Updates, toothaches, and blah, blah, blah...

Starbucks is now going to sell Rwanda Tea?....WHAT THE F-?!?!?! After what they are doing in Eastern Congo? Looting million and killing millions and this is how Rwanda is rewarded?!?!?!? Amazing...Kagame probably has Hutu prisoners digging up the ground to plant the coffee beans.. I'm officially boycotting Starbucks until this travesty of indignational proportions is corrected...

The same people who are screaming, "Boycott Sudan, Divest from Sudan", will now be saying that while holding their latte's.....

Okay, nothing political right now, I'll hold back my thoughts...or I'll just post them in my DRCNN blog... Its been awhile I know since I've last posted, I'm just involved in so much and I've spent the last few days streamlining the operations and just life in general....like the fact that I have to get these roots canal done in the near future because this pain in my jaw at times keeps me up laaaaaaate at night! I can only take so much painkillers..."Tylonal 500mg" is my constant companion...

….where was I? Oh yeah, I saw Tsotsi a few days ago...movie looked good, but let me tell you about Hollywood, when they say a movie "looks good", they really mean that the plot/storyline sucked. And let me tell you, Tsotsi was a movie that had me shaking my head when I left it with Kristie.... If you never new anything about South Africa and you saw this movie, you wouldn't want to know anything about South Africa let alone visit there... So this is what I'm going to do, I'm going to post a review of the movie this Friday, 2 days before the Oscar, this way you will have had enough time to see the movie. Me? I don't see how it was even considered for "best foreign film"... Now back to the productions at hand... I finished the latest draft to the Congo script a few days ago, and sent it out to a few of the leads. I made a few changes in terms of language in that I wanted to display more of our ethnic language instead of the languages Continental African acquired because of Colonialism. Because I find that Sadiq (Mulele in the film) speaks Crio, a language of Sierra Language, I changed the language to Crio that he speaks in a few scenes.

I'm sending the screenplay to John Prendagast. John is a Special advisor to Crisisgroup.org. We met in Sacramento in April of 2005 when he was a keynote speaker at Cal State Sacramento Conflict and Resolution. I was a presenter there and it was odd because just a few days before the event I was thinking that John and I should me. Well we finally did, and we are told that the organizers of the conference felt that we had too much fun in CalState.

I guess they felt that we should be stuck up and bourgeois like academic intellectuals tend to be at this Conference…

So after John went back to DC and I went back to Los Angeles I asked him if he would be interested in doing a cameo in the film and I said he would! That was cool. Now if these Hollywood “stars” who haven’t even been mentioned on Nightline (John was profiled twice) would be so humble the world would be a better place…and produce better movies…now let me introduce you to the ladies in the production. They are as follows:

Kristie Latray (as Geneva, top photo) ,

Bibi Amos (as Kita, middle photo),

and Joella Benoit (as Mujinga, bottom photo).

Not pictured is Solange Hepburn, Nday Kalubi,

Simba Dibinga (misengamanagement.com),

Mikolo, Thoto, Omekongo Dibinga

(omekongo.com)and a few other folks…

The feedback on the script has been extremely positive ad the opinions of each person has went a long way to strengthening the project.

Each person that reads it is a different audience so I get interesting opinions…The composers for the movie is Dig who is with Synchmasters and a great musician and composer from Tanzania named Emmanuel. I’m looking to use to music from Congo and want to make sure that the musical rights are obtained properly so that the owners can receive royalties. Artist like Franco, Koffi Olomide, the Luba traditional song NJANJA, Tshiela Muana. I’m serious, they are part of the proposed soundtrack, and if we can strike a deal we’ll use the songs but I want to make sure that the respective artist receive royalties…

Okay, some of you are on dial-up so I’m going to end here. Tomorrow I’m going to fill you in on how the casting sessions were put together and some other good stuff…remember, if you want to be different, be yourself…