Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom opens this weekend, in South Africa and in the US. I’ve read reviews, from both here and in SA, and I’ve tried to reconcile the differing opinions about the film, based on Madiba’s autobiography. I was open in my opinion of the film when I first saw it at its...
Hello movie lovers and art collectors and Whovians, and well, everyone… * It’s not just art that’s been fetching high prices these days, a prop from The Maltese Falcon just did too. A black bird figurine that made its film debut alongside Humphrey Bogart in the classic 1941 detective thriller reached over $4 million dollars at an auction...
Once upon a time the International Emmys were just about giving countries around the world the chance to cheer on their nominees (metaphorically speaking) as the best programming from across the globe competed for their chance to win television’s most coveted prize. With the boom in television shows, the US has been looking to overseas...
Hello – after a night in which Yeezus met Jesus, it’s now back to reality… * Kanye West brought the New York leg of his Yeezus tour to an end at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night. Complete with studded masks, almost-naked women, and religious epiphanies, it was actually a very moving production – even...
Hello from America, where the country is commemorating 50 years since the assassination of one of its most beloved leaders, JFK. * U2 has released a lyric video for the song the group wrote to accompany the Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom movie. It’s U2′s first new song in 3 years, ahead of their latest offering,...
This is amazing. Jonas Cuarón, who co-wrote Gravity with his director father, Alfonso, has shown us who Sandra Bullock’s character was talking to when she made her distress call to Earth, in one of the stand-out scenes in the movie. Hopefully by now you’ve seen the film, so this won’t come as a spoiler (and if...
Hello – good news out of London, and well, terrific news out for Madonna… * There have been reports about it this whole week but now it’s been confirmed! A Monty Python reunion show is taking place on July 1st in London next year. The remaining cast members John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and...
Back in the Big Apple and sad to see what’s happened to a vibrant city site… * Overnight, the pieces on New York’s street art mecca 5 Pointz were painted over white. Petitions and rallies couldn’t save what should have been preserved as a landmark. Instead, condos will be built where a piece of history...
Hello from Los Angeles where I managed to accidentally slap Enrique Iglesias while waiting for an interview with Leonardo DiCaprio… * The Hunger Games: Catching Fire had its LA premiere on Monday night, after various premieres in Europe. Jennifer Lawrence put the ‘haute’ in Dior Haute Couture, and yeah, the rest of the cast came out...
Hello from Los Angeles, where it’s so sunny, I may just never go back home to NYC… * LA hosted the fifth annual installment of The Governors Awards this past Saturday night, bestowing honorary Oscars to Steve Martin, Angela Lansbury and costume designer Piero Tosi, and giving the Jean Herscholt humanitarian award to Angelina Jolie. Many...
It’s been a few weeks since the Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (leaving me weeping in my seat). The film has since had a theme song, written by U2, added to it, and premiered in South Africa, where it received a warm reception from my fellow countrymen...
Hello from New York, where one can drink mulled wine inside a Christmas tree to make one feel better about the cold… * Eminem may not be generating the kind of heat he used to, but he doesn’t seem to have lost any of his clout on the charts, despite his being away from them...
