This movie looks sensationally thrilling, like a South African Sixth Sense, but with none of the US cheesiliciousness. Can’t WAIT to watch it. More here.
Thanks to CTG reader Angela in Germany who sent me this, the trailer for Black Butterflies, the movie about South African poet legend Ingrid Jonker, described by some as ‘South Africa’s Sylvia Plath’, and in Nelson Mandela’s own words:
“She was both a poet and a South African. She was both an Afrikaner and an African.
She was both an artist and a human being. In the midst of despair, she celebrated hope. Confronted by death, she asserted the beauty of life.”
Looks like a tear jerker but definitely one to watch. The movie itself is set in Cape Town and features lots of local scenes you will recognise. Jonker is an SA legend – go read her work if you don’t know it. She published her first collection of poems before she was 13. Child prodigy stuff 2 the max.
Long Street from Fifth Corporation on Vimeo.
If you live in the inner city, you hit Long Street from time to time. Some of CTG’s fav shops are there (Mungo & Jemima, WAG, Merchants on Long, Doktor and Missus) and there are some great places to go for coffee and eats (Yours Truly). I loved this short film that interviews some of the people who work on Long and just gives you a glimpse of the vibe here on Long. It’s also made beautifully. Plus I <3 Goldfrapp. Video was made by @GrahamAndRobert, whom I quite enjoy following on twitter. He also writes this blog. Enjoy!
INFLUENCERS TRAILER from R+I creative on Vimeo.
“INFLUENCERS is a short documentary that explores what it means to be an influencer and how trends and creativity become contagious today in music, fashion and entertainment.”
This looks pretty interesting. We at CTG enjoy watching how ideas spread. We like rickrolling people and ‘calling it work’. We like Lady Gaga. We like artists who, like this doccie states, can take an idea that is previously inaccessible and bring it to the mainstream in such a way that people accept it. That is influence, and that is art.
We feel like art used to be about the audience observing it (via Renaissance patron pals), and then it became about the artists making the art (via Picasso being a self-absorbed womanising douche), but now it’s like, the audience and the artist together create the art (via it being Friday, and us being mildly hungover, hence emo, and deep).
Thanks Mike!
courtesy of mark forrester. Love the angelic sound track!
Okay maybe I shouldn’t have gone to see this movie while running on an 8-hour sleep deficit but it seemed to be just the thing for Sunday afternoon. But things are not always as they seem.
I liked the book Eat, Pray, Love. The destinations were exotic, the descriptions were detailed, you felt like you were eating the pasta and getting fat along with the author without having to actually quit your job and leave your marriage (f*ck that – mission). It was a nice little detour, but it wasn’t the greatest story ever. In fact, it’s quite a cliche of a story, the main variation on the tale is that the person travelling is 45, not 19.
So Eat, Pray, Love was basically a really long gap-year travel article, peppered with emotional lightbulb moments and buzzwords like ‘Ashram’. It was sweet. It was nice. It was fine.
And then they went and made it into a movie.
I think it’s fair to say that travel articles do not translate into movies well. Not even the MASTER of travel hilarity, Bill Bryson, has had any of his books made into movies. That should have been a red flag for the producers, but no.
Look, making a movie is hard. Proper works of fiction with well-planned story arcs tend to fail at the best of times (examples include The Time Traveller’s Wife, or Atonement, or even American-goddamn-Psycho – look how they butchered that). So how they thought this distended travel article would make an interesting movie is beyond me.
If you pushed me up against a wall, held a knife to my guts and threatened to remove my ovaries unless I listed some highlights, I’d probably say the following:
- I liked it when Julia Roberts’ character threw a fit about how she ‘feels nothing anymore’ and then her publisher says ‘You’re acting like a child suck it up like the rest of us and get on with your life’ (she’s right)
- I liked the hot young guy Julia Roberts’ character hooks up with post her divorce, and I liked the part where she fell off the bed in the middle of the night and lies sobbing on the floor like a teenager (made me feel better about crying when I lost my parking ticket the other day, if this is how the average 45-year old woman behaves)
- I really really liked the part where it said ‘The End’.
I could go into detail but the truth is I slept through much of the movie, and then let out a wail when, upon waking, it still wasn’t over. I nudged PD and said ‘Priscilllllllaaaaaaaaa….” And she nudged me back and said “It’s nearly finished” and I curled back into a ball until the credits rolled.
Do yourself a favour and take the time you’d spend watching this movie and donate it to a charity that needs it. Remember, you will never get those 2 hours back.
Did anybody out there enjoy this movie? Did I miss something?
Watched the A-team last night. Here’s what I know for sure:
1. That black dude with PITY and FOOL tattooed on his knuckles was quite cool, but a bit emo. I don’t like my cool big black dudes to be emo. Did anyone else find him emo? Like that vibe where he gets freed and then he trims his hair and there’s this deep moment where we see he hasn’t given himself a mohawk again? He’s just given himself a normal trim? Like, tragedy! I’m not sure that scene actually happened since I did drift in and out of sleep. But that was the vibe.. and it was emo..
2. Sharlto Copley was really funny. Especially when he sang ‘You spin me right round baby right round’ while clinging to the helicopter blades. Also loved all his crazy faces. He was a great crazy guy. You just look at him and you laugh. And then when he’s not on screen you think, what is going on in this movie? Who are these people? Why do they keep saying something about a plan coming together?
3. Bradley Cooper is HOT. More please.
Guys that movie was really confusing. I know it was meant to touch me somewhere deep, to evoke some kind of nostalgia, or something, but I also realised while watching it that even though I THOUGHT I’d watched A-team when I was younger, I clearly hadn’t because I didn’t know who anyone was or what was going on.
Anybody else seen A-team? Anyone else have that kind of revelation? Anybody else feel confused? Going to have to watch Inception just to feel a little less confused.
Please enjoy these deleted scenes from Zoolander that feature Alexander Skarsgaard (CTG’s number 1, and only, perpetual celebrity crush – might be because we have the same name). Hi-LArious! Thanks to swartperd for sharing this!
The Little Mermaid was one of CTG’s favourite movies from approximately 1989 – 1993. That’s a lot of begging my mom to make me a mermaid tail / forcing my friends to ‘play Little Mermaid in the pool’ / having a ‘mermaid party’ and then insist that I be the only mermaid and that everyone else dress as crabs or fish / accusing my tomboy pal of ‘being mean’ when he refused to believe what I told him about how I was ‘actually a mermaid’ and was ‘pretending to be human so my parents don’t get angry’…
One can only imagine that this movie had a huge role in shaping the CTG consciousness. This is an ‘alternative interpretation’ of the messages within The Little Mermaid, which I don’t really have a problem with. It’s good to know the timeless values of manipulating your friends, running away from your parents, talking to men like babies, hoarding and stealing, changing your appearance to ‘look prettier’.. etc are relevant and accessible even without the broadway song-and-dance production (although that’s a part we do very much enjoy).
This is fun and all, but more videos might be tedious. So here’s a handy summary of some of the classic super girlpower messages you’ll come across in the ‘mainstream storytelling media’ from the last couple of centuries (yeah we could blame Disney but they didn’t even make the stories up… think that was that Anderson bro. And those Grimm bros.) :
Looks like 'Cat' got a little out of hand...
I think we all know what really happened with this cake, because we’ve all been there. Been where?
“It’s my best friend’s birthday. What ever shall I get her? Oh I KNOW, baking is quite in right now. I will bake her a cake. I will bake her THE BEST CAKE THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN! I AM GOING TO MAKE HER A LIFE-SIZE REPLICA OF HER FAVOURITE CHARACTER IN HER FAVOURITE MOVIE, BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S! I AM GOING TO BE THE BEST BEST FRIEND THAT HAS EVER EXISTED EVER!”
Somewhere around 2am the night before the birthday…
“FUCK THIS BAKING SHIZ. I’m going to pretend I made it like this on purpose. She better f-ing appreciate it.”
******Macarons FTW y’all********
