The Sun Is Also A Star is a 2019 American teen drama film directed by Ry Russo-Young and written by Tracy Oliver, based on the young adult novel of the same name by Nicola Yoon. The film stars Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton, and follows a young couple who fall…
BY ALLISON KUGEL Gwen Stefani spent her childhood and adolescence in Anaheim, California, a suburban girl living just a stone’s throw from Disneyland. It was her older brother, Eric, who founded No Doubt, the hybrid ska/punk/rock band that would…
By BRUCE DENNILL Ron Sexsmith is at home – the Canadian singer-songwriter lives in Stratford, Ontario – and in his words, “between records”. However his latest album, The Last Rider, was only released in April 2017, with a tour…
By BRUCE DENNILL Comedian, actor and director Alan Committie has, for the last several years, staged an annual solo show at Pieter Toerien’s Montecasino Theatre (either prior to or following a run of the same piece at the Theatre…
By BRUCE DENNILL Joburg Ballet soloist Shana Dewey started with the company, then the South African Ballet Theatre, when she joined company’s Junior Academy as a 13-year-old. That allowed for the odd appearance in a peripheral role in one…
By BRUCE DENNILL Composer, producer and playwright Alice Gillham’s new musical Calling Me Home recently completed its first run – a brief installation at the Joburg Theatre in Braamfontein, where it met with mixed reviews. The piece was initially…
In a career spanning 50 years and over 80 books, Stephen King has amassed a towering reputation as one of our greatest storytellers. The author of innumerable bestsellers, he has been honoured by the President of the United States with the National…
By BRUCE DENNILL Glen Phillips, once and occasionally present Toad The Wet Sprocket frontman, has released a poetic, honest new solo album called Swallowed By The New, on which he examines heartbreak, depression, grief and, ultimately, hope. You’ve talked…
What gets people talking about death in ways that make them feel more powerfully alive? Author Helena Dolny’s quest for an answer and belief that we need to talk about living and dying inspired an eight-year learning journey and resulted…
Nicola Yoon is the author of Everything, Everything, the book on which the eponymous movie has been based. What was your inspiration for Everything, Everything? I started writing the book when my daughter was just four months old. Like…
By BRUCE DENNILL Leo Sayer is a people person. He arrives in the foyer of the Johannesburg hotel where we meet five minutes early and is greeted by name by the concierge. He returns the compliment, giving the man…
By BRUCE DENNILL Mark Nevin: My Unfashionable Opinion Analogue tape recording: still a popular choice for “real” musicians and music fans, but not easy to do in terms of availability of hardware and engineers willing and able to…
By BRUCE DENNILL Tuning The Vine / 4th Avenue Parkhurst / 1 March 2017 Publicised using the hashtag #JoziWineRoute, Tuning The Vine was an interesting stab at bringing some of the poetry of a winelands-style wine tasting to…
By BRUCE DENNILL Prettier Than Matt is a two-vocal, ukelele and guitar, folk and Americana-playing duo based in Columbia, South Carolina. Jessica Skinner, fan of Dolly Parton and other iconic country singers, and Jeff Pitts, Metallica and Bon Jovi enthusiast,…
By BRUCE DENNILL American playwright Jeff Stetson wrote his play The Meeting, about an imagined 1965 meeting between American civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, in 1984. It was first performed in 1987 and has…
CHAPTER ONE It was a foul night to hang a man. The rain swept across the Irish Sea, throwing itself against the grey stone walls of Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison. Behind its unyielding façade two prison guards stood outside the…
BY BRUCE DENNILL Carte: A large menu with a generous choice of dishes with an Italian bent, but often tweaked to include whatever fresh produce is on offer in the farm stall element of the property. Smart: The venue…
Thanks to Nicole Hamilton, host of the Career Buzz show on CIUT 89.5FM in Toronto, for this interview about my music and other work. For more information about the radio station, go to www.ciut.fm. To listen to the interview, press play…
PART ONE: MOUSE-BABY AND THE METAL-HAIRED MAN CHAPTER ONE According to what she’s gathered from watching television, Poppy is a person. She’s got two arms, two legs and the right number of things on her face, all arranged…
Madala It began raining the day the dogs found Sipho Sibanda. A soft, gentle patter that fell like a benediction from the hands of a loving and indulgent god. Two dogs, both of indeterminate colour and breed, approached the…
By BRUCE DENNILL Blue Man Group was founded by three close friends Chris Wink, Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton in New York in 1991. Since the group’s inception it has grown to include permanent shows in Las Vegas, New York,…
A previously unseen sculpture of two lizards by Dutch sculptor Anton van Wouw (below) surfaced for auction at Russell Kaplan Auctioneers in Johannesburg earlier this year. The piece had become something of a legend for scholars of van Wouw’s work….
By BRUCE DENNILL It’s been necessary, for reasons of integrity, for you and other musicians to withdraw from CCM as an industry (specifically as a business/corporate entity more than a worship and missions platform). That action is often seen…
By BRUCE DENNILL Singer-songwriter Terra Naomi is working on an as-yet unnamed new album, available for pre-order – along with a range of brilliantly creative perks – here. You’re at once genuinely famous and also relatively under the radar…
By BRUCE DENNILL Sam McTrusty. What a fantastic surname that is. And the Twin Atlantic singer lives up to the gist of it when he comes on the line for a phone interview, apologising earnestly for a glitch on…
Durban, wedged up against the east coast of South Africa, is the dirtiest, strangest, most violent place I’ve ever lived. It’s the soul of South Africa. A sweaty one-night stand of a city where anything goes and the warm Indian…
By BRUCE DENNILL Carte: Loads of beautifully prepared meat – farmers in the area have been supplying the stuff since the governor at the Cape Colony was ordering it, so no surprises, there Smart: The décor and surroundings are…
He heard David’s shoes on the tiles walking towards him. All he could see were David’s black, highly polished, leather shoes. He wondered how David got them that shiny. ‘Are you listening?’ David asked. ‘I’m listening,’ Andre mumbled, but his…
By BRUCE DENNILL We Are Messengers frontman (and proud Irishman; his brogue is so rich it takes up extra bandwidth on the intercontinental interview call) Darren Mulligan, now resident in Nashville getting on with the business of running a…
By BRUCE DENNILL Other than a cup of what is presumably coffee, Josh Groban makes no concessions to fatigue after a full day’s travel from Los Angeles, via Heathrow, to Johannesburg. His chatty, friendly stage persona is shown to…
By BRUCE DENNILL Ian Thornley’s debut solo album, Secrets, releases as Ian Fletcher Thornley, allows the Canadian rocker to stretch himself thematically and sonically, though the musical flair he contributes to Big Wreck, his “day job” band is always…
The Co-Authors Wednesday 8:17am ‘Hey man, Marco, did you hear?’ ‘Shaun? What?’ ‘Are you sitting down?’ ‘No, I’m at the restaurant prepping bok choy. What is it?’ ‘It’s Noakes. You should probably sit down.’ ‘You’re freaking me out. What’s going…
By BRUCE DENNILL Your Kruger National Park Guide is essentially the opposite of the situation where you discover a place you love and purposefully avoid telling people about it in order to have it to yourself, not “ruined” by those…
By BRUCE DENNILL Broken Monsters Charity Art Show / Nando’s Central Kitchen, Lorentzville, Johannesburg It’s a simple, heartfelt formula, mixing fame, literature, talent and fine art to not only promote reading but to provide young kid with physical…
‘Gareth has such lovely hair.’ ‘I suppose the only way to tell you this, Mrs Crocker, is just to come out and say it,’ the educational psychologist announced, demonstrating her superpower for stating the obvious. Even at my tender age…
By BRUCE DENNILL JT Lawrence’s book Why You Were Taken paints the South Africa of 2021 as a difficult place for a person who knows his or her own mind. It’s an invigorating, bracing vision by a very talented storyteller….
Finding fault It all started with a phone call that was forwarded through to Roel Stolper by chance. It was 1992, and that conversation – between Stopler, a researcher at the CSIR, and Eskom’s Wallace Vosloo – and their subsequent…
By BRUCE DENNILL Mark Olson’s Good-bye Lizelle finds an Americana legend collaborating with a Norwegian (his partner, Ingunn Ringvold) on a release distributed by a German record label (Glitterhouse) and featuring tracks recorded in, among other places, Armenia, South…
By BRUCE DENNILL Calagary, Canada-based band The Wisers make honest, ballsy blues-rock. Singer Chad Thomas shares some thoughts. Operating as musicians creating original music in Canada, what are your thoughts on the way the industry is set up…
By BRUCE DENNILL Mike Weaver, frontman for Christian pop and worship band Big Daddy Weave is, like so many songwriters in the Christian contemporary music scene, a serial collaborator within that market. Yet many of his declared influences –…
By BRUCE DENNILL As I sit down with Great Domaines CEO Derek Kilpin outside the company office in Melrose in Johannesburg, there’s a flyover – three Harvards in close formation. Seconds later, a branch from a nearby tree crashes…
“What is she thinking?” It’s a question that has gone through the minds of parents worldwide who are attempting to raise teenagers—and it’s one that occurred to Oscar-winning director Pete Docter as he witnessed his own daughter Elie growing up….
By BRUCE DENNILL Marlene Wasserman, akaDr Eve, has, it appears, been seduced (intellectually, anyway) by the data in her latest book, Cyber Infidelity. She was able to put the book – which is really more of an academic work…
By BRUCE DENNILL The Impossible Five, the story of a journey around South Africa in pursuit of some of the most reclusive animals in the country – the Cape leopard, the pangolin, the aardvark, the Riverine rabbit and naturally occurring…
HM Queen Margrethe II of Denmark’s birthday on 16 April marked the opening of the new permanent exhibition at Amalienborg Palace (Denmark) of gilt bronze figures by the neoclassical artist Bertel Thorvaldsen from the 1820s. The figures are miniatures…
By TONY HORKINS Writer, producer and director Sam Raimi may be best-known for his work on the Tobey Maguire-starring Spider-Man trilogy, but he got his break in 1981 as the director and writer of the cult horror classic, The…
Seeing Double At The Movies So, how do you feel about pornography? Are you for it, against it or indifferent? Sorry, but I have been writing this column for almost a year already; you had to know we were going to…
South African duo Cherry Pill are back in South Africa after their début international performance at the prestigious Midem festival in Cannes, France. A cosmopolitan group of music industry professionals and music aficionados from around Europe, the Americas and the…
By BRUCE DENNILL Oesfees is a music festival that was inaugurated at Solms-Delta in Franschhoek in April 2008, and is now an annual event. The Franschhoek Oesfees, a harvest festival, takes the form of a heartfelt “thank-you” to the valley’s farm-workers,…
By EMMA LEVERTON When Bobby Thandi and I began our journey of writing the Fly Guys series, our mission was clear: to share a message of equality and diversity to younger generations through a fun, relatable story. There is…
By BRUCE DENNILL In South Africa, apartheid stories are still woven through much of the literature, using fiction as a way to investigate the way contemporary society is impacted by the evils of the past. In John Connolly’s latest novel,…
FOREWORD So here’s my problem…. So here’s my problem: when it comes to generating writing material, teenagers are gold. Their world is a narcissist, anarchic, paranoid hell of anxieties and stresses about how they look, how popular they are or…
By BRUCE DENNILL Charlotte Damgaard is the marketing director at Great World Exhibitions, the company behind the Body Worlds & The Cycle Of Life, Da Vinci The Genius and Tutankhamun – His Tomb and His Treasures, all of which have…
Tiah Beautement’s This Day has been described as “exquisitely written” and has met with critical acclaim for its honest, nuanced portrayal of depression. A subtle, lyrical, and deeply emotional chronicle of an ordinary couple trying to survive in the wake…
By BRUCE DENNILL In 1912, when the world as most people experienced it was a much smaller place, Auguste Escoffier, French cuisine’s roi des cuisiniers et cuisinier des rois (“king of chefs and chef of kings”), initiated the Dın̂ers d’Êpicure…
By BEN WRIGHT Easter in Texas is always a little strange for me. It starts with Mardi Gras and ends with a posh brunch. Easter Sunday is one of the few when normally informal church folks don suits and…
In Jon Broeke’s Interview With Destiny, an interview with an actress leads an entertainment reporter to what he’s always wanted, but can he look past his integrity to find love? Sparks fly the moment entertainment journalist Kevin Brandt meets actress…
Turning to go into the house, I spot the remaining chard, still waiting to be planted. I rush over, kneeling down beside their wee leaves with red and yellow stems. Footsteps come up behind me. ‘Ma’am, I would be happy…
By BRUCE DENNILL The creators and producers of the Fugard Theatre’s smash hit musical The Rocky Horror Show comes one of Broadway’s greatest musical productions: Cabaret. Lara Adine Lipschitz stars as on of the Kit Kat Girls; dancers in the Kit Kat Klub…
Filming the black comedy Birdman for director Alejandro González Iñárritu was one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of Michael Keaton’s career. Keaton is Riggan Thomson an actor who once starred as Birdman, a comic book superhero, which brought…
By GABBI BRONDANI London-based director Ed Perkins is screening his debut feature documentary, Garnet’s Gold, to a South African audience at the Jozi Film Festival 2015. I chatted to Perkins about the film, which is produced by Simon Chinn, two-time Academy…
By NICOLAS STRANGEDAY Love locks have arrived in South Africa. We’re not talking chastity belts here – those went out of fashion about 600 years ago – but the brassy symbols of inseparable devotion that are sprouting on bridges…
By TAMMY BALLANTYNE Site-specific cross-genre and cross-cultural performance works have long been a feature at many of our arts festivals and other platforms across the country: we’ve watched Jay Pather’s Siwela Sonke Dance Theatre on the Durban beachfront, in…
By BRUCE DENNILL Singer and actress Belinda Davids has the sort of problem most performers only hope to deal with. As the title character and focal point of the tribute production The Greatest Love Of All – The Whitney…
By TS CHAUDHRY “History is a lie!” This is the catchphrase of the ongoing television series Da Vinci’s Demons, loosely based on the life of Leonardo da Vinci. Even though we might not agree with this, much of history is based…
By BRUCE DENNILL Dr Zahi Hawass was in South Africa recently to elaborate on and form a living, breathing part of the Tutankhamun – His Tomb & His Treasures exhibition, running at the Silverstar Casino near Krugersdorp until March…
In Mma Ramotswe’s fifteenth adventure, Grace Makutsi launches a new enterprise of her own: The Handsome Man’s De Luxe Café. She is an ambitious lady with a business plan, but who could predict temperamental chefs, drunken waiters and more? Luckily,…
Described as a “racy, pacy crime thriller,” Priscilla Holmes’ Now I See You has met with popularity and warm reception. Filled with the sights, sounds, and local flavor of the Eastern Cape especially, the book travels from the glittering restaurants…
By BRUCE DENNIILL Mandy Collins spends a lot of her Twitter time telling people what she will be cooking, is cooking or is regretting cooking. She’s now published a book about cooking – specifically fast, fuss-free, family-friendly food (that alliterative…
By JEAN SHORNEY I have two favourite genres, to read and to write. These are crime and horror. Is there really a dividing line? A crime is committed; a spirit seeks revenge from beyond the grave… But let’s separate the…
When we arrived at Msinga we were the first white people in history to have settled among the people of the valley and no one believed this was possible. Men arrived in delegations. Sent by distant indunas, headmen, they squatted…
By BRUCE DENNILL A song is worth a thousand words. Or something. Below is a song I wrote about 2014 – not an easy period – with a link for a free download at the bottom of the page. Enjoy. Comments…
By LIZZIE JONES There’s a saying that goes “There’s a book inside us all, just waiting to get out” and that might well be true, but it’s the getting it out that’s the difficult thing. When it came to…
By BRUCE DENNILL Part of the appeal of popular columnists is that they only offer snapshots of their apparently endlessly fascinating selves and their psyches once every week or month. So writing a memoir-ish book-length work – as Darrel…
By ROBERTA AARONS Recently, I bumped into two old friends. They are sisters I have known for many years. One said, “I have just finished your book and thoroughly enjoyed it.” The other then added, “We were arguing about…
By BRUCE DENNILL The first track on Robin Auld’s new album Back Of The Line, Caleb’s Calling, deals with a man who’s lost his mojo. Is it too much to read into the lyrics something about the trials of…
Kelsey Grammer stars in Transformers: Age Of Extinction We’ve seen you in TV sitcoms and dramas, on Broadway and different movie genres. What’s it like to be on a film like this? I loved it. I’m a real geek…
By HEMMIE MARTIN When I’ve completed writing a novel, with all the rewriting and edits entailed within the process, I say goodbye to the characters, and look forward to creating a new community. I relish not only creating a…
Karin Brynard is a huge seller in the Afrikaans crime fiction market. New book Weeping Waters sees her work available for English-speaking readers for the first time. Below is an extract from the book. ———– The call came through just after two….
Christian Rudder’s book Dataclysm, published by Jonathan Ball, is an irreverent, provocative, and visually fascinating look at what our online lives reveal about who we really are – and how this deluge of data will transform the science of human behaviour. Big…
Andrew Marr is the author of Head Of State, published by Jonathan Ball. His previous books include The Battle for Scotland (1992), A History of Modern Britain (2007) and A History Of The World (2012). You’re well known to book lovers already…
By KEVIN MURRAY Writers are often advised to write what they know. This in itself could be a rather troubling piece of advice when you’re embarking on a novel about a remorseless, barbaric serial killer. But much of the…
By RICHARD MAYER Exactly 100 years ago, TS Eliot arrived in London to embark upon a momentous career in which he would rise to become possibly the leading literary figure of the 20th century. It was inevitable that I…
By SIBUSISO MKWANAZI Perspective is an integral part of any discussion, and to demonstrate this, take a look at the episode of Carte Blanche on which the team presented a segment about street art and in particular the works…
By HARRY FREEDMAN One of the remarkable things about the Talmud is that it came from nowhere, entering a national-religious culture that was already strong and thriving and nevertheless became that culture’s dominant text. The Bible and the subsequent,…
By KIMON NEOPHYTE Were they still alive today, two titans of literature would have celebrated their birthdays within days of each other: Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), 28 August (new style 10 September), and DH Lawrence (1885-1930), 11 September. Both wrote passionately…
Jeremiah Goldswain Most people have little knowledge about an ancestor four generations removed but Ralph Goldswain has come to know his great, great grandfather very well. His edition of Jeremiah’s memoirs – The Chronicle of Jeremiah Goldswain, 1820 Settler – has…
By JEAN SHORNEY Writing. Painting. Acting. Music. Our love of all things artistic successfully manages to inspire us. For me, as a writer, all the above are ultimately conducive. Music sets my scenes, but the music has to be…
“Buy a book, plant a tree” Scandinavian based non-fiction publisher Pine Tribe, who focuses on wellness and personal growth books, have launched an initiative which aims to ‘Eco-Revolutionise’ the publishing industry. Through their PlantATree campaign, they have so far planted 5…
By HEMMIE MARTIN When I became a published author of contemporary fiction, I always proclaimed I’d never write crime fiction, and I’d never write a series. And yet, here I am, three years later, an author of crime fiction,…
By MORWENNA HOLMAN Morwenna Holman is a ‘spirit writer’, which means her novels are dictated to her by spirits, “communing with the departed to write stories of their lives which are lost in the mists of time.” Her first novel,…
Marcie Grove is a lonely witch. After a full moon ritual she decides to do something about the abysmal state of her love life. Making use of a powerful spell to cure her sad state of affairs, she puts her…
By JOHN CONNORS It’s often said that no two people are the same, yet all we seem to do is categorise ourselves in various aspects of life. So when it comes to books – and particularly self publishing –…
By SIBUSISO MKWANAZI Craft beer: check. Easy to carry food: check. Undergound music: check. On your first visit, the Locrate Market looks, smells and sounds like your average market. But as you start to look carefully, you realise that…
By ANDY COFFEY Creating your own world is a blast, let’s not beat around the bush here; it’s like eating a big pie of imagination topped with the chilli sauce of creativity. It’s fun, and the great thing is…
By LEIGH ROBINSON Around 1 500 people groups in the world still do not have any portion of the Bible in their native tongue. That number was reduced by one recently for the Makonde people in the far north of Mozambique….
By CAITLIN CLERK Write and rewrite is the theme for this fourth and final Show Boat Tour update. On Monday night I started my piece like this: “I don’t think I deserve to love Dublin. I haven’t seen much…
By CAITLIN CLERK I can’t help but feel a little sad as we leave Cardiff behind us. I feel like each city we stop at gets better and better. Cardiff is the home of Show Boat’s sponsor, the Wales…
By CAITLIN CLERK We have just left Manchester. I am sitting in the front of the bus (because I can put my feet up here) next to Straight-steering Steve. Steve’s seat doesn’t bob up and down like David-the-Driver’s did….
By CAITLIN CLERK The last time I left the country I was crowd-funded by a couple of hundred people who were all anxious to see how I would spend their hard-earned money in New York. There was quite a…
The most common bullying experience is being taunted or ridiculed for being “different” in some way. I’m the poster child for this. For most of my life, I’ve been a bully magnet. I’ve heard every imaginable nasty comment about my…
By PAUL ELLIOTT So Bruce says “hey, I’m going to see Dan Patlansky launch his new album, you wanna come?” and I’m thinking, not sure about that, I’m pretty tired of music right now, taking a bit of a…
It’s always further than it looks. It’s always taller than it looks. It’s always harder than it looks. – THE THREE RULES OF MOUNTAINEERING (ANON) No sleep No sleep Another night from hell Stop delaying the inevitable Okay –…
Ben Trovato’s the hilarious misguided misogynist whose Sunday Times column thrilled and amused readers for years. Mark Verbaan is the man behind the persona, and his new book, The Memoirs Of Ben Trovato, suggests there was more to the man…
By BRUCE DENNILL Getting punters into galleries can be a bit of a challenge. Sometimes the catalogue is narrated in intellectualese; sometimes the artists involved are wilfully obscure; and sometimes the location of the gallery or its accessibility (it’s…
By BRUCE DENNILL Artist Georgia Papageorge has a long history of using art to speak for subjects that cannot – often natural phenomena. Her recent exhibition, Serengeti Crossroads: The Shepherd Principle Project (which closed at the UJ Art Gallery…
By ALAN SWERDLOW I was blindsided the other day while walking through my local shopping mall. Not physically, I hasten to add, but verbally. You see, in the middle of one of the walkways there’s a fairly pleasant café…
By TAMMY BALLANTYNE It’s rare to find a dance company these days reaching a milestone as momentous as 15 years of existence. Especially one espousing an Afro-infused contemporary dance technique. It is virtually impossible to find funding for companies…
By BRUCE DENNILL Background Info: ASSITEJ South Africa is the national network of ASSITEJ (Association International du Theatre pour l’Enfance et la Jeunesse/ The International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People). It is a global alliance linking thousands…
By PAUL ELLIOTT It came from the deep, or the dark… I don’t know – but it eventually came once Jason Zeeman had warmed up the chilly Joburg crowd ahead of Tree63’s reunion gig at Bryanston’s New Life Church…
By BRIONY HORWITZ Background Info: ASSITEJ South Africa is the national network of ASSITEJ (Association International du Theatre pour l’Enfance et la Jeunesse/ The International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People). It is a global alliance linking thousands…
By BRIONY HORWITZ Background Info: ASSITEJ South Africa is the national network of ASSITEJ (Association International du Theatre pour l’Enfance et la Jeunesse/ The International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People). It is a global alliance linking…
By BRUCE DENNILL RAMfest Johannesburg (ish – it was on an unsignposted farm in Bronkhorstspruit) on March 6 and 7 was about more than just music, mud, ironic T-shirts and illegible tattoos. There was fire, too. Swirly, whirly, cheaper-than-hallucinogenics…