Have You Been Searching For My Books? Now The Stress Is Over!

MIXED EXPRESSIONS: SOUTH WEST COLLABO?

AT THE BIG BOSS "60TH", S-W GOVS EXPRESS THEIR UNITY
(OR UNIFORMITY) IN DIVERSE POSES
... A METAPHOR FOR THE FUTURE?

BRAND SELLING NEW BRAND TO BRANDS

Foremost broadcaster and ace master of ceremonies, Prince Bisi Olatilo is trying on a new cap - as publisher of a weekly all-gloss high-flying general interest magazine. It's called, cryptically, BOS International.

Of course, BOS stands for Bisi Olatilo Show (in confident salute to the popularity of his long-running weekly TV show - (in its 14th year?)

Well, the news is Uncle B is the chief brand marketer, leader writer and driving spirit behind the rich and colourful magazine...now in its 13th edition, this week!!!

Here, the main BOS was caught at a main event recently making sure that start couple, Joke Silva and Olu Jacobs did miss the good pleasure of hugging a copy of the mag...Way to go Big Bros... I dey your back.

What sort of Gov is this man?

Courtesy SUNDAY PUNCH of April 15, 2012 (page 24)

Just flipping through Punch newspaper today, I saw this picture (bove). Gov. Ibikunle Amosun was captured welcoming some health professionals to his office, and what was he wearing? A see-through kaftan similar to those worn at serious weekend "owambe" parties across Yorubaland.

I mean the "revered" special group "fondly" called "igbadun Masters".

You can clearly see his underwear (singlet) leering... Is that a fashion statement?

Not a laughing matter!

What sort of message is he portraying?

Watching Tade Ogidan's ''Family On Fire'' on Easter Monday - Part 2

As I was ‘’saying’’ …

The once peaceful and loving family erupts in chaos when Kunle shamelessly arrives to claim his ‘goods’ and the older brothers are playing hard-ball. Even when he brazenly spews out threats and gun, the beleaguered mother still lovingly longs for her adorable son to calm down and forgive his siblings. But the scenario is now complicated for the wily Billy-goat, Moyo has absconded with the drugs.

As Moyo bumbles around London city trying to find a buyer, Kunle is under immense pressure from the original owner of the cocaine, Boss (Segun Arinze) and in turn has become a thorn in the flesh of his two brothers and their wives. Meanwhile, Moyo’s naiveté is exposed when he sells the first tranche of cocaine at a ridiculous 20,000 pound sterling to a gang of roughneck Jamaican drug dealers. When they trace Moyo home so as to retrieve their money and confiscate the rest of the stuff, Moyo concocts a sneaky escape leaving the old woman at the mercy of the Jamaican killers.

The old woman dies under crazy ‘’interrogation techniques’’, and the killers leave in disappointment, with blood and carnage trailing their deadly footsteps. By now, the word on the streets portends doom for Kunle… cheap coke on the streets... and the real owners are bleeding. We are soon treated to grand gangsterish mayhem as homes and people are attacked, shot, threatened, maimed and such gory upheavals in clear digital details.

Meanwhile, oblivious to the catastrophe he has left behind; Moyo paints the city in brilliant obscenely prodigal red. He rollicks with women, quaffing wines, rolling in stretched limousine…all the works. The new ‘’sheik’’ is in town!

             

But nothing goes on forever. The fast-paced conclusion rapidly throws up calamities in confetti style: Boss goes wild, kills Kunle’s white girlfriend, Sarah; tortures Femi, Wale and Kunle in a crazed dash to locate his drugs…. One of his main goons (Simi Opeolu) torments and murders Femi’s ebullient wife (Sola Sobowale); Moyo loses the plot completely and rollicks into the hands of the British police who clamps him into jail…and in a scene reminiscent of the dash and flash of Hugh Jackman or Keanu Reeves' cliff-hanger wrap-ups, the three brothers combine to turn the tables on the mafia goons as they all, in a Mexican stand-off crescendo, walk into the waiting arms of the encircling police force.

The last scene shows the considerable influence of the producer/director in massing fleet of police cars, uniformed officers, surveillance helicopter, and the munitions to create a thundering climax.

Phew, the flick is as good as, if not better, than any thriller from this side of the world.

OFF THE CUFF… MY OBSERVATION

I’m reluctant to write a critique of “Family on Fire” because, to be fair and serious-minded, one will need more than one viewing to do justice to the production.

However, I will like to make few observations. Short of boring you, I need to reiterate, that the essential message of the flick is the ‘’grabber’’ for me. Message: Be very careful of how you are training your child today…so that he or she does not become the petrol-bomb that will be used to set your home, heart and reputation on fire, in years to come. That showering love on a child is not by itself an error, but must not be an excuse for lack of discipline, parental care and guide, mentoring processes and a listening ear.

The work itself uses sundry techniques to announce its core values: the sound direction is top-grade, producing noiseless sound that is staggeringly clean and clear (what you will find at Silverbird Galleria’s top-of-the-bill American feature film parade). The flexibility, blend, diversity and appropriateness of several musical forms and soundtracks deployed in the thriller add to the pace and pulse of the movie.

The pictures are fairly sharp and well adjusted for big screen. Subtitling is unusually correct and apt. Most Yoruba films I watch have atrocious translations of Yoruba to English. However, this film is mum in certain crucial portions when the Jamaican gang members are spitting their patois (unlike the attempt to clarify, for the viewer, the mafia Boss’s curses and lingo). Or when the Indian couple, adjourning Femi’s house, appears to be speaking vernacular. We do not believe that’s a comic interjection. And also, English flourishes as adlibs in the film extensively, but the producers ignore to switch the subs to Yoruba (for the benefit single language speakers).

The sporadic switches (sometimes antithetic) between different scenes happening simultaneously but having compelling linkages to each other, creates a significant sense of urgency, panic, rush of activities …which ultimately gives the film a racy, all-action, heart-pumping ambience fitting for a fine modern thriller.

It is in order (and as usual for Tade Ogidan) that some fresh faces are introduced. It is not that the famed acts like Fosudo, Balogun, Sobowale, Arinze, etc do not deliver their roles well in ‘’Family on Fire’’… no, they provide accomplished performances, especially Fosudo and Balogun. However, the performances of little known Ologbosere and Olusanya, including the actor that plays his wife acquit, themselves creditably, thereby burnishing the overall good conduct of the entire cast. Freshness is implied, and instilled.

You see, acting well is not just about your movement or delivery of lines…extra effort in clear voicing of your dialogue; effortless mannerisms peculiar to a character; apparent flexibility in handling little roles in a big way…work well on keen eyes, and give the film an air of ‘’normality’’.

When characters in a film appear like people you know somewhere around your neighbourhood, you realize that hundreds of hours of quality time have been invested in producing, directing and editing life’s most precious achievement: life imitating life so effortlessly.

\

LAST LINE…

That is what I saw on the first night of watching Tade Ogidan’s “Family On Fire” that Easter Monday…  and I recommend it to everyone who cares about the future of our children (our nation); who agonizes over the current malaise bedeviling our value systems and growth indices; who is desirous of ways to arrest the drift and not fold hands in irresponsible frustration… watch and re-watch…and get more copies to give others… so that more and more families will miss the fire next time.

Watching Tade Ogidan's ''Family On Fire'' on Easter Monday



MAMA (LANRE HASSAN)




CURTAIN CALL AT THE LONDON PREMIERE IN OCT, 2011




TADE WITH SSP, FILM MAKER, KINGSLEY OGORO,
MUSICIAN & UNILAG DON, TUNLI SOTIMINRIN & KSB




TADE WITH MIC) RAMSEY NOEAH,
SIMI OPEOLU, KUNLE AFOLAYAN & FOSUDO



Yesterday, (Easter Monday, April 9, 2012) I was at the premiere of my friend, Tade Ogidan's Lagos World Premiere (whatever that means) of his latest filmic experience. He calls it ''Family on Fire''. Oh my, you have never seen a family combust like this!!

Today is not for a review of the event's organisation and pre-screening activities...and there’s so much to chastise and admonish in that area...and of course, there are great attempts that deserve praise and encouragement.

But my attention is on the ''preachment'' of the film. A message that sits snugly in my heart. The producers and promoters of the film (which includes the hyper-acting harridan, Sola Sobowale, who was the night's Sergeant Major dressed in what Tade described as her 'kitchen attire') want us to review how we treat our children. The values we share with them; the quality of love and attention we give them in their formative years....and even as they grow and mature.

Let me risk a rapid summary: Three brothers, Femi (Sola Fosudo), Wale (a good new face, Yinka Olusanya) and Kunle (Saheed Balogun) live in London. Kunle, a swashbuckling man-about-town suggests that their mum (effervescent Lanre Hassan) be flown in from Nigeria to enjoy the rest her wintering life in UK. The other brothers are stunned at Kunle’s good thinking, but the chap’s motive is sinister: he wants to use his mum as a noncommissioned drug courier.

By a mix-stroke of fortune and smooth-talk, Kunle convinces star passenger, Kenny St. Brown, the gospel pop act who plays herself, to escort his mum with the undisclosed contraband! One of the most suspenseful is watching KSB and the old woman being “trolleyed” into an investigation room by a suspicious British immigration official.

You are alternately thrilled and impassioned when the unsuspectingly cantankerous KSB almost thrusts the poor old woman into life imprisonment, before a fire alarm prompts some sort of escape. To jump ahead: we find out later that Kunle’s boss, a notorious baron, half-Portuguese, half-Guyanese of some sorts, eerily portrayed by Segun Arinze (undisputable Bad-man top-gun of Nigerian movies) is actually the mastermind of the fire-alarm ruse.

In any case, Mum gets to Femi’s home safely and Kunle is stuck in Lagos as a result of the famed volcanic eruption dust that makes flying across the Mediterranean impossible. Contraband is exposed amidst staggering amazement. The family’s fire has been stoked.

Spurning good counsel to get rid of the cocaine along with its owner, Kunle, and resume their normal life, the enraged Femi elects to punish Kunle by seizing the hot stuff! He hides the drugs, but he does not escape the prying eyes of a young relative Femi has brought to London to study, Moyo (Felix Ologbosere, a natty new face Tade has, as usual, extracted for glory)….

As they say in Idumota/Onitsha filmesque: Watch out for Part 2

Of Remi Tinubu, Joko Oni & Opral Benson: Spot the Difference... in the Battle of the Ages



STILL 'TOGETHER' AT 77+, BEAUTY
SPECIALIST, CHIEF OPRAL BENSON



LAGOS SOCIALITE, MRS. JOKO ONI,
 STILL SOLDERING ON AT 60+



SEN. REMI TINUBU...CALLING THE SHOTS AT 50+


Exactly what do these celebrity women have in common? The three pix were taken at the noon carnival held last Thursday, Marrch 29, 2012 at the Teslim Ba;ogun Stadium.

But what sort of man holds a birthday party at a stadium? Man of the people? Money miss road? Or a profound political strategist?

I really don't know what to call the event than "public celebration"  of Ashiwaju Bola Tinubu's 60th.

I was just musing on how the different women are dealing with the sure but steady encoachment of the ageing process.

Remi is in her 50's, Joko wades through her 60's and Opral is breasting the 70's tape...how are they faring with the almighty punisher of beauty, Mr. TIME? Look closely and see if you can spot the tricks of the trades....who is getting it right...and who needs to give up the struggle?

But whatever Time says, the three 'damsels' sure know how to garb up... in sensational cuts and air-defying gears.

What I Like About Aregbesola; And...Well... Others Don't



OGBENI AREGBESOLA AT TINUBU'S
60TH BD CARNIVAL ON MARCH 29

 Oh, I like Rauf Aregbesola as a person; but I dislike his beard.

I love his spartan figure (here, body frame indicates discipline and frugality, a sadly diminishing element in Nigerian public servants); but abhor his sartorial jauntiness (in order words, little shame to his dress sense).

As in this picture, he takes his public perception and aspiration so seriously that he is unafraid to ruffle feathers with his earthy brown flag of "Omoluabi" odyssey; while those who can't stand him find it difficult to denigrate his concepts of "Omoluabi", they see only executive antagonism laced with secessionist hallucinations in all these blood-lusting exertions.

To many admirers, getting close to him exposes you to his intellectual fecundity and ebullient passion to be consciously relevant in changing his environment; but to "the others" he is an uncouth demagogue (and that word is pronounced with a certain slant of the head indicating barely containable disgust and derision).

Aregbe comes across as an articulate mass mobilizer with a strong drive to win the trust and hearts of his people, galvanizing them to levels they hitherto had resigned themselves were unattainable; not so, his other "friends" would say - the man is just a smart-alec whose seeming good-intentions are carefully constructed schemes to siphon Osun's meagre funds to the Overlord in Lagos.

In close contact, Aregbe leaves an impression of a man in a hurry to challenge rooted paradigms; a cerebral conversationalist who parades his arguments and thoughts in dialectal robustness and consummate urgency; yet to others he panders to an image of a verbal wrestler, a rustic enforcer who seems unable to recognize occasions when not to plunder your capital.

To those who are unafraid of dueling wits and logic with Aregbe, they encounter a brilliant thinker who is compelled by the propensity of his own intelligence to submit and find some sort of accommodation with contesting and prevailing arguments and positions; but his traducers see a hubris-driven, ego-suffused intellectual pretender-marxist who in calmer climes should be in no greater position than an organizing secretary to a farmer’s party.

Obviously, you know where I stand on this enigma, but where do you stand?


FLASH: More 'photo-comments' on Bola Ahmed Tinubu's multi-layered spectacle of  a birthday celebration between Wednesday and Friday last week.

'FOOTPRINTS' FOR UNILAG'S PROF. DURO ONI

...PRESENTING MY BOOK (FOOTPRINTS) TO PROF. DURO ONI (r)
DEAN OF THE FACULTY OF ATS & HUMANITIES, UNILAG

On Tuesday, April 3, 2012, I was at the offices of the Dean of Faculty of Arts, Prof. Duro Oni where 25 copies of my book on Nigerian Entertainment, “Footprints” were formally presented to the University.

An elated Prof. Oni was effusive in his praise of our token gesture, and promised to send some of the copies to departments of Creative Arts, Mass Communications and other relevant organs, including the prestigious University Library.

The don also presented my wife and I with copies of the Faculty’s Prospectus.

 It was very nice seeing Prof. Duro Oni again. And as usual, he was inspiring in his disarming humility.

The book, "Footprints: Interventions in Nigerian Entertainment" launched late last year was written by Femi Akintunde-Johnson, multiple award-winning journalist and ex-industry 'policeman'.

A VOICE TOUCHED BY THE DIVINE

EBENEZER OBEY-FABIYI

(Ode to the Commander)

As the evergreen commander of post-independent modern music marks his 70^th birthday anniversary this week, I am inspired to honour him, salute his untiring prolificity and his matchless humility…

In January 2000, this (below) is what I wrote about the moody groovy mooosic man of Yaba… as a frontline member of people who made significant contributions to Nigerian music in the then outgoing millennium…

‘’EBENEZER OLASUPO OBEY-FABIYI

It took his parents few years to notice traces of musical robustness in him after his birth 57 years ago (he was 58 in 2000). Obey-Fabiyi however, had to wait 16 years to start what has turned out to be a most illustrious career.

  He toiled with the "rave-of-the-moment" Lagos bands of Ade Ade, Akibo Salvage and Fatai Rolling Dollars between 1958 and 1963.

  Right after leaving Rolling Dollars and founding his own International Brothers Band, Obey released a delightful debut, Ewa Wo Ohun Oju Ri.

  From a repertoire in excess of 100 compositions, Nigerians of the 20th century have been titillated by the sonorous philosophy and lingering didacticism of this Idogo, Ogun State born maestro. A check list: Board Members, Ketekete, Happy Birthday To You, Awon Ika Eniyan, Laise Lairo, Iwo Eni To Nsebi, Abanije Eniyan and so on.

  As this century winds up with Obey-Fabiyi devoting his incredible talent to the ministry of God, we salute this astute businessman, devoted father and creator of Miliki music.’’  

Ten years after, in March 2010 (in a multiple article in the Guardian on Sunday – “Our Music Is Dying Slowly, And Still Smiling”), I splashed these words…in my argument to underscore why people like Obey may never die musically…

‘’…So, when such musicians refuse to “die”, it is simply because they can reposition, reinvent and revitalize their craft and style on a platform that is alive, evolutionary and controllable by them: the band. Talent and band management can go a long way to make you live long beyond the immediacy of your ‘hit’ music.

 … Another is Commander Ebenezer Obey, who along with Sunny Ade, clutched the Nigerian musical world by the jugular, for two decades. Though some critics lampooned him (Obey) for returning to secular music long after he abandoned it for the Lord's vineyard, I think they are myopic. His musical antecedents had illustrated that the best of his music were embellished in biblical imagery. He sang God before he 'met' God. Even Paul, the greatest of the Apostles, recognized that a minister of God must not be a burden to his church. Paul returned to his tent-making job even after planting several parishes. His credo: He who does not work should not eat. Running a music band is his work. He can return to it, not only to consolidate his position as a composer of extraordinary talent, but as a successful manager of men and music. Except it is proven that he exalts men over God, the ex-Miliki man is justified to return to music, albeit with distinct modifications, to reflect his now pristine status….

(Those two quotes are part of my recently published book, ‘Footprints: Interventions in Nigerian Entertainment’).

And now this: Today, I join millions of appreciative people in doing ‘gafara’ on behalf of the undisputable sage of Nigerian music; the genuflector of the uninitiated; the stand-alone ‘araba’ that breathes sweetness into the most solitary homes… that his mouth will not miss the sap of heaven…that his name and voice, by the grace of ‘Olodumare’, will continue to spread joy and gladness.

To do what he has done…what he is doing…and what he can do…is simply unsurpassable. Live well and live long Commander Ebenezer Olasupo Obey-Fabiyi.

Femi Akintunde-Johnson, FAJ

April 2, 2012