Justin Nurse, the satirist who hit headlines with his Laugh It Off T-shirts, has been infiltrating the nooks and crannies of Grahamstown to report to 2oceansvibe about what was the cat’s pajamas and bee’s knees during the Grahamstown Art Festival.

This week, we got to see Justin’s Part 1 of his Going Down In G Town diary was well-recieved and gave some insight into the build-up to showcasing his own play, White Guilt, at the festival. He then gave some details on how Grahamstown manages the festival, and now he’s reviewing other people’s “stuff” and telling us what to keep an eye out for. Check out his latest review of what he saw, below:

Films I saw that I can recommend:

Short & Sweet Film Festival. Cape Town, you probably checked this vibe out when it was housed in the igloo at Rocking the Daisies and you were looking for some place chilled to come down at. Each time the films are different, though.

This time there were five of us, tops, in the room. Organizers Julia Stephenson and Devin Herd squabbled like an old married couple and the tech gremlins boggy-ed the vibe. Otherwise, kudos to these two for bringing the freshness in an otherwise regurgitating viral world.

Check out: This Is It Collective  (the Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared video is the one you wanna watch out for).

A Small Town Called Descent: Jahmil XT Qubeka is the guy who did Of Good Report. He’s South Africa’s Quentin Tarantino, just better. I’d cockride him even harder, but the powers that be that made him the 2014 Standard Bank Young Artist for Film already seem to be on that tip. Talk about jumping on the bandwagon that is tethered to the horse that has bolted on the ship that has sailed.

As I Lay Dying: James Franco stays one step ahead of his good-looking younger brother, Dave, with this directorial debut that shows that he is wys beyond his years. The split-screen footage near the start with the horses will send your brain into schizophrenic meltdown. Torrent this bad boy if you must.

Crash: When last did you see James Spader looking sexy? Here, in this movie, shagging women like Holly Hunter in cars about to crash. So 90s.

Stoker: This from the South Korean director who blessed and cursed us with Old Boy (part of the Vengeance Trilogy), a film so consuming it made me physically sick just thinking about for a full three days after viewing. No spice. Seriously, if you haven’t seen Old Boy, do yourself the pampering and pop on down to DVD Nouveau (Bree Street or Claremont) and hook yourself up. Then watch Stoker and see how he fares in English.

Free Angela Davis and all political prisoners: A really enthralling documentary that reminds us how America had their own apartheid/racism vibes going on at the same time as we did. Muchos educationados.

Theatre I saw that I can give props to:

Illusive: Take your better half on a date night to see Stuart Lightbody’s magic. Or better yet, take him card counting with you to the casino. This young Capetonian is the net result of 15 years of learning sleight of hand. A wizard in the making.

Lake: Welcome home from the circus Daniel Buckland. Watch out world for Ryan Dittman.

Love & Prozac: Sonja ‘The Porra’ Esquera does a kickass remix of the ‘Eat. Pray. Love’ theme of a woman searching for love in a time of Tinder.

Dirty Words: Props to Jon Keevy. The man has the beard and the temperament to call himself a real playwright. And him and the crew at the Alexander Bar & Café are doing good things for South African theatre.

Being Norm: When last did you let a mime abuse your imagination? Richard Antrobus does a great job at this. For kiddy winkles and cynical parents alike.

Amateur Hour: Three words: Jemma Kahn’s boobies. Let’s hope that the rest of the sketches in this promising show (admittedly, still a work in progress) can soon match the standard of genius set by South African theatre’s femme fatale unraveling her midriff onstage.

Mainstream Vibes For Old People:

Same Time Next Year: This is the kind of risqué theatre that the Eastern Cape farmers dig on. The envelope is pushed by the theme: a man and a woman, both separately married, meet each year in a hotel room to have an affair. You’re like: I want to love that this couple are so in love, but they’re acting in sin. I’m so conflicted. Julie Hartley is lank hot and so is Paul du Toit. You can catch him soon in The Rocky Horror Picture Show at The Fugard.

The Ballad of Dirk de Bruin: Boring vibe if you are looking for a vibe. Kif vibe if you want to reminisce about growing up during apartheid.

Black and Blue: Sylvaine Strike is the original Cell C siren, the voice that launched a thousand cellphone contracts. She can act too. This is a poignant story about her learning to deal with life again, through her ‘garden boy’, after her hubby hangs himself in the garden.

The Snow Goose: A popular WW2 story, with James Cairns sounding like a cute, young Anthony Hopkins version of Hannibal Lecter that I could gobble up with a table spoon.

Other vibes:

Funnier than Them: Warren Roberston tells a joke about poohing in his back garden in Joburg to scare the burglars away. That made me laugh. Chris Forrest told a joke about walking into a club called Déjà Vu that I had actually heard him tell easily 14 years ago when I was at Up the Creek. That didn’t make me laugh, though I really wanted to. Deep Fried Man made me laugh and think. He was Funnier Than Them.

That’s What She Said: Luella Holland is also lank hot. Leave it there? No. This is the show to Sharknado. So bad it’s good. A half-decent attempt at satirizing the foibles of social media, but this blonde bombshell would do well to ditch the yes men around her. One of them even managed to lurk onstage throughout the entire duration of her show, for no apparent reason.

The Songbird Tour: Laura Burhenn (Mynabirds, The Postal Service) was sorta the unspoken international act that rounded off the Festival in the Rhodes Chapel. Again, lank hot, but we coulda done better had we enlisted the smarts, say, of Carel from Oppikoppi to bring out a proper headline act. I was underwhelmed by her, yet pleasantly surprised with the barefooted medicine woman of South African folk music, Shotgun Tori that accompanied her on the night.

Oedipus @ Koonu: Such is my disdain for this piece of crap (touted as one of the Main Festival’s big shows) that I can’t even be bothered to spell Koonu properly. Look it up if you really care. Greg Homann (apparently the 2014 Standard Bank Young Artist for Theatre) should’ve been shackled and stoned to death and his career crucified on the hill up to the Monument for this allegorical nonsense that was a mishmash of Sophocles’ Oedipus and Madiba’s burial rights. Maybe that’s what it was about, I don’t care.

The thing is: when you attempt to dissect shit, you risk getting covered in shit yourself. The money that was flushed away on this gigantic theatrical turd is as abhorrent as the mega dollar that gets dropped on the un-marketed fireworks display randomly signaling the end of Festival each year. Fuck your art, Greg Homann. And fuck your fireworks display, Tony Lankaster. The people are starving.