From Precious
May, 2008
DVD
Precious suggests that you close the curtains, grab some ice-cream and you
spend the weekend in, with some award winning drama, courtesy of ER Season
11, which is out on DVD now.
The continually fantastic cast features Anthony Edward (Zodiac, Top Gun), Noah Wyle (Donnie Darko), Alex Kingston (Croupier, Moll Flanders) and an Emmy ® Award winning performance from guest star Ray Liotta (Best Guest Actor in a Drama).
Chicago's County General opens its doors for more highly-charged
drama which brings challenges and changes to the ER... an aquarium worker
with a live shark latched onto him... a blind woman and her guide companion
(a miniature horse!)... a college boy with an arrow in his gut (his fraternity
brothers were aiming for the apple on his head).
As for the staff...Corday and Chen weigh work and family, Abby finds
that being a good doctor is as tough as being a good nurse; Ray Barnett
- doctor by day, rock star by night - arrives and Carter decides to leave.
The hit series is one of the highest rated dramas on television. A winner of the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award, ER has also earned 22 Emmy ® Awards and 117 Emmy ® Award nominations – holding the record for television dramas. In addition, the cast has been honoured with four Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Ensemble Performance in a Drama Series.
All 23 episodes of the electrifying 11th series are brought
to you by Warner Home Video in a drama that combines the expertise of
big hitting producers Michael Crichton and John Wells (The West Wing)
and which manages to capture the emotion and grit of the emergency room
so effectively. Highly Recommended!
ER is now available from www.amazon.co.uk
From Precious
April 16, 2008
ART
Angaza Afrika
African Art Now
Angaza AfricaThis exhibition at the October Gallery brings together major works by 12 artists who best represent the innovative and dynamic artistic practices across the African continent and the African diasporas. The event launches the book, Angaza Afrika – African Art Now - a highly visual survey of contemporary African art compiled by Christopher Spring and published by Laurence King.
Angaza Afrika, translated from the Swahili to mean ‘Shed light on Africa’ or ‘Look around Africa’, is comprehensive in its range. Each work will be a stunning visual and physical manifestation of the artists’ energy and spirit, such as Rachid Koraichi’s Sufi- inspired black and white appliqué work and the beautiful work of South African artist Karel Nel, who sets vast leaves from the Coco de Mer palms in atmospheric, elemental architectural spaces.
Other featured artists include El Anatsui, who with his magnificent cloths made from thousands of glimmering bottle tops was one of the highlights of the 52nd Venice Biennale and who will transform Channel 4’s 50ft logo, situated in front of their London Headquarters, with an installation in June 2008; Owusu-Ankomah, whose drawings were chosen by Giorgio Armani for his Emporio Armani (PRODUCT) RED capsule collection and Abdoulaye Konaté who has been shortlisted for the Artes Mundi 2008 Prize.
Angaza Afrika
15th May – 30th June 2008
Tuesday – Saturday 12.30 – 5.30pm.
@ the October Gallery
BOOKS
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
by ZZ Packer
Review by Tisha James
It's not often that you come across a short story collection where each one is a genuine winner.
Z.Z. Packer's Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is a collection of eight short stories set mostly in the lives of African Americans teenage girls. Each one is a stand out classic.
In the title story a Yale freshman is sent to a psychotherapist who tries to get her - black, bright, motherless, possibly lesbian - to stop "pretending," when she is sure that "pretending" is what got her this far.
Speaking in Tongues describes the adventures of Tia, a 14 year old Alabama church girl who takes a bus to Atlanta to try to find the mother who gave her up.
This is simple and effective storytelling and with it, ZZ Packer has made a stunning debut.
Buy it now
Banana Bottom by Claude McKay
Review by Jennifer G Robinson
In 'Banana Bottom', Claude McKay explores his own version of Pygmalion in the Caribbean island of Jamaica.
After enjoying a European education via white missionary benefactors, Bita Plant is returning home. The missionaries, Malcolm and Priscilla Craig, have mapped out Bita's life completely. She will receive training at the mission in Jubilee; she will serve the church; she will marry a man of certain standing; she will be a dutiful wife and assist that husband in the continuation of the work at Jubilee.
However the Craigs are unprepared when their social engineering unravels, but then, so is Bita. As she settles, Bita finds that she gravitates towards the customs of the local people. Whilst she is appreciative of her education she intelligently places it in a certain order in her life and does not value it above tradition. Thus she is 're-drawn' to Jamaican culture as though no amount of European education could eradicate her heritage.
Set in the early 1900s McKay guides us through a social structuring not so much defined by education and wealth, but by skin colour, much of which some would argue still exists in Jamaica today.
The protagonists could be educated to the hilt (if they could summon the money), however if one's skin colour was too brown or 'black', it could only allow a certain piercing into the echelons of light-skinned Jamaican society. It takes some time for dark-brown Bita to experience some of this prejudice
(because of her benefactors and education she is something a celebrity), which she does through an over amorous encounter.
'Banana Bottom' has powerful melodrama and in some parts so comically raucous, one could almost visualise a play from Blue Mountain Theatre. Splicing between the clipped tones of the white characters (and Bita's for that matter), the Jamaican patois of some of the black, Bita's life in Jubilee and the machinations of the villagers, the author adds a certain rhythm to the pages. Contemporary readers may find it jarring to see characters so overtly introduced initially by their skin colour, however one has to remember that the novel was written in 1933 set in a Jamaica a couple of decades prior and is the author's observation and probable experience of society at the time.
A poet, novelist and journalist, Claude McKay was born in Jamaica in 1889. He then lived in New York in 1912 and subsequently became a driving force of the Harlem Renaissance. Trailblazing through Europe, McKay - ahead of his time, spoke out against racism in world governments. Ironically it was Britain's Winston Churchill who appropriated McKay's poem 'If We Must Die' to rouse the country to war against Germany. McKay's poem was written to articulate the torment of the Harlem 'race riot'.
Claude McKay is a classic author and his writing richly deserves exposure. Publishers Serpent's Tail, have republished 'Banana Bottom' and in a continued promotion to introduce contemporary readers to his important work, McKay's 'Banjo' is also scheduled for republication.
