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.