Oh! Nollywood, what will 2008 bring?

Chinedu Ikedieze and Osita Iheme

As a rule, I do not like criticising another man’s work or writing a rejoinder. I appreciate the hard work and creativity that the producer of a seemingly hopeless movies, book or painting must have invested to make the work come alive.

I need to state the above for you to appreciate the pains I am going through writing these words. While in Lafia awaiting the day to break for me to attend court, I was compelled to watch a Nollywood film. The compulsion was overwhelming as the hotel I lodged in tuned to Africa Magic (a cable station that shows African films) the other alternative is NBS Nasarawa.

The reception was poor, colourless in a coloured TV and the language defeating.

I grew up watching ACB-sponsored Things Fall Apart, NTA-produced Second Chance, Village Headmaster, the classical Cock Crow At Down, Sura Di Tailor and the recent broadcast of Basi & Company, Samanja, to mention but a few. Those who shared the viewing pleasure of these, will agree that the Nigerian film/TV industry is not developing. Currently, there has been a Latin infestation of prime time on almost all Nigerian TV stations NTA guilty as well. These poor Latin Soap, (The Rich Also Cry, Palomo, Esmaranda, Sebastine and Catalina) often have one person doing English voice over, have enslaved Nigerians and robbed them of quality family time. Worrisome is the religious zeal with which corporate Nigeria is investing in these instead of promoting Nigerian opera.The new generation actors may be smiling to the bank with a fat pay cheque but the public are not getting value for money.

It is mind twisting when these Nollywood films attempt westernized thriller/action film or war film. I doubt if they employ the services of a military consultant. The way the actors wield guns and over all dispositions show that inadequate research or none was done on military/soldiering cum war before these films were chunked out.Since it has been taken for granted that voodooism, fetishsim and ritual is African, these movies do not depict the true essence of Afro-idol worship. My Sunday school playlet that pitch God against the devil are far better than the garbage nollywood vomits to the viewing public. I learnt that our brothers in the diaspora being home sick look unto the films from Nigeria for a true reflection of things at home, but are disappointed with the shameless attempt to copy Hollywood.

When an 18th century African scene is played, you will be dumbfounded to see actors speaking native language with American accent and their costume is a far cry from the bare breast beauty of our fore-mothers. Talking about costume, in most of the movies that have part 2, the actors often star in the whole movies without changing their hair style and in a horrible one I, watched, four years later, there was no significant change in the life of the actors.

They remained ageless, the cars used in part one, are still the same without visible wear & tear. Need I to remind you of the ageless Nollywood twins that remain unchanged from birth through NYSC and mischievous activities as adults in the village.

The captions show lack of imagination they either spell I known American movie right to left or it a literal-translation into native language.Have you watched Nigerian film lately?

Actors who cannot win a singing competition against a frog, assault our eardrum with unrealistic pledge of love on a village road to the stream. The borrowed houses in which these films are shot are another interesting dimension to lack of research. Often times, the mansions are too big for a family of two. Beyond the sitting room, the whole house is empty. The echo from the recording will tell you this, when the housewife is fully dressed like a mannequin with an eight inches high hill shoe, slaps round the living room.

Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde

Every serious attempt to get to the root of these sub-African standard productions, stops at the producers’ doorstep. The producers in Upper Iweka, Alaba international and Idumota being businessmen, are interested in quick return and not the growth of quality production. Once actor A, B or C is staring and the film can be mass-produced to meet the producers’ investment, the film might as well be shot with a camera phone.

There is need for Nollwood to be involved in quality research. A research institution should develop as a supporting industry to Nollywood.When the then Minister of Information Nweke Junior got involved with the industry, I was happy that a Daniel has come to justice. However, beyond Zuma and politicized movies awards inBayelsa State, the ministry of information/orientation has not contributed meaningfully to the development of quality film production in Nigeria.

The new Information Minister should go a step further than Nweke, who was busy visiting film festivals abroad, and provide the enabling infrastructure for the industry to grow and sell Nigeria positively to the outside world. Hollywood has done so to America and most of us knowAmerica through their films and have swallowed their propaganda of effective policing and ready ambulance service at every street corner.The minister should not allow the PDP policy of privatization cloud his reasoning.

The movie industry is not yet ripe for total plucking by the private sector. Government should provide grants for the building of film village with the full regalia (light, water, amphitheatre, accommodation) and a soft if not tax exemption for the first five years.

Contributed by Ashimole Felix

Review: The best and worst films of 2007

The year in film was a mixed bag, though one that holds great promise for the future.

American cinema produced one flat-out masterpiece this year - Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood" - and at least three more great movies that might legitimately be called "art," if you'll pardon the expression.

Several others were more formulaic or genre-based but no less thrilling, some of them widely praised ("No Country for Old Men," "Michael Clayton," "The Bourne Ultimatum," "Eastern Promises"), some unfairly overlooked ("We Own the Night," "The Hoax," "The Mist").

Pixar released yet another top-notch animated film in "Ratatouille," a benchmark so far in advance of the competition that it's practically in its own ballpark. Former Nickelodeon animator Gabor Csupo's live-action "Bridge to Terabithia" was one of the year's best surprises a heartbreaking movie about mortality and creativity that deserved to be seen more widely.

"Knocked Up" was so warmly received it invited the inevitable humorless politically correct vetting, but another Judd Apatow production, "Superbad," was even better, by some distance the funniest movie of the year and more shrewd about male adolescence than it was given credit for. And in Seth Rogen, these movies delivered a brand-new star, one of the faces of the year. Video Watch some of the surprise hits of the year »

Others would include Tommy Lee Jones (who bested his performance in "No Country for Old Men" with the underrated -- if flawed -- "In the Valley of Elah"), Casey Affleck ("Gone Baby Gone" and "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford") and the remarkable Philip Seymour Hoffman (in "The Savages," "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" and "Charlie Wilson's War").

But, even by Hollywood's standards, there were precious few comparably complex roles for women. "Margot at the Wedding" was one exception, but you have to look to foreign movies for the best female performances of the year: Anamaria Marinca in "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days"; Carice van Houten in "Black Book"; Marion Cotillard in (the otherwise disappointing) "La Vie en Rose"; Marina Hands in "Lady Chatterley."

It was also a disappointing year for documentaries not in terms of quality, but for distribution and box office returns. So make a point of catching up with "Terror's Advocate," "Manda Bala" and "The King of Kong" on DVD.

On the other hand, musicals were strong, thanks to "Hairspray," "Sweeney Todd" and "Once." If the movies start to sing again, that will truly be something to celebrate.

More "serious" movies emerged this fall than we've seen from the American movie industry since the 1970s. Though the business probably didn't like the films' anemic box office, it's not impossible that they'll find more favor on DVD. Few of them will lose much in the transition, which may be why they failed in the first place. (And in truth, most of them don't measure up to the best TV series: "The Wire," "Deadwood" and "The Sopranos," for example.)

Hopefully, these misfires will not stop more ambitious movies from being made; we're already treated to nine months of nothing but teen fodder, or so it feels. Granted, it may mean that everyone has to take a pay cut none of the "serious" Hollywood films had big budgets by current studio norms, and if you added up the budgets for four of the non-U.S. films in my top 10, they would still cost less than any one of the other six.

Anyway, here are the films that made my year and three that threatened to ruin it:

"There Will Be Blood"
Anderson's lacerating epic about the birth of the oil age. Daniel Day-Lewis, in the best performance of the year, is extraordinary as the prospector entirely consumed with his own enterprise; Paul Dano the evangelist who may be his nemesis.

"Into the Wild"
Director Sean Penn's sublime end-of-the-road movie invests its story with beauty and spirit in a strange way it's a very heartening tragedy. With Emile Hirsch and vivid support from Catherine Keener, Brian Dierker and Hal Holbrook.

"Zodiac"
David Fincher found a story to match his own obsessive need for control in this infuriating but brilliant and original film about the elusive (and in some ways debilitating) quest for truth.

"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"
Filmed in languid, wispy vignettes by cinematographer Roger Deakins, this is an elegiac, rueful evocation of the death of the Western hero, a slow passing that occurs long before Jesse (Brad Pitt) draws his last breath. Affleck is the disillusioned, romantic Ford -- and the film is his tragedy more than anyone's.

"No Country for Old Men"
Also shot by Deakins (and in the same location as "There Will Be Blood"), the Coen brothers do right by Cormac McCarthy's compelling thriller, a kind of lament at the new nihilism.

"Once"
In an exceptional year for musicals, this shoestring Irish picture seemed freshly minted: a spontaneous and authentic alternative to overproduced schmaltz.

"Black Book"
"Robocop" director Paul Verhoeven's first Dutch film in 20 years is a blistering World War II movie featuring sympathetic Nazis and duplicitous Resistance fighters. But this isn't just role reversal: There is no moral high ground in war, only naked self-interest, desire and desperation. It's something to compare with the fall's Iraq movies.

"Persepolis"
An autobiographical animated film by Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian who grew up in a liberal anti-monarchy Tehran household in the 1970s, then came of age under the ayatollahs and completed her education in Europe. This poignant, very funny memoir puts a personal face on the world's most pressing culture clash.

"Syndromes and a Century"
There are directors who become heroes for bending the rules. Then there are those who throw the rule book right out the window. Thailand's Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul is making movies like nobody before or since. This is one of the strangest art movies of the year, but it's entirely accessible to anyone open to new experience.

"4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days"
The Cannes Film Festival prize winner (which screened in Los Angeles for an Oscar qualifying run) is a prodigious if harrowing piece of work. This intense Romanian drama by Cristian Mungiu shines a spotlight into those dark places where angels fear to tread, yet it's a profoundly moral film.

And the three worst ...

"Because I Said So"
Anyone who thinks "Knocked Up's" Apatow is sexist should be forced to sit through this wretched comedy in which former feminist icon Diane Keaton does not rest until her 22-year-old daughter (Mandy Moore) is safely wed.