If you’ve got four minutes, here’s the trailer for the highly anticipated (that’s debatable) biopic of Winnie Mandela, starring Jennifer Hudson as the title character and none other than Terrence Howard as Nelson Mandela. It looks cheap and they could at least have gotten the accents right.
This may be the most time I’ll be according this film.
Holy cow. Not only is this an incredibly boring trailer, but the accents are laughable.
Yes, you and the entire English clan find the accents of the African laughable. And they find the accents/drawl of USA’s anglo-Americans in Texas simply hideous.
Indeed, a totally exasperated Zulu may wish that the English wouldn’t try to speak isiZulu.
Now, with regard to accents, there are hundreds spoken by the natives of UK in London. A mono-toothed beer guzzler holed up in a bar in Newcastle, UK, may wonder why those bastards of the House of Windsor cannot speak proper ‘English’ as spoken by his beer buddies.
Laughable, indeed.
I feel so much happier now I undearsntd all this. Thanks!
Jeniffer Otunga does again. Najivunia Ukenya!
You (guys)africans complain about the accents everytime an american is casted in a role about an african figure. Nothing new here. I feel like this if you want your own actors to star in the films. How about you guys start using your own money. Until then shut up and be happy that there are directors who care enough to do so..
we have nollywood actors and actresses we doesn’t need hollywood clowns… they doesn’t do nothing to us!! the problem ya’ll western brothers and sisters think is waay different and what we think.. “this movie brought a lot of conversation is in South Afrika. Winnie she didn’t like to hear about this movie.. “i hope you know that!.”
With regard to patronage, how does Nollywood fare compared to Hollywood – in South Africa?
don’t disagree re: the accents but while the trailer is not great I definitely would not say that this is in anyway cheap looking. I know a lot of people have been up in arms about this whole movie from the day the casting was done and while I see there is a point to the complaints let’s just stick to the complaints that have merit. Really it doesn’t look cheap.
we have nollywood actors we don’t need hollywood actors!!
I’m definately not watching this – it’s all sorts of wrong…I hope uMam Nomzamo aka Winnie says something about this mess.
As an American, I am offended by the reliance on Hollywood actors. Surely there are souther African actors who could fill these roles. Using Hollywood types is the same colonialist mentality that relied on white actors to play key roles in the anti-apartheid films (Dry White Season, etc.).
Its a business, so the smart move is to have a recognizable actor, but it still (and will in continue to bother me). I will wait for the movie to be at the Redbox–
Finally, the most grievous sin. It looked dull. Winnie is controversial. Lets have a probing look at whether she is greedy, self-centered, self-serving, violent, is she a murderer, what radicalized her, or why she took up with other men. (I AM NOT SAYING SHE DID THESE THINGS…. I SUGGEST THAT THE FILM EXPLORE THE CONTROVERSIAL ASPECTS OF HER LIFE RATHER THAN LIONIZE HER in a dull love story).
Oh my word. It looks so boring. Accents are terrible and the makeup is questionable. When we see the real Winnie speak, with all that passion and even at 70 she is mesmerising, and she is both dangerous and beautiful – you can’t help but love her. Sorry, Jennifer, you’re not Winnie, and we can see that from just a trailer. As Chris said, we need to know the controversies, the real story about a woman who is a national hero, but a highly flawed one.
@Luso – very well put.
Would you explain what you mean (subjectively) by “highly flawed”?
Powerful personalities make friends and determined enemies too.
What perfect national hero do you have in mind?
There’s a scathing trailer review in the Guardian:
http://bit.ly/amDwCS
“I am needed here,” intones young Jennifer-as-Winnie, dynamic as she is humble, about 45 seconds into the trailer – keening violins being tuned up just out of shot. We soon see why: once her husband was convicted of sabotage and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964, the film appears to suggest Winnie singlehandedly propped up the ANC’s democracy mission for an entire quarter-century. “I will continue the struggle for a free and equal South Africa!” she exclaims testily, violins really hitting their stride now. For those who find this dialogue too oblique, helpful intertitles egg her on insistently: “Her strength … her courage … became his hope.”
At this point, nearly three minutes into what feels less like a trailer than a tinyURL condensation of the entire film, we’re getting antsy for Winnie to do something dastardly, if only for dramatic purposes: set fire to a ring of tyres encircling a hapless innocent, say, or cop off with the lover she kept openly throughout her husband’s imprisonment and beyond. (Hell, we’ve already spent a minute in the company of Howard’s lazy-eyed, haltingly-accented Mandela; we’d be on her side there.)