disrgrace: in more ways than one - UPDATE

*sigh, here we go again, mangled saffrican accents, foreign filmmakers who've convinced themselves that they're ooh so plugged into the south african zeitgeist. all of which yields the mess that is "disgrace". the screenwriters even had the odasity to change the ending of the book to suit a movie audience. kak kak and kak again. the film is ostensibly set in eastern cape, err err bar the fucking view of table mountain and surrounds, clearly this movie wasn't made with locals in mind. clearly. we here at absoulute always get nervous when we hear of these semi-big-budget Hollywood flicks with their household name big amerikana movie stars. we know two things for sure, they'll sound more welsh than they do saffarican and the producers are cowards.
there is something fundamentally, let's repeat that, fundamentally inauthentic about this flick, as we said, it tries to pass of eastern cape as the western cape, it has john malkovich really trying is damnest to pull of the wretched sounds of the saffrican white middle class post apartheid experience (err err...don't where going with that description but it fits). he tries, lawd knows he tries and i guess if you're from mars you might even find him convincing.
this was always going to be a difficult movie to pull off, very. the book had this steady pace that never let up, never too fast but nonetheless quick enough for you to want to put it down and catch your breath. this movie is too deliberate, it tries too hard to consider all the important narratives, too busy making sure that the audience d.o.e.s n.o.t m.i.s.s all the all too important social commentary. for all its faults district 9 got one thing right, at certain fundamental glimpses it was unmistakenbly south african. detail was afforded to that small fact, that d9 was set in south africa with an overwhelmingly south african narrative. disgrace on the hand didnt even bother, detail? what detail? coetzee should be ashamed that he gave his blessings for this movie. it foks up the idea we have of coetzee as this genius recluse, intolerant of all things bullshit. he might as well have let the screenwriters, the casting director and director all have their way with his wife, his second wife at that. in case its not clear from the above, we were not impressed

district 9: more light less heat please

we don't know what version of history - past and present - neil blomkamp and his team of writers feed on. clearly its the same acid laced cat-food contraband their alien creations in district 9 seem to love. district 9, aka the current #1 box office hit in the us, is a nearly 2 hour flick which preaches well but forgets to feed us the sermon. okay quickly, there are these aliens, who become marooned above the joburg skyline, and they cant make their way home. these cats are filthy, and they get high off cat food, seriously. they are dirty, like the nigerians (more on that later...) and really nobody wants them around. so yes, the film oozes with reliable and easy metaphors and perhaps yes, the joburg setting was relevant in that respect.


the film is technically superb, the documentary shooting style and narrative allows the film to get away with more self consciousness than would be ordinarily allowed. the narrative on the other hand seems dishonest, insincere...it FEELS like it was written by a white guy with more middle class white guilt than he knows what to do with (apologies to km, i know you're a regular reader, thanks for use of your words here..). the writers try to cover all their bases on the major social issues of our time, for instance, the combining of the apartheid narrative and the xenophobic narrative was quite frankly lazy, dishonest. i understand the need to make the story accessible, and to package it into neatly outlined, morally unambiguous boxes, but really?!!? now about the nigerians, well they do what nigerians do, right? right? errr, right? they trade in contraband, sell sex and guns on the side, and display a fucked up version of cannibalism...jahwellnofine. this movie will clearly work for some, it didn't work for us, too easy, too easy, if you're going to raise an argument and get all deep and philosophical, make sure there's a punchline at least

redbull sound clash

okay, summer for the south! the muze fests are coming in thick and thin this side of the equator....good to be back home...rocking the daisies is around the corner, oct 5 (jhb) and oct 11 (cpt)...but more on that later. red bull is having its clash fest thing next week (aug 22). the fest is being held at the carlton skyrink - i remember starting my very first teen love affair there...long story that ended, eventually. anyway, we'll be there, definately, hear some tumi and not the volume, but rather tumi and the dirty skirts, with some tiagao (340ml) and so on. kewl setup and concept, not only will the various performers collaboarate but they will also "battle" (yeah in the MCing sense) and he crowd will deh-tah-mine the ultimate kewlest band.

checkout website for more details

www.redbull.co.za/soundclash

new publication: Joe Bubble

ooh, spring begets new things. our friends from one small seed launched a new ezine, "Joe Bubble" www.joebubble.com. we love this mag - if you're cape tonean we think you'll love it more. this mag feels like a more accessible "one small seed" www.onesmallseed.com(we love one small seed, but we all know how parochial and geographically biased OSS can get - word up Cape Town!). Joe Bubble, covers local (SA) fashion fotography, art & kulture etc.

the accidental minimalist

on saturday, a friend took me to the constitutional court hill gallery in braamfontein, johannesburg. it was my first time there. the large concrete construct leaves no doubt as to the austere nature of the business there, but the place didn't have that drab feel of yester-century apartheid architecture. none of the overt phallisism and grey drabness of say the unisa building in pretoria. there was something instantly warm and welcoming about the constitutional court building, warm but serious i guess. i'm not sure how many court houses around the world can boast the vast array of artworks we saw on saturday. the court is better stocked than most galleries i've been to. i discovered a new artist on sat, a chap i had never heard of until then. dumile feni was born in worscter in the western cape. the pieces we saw on saturday provided a 20th century narrative of apartheid south africa, without necessarily making or stressing (with heightened hyperbole) any huge political statement. they just were, but somehow the historical narrative remains clean and unambiguous. he draws on paper - often note pad paper - and does so using pen. very simple, some may call it minimalism. i remember reading an article where gerald sekoto was being interviewed, he said that whenever he was broke he used to draw with materials that were most readily available to him; pens and note pad paper. so maybe the same applies to dumile feni. maybe he is the accidental minimalist, his pieces are so drenched in message and innuendo that i couldn't help but get the sense that had the time allowed, he would have had so much more to say.

fonni haha

source: http://ilovehotdogs.tumblr.com/

atlas sounds

today, i felt as if i missed EVERYone and EVERYthing. everyone i've ever said goodbye to and everything i've ever walked away from

{soundtrack}
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcMGACqsg5A

coming of age article

i'm guest editing a series of articles for a local publication. the brief to this particular writer was to write a personal narrative on getting older and how one manages their identity through both their successes and failures..errr...the publication is a men's only publication that focuses on successful living etc. anyway, i thought this particular piece was interesting, funny and a little sad. i attach (with the author's (belated) permission) the beginning of the (VERY ROUGH 1st DRAFT)article:

To see the article properly, click on the scanned articles

spoek mathambo

so the Fader recent blogged about "spoek mathambo" - HIVIP united states of ayobaness



this afro-dance release has super suped DHANS music (ala, thebe i wanna DHANS for you). it mixes distinctly local sounds with a very very berlin-esqu trance vibe. but at the same time, you could easily hear some of these sounds in a lagos discotheque and it wouldn't sound unfamiliar. so there's something for dance fans of all ilks. there's a track by kasi house mafias called "bitch made", the riff there reminds me of the (late great) paul ndlovu track ndi "famba emoyeni". in the very same breath the album contains a track caled "i'mma tell your momma" by red the homeless gfunk beatbox. this song sounds like a lil' wayne mix, but nonetheless still very cool. we downloaded here...{http://www.mediafire.com/?dlzntuq3zx1} and we liked this very much. nthato and mark made it onto the fader, we thought that was worth a punt.

bobby hughes combination

if there's anything the world wide web keeps teaching me it's that there is so much undiscovered music out there. i've been really getting into bobby hughes - nu-jazz, soulfunk white-middle-aged guy(!!! ed note: listen to the song and let us know if there's anything mildly white and middle aged about this song). this song, nattergalen is one of the newest things on my ipod. good song for road tripping, good background music to good convo and equally good company and some red vino, good song to listen to alone while reading something interesting about the latest danish trends in furniture...good song all round we thinks. the song can be found on the st germain album, "Saint-Germain des Prés Café 4: The Finest Electro-Jazz Compilation". cool beans, listen and love.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edJaYhEUPCM

boy meets girl: the narrative on "nice"

she said: we kiss, we drink red wine, we kiss and then we kiss some more

he said: and i like your kissing, it's nice

{soundtrack in his head}::

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nTFjVm9sTQ

my standard 3 teacher, mrs leon, always objected to the use of the adjective "nice". from a very early age we are taught to use more colorful language to describe the feeling of niceness, in that lesson we are perhaps unwittingly un-taught to see and appreciate things we enjoy, merely because they are nice. there has to be more, they say. sad. i think "nice" is a good starting point, long live "nice", its so underrated.

narrative: boy meets girl

he said: relax

she said: i'm ready to burst M@#cker%^$

he thought: strange, i like kissing that potty mouth

{soundtrack to the narrative}:

last number lover's song: melancholy

memory tapes have this tendency to reveal themselves to me in the most stunning contradictions...on the one hand, i love their various and many collaboration projects but on the other and perhaps more fundamental hand, their standalone stuff is always hard to swallow for this limpopo native. too prissy, too clingy and clangy, too too something. that aside, "watching the waves" (song by Taken by trees, this is the memory tapes version, the better version) is so many things, so many feelings, i listen to it and instantly feel like i should be missing someone or something terribly. and perhaps i do, i do. this is a great song, great in all the rounded up ways of all great love song traditions...err...errr...i really love this song, so soft, makes me feel alles:

download:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?lz2tlgfioi4

checkout the web page of taken by trees: http://www.takenbytrees.com

winter's love

the best advice i received on this delicate matter, "have tons of fun. be more crazy with her. crazy is good!". on balance not a bad winter so far.



ps: i really loved the animation in this video, it somehow fits the song perfectly. i like it when things fit like that, so perfectly.

what did he say?

ramona gonzalez aka nite jewel is the latest installment of this breezy bedroom indie pop that we've found ourselves getting into. alles from neon indian, reverie sound revue and yes, even air france. all of this music has one thing in common, we thinks, we not sure what that is, we'll get back to you on that... what we do know is that this musiek manages to successfully negotiate that often very fine line between cheesy and and and...errr....FEEL GOOD. we encountered nite jewel off a very cool site for all things musically hip: href="http://www.humanearmusic.com/artists/nite-jewel">

there's an album, "Good Evening" almost impossible to get anywhere other than on the net (and the cape tonean store we got it from). the song "What did he say" reminds me of her, only because she claimed it so viciously as her own....story story.... (note to her: send me that link to your blog). anyway very cool song.

an anniversary away

she likes run-on sentences, and yes, so do i.

i think she would like this, i already do.

credit crisis cool, lofi indie pop

easy on the ears, cheezey, poppy with some street-like cred.

i think she'd learn the words and sing-along

i think you'd like it too:

of swines and flu

make sure you have adequate protection, swine flu cometh

to whom it may concern

no-one writes letters anymore, and that is a shame. letters are by far the best gift anyone can receive. the letter below remained unsent - which is very sad - until recently. the said couple were divorced, and he had just heard that she was about to re-marry. the two of them had known one another since they were 15. upon hearing of her engagement he wrote to her what seemed like a goodbye letter. true story, i swear. there's a program on tv chronicling the best love stories and the narratives behind them. even the most hardened cynics amongst us were moved by the missive below.




dear so and so

i write this letter with both hope and hesitation. hope, that it will be recieved well and will find you well, hesitation, knowing that i attempt to reconnect when we have suffered the most severe of discconects over the last while. i rue the time we've lost, all those unspoken words, having not written to you for so long - too long. i felt slightly embarrassed this morning as i began to write this. the truth is i didn't know whether i was ready to try and negotiate these many nuances or examine these boundaries of all of this newness and surrounds.

i'm different from you in that I am never able to really forget someone. Their memory stays with me and the remembering, eventually, just stops being such a nuisance. It reminds me of one of my favorite James Baldwin quotes from "Giovanni's Room". A good book, if you ever have the chance to read it. It goes:

"Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare."

in the above sense, and perhaps embarrassingly so, in all senses, i am still mad for you. when I heard you were getting married, I once again became plagued, by a strange and perhaps cursed sense of trepidation. My heart broke. I knew that the long awaited end was now putting itself into proper effect. In this world we barley began let alone ended buffer buffer stream stream

all my love and then some,

yours

heads up: ebony bones

her heavily south london accent aside, ebony bones is arguably the biggest find we made last year, at least as far the london music set goes. she bursts with energy, reminding me of a 1000 versions of my four year old niece and her barney videos (she GOES BUCKWILD AT "i love you..."...but that IS another story entirely). ebony performs and performs, and she is hectic about it. in fact at first glance, first sample, she can overwhelm even the most dedicated of hippies. but once you modulate the kollorful propaganda she seems to so carefully push-sell and you settle her sound into the much kooler form of regard it really is, then you'll see her for what she is: genius....
las number-girl ebony bones gave a killah performance extraordinaire at the annual wicker park summer fest. kolorrrr and hype and all things dope rolled into one performance. but the dooby, dazed americana crowd meandered in and out of mild curiosity and disregard for the better part of her concert. none of that fazed her however, she belted it and belted it some more. check out the vid below and get addicted. speaking of wicker, we doing some nice research on the major cities' summer fests, it was my first time at wicker last year (2007), plenty of photos and videos and etc. btw barack gave one his bestest speeches here...


(source:guardian.co.uk)