Father Geek here, taking a brief break from the SXSW Film & Music Festival and its concurrent Interactive Conference.

We (several AICN staffers) attended a couple of uber cool panels yesterday; one featured Dennis Hopper and Cheech Marin while the other was centered around Peter Bogdanovich. I also managed to catch screenings of a few incredible flicks, the best of which so far has been Bogdanovich's new THE CAT'S MEOW set in the California of the mid-20's and shot off the Greek Coast and in Germany. We also saw Roman Coppela's debut feature film, a letter-perfect 60's retro Sci-fi flick (think 10th Victim, Modesty Blaise, Barbarella, and Danger Diabolik), the quite delightful CQ with the Director attending, as well as the disturbing doco CYBERMAN, and the exploitation overdose CITIZEN TOXIE, a screening held at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema with Troma head Lloyd Kaufman and some of the cast attending. In a surprize move Kaufman called Harry Knowles to the stage, commenting as he did that he had heard Harry had never finished college. He then, with Toxie's aid, presented AICN's Headgeek with a diploma from Troma Junior College. A tearful and very shaken Harry thanked his loyal worldwide readership among others for helping to make a dream come true as his proud Father Geek looked on from the 5th row of the packed audience. I also witnessed about 12 competition shorts late last night that Harry and Chris Gore were judging for the festival, as well as working in brief one-on-one conversations with the great legendary Doco film maker Albert Maysles and indie promoter The Dude. Managed to get Bogdanovich to sign my LAST PICTURE SHOW one-sheet too.

Well, that's enough of me, here's Dr. SOTHA and Rigobert Song with the regular weekending column...

DR.SOTHA here not only to introduce another Africa-AICN, but also to announce the launch of ‘chemical anomaly’. This potent liquid generator allows fleas to absorb medicinal chemicals and excrete them into pets’ snouts, which in turn prevents these pets from contracting radiation colds. I have single-handedly saved thousands of cats and dogs living in the South-Central Congo from suffering painful deaths. The accolades will inevitably soon begin to pour in.

To order a shipment of liquid generator fleas send your names and psychological profiles to Nurse Hollis at Our well-equipted and plush Capetown Experimental Labs...

Thank you for caring…

SOUTH AFRICA

* Will Smith has loved taking his new movie ALI to Africa, but the actor will never play former South African leader Nelson Mandela on film. Mandela was the guest of honor at the Muhammad Ali biopic's South African premiere amid reports Hollywood is planning a movie about the life of the 83-year-old political activist. Smith is an obvious candidate for the role, but despite his Oscar-nominated role as Ali, the actor insists he is not prepared to play Mandela on the big screen. He says, "The level of pressure and the strain it puts on your life and your family to portray an icon - it's one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences. It's something you do once." (Thanks to Pedro at www.film-fix.com for sending me the story – DR.SOTHA)

* Lumumba has already exceeded the box office figure estimated for its entire run in South Africa, since its release at Cinema Nouveau in Johannesburg and Cape Town last Friday. LUMUMBA is still set for release in other key cities around the country.

When LUMUMBA opened last weekend, it achieved a print average of over R 13 500 for the opening weekend only. This is a major achievement for any film. The very successful and groundbreaking local documentary THE GREAT DANCE achieved an opening weekend print average of just over R 10 000 and went on to set new box office trends for documentaries released theatrically. LUMUMBA's print average for its opening week jumped to just over R 27 000.

The figure achieved for LUMUMBA's second weekend at the SA box office is an increase of 8% on the opening weekend. This fact is yet another major achievement for any film. Most films are expected to drop by at least 30%, when compared to the opening weekend's box office retur! ns. LUMUMBA's print average for its second weekend at the SA box office is just over R 14 500.

This film has now been the #1 film on the art house-circuit for 2 weeks in a row. Other films on circuit at Cinema Nouveau include major international titles such as IRIS, THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE, HEARTS IN ATLANTIS, IGNORANT FAIRIES etc. Director Raoul Peck's LUMUMBA is based on the true story of the newly-independent Democratic Republic of the Congo's first premier in the 50s, Patrice Lumumba. He rose to fame from a job peddling beer to a political icon often compared to other revolutionaries such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.

LUMUMBA's current box office gross for SA stands on just over R 96 000, with two prints on circuit. The film is still set for release at Cinema Nouveau in Durban (April 19) and Pretoria (June 7).

* Irish actor Stuart Townsend’s new film 24 Hours has taught him lots about love and Hollywood - thanks to his two female co-stars Charlize Theron and Courtney Love. Townsend fell in love with Theron, who plays his wife in the movie, on the set, while Love gave him lessons in how to deal with Hollywood. He says, "She introduced me to a side of the business that I hadn't been exposed to before. This was a different experience." And, while he's happy to confirm his romance with Theron, he insists their relationship wasn't just another Hollywood on-set romance. He adds, "We only had two scenes together, but we got to spend three months together making the movie. So our's wasn't a case of us falling in love on screen and transferring that to real life. This way, we know it's for real."

NORTH AFRICA

* Put your hands together for Rigobert Song:

Hello readers. I have put this review up before, but I watched it again this week, and feel it deserves all the attention and accolades it can get. This is Black Orpheus for the 21st Century set in a vibrant Africa. Remember to email me at rigobertsong@hotmail.com

Karmen Geï

Directed by Joseph Gaï Ramaka 82 minutes In French and Wolof with English subtitles

Director Joseph Gaï Ramaka writes: "Carmen is a myth but what does Carmen represent today? Where do Carmen's love and freedom stand at the onset of the 21st Century? Therein lies my film's intent, a black Carmen, plunged in the magical and chaotic urbanity of an African city." Prosper Merimée's novella, adapted in Bizet's celebrated opera, has already received 52 film interpretations, most notably the all black Carmen Jones, starring Dorothy Dandridge, and, more recently, Carlos Saura's flamenco Carmen and Jean-Luc Godard's B-movie version Pré Nom Carmen.

Yet Karmen Geï is the first African Carmen and, arguably, the first African filmed "musical." Accordingly, Gaï Ramaka has completely replaced Bizet's score and the usual staging with indigenous Senegalese music and choreography: Doudou N'Diaye Rose's sabar drummers, Julien Jouga's choir, El Hadj Ndiaye's songs and Yandé Coudou Sène's prophetic voice. Saxophonist David Murray's contemporary jazz score runs like a thread of unfulfilled desire through the film. Karmen Geï may convince viewers that this African ambience is what the Carmen legend, perhaps leading back through Andalusia to its African roots, has been waiting for all these years.

Like every Carmen, Karmen Geï is about the conflict between infinite desire for freedom and the laws, conventions, languages, the human limitations which constrain that desire. Since this is an African Carmen, freedom necessarily has a political dimension. The opening scene is set in a women's prison on Goree Island, site of the notorious slave castle. Karmen and the women in the prison use dance and music as a weapon of resistance against dehumanizing regimentation as has so often been the case throughout the African Diaspora. Karmen's outrageously provocative performance seduces Angelique, the warden, the symbol of authority, inverting the power relationships within the prison. Karmen literally transforms prison life into a musical production number celebrating the triumph of her sexuality and that of the other women. Karmen is called, "She who wreaks havoc," signifying that she is both a liberator and a destroyer of every order.

Karmen challenges not just the formal legal system but the conventional society it supports. In the second major scene, she disrupts the wedding of a policeman, Corporal Lamine, leaving the marriage unconsummated and making a mockery of the institution. In specific, she interrupts the traditional praise singer to denounce the assembled established social order he is flattering: "I say you are evil…You have swallowed up the country." Karmen is irresistible; in one night Lamine becomes a prisoner and then, with Karmen's help, a fugitive and member of her smugglers ring. He says he has "lost my shadow," his conventional identity as policeman and husband; his personal boundaries have collapsed in front of Karmen's promise of infinite freedom. +

Yet Karmen's libido cannot be contained within the limits of a conventional heterosexuality. In one of Gaï Ramaka's boldest strokes, he makes Karmen bisexual. Her great love turns out to be Angelique, the prison warden. But it is a "sad love" because Angelique realizes she cannot hold onto Karmen because what makes her so free also makes her unattainable. In fact, unlike the possessive Lamine, Angelique allows Karmen to leave prison thus losing her. In the end, Angelique commits suicide by walking into a moonlit sea, something as boundless, inviting and ultimately enveloping as Karmen herself. The spirit of the sea, Kumba Kastle, runs through the film like a blues riff; the characters perch on craggy islets of identity, their lives forever in danger of being swallowed up in the formless immensity of the ocean.

Karmen's desire may be infinite but her life is finite. Sometimes when she dances it is almost as if she were defying her own body's gravity and shape. During a card game, she has a premonition of her death, the vision of an over-exposed world in white face. The two most important men in her life, the singer, Massigi, and the lighthouse keeper, Samba, can not console her for the loss of Angelique. After a mysterious encounter with his wife, Karmen realizes she can never commit herself to Lamine and commands him to return to his marriage and ordinary life. But Lamine's jealousy overwhelms him; if he cannot possess Karmen's freedom he will destroy it. He stalks Karmen; she does not resist her fate; but taunts him, speaking in aphorisms, as befits a force of nature: "Love is a rebellious bird, no one can tame…Love is a vagabond child who knows no laws." In the end, perhaps, it is not Lamine but life itself that is too small for Karmen.

The film ends as it began with a performance - but this time Karmen is absent. Earlier in the film we encountered a blind woman who came down to the beach each day to sing to the sea; now she sings of Karmen's death before a concert audience, an audience of which the film viewer is in fact a part. Karmen is being murdered in the flies over the stage while we listen to her life re-enacted below. Perhaps Karmen was too expansive to remain among us in any form but art, ultimately returning to where she has always existed - legend and imagination.

This is what others had to say:

"The effect is perhaps most readily comparable to Black Orpheus … Karmen Geï transcends tourist exoticism thanks to star GaÏ's formidable presence - here is the rare Carmen to possess rather than 'act" a sexual magnetism that's more femme vivre than fatale."—Variety

"Weaves a spell … The music transforms the story into something free and graceful." -- Libération

* Prominent figures of Afro-American cinema such as Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep), Billy Woodberry (Bless Their Little Hearts) and Haile Gerima (Bush Mama), and the South American documentary filmmakers Marta Rodriguez (Colombia), Vladimir Carvalho (Brazil) and Mario Handler (Uruguay) are among 50 directors who will be attending the 16th Fribourg International Film Festival from March 10-17. The festival, which is dedicated to films from Latin America, Asia and Africa, has selected 12 films ranging from Nazim Abbasov’s Fellini and Yan Yan Mik’s Ge Ge through Zhanh Qiang’s Se Jie to Ariel Rotter’s Solo Por Hoy for this year’s International Competition lineup. In addition, the Political Press Award has such films in the running as Vladimir Carvalho’s Barra 68, Haolin Shu’s Zheng Zha and Yun Huang’s Jak-Byul. The festival will be opened by the International Competition entry the Moroccan-French co-production Aoud Rih by Daoud Aoulad-Syad.

AFRICAN AMERICAN

* All About the Benjamins starring Mike Epps and Ice Cube, is faring only a bit better than The Time Machine with the critics, but it cost roughly a quarter of the $80 million that DreamWorks shelled out for the sci-fi movie. Gene Seymour in Newsday gives the film its best review: "Granted, its dark-edged crime-caper plot is so formulaic it seems almost ritualized," he writes. "Yet Ice Cube and Mike Epps enact their standard odd-couple tango with such ease and brio, you'd think they'd never seen such movies before. A lot of generic thrillers could profit from their easy-does-it byplay." Robert K. Elder in the Chicago Tribune also concludes that the two stars "have an explosively funny on-screen chemistry." But Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer says that Ice Cube and Epps "made me laugh in Next Friday. They made me squirm here." And Philip Wuntch in the Dallas Morning Newswhile describing the film as "good, sleazy fun that should pay of! f handsomely at the box office," describes one scene that left the audience he saw it with doing a lot of squirming -- one in which Epps yells, "I ain't gonna make that jump! I don't wanna wind up like Christopher Reeve!" (Ouch – DR.SOTHA)

* Sony kicked off the last day of ShoWest with a bang Thursday with the announcement that stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence will re-team with producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay for "Bad Boys 2." Asked how it felt to be able to finally announce the long-anticipated sequel to the 1995 hit "Bad Boys," planned for a summer 2003 release, Columbia Pictures chairman Amy Pascal said: "It feels good. We're very, very excited." Sony also unveiled new trailers for "Spider-Man" and "XXX," an actioner starring Vin Diesel and helmed by "The Fast and the Furious" director Rob Cohen. The studio went on to sponsor a carnival-themed buffet lunch in Las Vegas' Paris hotel featuring attractions and giveaways tied to "Spider-Man," "XXX," "Men in Black 2" and "Stuart Little 2." The trailers and announcements came before Sony's morning screenings of the Adam Sandler comedy "Mr. Deeds," a contemporary retelling of 1936's "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," direc! ted by Frank Capra and starring Gary Cooper. Sandler was on hand to introduce the film in typical wisecracking fashion. "Ladies and gentlemen, what an honor it is for you to be in this room," Sandler said. "I feel happy and satisfied for you. Tell the children when you get home that you were in the same room as Adam Sandler and he's a fucking asshole." (And this guy is in a PT Anderson film. It doesn’t compute – DR.SOTHA)

* Wesley Snipes was left fuming after movie bosses insist he re-shoot scenes for his new prison flick Undisputed. Snipes plays a prison boxer in the movie - due for release in October - who has to take on the reigning World Champion, when he is locked up in the same jail. But Snipes is angry because producers have demanded he return to shoot additional scenes - even though the film has already been met with mass approval by preview audiences. According to Britain's OK! magazine, Miramax want to broaden the movie's appeal to white audiences and make Snipes' character more sympathetic. (Gee, another great decision from the suits. Wish I was as clever as them – DR.SOTHA)

* Tom Arnold has been added to the cast of Warner Bros.' action feature "Cradle to the Grave" for director Andrzej Bartkowiak and producer Joel Silver. Shooting begins this month, with DMX and Jet Li toplining for a release in the fall. Written by John O'Brien and Reginald Bythewood, "Cradle" is about a crime lord (DMX) and a government operative (Li) who must come together under unlikely circumstances. Anthony Anderson and Gabrielle Union also star as members of DMX's team of professional thieves who rob a diamond exchange. Arnold will play an arms dealer. The project reteams Arnold with Bartkowiak, Silver, DMX and Anderson, who worked together on the Warner Bros. feature "Exit Wounds."

* Eddie Murphy has revealed his secret fear - he's terrified of flying. He is so afraid of planes, he almost stalled filming on his new movie I SPY - currently in production in Vancouver, Canada. Producers managed to coax Eddie onto a private jet for the flight to Vancouver, but only after they had met the actor's specific demands. Murphy insisted on personally interviewing and running a background check on the pilot and he had the plane carefully inspected for safety from top to bottom before he would set foot on it. The inspection routine was repeated before Eddie left Vancouver to return home. (Paranoia can be an ugly thing – DR.SOTHA)

DR.SOTHA REVO & OUT