Recently in Africa Category

As with the other day, I can't seem to make Quicktime happy at my workstation here. Nonetheless, it appears Matt Damon has gone from exposing his conjoined twin's involvement in the WMD fiasco to ending apartheid in the new trailer for Clint Eastwood's Invictus, with Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. Busy fella.

Also in today's trailer bin, two second looks at worlds gone mad: Mia Wasikowska finds Through the Looking Glass is still crazy after all these years in trailer #2 for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, also with Tim Burton, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Stephen Fry, Michael Sheen, Crispin Glover, Timothy Spall, and Christopher Lee. To be honest, it looks a little too Burton-y to me, if such a thing is possible for a property like Alice.

And Leonardo di Caprio is still losing his cool on The Island in trailer #2 for Martin Scorsese's recently kicked-to-2010 Shutter Island, also featuring Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, Michelle Williams, Patricia Clarkson, Elias Koteas, Jackie Earle Haley, and the eminent Max Von Sydow. Eh, this looks better than most January fare.

In a 4-0 rout, Brazil knocks the US out of the Women's World Cup in the semifinals. Arg, that's too bad. Despite the time zone issues, I caught several of the round 1 games (including US-Sweden and US-Nigeria, as well as a few random match-ups like Canada-Ghana and Denmark-NZ) and thought we looked pretty solid, give or take an occasionally lackluster offense. But it sounds like we ran into a brick wall here. At any rate, Brazil will face Germany, who beat Norway 3-0 on Wednesday in the Finals.

"The resolution allows the use of force in self-defense, to ensure freedom of movement for humanitarian workers and to protect civilians under attack." In a unanimous vote, the UN Security Council agrees to send 26,000 peace-keeping troops and police -- a UN-AU hybrid force known as Unamid -- to Darfur. "Ban Ki-moon , the UN Secretary-General, called the move a 'historic and unprecedented operation' that will send 'a clear and powerful signal' of help to the people of Darfur." That being said, many observers -- among them Sen. Russ Feingold -- feel this version of the resolution has been excessively watered down to appease the Sudanese government: "If this UN resolution is passed as it currently stands, we can expect the Sudanese government to try to evade its requirements and agreements without a single consequence. Should that happen, the toll of the genocide in Darfur will continue to mount -- in lives lost, in persons displaced, and in fundamental human values that the international community has failed to uphold."

"None of those 76 senators, who include the current Republican leader and whip, acted to jeopardize the safety and security of U.S. troops in Somalia. All of them recognized that Congress had the power and the responsibility to bring our military operations in Somalia to a close, by establishing a date after which funds would be terminated." In an editorial for Salon, Sen. Russ Feingold invokes GOP behavior on Somalia in 1993 to make the case for Congress cutting funding in Iraq. "Since President Bush has made it painfully clear that he has no intention of fixing his failed Iraq policy, it is no longer a question of if Congress will end this war; it is a question of when."

All the King's Men by way of Heart of Darkness (and more than a dash of Hotel Rwanda), Kevin MacDonald's The Last King of Scotland is a harrowing portrait of the scampish, fun-loving, paranoid, and genocidal Idi Amin, former president/warlord of Uganda, and a moderately engaging cautionary tale about the dangers of seeking to find oneself in a place one doesn't belong. Somewhat clunkily assembled (despite being co-written by Peter Morgan, screenwriter of The Queen) and suffering from a third act that, like its protagonist, gets lost somewhere amidst its downward trajectory, The Last King of Scotland is a film mostly redeemed by excellent performances -- notably Forest Whitaker as Amin and James McAvoy as our (anti-)hero, but also Gillian Anderson, Simon McBurney, and others in supporting roles. It wasn't quite as good as I was hoping or expecting, but it's definitely worth a rental -- for Whitaker if for nothing else -- if you can handle the increasingly graphic carnage of the film's final hour.

As the film begins, it's 1970, and (the fictional) Nicholas Gerrigan (James McAvoy of The Chronicles of Narnia) is a recently-minted doctor and young, debaucherous Scotsman looking for a life less suffocating than the one on the plate before him, taking over the family practice. Choosing Uganda more or less at random (he spins a globe to choose his fate, but not without first exercising some veto power), Gerrigan soon finds himself one of two doctors on hand in an overworked clinic deep in the African hinterlands, where the only fun to be had is making flagrant passes at his colleague's do-gooder wife (Gillian Anderson). Fate rescues Gerrigan from his ennui, however, in the form of a traffic accident -- one which brings him to the attention of Uganda's new leader, the Scotland-adoring Idi Amin (Whitaker). Soon thereafter, Gerrigan has been made Amin's personal doctor and "closest advisor," meaning he spends a lot of time dissolute by the pool, unwittingly (and soon deliberately) oblivious to the bloody machinations holding Amin's regime in power. That is, until his own somewhat-inadvertent complicity in a murder -- as well as some really poor life decisions -- force Gerrigan to confront the monstrosities laid before him. This place is a prison, he soon discovers, and these people very clearly aren't his friends.

As it almost had to be, The Last King of Scotland is most enjoyable in its first hour, as Gerrigan is slowly seduced by the life Amin offers him, and all the sultry pleasures therein included. When it all turns on him, and Gerrigan discovers the heavy price of his fool's paradise, the film quickly descends into a hell that's not only hard to watch (one grisly scene brought back unsettling childhood memories of watching...I think it was A Man Called Horse -- you'll know it when you see it) but also somewhat repetitive. How many slo-mo shots of a druggy and/or horrified Gerrigan set to acid-rock do we really need here? Moreover, the film telegraphs one of the good doctor's key indiscretions for far too long -- at least forty minutes is spent simply waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak.

That being said, Forrest Whitaker's performance here makes up for a lot of mistakes. (Seeing the clearly quiet-natured Whitaker's shellshocked acceptance speech at the Globes last weekend made his work here seem all the more surprising and impressive.) The Willie Stark last year's All the King's Men desperately needed, Whitaker commands the camera in every scene he's in -- His Amin is all the more horrifying because he's basically an overgrown boy, all appetite and no restraint. In every scene, you can sense him lumbering somewhere on the border between childish glee and murderous rage, and we never know where the axe will fall...only that, when it does, it's not going to be pretty.

Other important leadership shifts, these in and around New York: Having officially replaced Kofi Annan at the UN earlier this week, new general secretary Ban Ki-Moon cleans house, announces his own team and sets the Darfur crisis as a top priority. And, over in Albany, New York governor (and future presidential contender?) Elliot Spitzer delivers both his first Inaugural [text] and his first State of the State [PDF]: "In an hourlong address that was largely a repudiation of the policies of his predecessor, George E. Pataki, the new governor said he would seek to broadly overhaul the state's ethics and lobbying rules. He said he would make prekindergarten available to all 4-year-olds by the end of his term, overhaul the public authorities that control most of the state's debt and make New York more inviting to business by reducing the cost of workers' compensation."

In honor of the new year, and since I spend so much time berating him and his historically terrible administration around here, two holiday tips of the hat to, of all people, Dubya. On his watch, the president has "established the world's largest sweep of federally protected ocean" and tripled humanitarian and development aid to Africa. Hey, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Jeffrey Sachs, take note: A new report finds that the best way to get the US to pony up some foreign aid for impoverished nations is to get that country on the Security Council, and pronto. "A two-year seat on the Security Council, for instance, can generate a 59 percent spike in U.S. assistance, according to a study by two Harvard University scholars that tracked U.S. economic and military assistance from 1946 to 2001. In times of crisis, U.S. aid to some member countries has increased by as much as 170 percent. Those aid levels tend to recede after the country leaves the 15-nation council." So, great news, Panama...You just hit the jackpot.

In a special Africa-themed edition of the movie bin, a young Scottish doctor (former faun James McAvoy) hangs with Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (Forrest Whitaker) and Gillian Anderson in the new trailer for The Last King of Scotland, potentially crooked cop Nic Vos (Tim Robbins) spurs Patrick Chamusso (Derek Luke) to rally against South African apartheid in the trailer for Phillip Noyce's Catch a Fire (which continues the director's move from Patriot Games-type thrillers to global-political fare such as Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Quiet American), and things go awry in Morocco for Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett (and elsewhere for Gael Garcia Bernal and Clifton Collins Jr.) in this look at Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel. (Let's hope it's better than Inarritu's woeful 21 Grams.)

Well, that's that, then. Ghana knocks the US out of the Cup with a 2-1 victory that may have hinged partly on a questionable PK. (Being in research mode, I didn't see the game -- Still, it seems like a lot of the games this Cup have swung on bad calls, and we needed a win, not a tie, regardless.) Oh well, there's always 2010, I guess. At any rate, congrats to Ghana on getting through, and here's hoping the Togo Sparrow Hawks can play spoiler to France tomorrow...

As if the Dallas-Miami NBA Finals (ok, I was way off) weren't sports bliss enough 'round these parts, the 2006 World Cup has begun, with host Germany defeating Costa Rica 4-2 and Ecuador besting Poland 2-0 on Day 1. Alas, since I have to maximize my research time while I'm briefly back in the 202, and since the Manuscript Reading Room of the Library of Congress aggravatingly keeps bankers' hours (and charge $0.20 a photocopy, but that's a whole 'nother rant), it looks like I'll be missing much of the first round. But I promise to make it up on the back end.

The WP takes a gander at the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), which "can see 13 billion years back in time, nearly to the big bang. With its 10-by-11-foot hexagonal mirror -- the largest of its type in the world -- SALT concentrates the faintest, most distant light in the universe. If a candle were to flicker on the moon, SALT could detect it."

"[Y]ou have somebody being fired from the CIA for allegedly telling the truth, and you have no one fired from the White House for revealing a CIA agent in order to support a lie. That underscores what's really wrong in Washington, D.C." Following the recent dismissal of CIA historian and Africa specialist Mary McCarthy for telling the Post about our secret gulags, several Dems, including John Kerry and Rep. Jane Harman, question the Dubya double standard regarding leaks. Update: Was it not McCarthy after all?

By way of a friend, the State Department releases its mandated yearly human rights report for 2005 (here), finding cause for alarm in Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela, Burma, North Korea, Belarus and Zimbabwe and (surprise, surprise) progress in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report doesn't delve into human rights violations here at home (although China tries to fill that gap in response every year), but it does unequivocally state -- in bold, no less -- that "countries in which power is concentrated in the hands of unaccountable rulers tend to be the world's most systematic human rights violators." Hey y'all might be on to something. Deadpans the head of Amnesty International: "The Bush administration's practice of transferring detainees in the 'war on terror' to countries cited by the State Department for their appalling human rights records actually turns the report into a manual for the outsourcing of torture."

"It must be on the basis by which I travel anywhere, being in a private aircraft, which bears a substantial cost unfortunately...I am confident that we will have a long, productive and warm relationship, but good relationships are built on firm understandings at the outset." Among his many other shady dealings, it seems "Casino Jack" Abramoff tried to bilk the President of Gabon for $9 million, in order to set up a meeting with Dubya. Apparently, Gabon didn't take up his offer...I wonder if they considered it spam.