Despite some clumsy writing, these reviews capture the energy and verve of African cinema.
Baylay covers raucous and vibrant African movies in this collection of his film reviews.
The author gathers over 100 of his reviews from africanmoviestar.com and other venues, most of them evaluating productions from Nigeria’s Nollywood movie industry (along with a few from Ghana’s Ghallywood). Romantic comedies abound, including Kiss and Tell, in which the hero bets his PR-firm partner that he will bed a gorgeous girl within 10 days or forfeit his share of their business; Baylay praises its offbeat supporting cast. A Private Storm is a dark drama about a man who, having endured his stepfather’s violence, inflicts similar abuse on his fiancée, which the author faults for its contrived ending. And then there’s The Power of Buttocks, the saga of a sex worker who gets a makeover, lands a corporate job, and, partly on the strength of her derrière, marries the boss—but then has an affair and is targeted for blackmail, leading to considerable carnage. Baylay’s reviews celebrate a major cinema that’s seldom noticed by Westerners, in addition to stars like Majid Michel, Tonto Dikeh, and Ramsey Nouah, Nollywood’s answer to Jack Nicholson. The pieces also illuminate contemporary West African culture with its young urban strivers racing to get ahead, weathering social upheavals and government corruption, their love lives complicated by sexual dissatisfaction and evil spirits. The reviews are often rambling and poorly edited, and sometimes don’t clearly convey plot points and critical verdicts. (The author calls Buttocks both “extraordinary” and “an average story to watch.”) At its best, though, Baylay’s prose richly evokes the look and feel of the films and the actors, as when he describes a scene in which fashionably haughty women “[look] at you sideways from head to foot, suck their teeth at you before they high snap their fingers in the air.” Rounding out the collection are David Ajiboye’s pungently frank interviews with Nollywood luminaries like actor-director Ernest Obi.
Despite some clumsy writing, these reviews capture the energy and verve of African cinema.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.
The Chicago Bulls stalwart tells all—and then some.
Hall of Famer Pippen opens with a long complaint: Yes, he’s a legend, but he got short shrift in the ESPN documentary about Michael Jordan and the Bulls, The Last Dance. Given that Jordan emerges as someone not quite friend enough to qualify as a frenemy, even though teammates for many years, the maltreatment is understandable. This book, Pippen allows, is his retort to a man who “was determined to prove to the current generation of fans that he was larger-than-life during his day—and still larger than LeBron James, the player many consider his equal, if not superior.” Coming from a hardscrabble little town in Arkansas and playing for a small college, Pippen enjoyed an unlikely rise to NBA stardom. He played alongside and against some of the greats, of whom he writes appreciatively (even Jordan). Readers will gain insight into the lives of characters such as Dennis Rodman, who “possessed an unbelievable basketball IQ,” and into the behind-the-scenes work that led to the Bulls dynasty, which ended only because, Pippen charges, the team’s management was so inept. Looking back on his early years, Pippen advocates paying college athletes. “Don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou student-athlete nonsense,” he writes. “These young men—and women—are athletes first, not students, and make up the labor that generates fortunes for their schools. They are, for lack of a better term, slaves.” The author also writes evenhandedly of the world outside basketball: “No matter how many championships I have won, and millions I have earned, I never forget the color of my skin and that some people in this world hate me just because of that.” Overall, the memoir is closely observed and uncommonly modest, given Pippen’s many successes, and it moves as swiftly as a playoff game.
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982165-19-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
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