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/ 7 September 2006
David Lynch’s latest opus is a Russian doll of a film with stories inside stories inside stories. But coming in at three hours long, made in Poland and Hollywood, the digitally-shot film is inspired and incomprehensible by turns. Laura Dern (who also co-produced) stars as an actress who has just landed a part in a new film.
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/ 7 September 2006
Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian teenager who lived through what was perhaps Europe’s worst kidnap ordeal, spoke on Wednesday night for the first time of her ”place of despair” confined to a tiny enclosed pit outside Vienna for more than eight years. In a 40-minute appearance on Austrian national television Kampusch painted a picture of terror, panic, starvation and fury.
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/ 7 September 2006
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Legal sparring continued in Jacob Zuma’s corruption trial on Wednesday, with his supporters thinking their side was winning. ”It is clear to anyone inside that court that the ship is sinking,” Congress of South African Trade Unions general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi told the crowd outside the court.
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/ 7 September 2006
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (and its predecessor the Independent Broadcasting Authority) has gone about regulating the broadcasting sector and redressing the wrongs and imbalances of apartheid in ways that are passing strange. John van Zyl takes a sceptical look at the latest Icasa position paper.
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/ 7 September 2006
<b>Not the CD of the week:</b>
The target audience for Nigel Kennedy’s latest offering would no doubt be those looking for a recording of the <i>Four Seasons</i>.
So what has Kennedy added to make Vivaldi (EMI), his second recording of the piece, appealing? Nothing, writes Lee Madeley.
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/ 7 September 2006
If you think today’s reality television shows go on forever, you have seen nothing yet. Rupert Murdoch’s Fox television is planning a new variant of the cut-price phenomenon called Forever Eden that might literally never end. Julian Borger gets square eyes.
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/ 7 September 2006
On a flyer from Virgin Active (or Virgym, as Oom Thys calls it) this week: ”Class Definition”. No, your local gym is not offering Marxist political education, it just needs to explain its exotic menu of physical jerks. Perhaps Richard Branson would like to re-educate the jerk responsible for this quality customer service e-mail to a client with one of those new Virgin Money cards.
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/ 7 September 2006
Jacob Zuma’s defence appears desperate to exclude evidence seized by the state during searches of Zuma’s offices and residences in August last year — and they may still succeed in doing so. The Zuma searches were ruled unlawful by the Durban High Court after Zuma contested the validity of the search warrants.
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/ 7 September 2006
To get a sense of the problems besetting prisons in Côte d’Ivoire, look no further than Building C of the House of Arrest and Correction of Abidjan (Maca). The 115 detainees crowded together in this building share just one toilet, and barely manage a daily shower. Maca, the largest prison in southern Côte d’Ivoire, is home to more than 4 000 prisoners — even though the 26-year-old facility was built for just half that number.
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/ 7 September 2006
Rival Palestinian factions are close to forming a new power-sharing government, which Hamas expects to lead, the Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, said this week. A national unity government is intended to lift the international freeze on funding to the Palestinian Authority, which has left it facing an economic crisis and a wave of strikes by thousands of unpaid civil servants.