Reviews

Broadway’s Longest Running Musical

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 07:29:26 +0100

Having played to more than 100 million people in 149 cities around the world, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera is arguably the most popular musical of all time, experiencing sell-out seasons around the world. The Broadway production became the longest running show ever on Broadway when it overtook Cats with its 7 486th performance in 2006. It is now in its 23rd year on Broadway! If you have never experienced it, The Phantom of the Opera tells the story of a disfigured musical...

Reality TV Fever

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:16:04 +0100

Reality TV’s explosion in global popularity started in 2000, with the success of Big Brother and Survivor but the concept was not a new one. The genre has existed in some form or another since the early years of television programming. It made its debut in 1948 with Allen Funt's hugely successful Candid Camera and the genre gained momentum in the ‘50s - after all, what are game shows if not Reality TV? Today there are at least three television channels devoted exclusively to reality tele...

National Geographic Photographs: Then and Now

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:12:40 +0100

National Geographic began publication in 1888, which means for more than a hundred years their photographers have travelled to the most fascinating ends of the earth creating a century’s worth of records of our changing world. Now, taken from National Geographic's vast archives, this dazzling volume takes readers to every part of our planet, showing us what has changed and what has stayed the same. Published in 1998, Photographs: Then and Now displays past and present side by side in a rem...

Coca-Cola through the Ages

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:05:26 +0100

In 1886, Atlanta Georgia passed a short-lived law prohibiting the sale and manufacture of alcohol. In response, a pharmacist named Dr. John Pemberton created a fake wine, mixing together fruit flavours with kola nut extracts (caffeine) and coca leaves (cocaine). He then added carbonated water to the green syrup, dispensed it via soda fountains and sold it for five cents a glass. At the time it was believed to cure hangovers and headaches. Thirteen years later two businessmen from the city of Chat...

The Best of a Decade, 2001 – 2011 (Best selling author)

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:35:28 +0100

Best Selling Author of the Decade It’s hardly a surprise that Mrs Harry Potter aka JK Rowling, tops the list of best-selling authors. In fact, Rowling has written seven of this decade’s top 10 bestsellers, which boast a combined sales value of £215 million (R2.7 billion)! It only took five years for the British author to go from living on welfare to being a self-made multi-millionaire – and many eloquent paupers have tried to follow in her broomstick’s slipstream. In 1990, the idea o...

The Best of a Decade, 2001 – 2011 (Best Movie of the Decade)

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:31:38 +0100

Best Movie of the Decade 3D movies with their inflated movie rates, coupled by inflation in general and the significant increase of movie tickets as a whole means that the “highest grossing movies of all time” usually end up as the more recent films of our time – not an accurate indication of best movie. With these considerations in place, Avatar, with its $2 billion profit, whipped the “highest-grossing” title away from Titanic, and, more recently, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow...

The Best of a Decade, 2001 – 2011 (Best music video)

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:28:46 +0100

Best Music Video of the Decade Okay, so Justin Bieber may hold the YouTube record for most hits, but Beyoncé Knowles’s Single Ladies video not only scored more than 145 million hits and three million downloads, it has also been credited as having started the first major dance craze and garnered the most spoofs by celebrities. Single Ladies dominated the charts to become the singer’s highest-selling song of all time....

The Best of a Decade, 2001 – 2011 (Best invention)

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:25:37 +0100

Best Invention of The Decade

If “liking”, “defriending” and “poking” are not part of your daily vocabulary, then where the hell have you been? Facebook is not just a website, it’s a worldwide phenomenon that has had a hand in marriages, divorces, promotions, dismissals and even overthrowing of governments!

Most Colourful Neighbourhood

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 08:50:58 +0100

Wandering through the streets of the Bo-Kaap, Cape Town, is like stepping into a colouring book. Rows of houses, one block after the other, are painted a myriad of pinks, oranges, lime greens, yellows and turquoise. Formerly known as the Malay Quarter, this multicultural area is tucked into the fold of signal hill and is well known for its steep cobblestone streets, beautiful mosques and lively community – and for the rows of brightly coloured houses, of course!...

A Human Work of Art

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 08:48:58 +0100

Seventy-four-year-old Isobel Varley has 93 percent of her body covered in tattoos. She is the Guinness Book of World Records’s most tattooed senior woman. Varley got her first tattoo in 1986 at a tattoo convention at the Hammersmith Palais at the age of 49. According to Guinness, Varley had more than 300 designs inked over a 20-year period. Varley reports, “The only areas not completely tattooed are my face, the soles of my feet, my ears and some areas on my hands.”This, er, colourful cha...

The Best Selling Toy in History

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 08:47:23 +0100

Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik wanted to create a working model to help explain three-dimensional geometry to his students, but he ended up inventing the world’s best-selling toy instead.The Rubik’s Cube became a worldwide phenomenon in 1980. Today, more than 300 million Rubik’s Cubes have been sold worldwide – so many, in fact, that if all the cubes were placed on top of each other it would be enough to reach the North Pole from the South Pole!...

The Blue Man Group

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 08:44:11 +0100

They’re bald, and they’re blue’tiful, and they have managed to attract more than 17 million people to their show – a visually stunning performance that combines music, comedy and multimedia theatrics.The trio boasts characteristic “blue skin”, which is grease paint and takes more than an hour to apply to their bodies, heads and faces. No patch of skin is left, er, unblued! The paint never actually dries, which is what gives the blue men their distinct wet gooey look throughout the sho...

Cheers Ryk Neethling

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 08:42:50 +0100

Move over fragrances, personalised wines are the latest trend in celebville. Many an actor (Paul Newman), athlete (Ernie Els) and band (The Parlotones) have jumped on the wine barrel and slapped their name on a label, ready for consumption at every good time. Unfortunately critics have often judged celeb wines as below-average blends, and a growing shadow of scepticism has emerged. Nevertheless, South African Olympic gold medal winner, Ryk Neethling, has offically joined the ranks of ‘winemaker...

George Foreman: From Boxer to Griller

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 08:39:19 +0100

Nicknamed ‘Big George’, the former two time heavyweight boxing champion was once quoted as saying, “I want to keep fighting because it is the only thing that keeps me out of the hamburger joints. If I don't fight, I'll eat this planet.” George Foreman went on to become the oldest man to win the world heavyweight title. From the moment George began training for his comeback fight in 1987, he was aware of the benefits of eating healthier and ultimately put his ultimate victory — becoming...

Bullfighter goes Armani

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 08:36:57 +0100

Celebrity Spanish bullfighter Cayetano Rivera Ordonez doesn’t just take his sport seriously, he takes his style seriously too. The 34-year-old, who comes from a long line of famous bullfighters, is also a Giorgio Armani fashion model. Cayetano featured in the exclusive ‘Hand Made to-Measure’ Armani ad campaign in 2007, joining other celebrities from the sporting world who have worked with the designer, including British soccer player David Beckham. “Cayetano has that quiet, sophisticat...

Bjorn Borg – An Ace in Underwear

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 08:28:54 +0100

In the tighty-whitey world of average undies, The Björn Borg Collection is serving it up in straight sets. Yes, the Swedish tennis legend who was once ranked #1 in the world, with 11 single Grand Slam titles behind his name, is now the founder of an international underwear company. The Bjorn Borg men and women’s ranges include a wild offering of creative designs. Think checks, bright stripes and bold prints. There’s even a neon tennis ball design – rather fitting considering the man behind...

Book review: Blade Runner

Thu, 26 May 2011 14:20:32 +0100

Known as “the fastest man on no legs”, Oscar Pistorius is one of the most gifted sportsmen on the planet. His inspirational autobiography, Blade Runner, documents his extraordinary development from immobilised child to world-class sprinter. The young South African born without fibula had both his legs amputated at 11 months.

Chappies bubblegum (brand review)

Thu, 26 May 2011 13:54:35 +0100

SA’s best loved bubblegum brand was created in the late 1940s by Arthur Ginsburg, who produced the iconic product in an aim to challenge Wicks, the only single-piece chewing gum on the market at the time. Today Arthur is an 85-year-old who lives in Killarney, Johannesburg. He retired from the confectionery business some 20 years ago. But the small coloured squares in their distinctive yellow wrappers with blue and red stripes and chipmunk head are still going strong. Back in the day, everyone c...

The Bang Bang Club (movie review)

Thu, 26 May 2011 13:51:27 +0100

A gripping true-life drama based on the experiences of four young combat photographers capturing the final days of apartheid in South Africa. Fuelled by adrenaline and moral outrage, Greg Marinovich (Ryan Phillippe), Kevin Carter (Taylor Kitsch), Ken Oosterbroek (Frank Rautenbach) and João Silva (Neels van Jaarsveld) made sure the world saw the violence that ripped through the streets of South Africa.