Don’t expect to see Trevor Noah at screenings of his new ‘The Daywalker’ live comedy film, currently on circuit. During our conversation, one of South Africa’s funniest men reveals why he doesn’t like watching his own performances, how he beats Loyiso Gola at the game ‘Fifa 10’, why hanging with the paparazzi is never fun, the joys of being heckled by a six-year-old, and getting obsessed with twitter.
Cranky septuagenarian widowers are supposed to play bowls on Wednesday afternoons, drive as slowly as they speak, and send handwritten letters to the local community newspaper complaining about the quality of the toilet paper in shopping mall restrooms.
They’re not expected to tie thousands of helium balloons to their house and float off to the untamed jungles of South America, encountering chocolate-loving oversized birds and talking dogs on arrival.
John Dillinger: legendary Depression-era outlaw, audacious bank robber, cavalier jailbreaker, hero of the common people, and — in Michael Mann’s ‘Public Enemies’ — speed dating pioneer.
“I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars, and you,” he tells a hard-to-get Billie Frechette when she first catches his eye. “What else do you need to know?”
Not much, reckons Mann.
The Dave Matthews Band’s seventh studio outing, ‘Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King’, smoulders into life with an impassioned sax solo — only fitting, really, for an album dedicated to the man playing with such fire in his belly.
Yes, the memory of Leroi Moore, who died suddenly last year, looms large over the album named after him. Quite appropriately then it’s a focused, no-nonsense affair — like the man himself.
My first car was a 20-year-old Renault 5. Bought new by my parents in 1976, it came with all the decade’s quirks – apple green body colour, faux leather (i.e. plastic) seats, thatched effect for the ceiling, a luxury spec featuring cigarette lighter and one of those analogue dial radios.
But even after two decades, it was easy to see the car’s original appeal: with VW’s Beetle its only real rival, the 5 was tailor-made for young families.
In 2009 so is Sandero.
There’s an odd hint of familiarity as two figures – cloaks flapping the wind – stand on a rocky outcrop, the camera swooping over the waves towards them. Moments later, inside a cave, the wizened old man bellows a spell, his flowing white hair and matching beard silhouetted against a sea of flames. And when a mass of pale, skeletal figures with big eyes creep up from the water (is that you Gollum?), it’s clear that ‘The Half-Blood Prince’ has ‘Lord Of The Rings’-scale ambitions.
“What was it that you slipped inside my drink?/ Maybe poison?” Jon Savage demands on the enigmatic fist-pumper ‘Who Do You Trust’.
No need to be so paranoid, man. His group’s second album – a quietly confident collection of steroid-enhanced stadium rockers, sleek pop anthems, and genuinely heartfelt ballads – is what few others achieve: intelligent, adventurous and damn near impossible to get out of your head.
Amid a blurred frenzy of helicopter gunships, airborne cars, cluster bombs, barked military orders, missiles, scattered brick and mortar, tanks, frantic shouting, the wanton destruction of ancient landmarks, that patriotic American music, and giant robots auditioning for the WWE, somewhere in the Egyptian desert, balding, overweight 50-something suburban dad Ron Witwicky runs for his life.
“I don’t know what’s going on!” he gasps.
Don’t worry, man, nor do we. And don’t even bother asking the director.
Hangovers suck. Your eyeballs raped by sunlight. The shagpile-carpet tongue. The squash court inside your skull. That urge to gulp all the water in the toilet bowl. The acid whirlpool spiralling in your belly. The urgent need to die.
Still, it’s nothing a greasy breakfast, another bottle of vodka, or Romanian tripe soup can’t fix.
Less easy to deal with: waking up in a trashed Las Vegas hotel room, a tiger in the loo, unknown baby in the closet, a friend disappeared, no recollection of the wild night before, and help from Gil Grisom’s CSI team strangely unforthcoming.
Depeche Mode, reasons driving force Martin Gore, are “a subversive pop band, able to get away with anything”. Theirs have always been twisted songs of faith and devotion, sex and death. Musically not much has changed either, the past decade spent trying to reach the heights of best work ‘Violator’ and ‘Songs Of Faith And Devotion’.
Nils van der Linden