Martin Cuff Consulting

Due for release in November of this Year, Baz Luhrmann’s latest opus Australia is set in north of that country just before World War II. It revolves around an English aristocrat (Nicole Kidman) who inherits a cattle station the size of a small European nation. When rival cattle barons plot to annex her land, she [...]

Martin Scorsese’s excellent The Departed was on TV the other night. Set in Boston, the violent tale revolves around a gangster (played smarmy by local boy Matt Damon) who infiltrates the police department and a cop (aced flat and hard by Leonardo DiCaprio) who infiltrates the gangs. When it becomes clear that there’s a mole in each [...]

It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years since Julia Roberts graced the streets of London in Notting Hill. It was on TV again over the weekend: a “what happens” when a megastar meets and falls in love with quite a normal chap. Even if the chap is floppy Hugh Grant. What happens when a [...]

Anyone whining about the lack of success of the South African film industry need only to look at a movie like Pieces of April to understand what we’re doing wrong. Written and directed by Peter Hedges, April is a small, personal film, well told.  It stars Katie Holmes (post-Dawson and pre-Tom and therefore appealing) as an [...]

I’ve mentioned before that I’m something of a Tudor history buff; I didn’t perhaps mention why. I grew up in a remote part of rural England, in a small village that happened to be near the birthplace of the infamous Anne Boleyn. Anne is the first historical figure I ever really became aware of, and my entire [...]

OK, so it’s been hectic and there’s not been a lot of time for movie watching. Instead, I did see the first couple of episodes of Holly Hunter’s first foray into TV, the oddly bi-polar Saving Grace. It’s part Walker, Texas Ranger, part Touched by an Angel. Though the drunk and wayward cop thing has been [...]

In Stranger than Fiction, Will Ferrell plays Harold, an anal IRS agent who begins hearing a voice in his head, narrating his life. But then the narrator – a distinguished author with writer’s block – Emma Thompson, says: “Little did he know that this simple seemingly innocuous act would result in his imminent death……” I’d [...]

OK, so even my regional loyalty can be pushed to its limits. Citing nothing more than the fact that it had been shot in Namibia as rationale, (it was the biggest budgeted film ever to have shot in southern Africa, employing hundreds of African cast and crew members in the process), I forced Christopher sit [...]

Selfish little shockwaves bouncing round my house this morning; with the untimely death of the prodigiously smart and talented Anthony Minghella, what will become of the rest of the series of No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency movies, the pilot of which shot in Gaborone last year? No.1 is of course the film of the much loved [...]

My second Made in Cape Town movie of the weekend was Rendition, the first Hollywood production of South African director Gavin Hood, who won a Best Foreign Language Oscar for Tsotsi. Cinematography was by another high flying South African, Dion Beebe. “Rendition” refers to the ability of the CIA to detain anyone suspected of terrorist dealings, [...]