Jet-setted out to Miami for a hot minute to cover the BET Hip Hop Awards. Hosted for a second year by DJ Khaled, this time with his little protege Asahd by his side. 11-months old and that kid has more of a following than I could ever hope to accrue in all the years I have on him. It’s those cheeks I tell you! It was also the first time the awards took place in Miami, aka 305, aka Sunshine State, aka Khaled’s adopted home and the place that gave the super producer his big break into the industry. “It’s my second time hosting the awards, and I asked them,…
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Black Mirror: San Junipero, aka Cape Town in a Madonna Wedding Dress
I’m so late to this party. So late that I not only missed a stand-out moment in contemporary TV-watching, but I missed out on doing a story about it. As the US correspondent for Eyewitness News back home in South Africa, it’s my job to stay on top of the entertainment news here, as well as big US stories (you could say Trump has kept me pretty busy). But I also specialize in sharing any strides South Africans, and Africans to a larger degree, here in NYC and the US are making. So if someone is nominated for an International Emmy, as Thuso Mbedu was earlier this week, then I’m on…
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Three Billboards & Twenty-three Miles
Another Toronto Film Festival has come and whooshed by! I’ve been asked what my favourite films from this year’s fest are. And what a coincidence – I made a running video about them. Another coincidence? Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which won the Grolsch People’s Choice Award was my top film too. Frances McDormand needs to win all the awards for her role in it, where she plays a grieving mother who takes up a drastic move to solve the mystery of her daughter’s brutal death. Sam Rockwell, too, shines, in this film from director Martin Mcdonaugh, who brought us In Bruges and Seven Pyschopaths.
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19 Hours in Bangor
“I was about 8 miles from here when I started to write The Dark Tower” Stephen King said, wearing a cap with the city’s name emblazoned on it. “Bangor is home.” I went to Maine for the first time ever, to see sites and places that have inspired the King of suspense and the supernatural. King grew up in a little town in southern Maine, “with more graveyards than people,” as he describes it, and no running water. He came to the University of Maine in 1966, and soon he and his wife Tabitha settled in Bangor, with its population of just over 31 000 people. Taking a tour of the…
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The Rundown: Sex and the City
Living in New York can – at times – be like living in your own episode of Sex and the City (like when the sailors come into town for Fleet Week, or your very favourite shoe repair store closes down). It’s been 20 years since Candace Bushnell’s book first came out, inspiring the TV series that became a hit the world over. I got to interview the cast when the two films were coming out (the 1st one I liked, the 2nd one, not so much…) and they did not disappoint – sweet and sassy women. Running around New York now, I often think of scenes I know so well,…
