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/ 4 September 2007
Two very different movies about the Iraq war are among the favourites for awards at this year’s Venice film festival as it passes the halfway stage, and an unusually high number of male leads have stood out. For pure shock value, Brian De Palma’s Redacted wins hands down, stunning audiences with an uncompromising reconstruction of the real-life rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl.
United States sales of the seventh and final Harry Potter volume hit an estimated 8,3-million in the first 24 hours, confirming its place in the history books as the fastest-selling book. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comfortably beat the previous 2005 Potter instalment, which posted US sales of 6,9-million copies in the first 24 hours.
Harry Potter fans poured into book stores around the world on Saturday to get hold of the seventh and final volume in the series and discover the secret of the boy wizard’s fate. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows hit the shelves across most of the world at 2301 GMT on Friday, in a release carefully orchestrated to maximise suspense and sales.
The Harry Potter books have spawned a parallel universe on the internet, where sites attract millions of fans every day and play a major part in the success of the novels and their Hollywood adaptations. So popular are JK Rowling’s stories, and the web pages built around them, that a handful of online fans have become stars in their own right.
Does Harry Potter die? Fictional or not, the question of what happens to the boy wizard at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is on millions of lips five days before it goes on sale. Security measures in place to protect the contents of book seven sound like something from a heist movie.
They rocked the world, but as the clean-up at nine climate change gigs around the globe begins, many wonder if the galaxy of pop stars did much to change it. United States and British media were generally underwhelmed on Sunday by Live Earth, the mega-concert organised by former US vice-president and green campaigner Al Gore.
Fred Khumalo says his right to information was trampled upon when the SABC crumbled under pressure and canned a mini-series on the dangers of circumcision.
The Cannes Film Festival opens on Wednesday with a mix of arthouse movie making and raw star power fitting for cinema’s greatest showcase, which turns 60 this year. Chinese director Wong Kar Wai, best known in the West for In The Mood For Love, brings My Blueberry Nights” to the palm-lined Riviera resort.
Fred Khumalo suggests that the media might be overreacting in its reports on ritual slaughter in historically white suburbs. On the other hand, the press coverage is fuelling much-needed debate on our cultural identities.
More than 30 years after his death, a ”new” book by JRR Tolkien goes on sale on Tuesday which may well be the author’s last complete work to be published posthumously. Tolkien’s son and literary executor Christopher, now in his eighties, constructed The Children of Hurin from his father’s manuscripts.