was the best.”

The film is something of a rarity in South Africa having quite a bit of nudity and sex, somewhat unheard of since Lipstick Dipstick, in the conservative South African market. And the nudity wasn’t just on the part of Jay, though she had her kit off for a fair amount of time, Lionel took part in the disrobing as well.

“Well, nudity is nudity,” he says.

“Personally, I’m fairly shy about nudity. I’m

very happy with my body and what it’s been able to do for me. It’s always going to be awkward to be nude when you’re the only one nude, and everyone’s dressed and they’re all looking at you, because you’re the subject matter. And they’re point cameras at you and pulling focus and you’re dealing with a very beautiful and articulate young lady who’s half your age, and who’s gorgeous, and you have sex scenes and they’re nothing like sex scenes at all. You’ve got your one arm around…” he leans back on the chair and extends his arms out and hikes his right leg up towards the ceiling to illustrate what he’s talking about. “Some gaffers holding your one leg up and you’ve got a gogga climbing up you’re a*s, and you’ve got ants in your ear, and you’re thirsty, and there’s sun in your, you know… And you’re kind of lying on top of someone who you’ve become friends with and colleagues with…

It’s just a very awkward business. I like to be naked in the sanctity of my own home. I’m not even the kind of person that walks around on the beach [like that].

You know, it’s awkward, an awkward thing being naked. Thank God I’m at that age when those roles don’t call much anymore, but I’ve experienced a few on stage before, which have been horrendous.”

The nudity, which was in the original script that Lionel read, didn’t deter him from do the film and becoming the character though.

“No,” he replies adamantly when I asked if he had second thoughts. “I get into a completely different space when I’m acting.

I’m not Lionel at all, I’m that dude. It’s awkward, but when we’re rolling I’m in that zone. And it’s strange because there’s, certainly for me and I have a very strong physical theatre background with Andrew Buckland, and there’s a lot of discipline involved and pitched voice, or movement on stage, a lot of physical theatre. So as an actor there’s always 5% of your brain that’s working technically, like keeping that distance exact, like if you’re sitting down. Literally not there, there,” he moves his head slightly to one side.

“Because if it’s there the lighting’s not getting the eyes properly. So there’s always 5% that’s technician. The other 95% you’re just in that character. It’s a weird blend for me, and I think it’s different for each actor who, as an individual, has a different way, or is doing it for different reasons.”

The film climaxes with a fight between John and Jackie’s father, played by another screen legend Deon Lotz, but their light is interrupted when they are attacked by a crazed baboon. One that Lionel then battles with a knop-kerrie.

“It was very strange,” he tells me about his experience with the baboon.

“Because I didn’t do any scenes with the baboon. It was all Chroma-keyed. It was very, very weird because I saw the baboon and I wasn’t very impressed with the baboon. He had quite a s**t attitude, and children and animals are always treated better than any actor on set. Can’t come within a hundred metres near the place because there’s Sam the baboon. F**k Sam the baboon. The baboon was the star of the show and al he did was whine and moan and p**s and s**t all over the place. His acting skills were terrible. I saw him twice. I never got in the same scene as him. So it was weird acting with a green screen behind me. They would give me a focal point, and we’d go through the storyline of exactly what was happening, but it’s a face

“I get into a completely different space when I’m acting. I’m not Lionel at all, I’m that dude.” off, with him and the baboon at the end where, ‘I’m going to kill you dude. I’m going to kill you if you come near me’, and he does.”

Chroma-keying is the process of acting against a green screen, so the actor was never in any real danger, at least this time around.

“I actually had that exact thing about four years ago,” he tells me. “I was in an Audi soft top in the Western Cape. My daughter was at one of those weekend things, and it was on a farm. You have those gates with those things,” he motions with his hand mimicking the grates in the ground at gates on farms. “So the antelope don’t come in. The top was off. It was a Saturday and I was in a cool mood and I stopped and as I looked up there was this baboon, right here,” he motions to just inches in front of his face. “On a rock. But literally this far from my face,” the hand is about ten centimetres from his face.

“And his teeth are like this,” he inverts his fingers to show the two sabre-tooth like fangs that the baboon had. “This is my face, you know, I’m an actor. I remember looking at this oke in the eye and I couldn’t move, and I started talking to him, ‘cause he was aggressive, I think he must have been one of the sentries. I said to him, ‘Dude, we’ve invented the atom bomb. We’ve sent people to the moon. We’re into nanotechnology. I’ll take you out so fast you have no idea’, and it almost felt like he listened to me because he considered that for a moment and then he was gone. That’s the closest I have ever been to a standoff with a baboon.”

We’re all thankful that baboon decided against risking it, otherwise there might be no film. Lionel is now working on Kite, the new Samuel L. Jackson and India Eisley film being shot in and around Johannesburg, and he needs to have four hours of prosthetics done for the role. You can see him in that next year, but for now, see him in Sleepers Wake, and the scar tissue, on his forehead, only took two hours to apply.

Our Very own Nominations

This month sees the release of the nominations for our very own film and television awards show the South African Film and Television Awards, or the SAFTA’s. We had a look at the films up for the coveted Golden Horn.

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his month the nominations for South Africa’s very own Oscar celebrations, the South African Film and Television Awards, or SAFTA’s, were announced and it is clear that we have some amazing talent in our own country that would rival the best film actors in the world.

Topping the list of nominations in this year’s SAFTA’s is Die Wonderwerker, with 10 nominations, which is an impressive number considering that there are only 14 categories in the feature film division of the awards.

Die Wonderwerker tells the story of Eugene Marais, played in the film by Dawid Minaar who picked up the Best Actor nomination for the role, a noted Afrikaans naturalist, mentalist and poet in the Afrikaans language from the 1900’s. The film picks up as Marais arrives at the farm of Rietfontein, sick with malaria. He is taken in by the family that lives there, and turns their lives upside down, including falling in love with a nineteen year old girl that lives on the farm, played by Anneke Weidemann, who picked up the Best Supporting Actress nomination for the role.

The film received nominations for Best Actor, Actress, as well as Supporting Actor and Actress. It also got nominations for Best Picture, Director for Katinka Heyns, Writing in a Feature Film, Cinematography for Koos Roets, Editor for Ronelle Roets and Sound Design for Barry Donnely.

Receiving 9 nominations this year is the comedy Material. It tells the tale of a young Muslim man, played by Riaad Moosa, for which he received a Best Actor nomination, who wants to be a stand0up comedian, but his father, played by Vincent Ebrahim, for which he picked up the Best Supporting Actor nomination, a stuck in the past Muslim man wants him to continue in his footsteps and take over the family material shop. When he finds out about the comedy things get really complicated, especially since

the son’s jokes feature the father quite predominantly. The film received nominations for Best Actor for Riaad Moosa, Best Supporting Actor for Vincent Ebrahim and Best Supporting Actress for Denise Newman.

It also picked up Best Picture, Director for Craig Freimond, Best Writing Team also for Craig Freimond, Cinematography for Trevor Calverley, Editor for Megan Gill, and Sound Design for Charlotte Buys.

Afrikaans romantic comedy Semi-Soet picked up 8 nominations. The film about mistaken identity and falling in love received nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor for Nico Panagio, Best Supporting Actor for Louw Venter, Production Designer for Francois Coetzee, Musical Composition for Orangotang Music and Michael Bester, Costume Designer for Nerine Pienaar, Makeup and Hairstylist for Theola Booyens and Sound Designer for Jim Petrak.

Otelo Burning, an African version of the Othello story received 7 nominations including Best Picture, Best Actor for Thomas Gumede, Best Actress for Nolwazi Shange, Best Writing Team for James Whyle and the cast workshop, Production Design for Anita van Hermet and Chantal Carter, Music Composition for Tiago Correia Paulo and Alan Lazar and Costume Design for Ruy Filipe.

Other films picking up nominations for this year SAFTA’s are the animated feature Adventures in Zambesia. It picked up for Best Director for Wayne Thornley and Music Composition for Bruce Retief. Director Darryl Roodt’s new film Little One, received 3 nominations, along with Pretville, which also received three and A Million Colours and Zama Zama each received two. 31 Million Reasons, Lucky, Man on Ground and To the Power of Anne each received one.

For the full list of feature film nominations check out the next page.

Best Feature Film “Die Wonderwerker” “Material” “Otelo Burning” “Semi-Soet” Best Director of a Feature Film Katinka Heyns “Die Wonderwerker” Craig Freimond “Material” Wayne Thornley “Adventures in Zambezia” Darrell James Roodt “Little One” Best Actor in a Feature Film Thomas Gumede “Otelo Burning” Nico Panagio “Semi-Soet” Jack Devnarain “31 Million Reasons” Dawid Minnaar “Die Wonderwerker” Riaad Moosa “Material”

Best Cinematographer of a Feature Film Koos Roets “Die Wonderwerker” Trevor brown “A Million Colours” Trevor Calverley “Material” Best Editor of a Feature Film Ronelle Loots “Die Wonderwerker” Aryan Kaganof “Man on Ground” Megan Gill “Material” Best Production Designer of a Feature Film Francois Coetzee “Semi-Soet” Jackie Lotz “Zama Zama” Anita van Hermet and Chantal Carter “Otelo Burning” Bathoni Robinson “Pretville”

Best Supporting Actor in a Feature Film Mpho Osei-Tutu “A Million Colours” Vincent Ebrahim “Material” Louw Venter “Semi-Soet” Marius Weyers “Die Wonderwerker”

Best Music Composition Orangotang Music and Michael Bester “SemiSoet” Zethu Mashika “Zama Zama” Tiago Correia Paulo Alan Lazar “Otelo Burning” Bruce Retief “Adventures in Zambezia”

Best Actress in a Feature Film Lindiwe Ndlovu “Little One” Nolwazi Shange “Otelo Burning” Jayashree Basava “Lucky” Elize Cawood “Die Wonderwerker”

Best Costume Designer Nerine Pienaar “Semi-Soet” Mia Zwiegers “Zama Zama” Ruy Filipe “Otelo Burning” Nerine Pienaar “Pretville”

Best Supporting Actress in a Feature Film Denise Newman “Material” Matshepo Maleme “A Million Colours” Anneke Weidemann “Die Wonderwerker”

Best Make up/Hair Stylist Theola Booyens “Semi-Soet” Elzette Winterbach “To the Power of Anne” Charlie Runge and Lee-Anne Nourse “Pretville”

Best Writing Team of a Feature Film Chris Barnard “Die Wonderwerker” Craig Freimond “Material” James Whyle and the cast workshop “Otelo Burning” Darrell James Roodt “Little One”

Best Sound Designer of a Feature Film Barry Donnelly “Die Wonderwerker” Jim Petrak “Semi-Soet” Charlotte Buys “Material”

Those that Dance Together, Stay Together

Jessica and Luis de Castro in Giselle Photo by John Hogg

James Fraser and Jessica Overton are two of the brightest raising stars of the South African Mzansi Ballet. We profile them both this month.

The reason? Because they’re a couple, and we don’t want to come between them.

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his month we decided to do the me to a paediatrician and he suggested she profile a little differently and enrol me in ballet lessons to correct the instead of profiling two dancers problem. I started ballet at age three, my feet separately we decided to profile two of the stopped rolling inwards and I am now proud together, and who better than real life couple to call myself a professional ballet dancer. I James Fraser and Jessica Overton. feel that I was born with problem feet for a “There is nothing better than having a reason! Ballet is my passion.” passion for something, and being able to Their favourite parts to dance are, of share it with someone you love! We course, dancing with each other, but in understand what the other is going through at specific roles. work each day, and support each “My favourite role is Princess Florine other in the studio, on stage and at in The Sleeping Beauty,” Jessica says. home.”

“I made my debut as Princess James started dancing Florine at the South African State when he was 11, staring with Theatre in 2011. I was cast to Latin American and ballroom, perform the White Cat pas de deux but a dance injury introduced in this ballet, and only him to ballet. understudied the role of Princess “My dance training Florine. The dancer cast to perform started with Latin American Princess Florine was suddenly injured and Ballroom at age fifteen,” and I had to go on stage as Princess he says. “After a serious Florine with just five minutes’ notice! hamstring tear, my Coincidently, James was cast as physiotherapist suggested Princess Florine’s partner, the ballet lessons. I was initially Bluebird! When I stepped not that interested! Soon onto stage, I could keenly afterwards I was given a sense the energy from my school project to profile a colleagues on stage, some role model, my Mother nervous and all excited for suggested I research me. I wore a beautiful Jessica Overton the great Russian royal blue tutu and tiara.

Photo by Justin Dingwall dancer Mikhail Despite the pressure, it Baryshnikov. I saw him star in the movie ‘The turned out to be the best night of my life! It Turning Point’ and was inspired to start ballet was also my first appearance on the lessons the very next day! I knew then that professional stage in a pas de deux, and ballet was what I wanted to do for the rest of sharing it with James made it extra special. my life!”

Soon after this performance, I was one of just Jessica’s dancing career also started three dancers to be promoted to the senior after a consultation to a doctor. corps de ballet. I am also enjoying the role of “When I was young, my feet would Cupid in Don Quixote. Cupid is a cute and roll inwards,” she tells us. “My mother took

“A professional ballet career involves sacrifice and dedication. So if this is what you really want to do, then work really hard, stretch and accept corrections from teachers and coaches.�

Jessica and Nelson Nunez in the Nutcracker Photo by John Hogg

lively character and I’m having fun making this “I don’t always enjoy walk on roles role my own.” because I would rather be dancing!” says “Albrecht in Giselle is my favourite James. Seems they both love being on stage, role,” James says. “It was my first Principal but only if they’re dancing. It wasn’t always role. I enjoy performing ‘princely’ roles. As the case though. James didn’t consider any Albrecht, I felt like I was flying, and that kind of career as a dancer until he started something magical was happening. The only Latin American and Ballroom at 15. It was a other time I have experienced this sensation different story for Jessica. was when I performed the role of Bluebird in “I knew that I wanted to be a dancer The Sleeping Beauty with Jessica!” from the day I started ballet lessons at age It was attraction at first sight for both three,” she tells us. “I would listen to music Jessica and James. from the famous ballet productions “Jessica and I sometimes like Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and The see ourselves as characters in Sleeping Beauty and perform in the the ballets which we perform lounge at home, pretending to be a in,” James tells us. “The ballerina. I made many sacrifices upcoming production of Don as a teenager in pursuit of this Quixote is a good example. dream, often missing parties to The main character Kitri, is a attend class or rehearsal. But it saucy, feisty young girl, and was worth it because now I’m a her boyfriend the handsome member of South African Mzansi Basilio.”

Ballet and living my dream.”

“Although I am not as A dream of a lot of little girls outgoing as Kitri,” Jessica adds. “I come true. Both of these wonderful relate to the storyline of Don Quixote. dancers have advice for the younger Kitri and Basilio’s meeting is much generation to achieve their dreams like the way James and I met: We flirted, as well. teased and had a lot of fun “The best advice I can together, just as Kitri and give is to ask yourself, ‘Is Basilio do in Don this what you really Quixote.” want to do?’” Jessica Though they says. “A both love to dance professional ballet Don Quixote, career involves especially since sacrifice and they’re going to dedication. So if this James Fraser dance together, is what you really Photo by Justin Dingwall there are a few want to do, then roles that they work really hard, prefer not to do. stretch and accept corrections from teachers “As long as I am on stage, I am and coaches. Also watch as many ballet happy,” Jessica says. “But soon after I joined performances on DVD as you can. This is a the Company, I had to perform the role of a good way of keeping up to date with what little old lady in Cinderella. The role did not dancers and companies around the world are require any dancing and I was completely doing. I love watching SAMB Principal Dancer covered up in a black costume-no one could Burnise Silvius, she is my role model and I lean recognise me! I am also not particularly fond a lot from watching her in class and in of the Snowflakes in The Nutcracker; I find the rehearsals. Not only is she beautiful to boureé (running fast en pointe) section very stressful as we have to remain in a completely straight line!”

watch, but also to see how she does certain steps. One can pick up many tips just by watching someone of her high standard. I feel honoured when she gives me a correction or a tip. I would definitely recommend ballet as a career and couldn’t imagine my life without it. I could also not have come this far without the support of my Mother - a good support system is important! My Mom gave up much of her time to take me to and from ballet classes and my ballet teacher Fiona Brown spent many, many hours coaching me.”

“I agree with everything that Jessica has said,” James adds. “But must add that you have to LOVE to dance, and ensure that you have the passion, motivation and heart for this career.

Cross training is important to prevent injuries. Remember to go to see your physiotherapist regularly too.”

James in Giselle Photo by John Hogg

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These Creatures are Beautiful

Another film based on a series of books hits the big screen this month as Beautiful Creatures is released. We went along to the theatre to see if these creatures are as beautiful on the screen as they were in the books.

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he cross over between film and book has never been as popular as it is right now. With the releases of the Harry Potter films, connected to the book series, and the Twilight films, which closed late last year with the DVD releasing later this year, not to mention The Hunger Games series, of which the second film is coming in November this year, the films based on books are breaking box office records and gaining thousands of fans, for the film and the books.

Now a new film, the first based on a series of books, Beautiful Creatures, is looking to reap from the excitement.

Ethan Wate, played

by Alden Ehrenreich, is a small town boy living in the town of Gatlin, trying to figure out how to get out of the town. But all that changes when he meets Lena Duchannes, played by Alice Englert, the new girl in town. She’s immediately shunned at school being the niece of Old Man Ravenwood, played by Jeremy Irons. The Ravenwood family are considered evil by the ultra-conservative town’s people and, as such they dislike Lena straight off, but Ethan thinks differently, and when fate throws the two together a couple of times, they start seeing each other, even though her family doesn’t approve. Things are all right, until a locket that Ethan finds in a cemetery unlocks the secrets of the Ravenwood’s and the ties that bind them to Ethan and his family. The Ravenwood’s

are casters, a group of people who can cast spells and do magic. There are good casters and bad casters, but a girl can’t choose which one she will be. On her sixteenth birthday her true nature chooses for her, whether she’ll be good or bad, and Lena is about to turn sixteen. This has bought her cousin, Ridley, played by Emmy Rossum, a dark caster, back to town, along with Serafine, played by Emma

Thompson, Lena’s mother and the most evil dark caster alive, as they wait to see whether Lena will go light, or dark as they hope.

This is a film that every fan of the Twilight series will love. It has a lot of the same elements that made the Twilight series so popular, love, magic, impossible relationships, and self-sacrifice for the one you care about. It is done in such a great way that it is a worthy successor for that series,

one of the most popular of all time. I will say that the Southern accents are a little much, but when half your story has to do with the Southern side of the Civil War there’s bound to be accents involved.

The performances are wonderful.

Ehrenreich is likable as the love struck Ethan.

He’s a smooth talking, charming young man, but in such a way that you would want him to walk up your path and ask out your daughter.

Englert is mysterious and sullen as the girl with an uncertain future. She easily jumps between fear of the future and hope for a foundling love.

Irons is great as the uncle that is naturally dark, but chooses the light to try and save his niece.

The show is stolen though by Rossum, who relishes the darkness and looks incredible doing it in some of the most seductive costumes I’ve seen in a while, and Thompson as two characters, Ethan’s best friend’s mother and Lena’s mother.

Lena’s mother is only a spirit so she takes the other woman’s body, spoiler alert. She is evil and funny and scary and everything you want in a main baddy for this type of film. The effects are magically

wonderful and the spells are amazing, and sometimes dizzying.

If you loved the Twilight series, watch this one to continue the magic. I give a magical 9/10.

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It is a Good Day

John McClane is back on the screen this month as he battles bad guys in Moscow in A Good Day To Die Hard. We went along to check it out at cinemas to see if McClane is dying as hard as he did back in the 80’s, or if he should just quietly die.

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hen Bruce Willis did the first Die Hard film, back in 1988, he was already in his thirties, considered, by some, to be too old to be an action hero. He proved them wrong of course by introducing the world to one of the best action, wise cracking cop heroes in cinematic history, John McClane. This year McClane comes back to the big screen, and in his 58th year, Willis is proving that age is just a number, at least when it comes to action heroes.

When John McClane, reprised for the fifth time by Bruce Willis, learns that his son Jack, played by Jai Courtney, has been arrested in Moscow he jets off to Russia to try and reconcile with his estranged son and do what he can for him, but as soon as he arrives all hell breaks loose, as it tends to do around McClane, and soon he discovers that not only is his son not the juvenile delinquent that he thought he was, he is in fact a C.I.A agent in Russia for a very dangerous mission. There is a file that implicates Russia’s new Minister of Defence, played

by Sergei Kolesnikov, in illegal arms dealing.

The man that has the file, Komarov, played

by Sebastian Koch, is imprisoned and awaiting trail, but the Americans know that the Minister will never let him testify, so they send in McClane junior to get him out. Of course McClane Senior gets involved in what seems like a cut and dry mission, but as soon as they escape the prison in a spectacular car

chase, things get complicated as they realize that things are not as they appear, leading to father and son teaming up to save the day.

McClane style.

This is classic action adventure, with cars and bullets and wise cracks flying freely.

It’s wonderful to see McClane back on the screen, since he was one of my favourite action heroes from childhood, and he’s just as good as ever. His shooting a big a*s machine gun while shouting, “I’m on vacation,” is classic of this character, and it’s great. The addition of his son, played with action verve

by Courtney, better known as the bad guy from the Jack Reacher movie starring Tom

Cruise, is genius. I would have liked a few more wise cracks from him though, to make him a little more like his dad, but it does work and work well. The bad guys are weird and frightening again, especially the tap dancing mercenary, which I thought was a fantastic character point that will make him memorable, and it needs to be said that this film features one of the best crashes by an armoured vehicle I have seen in a long while.

It had me watching the screen gap jawed.

If you’re as big a fan of McClane as I am, you will not be disappointed by this film.

If not, this may convert you, after all it is a great actioner.

Fanie Fourie’s Lobola 9/10

Starring Eduan Van Jaarsveldt, Zethu Dhlomo and Chris Chameleon Directed by Henk Pretorius son (Motlatsi Mafatshe), a man that’s used to anie Fourie (Eduan Van Jaarsveldt) is getting what he wants. somewhat of a loser. He lives with his South Africa is a crazy country. It’s mother and paints and panel beats cars amazing and beautiful, but completely crazy. he designs, a panel artist as he calls himself.

It’s nice to see a film that reflects that truly Dinky (Zethu Dhlomo) is trying to become a and honestly. It’s one of the only South business woman, but struggling to get African films that is a true reflection of what anywhere. They probably should never have it’s like to live in South Africa, the good and met, but when they do, and Fanie asks her to the bad, and it’s great. The performances are accompany him to his brother’s (Chris great from everyone involved, especially Jerry Chameleon) wedding and she accepts, they Mofokeng as Dinky’s dad and Marga van Rooy start a relationship that no one, not even the as Fanie’s mom, both are stereotypes of their two of them, expected. But are the rest of characters and are very funny. Van Jaarsvaldt their families ready for this relationship? And and Dhlomo work very well together and are what happens when thing get serious? completely believable as the couple. It’s a Especially when Dinky is the target of a chief’s sweet film that all South African’s should see and enjoy.

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The Guilt Trip 8/10

Starring Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogan Directed by Anne Fletcher learn about each other again and discover again what it means to be mother and son.

This is one of the sweetest road trip films I’ve seen in a while, and it was a real surprise. It’s sweet and funny and touching, not what you would expect from a Seth Rogan film. Rogan is known for his gross out comedy roles, but this comedy is family friendly, with the exception of a few swearwords, and is a lovely film. Streisand is back at her comedic best as a neurotic stereotype of a Jewish mother to an only child. She’s over powering ndy Brewster (Seth Rogan) is an and protective and wonderful, while Rogan is inventor with a great new cleaning poster for the child that resents her, but product he’s trying to sell to chain wouldn’t want anyone else. It really is a sweet stores. Before he heads off on a road trip to film that mothers and sons everywhere do meetings to sell the product he stops off at should see. his mother, Joyce’s (Barbra Streisand), house and after seeing how lonely they woman is, and finding out about the love of her life, not his father, and tracking him to San Francisco, Andy suggests that his mom comes with him on the road trip, planning to get her to a rendezvous with the man. She says yes, of course, and, during the eight day trip, they

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Quartet 8/10

Starring Maggie Smith, Billy Connolly and Michael Gambon Directed by Dustin Hoffman may be closing it falls to the four to reconcile and perform one of Verdi’s masterpieces, but Jean refuses to go on.

This film is in the vein of Best Exotic eginald Paget (Tom Courtenay), Wilf Marigold Hotel. The story is wonderful, the Bond (Billy Connolly) and Cissy Robson older retired singers and seeing what happens (Pauline Collins) are three retired to the people we admire after they become principal opera singers living in a home for too old to really be on stage anymore. retired musicians in rural England. They were Connolly is fantastic as the dirty old man, and all prima donna’s in their own rights, but Smith is great as the woman who used to be a together were wonderful. When Jean Horton huge star, but is now just another used-to-be.

(Maggie Smith), another opera singer who She portrays the fear of every ex-singer when used to sing with the others, comes to live at she’s asked to sing again, even though she the home things are tense from the knows her voice is gone, and the fear of not beginning. She was the reason that they didn’t being what she once was. The highlight of the sing together anymore, becoming too big to film is Courtenay’s class with a bunch of kids, sing with them, and breaking Reggie’s heart teaching them similarities between opera and when she divorced him. Now that the house rap, it is eye opening and inspiring.

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Verraaiers 7/10

Starring Gys De Villiers, Vilje Maritz and Neil Bennet Directed by Paul Eilers Thompson) to leave with him, and they do, inspiring others to do the same. The Boer generals are not happy about the desertions and decide to do something about. Those that have left will be arrested and tried for treason against the state, and the first to be tried will be the Van Aswegan’s.

This is a great South African film, of a n the late 1800’s, in the midst of the Anglostory that all South African’s should now. A lot Boer war, news comes down that a new happened in this country before Apartheid commander, Lord Kitchener, is about to and what followed, but we seem to gloss over named for the British. At the same time the stories that happened before the Africans rumours do the rounds that this man is took power. I think this is a mistake. There is a pushing the scorched Earth policy for the world of stories in this country, good and bad, British soldiers, a policy where the soldiers and to ignore them is just plain wrong. The will torch the Boer farms and take their acting is wonderful, especially by De Villiers, families to concentration camps. One of the Maritz, Thompson and Neil Bennett, Jacobus’ commanders of the Boers, Jacobus Van other son-in-law who also gets arrested and Aswegan (Gys De Villiers) as well as his son tried. The directing did bother me though. I decides that it would be best to leave the war would have preferred there not to be so many and protect his family, especially since they fade to blacks. It’s just not necessary after think the war will be over soon and that every scene and makes the film look they’ve lost. He convinces his son, CJ (Vilje amateurish.

Maritz) and his son-in-law, Henry (Andrew

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The Impossible 9/10

Starring Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts and Tom Holland Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona are dead. Will they find each other again, or will this wave rip this family apart forever?

I was hesitant to watch this film at n Christmas Day in 2004 a tsunami hit first, being told that it was a difficult watch, South East Asia. A British family living and it is, Maria’s leg is cut so badly you can in Japan, Maria (Naomi Watts), Henry see bone and there’s a scene where she’s (Ewan McGregor), and their sons Lucas (Tom dragged, screaming, through the rubble left Holland), Thomas (Samuel Joslin) and Simon by the wave, it’s really bad, but this is just (Oaklee Pendergast) are in Thailand when the part, and a small part of a remarkable film. It tsunami hits. They are all caught up by the really gets under your skin and you hope they massive wave. Maria and Lucas are swept in find each other, regardless of the obstacles in land and find each other before being found their way. When they just miss each other by local tribe’s people and being transported your heart breaks, and, spoiler alert, when to the hospital. Maria in pretty bad shape. they find each other again you feel the tears Meanwhile Henry, Thomas and Lucas have of happiness flowing down your cheeks. It is a also survived the wave, but are at the hotel. remarkable movie with remarkable Henry sends the little children to higher performances by McGregor, and Oscar ground to keep them safe and starts a nominated Watts as well as all three of the massive search for the rest of his family, but kids, who do amazing jobs. It is a great film. they both think that he, Thomas and Simon

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Sleepers Wake 4/10

Starring Lionel Newton, Jay Anstey and Deon Lotz Directed by Billy Burke original, but again all the same issues that I’ve been harking on about in South African films have reared their head again. I feel that the script needed far more work. The scenes don’t meld together well, and the dialogue needs some serious attention, but the major problem, again, is the directing. There needs man, John (Lionel Newton), runs away to be a certain amount of subtlety when it to the middle of nowhere to hide from comes to directing. You need to forget that the death of his wife and young you’re watching a film. The subtlety here is daughter. There he meets Jackie (Jay Anstey) missing. Everything is hard, disjointed, tedious a teenager running herself. She is there with and tacky. It shows in the acting too. Anstey her father (Deon Lotz) and brother (Luke and Newton try their best, but without the Tyler). They are running from the death of proper directing to show them the subtle their mother, and wife, at the hands of home intricacies of what their characters need to be invaders. John and Jackie begin a relationship, believable it just becomes a plodding attempt hoping to find solace in each other, but things at intrigue. Another step back for SA cinema. get out of control very quickly, with We need better training for directors. devastating consequences.

This could have been a good film. The concept is not bad, though not entirely

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The Last Stand 7/10

Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Forest Whitaker and Johnny Knoxville Directed by Jee-woon Kim This film is totally mental. It is action packed, violent, manic and completely entertaining. It’s great to see Arnold back on the screen, but not acting like the Terminator, drug kingpin, Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo not totally anyway. He acts his age, which is Noriega) escapes while being old, but he still has the stop-at-nothing transferred by the FBI. He gets behind attitude which is wonderful. The idea of the wheel of a new souped-up Corvette ZR1 someone trying to drive themselves to Mexico and heads for the border while FBI agent is a little silly, especially in these Bannister (Forest Whitaker) is on his tail. circumstances, but it works for this film.

Ahead of him is the town of Summerton, Knoxville is idiotic and funny again as a mental Arizona, and the town Sherriff, Ray Owens guy with too many guns, a role seemingly (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his team of written for him. It’s a ridiculous film, but inexperienced deputies. They are the only that’s the point. You can’t take your eyes off thing standing between this psychopath in his the screen for the entire thing. supercar and freedom, and they’re not going to stand aside and let him win.

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Snitch 9/10

Starring Dwayne Johnson, Susan Sarandon and Jon Bernthal Directed by Ric Roman Waugh for getting his son’s sentence diminished. n America Problem is the cartel sees what John is doing the and soon he’s in way over his head. minimum This is a good thinking-man’s action mandatory film. The story, based on actual events, is sentence for thrilling and harrowing. The fact that now a having first time drug offender in America serves enough drugs more time than a rapist, true, is a scary to sell them is thought. The Rock is great as a father pushed ten years, so to extremes to save his son from a system set when Jason up to catch the worst, but also to crucify the Collins (Rafi stupid. Susan Sarandon is her b****y best as a Gavron) is US attorney whose only interested in arrested for accepting a box of ecstasy tablets convictions for her political campaign, and from his friend, he’s arrested. The catch is he Gavron is sympathetic as a stupid kid who did was set up, you see the way it works is if you one stupid thing and is now going to pay for it are arrested with drugs you turn over on for the rest of his life, however long that may another dealer to diminish your sentence, but be. It’s a great film for those that enjoy good Jason isn’t a dealer, and he doesn’t know any, legal thrillers, as well as action films. and he won’t set up his friends, so it falls to his father, John Matthews (Dwayne Johnson) to do the setting up for him, but he looks big to save his son. He sets up a buy with one of the biggest dealers in Minnesota, a deal to run drugs in the trucks that John owns, in return

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The Sessions 9/10

Starring Helen Hunt, John Hawkes and William H. Macy Directed by Ben Lewin sessions continue they begin to form a bond that lasts a lifetime.

This is one of the most touching, ark O’Brien (John Hawkes) is a man inspirational films I’ve seen in a long time. It is in his thirties who had polio as a just beautiful in the way it’s put together and child and lost the use of his entire completely honest in its performances. Hunt, body. He sleeps in an iron lung and can only nominated for an Oscar for her performance be out of it for a few hours a day. He is a poet in this film, is simply wonderful as a woman and a journalist, but he can’t get a who helps men to not be frightened of their relationship. When he’s asked to write a story bodies, and Macy is fabulous as the priest about handicapped sex he finds out about a who helps Mark to make his decision. He’s sex surrogate, a woman that will sleep with funny and honest and the kind of priest that you to teach you how to have sex, so you can all priest should be. The person who steals the have it with a serious partner and not have all show though is Hawkes. I’m not sure why he the pressure. With the encouragement of his didn’t get an Oscar nomination, because I priest (William H. Macy), he decides to call on think he deserves one. He’s amazing as a man one to discover what it’s like, especially since, stuck in a body that just isn’t his, and trying to being a man, it is on his mind constantly. be a man in the worst possible situation. This When he meets Cheryl (Helen Hunt) they both is a completely great film. get more than they bargained for, and as the

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10 Years 2/10

Starring Channing Tatum, Rosario Dawson and Chris Pratt Directed by Jamie Linden (Rosario Dawson) at school and hopes to reconnect with her, problem is that she’s now married, and he’s there with his steady girlfriend (Jenna Dewan-Tatum). As the night progresses they all have their moments and either fly or fall on their faces.

For every one American Pie that comes along there are seven film like this, t’s the night of their 10 year reunion and a films that try to be as funny as the other films bunch of friends make their way from a in the genre, but just don’t connect with the friend’s house to their old school to catch audience. This film doesn’t connect, at all. It up and remember the good old days. There’s doesn’t connect with the audience, it doesn’t the singer (Oscar Isaac) who made good and is connect with the actors, it just doesn’t now a big star, trying to avoid all the exconnect. The performances are wooden and schoolmates who are now fans. The bully forced, the jokes are heavy handed and simply (Chris Pratt) who got married and is trying to not funny and the plot is not really a plot. It’s use the night as a reason to apologise to all more like a series of idiotic scenarios thrown the people he used to pick on at school, the together without purpose. This is really not a problem is he’s getting more and more drunk good film. and making things far worse. Then there’s the guy (Channing Tatum) who lost his love

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Zero Dark Thirty 7/10

Starring Jessica Chastain, Joel Edgerton and Chris Pratt Directed by Kathryn Bigelow The attack on the World Trade Centre shook the entire world, and it was just a matter of time before they found the man aya (Jessica Chastain) is a C.I.A responsible. Then it was a matter of time agent working in the Middle East before the film of his capture was made, right after the attack on the World especially since it was such a fantastic story in Trade Centre in New York. She gets a lead on the search of him, something that the best a courier who could be a direct link to Osama fiction writers in the world probably couldn’t Bin Laden and follows it. The search takes her have come up with. Chastain’s performance is over ten years, and being shot at, almost wonderful. She starts off repulsed by the blown up, loosing countless friends, and actions of the other in her world, the torture having to be evacuated from the Middle East and mishandling of captives, but soon she in the process, but after much time and strife realizes why they’re doing what they’re doing she finds the man she’s looking for in and she becomes just like them. She’s tough Pakistan. And, by locating him, finding who and unrelenting and fantastic. I would have they think is Bin Laden himself, and a daring liked the film to be a little faster paced. It raid by the Americans to kill the man that was moves a little slowly for me, especially when responsible for the deaths of so many it’s supposed to be an action, thriller in civilians. essence.

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Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters 7/10 Starring Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton and Peter Stormare Directed by Tommy Wirkola they’ve faced before, with a plan more deadly than anything they’ve thwarted before and with knowledge of their past that could destroy them before they can even start to fight.

If you enjoyed filmed like Van Helsing and The Brothers Grimm than this one is for you. It’s got action and adventure and magic ansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel and just the right amount of insanity to make (Gemma Arterton) were just children to great. The effects are good, though a lot when they were left in the forest, more gory and violent than usual for this stumbled on the ginger bread house and killed genre. The writing is good with the witty one their first witch. It’s been years since then and liners coming thick and fast and the now they are both grown and killing witches performances by Renner and Arterton are professionally. When they are asked to a funny and interesting and fun. This is a bit of village where 11 children have vanished rubbish, but it fabulous rubbish. already they know immediately that they’re up against more than they’ve been up against before. They’re up against a witch (Famke Jansen) who is more powerful than any

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The Dogs are Back Photos by Ralf Brinkhoff

The Tap Dogs are back at the Teatro at Montecasino until March 10th. Jon Broeke went along to see if the Dogs have still got the bite.

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saw the Tap dogs the first time they came out to South Africa, and I have to admit, while it was very entertaining and exciting to see these very talented tap dancers on the stage, I was a little bored. It’s not any body’s fault, but there’s only so much tap you can watch before it starts to look the same and become tedious, regardless of how good the tappers are. So when I found out that the Tap Dogs were coming back to South Africa, I was excited to see them again, but also concerned about being bored again, which I really didn’t want considering how good these tappers really are. Luckily, I had nothing to worry about. The show is better than it ever was. It’s entertaining and exciting and I wasn’t bored for a second during the non-stop hour and half show.

The cast of the show is eight people, six dancers and two female drummers. The dancers each have a distinct personality on the stage, which the consistently maintain during the show. There’s the leader, Douglas Mills, is strong and no nonsense as he leads the others in the routines.

There’s the disco-loving one,

Chaise Rossiello, who is an amazing tapper, but breaks into disco moves a la John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever every time he has a solo. It’s really funny. The kid, Nathaniel Hancock, is the young in the group and is teased by the other dancers all the way through. The strong man, Anthony Locascio, is imposing as the most well-built one on the stage, and using imposing positions to illustrate his muscles. The sexy one, Anthony

Russo, who is also the second in command uses his sex appeal throughout the show, when he’s not tapping upside down that is.

And the clown, James Doubtfire, is hilarious as the comic relief of the show. He amuses the audience the whole way through and has moments when you’re laughing at loud at him, especially when he brushes water at the front row to get them wet, getting into trouble with the leader for doing so. It’s a

good laugh.

Aside from the characters the dancing in the show itself is wonderful. The entire thing really feels like a bunch of friends coming together to have a good time. The fact that they’re in front of an audience is not important, they’re just dancing with each other like they would at a construction site somewhere out in the middle of Australia.

The stage is set up with a series of props that the dancers use throughout the performance. The idea behind the props is things that you would possibly find on a construction site, but figured for dancing on. In the beginning of the show there’s a sheet of roofing tin hanging from the ceiling. It lifts to reveal a red stair, but only enough so we can see the feet of the dancers on it.

They then open the show with a mixture of tap and comedy, after which the sheet lifts and they take off in a high energy, high impact tap sequence to heavy music that blares from the speakers. It is highly entertaining. The show continues into a series of ever more intricate dance sequences, including inverted platforms that the dancer’s dance on, a metal part of the stage that makes a completely different sound to the wood, and that Mills won’t

let anyone else dance on, dancing on pads connected to a synthesiser making drum sounds, as well as rather annoying ping sound, that the dancers use in jest during the dance, to actually dancing upside down. The entire thing takes your breath away as we go from one crazy gimmick dance to another.

Another new add this year, which appeals also, is the inclusion of two very attractive female drummers to the roster,

Catriona Hunter and Catarina Percinio. Both are sexy hitting their drums, but more than that they are great drummers who accompany the tappers beautifully.

I am so glad I saw the show again because I always felt a little disappointed at being bored in such an amazing show. Now that I’ve seen this show I will happily recommend that everyone should buy tickets to go and see this show. Right now.

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It’s an Experience The Queen Experience hit the stage this month at the Mandela at Joburg Theatre. Jon Broeke went along to the opening night to experience the Experience.

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usic comes and goes. It changes constantly. Some songs and singers that are huge right now will be almost completely forgotten in ten years, maybe even less, just like countless singers from the 80’s and 90’s that no one’s ever even heard of.

But sometimes a band, and their music, can live on, for decades. One such band, and their amazing music, is Queen.

People know Queen, they know their music, word for word, and they know the amazing influences that they’ve had on today’s popular musicians. All of this was proven when I attended the opening performance of The Queen Experience at the Mandela at Joburg Theatre this month.

The show is nothing short of a celebration of the music and people that made up one of the best bands of their time. The music is great, and it’s what brings all these people together, and creates a spectacular show. Joseph Clark, a former ballet dancer turned rock singer, heads the group. He’s flamboyant and colourful and has an incredible voice that Freddie Mercury himself would endorse. The background singers, made up of Yollandi Nortjie, Kate Borthwick and Zetske van Pletzen are sexy and have wonderful voices that compliment

Clark and the songs that they are singing beautifully. Kate also plays the piano beautifully. The other member of the band that plays the piano, and keyboards is Kyle Peterson. He does an amazing job, especially on keyboard heavy tracks like Who Wants to Live Forever and Bohemian Rhapsody. Richard Brokensha plays the guitar with a verve that is in infectious. He really stood out during the Spanish guitar section of Innuendo. On the drums is Peach van Pletzen. He’s hell on the old skins and his drum solos, especially at the opening of the second act, are thumpingly great.

Trevor Donjeany thrilled the audience no end with his bass playing, especially on the bass heavy Under Pressure.

Saving the best for last, Nathan Smith on lead guitar. He is one of the most incredible guitarists I have heard in all my life. I think that if Brian May himself had been sitting in the audience he would have been completely thrilled with the intensity and absolute love with which Smith plays his guitars.

The show has so many highlights that I think I’m virtually going to go song for song.

The show opened with One Vision, a song that is one of my favourites being featured in one of my favourite films of all time, Highlander.

It’s a great way to get the audience pumped

for the rest of the show. Guest artist Althus Theart, known by many South Africans as a great actor and Afrikaans singer, joined the band on the stage for Under Pressure, Another One Bites the Dust and We Will Rock You in the second act. You could tell how much he enjoyed performing the songs and what joy he took from the music itself. He was a joy to watch on the stage. For Too Much Love Will Kill You and Who Wants to Live Forever Clark was joined on stage by excellent tenors Mmusi Morekhure and Tebogo Makgwe. They have some of the most incredible voices you will ever hear and their rendition of Who Wants to Live Forever bought tears to my eyes and Goosebumps to the rest of me. It was one of those moments you remember for the rest of your lives. Add to all of that incredible performances of Bohemian Rhapsody, Clark dressed in drag for I Want to Brea Free, which seemed to upset a

couple of the audience members by the sounds coming from the gallery, The Show Must Go On, Crazy Little Thing Called Love and the Elvis classic Jailhouse Rock, an incredible performance by Nortjie singing the soprano part on Barcelona that had the audience on their feet whooping and cheering like mad, and a particularly moving performance of In My Defence, the last song the Freddy Mercury himself sang before a live audience before his untimely death, this is one of the best rock concerts I’ve been to in a long while.

When you see this show, and if they come to perform again I suggest you do just that, don’t think of this as a Queen Stage show, think of it as a rock concert. Amazing music performed by amazing musicians. That way you will get the most out of what will undoubtedly be one of the nights you will tell you’re grandkids about.

25th Anniversary Umbrella Photos by John Hogg

The Dance Umbrella is on the stage again this month at the Wits Theatre, but this year it’s the 25th anniversary.

Jon Broeke went to the opening night to see what 25 years of Umbrellas has to show.

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his year marks the 25th anniversary of a platform that all dancers in South Africa have heard of and wish to dance on. The Dance Umbrella started back in 1985 as a way to give a platform to contemporary dancers in South Africa who wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to dance on stage. The Umbrella nowadays is still serving that purpose, but to a much greater extent. They commission works, providing money to choreographers and dancers to do what they love to do, and that’s dance. They have also set up training programmes for new choreographers and dancers to teach them, not only to dance, but also to run businesses so they can become self-sustaining and have constant work.

I rag on the Umbrella all the time, not on the good work that they’re doing, because it is good work, work that needs to be done, and they’re doing a great job of doing it, but this is now different, and unfortunately I’m going to rag on it again.

The opening night, held at the Wits Theatre this month, consisted of four pieces choreographed by different people and performed by different companies.

First performance, called Treasure to a Being, was choreographed by Sonia Radebe for the Moving Into Dance Mophatong dance company. It started off really well. Five dancers standing on stage under an overhead spot, one in the middle and four others around him. The four then begin using the middle man as a puppet, controlling his movements. It was very effective, for about a minute or two, but after ten minutes had past

he novelty had worn off. They then proceeded to gyrate and have what appeared to be epileptic seizures for the next twenty minutes before another dancer came on stage wrapped in coloured wires being held by other dancers. The dancer turned so the wires unwrapped, he then lay on the floor seizing while the others hit him with the wires, saying errant phrases like “soft” and “move” and so on. It was all a little confusing. When they actually danced, for all of thirty seconds, it was nice, but not really long enough for me to even give an opinion about.

The second performance on the programme was Out the Tunnel, choreographed

by Carly Dibakwane for the Soweto Dance Project.

Again it started out with a really novel, clever idea of the dancers, four guys, wearing these lights on their chests pointing up into their faces so all you could see was them, a la horror movie effect. It was a great idea, but after ten minutes, again the novelty wore off.

To make it worse all the other lights were off, so even though I could tell the dancers were dancing, I couldn’t see what they were doing, and frankly it was annoying. When the lights finally came on and they danced, they were nice, but… These guys are not professional dancers. There’s a certain level of ability you expect to see on the stage at the Dance Umbrella, and these guys just weren’t there.

Did they love dancing? Absolutely. Were they entertaining? A very big yes, but there’s more to it than that. Extended feet and legs and control of the core goes a long way when you’re dancing in a professional platform.

The third performance of the night was Thola (Discoveries). Choreographed by Thabo Kobeli and danced by Cultural Development Trust this performance is close to the hearts of those that run the Umbrella.

It was the culmination of work to showcase

the outcome of the DanceXChange programme which the Umbrella runs in Limpopo and KwaZulu Natal. We were told not to crit this one to badly since it should be considered as a precursor of things to come, the dancers only having had about ten classes to get it together, and most never having danced before. So I will try. The dance was made up of several dancers on the stage. Each of them seemed to be capable dancers, though no real height of leg or extension, but ten classes… Okay I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, but it wasn’t the dancers I had an issue with. It was the dance. It made no sense what so ever. It started off with each of the dancers involved in their own world before they all started worshipping, or something, a sandal. There was one moment which reminded me of the apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey, not sure that’s what the choreographer was going for, but hey. Then there was a moment when a guy started chatting up one of the girls and then they spent the next five minutes running around the stage making goo-goo eyes at each other, for no particular reason that I could fathom. It was surreal.

The fourth number performed was the reason we still go to the Umbrella.

Beautiful Us was choreographed by Gregory Maqoma and performed by Vuyani Dance Theatre, and it was, in a word, sublime. You can tell the difference when professionals step on the stage, every move they make seems more graceful. It’s difficult, or impossible, to put into words, but you can just tell, and they are incredible to watch. They just capture your attention and no matter how long they dance you can’t take your eyes off. The biggest problem with this dance was the fact that it shone a huge spotlight on what was wrong with the rest of the performances.

Each of the dancers was strong with great extension. The jumps, especially off the floor which they did in one section where astounding. The music, by Jean-Paul Poletti, Ismael Lo and Dead Can Dance, sounded like Caribbean musical rhythms with Native American thrown in and some African beats at the end. The fast paced parts of the dance were strong and sharp and you could just tell that the dancer’s where having the time of their lives on that stage. It was one of the most dynamic dances I’ve seen in a while The Umbrella is living up to the point of its inception, giving life to dances and dancers that otherwise would never see the light of day, but I think maybe there needs to be a bit more of a control over the content that’s featured in the shows, but maybe it’s just me. I come from a more traditional background, ballet, lyrical, jazz, and maybe I just don’t understand the nuances of contemporary, but I do know what I like, and judging from the audience’s reactions I may not be the only one. Nevertheless here’s to the Umbrella going on for another twenty five years. If Beautiful Us is anything to go by it is well worth it.

It’s all in the Mind Photos by Genevieve Vieira

Mentalist Michael Abrahamson was back on the stage this month when his show Visage came to the Kingsway Campus of the UJ Arts Centre. We went along to the opening night to experience the mental abilities of this amazing man.

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agic has always held a special fascination for people. We all hold our breath when an aeroplane or a building seems to disappear before our eyes, and find ourselves dumbfounded when something that can’t possibly be real happens. Some of the most amazing magic happen when someone seems to read our minds. That’s exactly what seems to be happening in the new show Visage: Secrets of the Mind which showed this month at the Kingsway Campus of the UJ Arts Centre.

The show features acclaimed mentalist Michael Abrahamson who astonishes the crowd with a mixture of theatricality and astounding mental skill, which a lot of the time comes off as pure magic.

The show itself is made up of a series of experiments, as Michael refers to them, each more impressive than the last. These include a numbers trick, a Sudoku trick of sorts that he opens the show with. Using the number 79 he creates a grid, four numbers across and four down, so 16 numbers in total, and using the number 79 he makes all the lines add up to 79. The horizontal lines, the vertical lines, even the diagonal lines. He doesn’t stop there though. The four numbers that make up the corners of the grid also add

up to 79. It’s an amazing feat of mathematical ability and a great way to open the show.

He then goes on to a series of experiments where he seems to read the very minds of the audience members. Using six coloured masks that were placed in the audience before the show he calls people, those with the masks, onto the stage. He then goes on to guess the colours a woman uses to colour in a picture, match up, picture for picture, a series of picture cards with an audience member and pulling the word Visage with the first letters of a series of words from six separate audience members picking words off sheets of paper. The entire thing boggles the mind to see.

A couple highlights from the show was Michael’s amazing recall abilities which he uses to remember the order of an entire pack of playing cards, which he learns in 45 seconds, and then reels off 20 minutes later.

A bell was handed to a girl in the audience, who was told to ring the bell whenever she felt like it. Michael then set a clock on the stage to the time he thought that she would ring the bell, and he was perfectly right.

The show closes with a piece of A3 paper, which is locked away in a clear box which is on stage for the entire show, before the performance even starts. On the paper is written a bunch of the answers for the show, which is impressive enough, but the most impossible thing was one of the last experiments. Michael asked members of the audience, about twenty in total, to write a

few things, including a name, on little pieces of paper. He then called two audience members onto the stage to read two of these pieces of paper. He read their minds, getting it all right, except for a name, writing Michael instead of Michelle, but on the A3 paper at the end Michael was written, then crossed out and Michelle was written below. It was unexplainable and had the audience scratching their heads. He ends the show by revealing a name in a pocket that was written

by an audience member at the very beginning of the show, again having the audience laughing nervously at his amazing abilities.

This is a remarkable show by a remarkable man. He is truly an extraordinary talent who has spent years training to be able to do what he does. If you missed the show this time keep your eyes peeled, he will be back soon and you need to see him. It’s a mind blowing, head scratching experience.

Frankenweenie 8/10

A Thousand Words 3/10

Starring the voices of Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara and Martin Short Directed by Tim Burton Victor (voiced by Charlie Tahan) has a best friend, his dog Sparky, but when tragedy strikes and Sparky is killed, Victor won’t leave him that way. Using his skills in science, and given an idea, unintentionally by his science teacher, Victor brings the dog back to life, which is all well and good, until one of the other children in his class, Edgar 'E' Gore (voiced by Atticus Shaffer), realises what he’s done. He blackmails Victor into bringing back his pet, but when the other children find out too they bring their own pets back, with disastrous results.

This is clever, fast moving and fun film. The stop motion animation is amazing, with the seamless movements and life-like, yet completely over the top and Burton-ised, characters. The story is very dark though, and the monsters at the end are rather frightening. If you’re watching it with your child you may want to keep the remote on hand. Not suggested for any kids under 10, but those over will enjoy it.

Starring Eddie Murphy, Kerry Washington and Cliff Curtis Directed by Brian Robbins Jack McCall (Eddie Murphy) is a fast talking literary agent who thinks he can talk his way into, and out of, anything, but when he meets Dr Sinja (Cliff Curtis), a spiritual guru, his life changes completely, as a tree appears in his back yard, inexplicably connect to him. Every word he says a leaf falls from the tree, and when all the leaves have fallen, he will die.

Now Jack needs to figure out how to save the tree, and himself.

This could have been an interesting film. It’s an interesting concept, and I’ve always been a fan of Eddie Murphy, but this film seems to find itself floundering. It’s not especially funny, or especially witty and, frankly, it’s annoying and boring. It’s nowhere near as good as Murphy’s other work and leaves you feeling very unsatisfied, and not wanting to say a word about it, or anything.

Rent Beverly Hills Cop again instead.

The Possession 8/10

Starring Natasha Calis, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick Directed by Ole Bornedal When Em (Natasha Calis) finds the antique box at a yard sale her father, Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) buys it for her, but when she manages to open the box things go from bad to worse very quickly. Now Clyde needs to work out what’s going on. What was in the box? How can he stop it? Can he save his family? Can he save his daughter? It’s a race against time before he loses them all forever.

There’s nothing new about possession movies. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, but this one has some nice elements that puts it apart from the rest. Firstly the box is creepy beyond compare, the moths that live in it add to the creepiness factor as well. The acting is great, especially by Calis. You really feel she is in mortal danger, doing things she has no control of. This is a horror film for horror fans. A good scare.

True Justice: Angel of Death 5/10 Starring Steven Seagal, Sarah Lind and Lochlyn Munroe Directed by Wayne Rose In this instalment of the True Justice series Kane (Steven Seagal) and his team are tracking an arms dealer who is in possession of a suitcase Nuke. Kane thinks he’s going to sell the bomb to the Ghost, the mysterious figure that killed his original team and who he’s been tracking all along. Now he has a real connection to his quarry, but can he catch him and stop the bomb falling into the wrong hands in time?

This film isn’t as good as the previous ones. It’s still an enjoyable watch, if you enjoy Seagal, but the story’s getting a little complicated and a little confusing. If you haven’t seen the previous three movies you’ll probably be lost.

Beat the World 4/10 Starring Tyrone Brown, Mishael Morgan and Nikki Grant Directed by Robert Adetuyi Three dance crews, one in Detroit, one in Berlin and one in Brazil, are all preparing to compete in the Beat the World dance competition. They’re all good, but they need a special edge to win over their competitors, but they’re marred by in fighting inside the crews. From a bet gone horribly wrong, to messy break ups, these dancers may never get to the competition, let alone win.

This is the same thing we’ve seen a thousand times. Yes, it’s three crews this time, instead of just the one main character’s crew, but I’m not sure the film benefits from that. It splits the viewers’ attention too much for you really care about any of them. The dancing is good, and the free0running is excellent, but there’s not much substance to this film. Rather re-rent one of the Step Up films.

The Apparition 4/10 Starring Ashley Greene, Sebastian Stan and Tom Felton Directed by Todd Lincoln In the 70’s a group of paranormal psychologists tried to connect to the spirit of their dead colleague. They called it the Charles Experiment, after the man they were trying to connect to. Years later another group tries the same experiment, but they manage to open a doorway to a monster that takes one of them. Further years later a couple (Ashley Greene and Sebastian Stan have just moved into a new house in a housing project in the middle of nowhere when strange things start happening. How is this connected to the experiment? And can they figure it out and stop the monster before it kills them both?

This film offers nothing new. It’s not especially scary, offering only the standard cheap scares where something jumps out at you. The story is odd, saying the thing they’re fighting isn’t a ghost or a demon, but something else, but what they don’t specify.

It’s all a little wishy-washy. a little wishywashy. You’d do better with The Possession.

Gabe, the Cupid Dog 4/10 Starring Brian Krause, Boti Bliss and Linden Ashby Directed by Michael Feifer When journalist Eric (Brian Krause) gets an offer to move to London to head up the European division of the magazine he works for, he’s ecstatic. His dog Gabe though isn’t happy about it, especially when he discovers that he’ll have to spend six months in quarantine if he goes with, so the dog comes up with a plan to get his master a new girlfriend, and stop him making the trip.

Problem is he picks Sara (Boti Bliss), an executive assistant at a publishing house. She also the person Eric’s trying to get an interview through with a mysterious new writer, but, little does he know, she actually the writer herself.

This is a bit of mindless drivel. The voice over of the dog, you can hear his thoughts throughout the film as he narrates, gets really tedious within five minutes of starting the film. The acting is over the top and the storyline is mediocre and completely obvious from the very second it begins. I would suggest getting something else.

Rosewood Lane 3/10

Starring Rose McGowan, Daniel Ross Owens and Ray Wise Directed by Victor Salva Radio psychologist Dr Sonny Blake (Rose McGowan) moves back to her childhood home a year after the death of her father, but as soon as she arrives she notices the strange behaviour of a strange boy (Daniel Ross Owens), who delivers the papers in in the neighbourhood. His behaviour is menacing to put it mildly and before long Sonny finds herself trapped in a cat and mouse game with this boy. The trouble is no one else believes anything is going on, so they’re not around to help her when things turn deadly.

This film is neither scary nor smart.

It’s tedious and really goes nowhere. While the acting from McGowan and Owens is good at times, they can’t carry a film that has no real plot. The twist at the end is also just silly and annoying. Rather check out something else.

Watch it jump

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