Movies

Collected on three DVD‘s, this box set enables fans of the South Park clan to relive the halcyon first season. South Park has already run for 12 seasons and is planned to continue for at least another three, well into 2011.

The thirteen episodes that started it all are presented in glorious full screen, full colour and have stereo sound.

Fans will remember such favourites as Cartman Gets an Anal Probe, Weight Gain 4000, Starvin’ Marvin and Cartman’s Mom is a Dirty Slut.

A few extras are included, specifically Cartman‘s rendition of Holy Night. A must for the festive season!

Indulge me for a bit – I haven’t had the opportunity to watch movies in quantities like this for ages. The past two weeks saw some sedentary coach potatoing happen in front of the tube. I’ve picked some of the ones we enjoyed to recommend to you in case you missed them (you have a life, of course you haven’t).

21 is a movie based on real events involving a scheming mathematics professor and some super-brained students in a Blackjack card counting scheme. Kevin Spacey plays the role of the mastermind professor Micky Rosa who has developed a scheme of card counting that involves his team members communicating in a special code to indicate when a certain table is ripe for the picking and to convey the current count to the chosen big player. Ben Campbell is the brilliant student who gets in on the scheme simply to make enough cash to pay his way through medical school. His winnings are stolen from his dorm room and he is beaten up and thrown out of Vegas by William Cole, played by Laurence Fishburne. Cole is eager to get his hands on Rosa and Campbell achieves his objective after a clever gamble of his own. The story of the MIT studens was reported in Wired Magazine quite some time ago. 21 is highly entertaining.

Al Pacino stars in 88 Minutes, a thriller that has him and the audience guessing as to which maniac is hunting him down and has promised that he has 88 minutes to live. Pacino plays the part of the celebrated and successful Dr. Jack Gramm who specializes in serial killers and has just managed to convict Jon Forster. Though Forster is on death row, copycat killings take place that implicate Gramm and place Forster‘s conviction in doubt.

The premise of 88 Minutes is very good but the movie is let down by poor plot and character development. In the end, the unmasking of the real killer is a surprise, but by then I didn’t really care anymore. Not even Pacino can save this one. If you have nothing else to choose from, 88 Minutes will do. Otherwise, give it a miss.

I never thought zombie movie, but that is effectively what I Am Legend is. For once, Will Smith is a bit subdued and does a great job playing the part of Robert Neville, the last man alive in New York after a bacterial epidemic transforms the human populace into monsters. A cure for cancer is the catalyst for the epidemic that transforms those infected into zombies. Neville shutters himself and his dog into his apartment replete with webcams, canned goods and a laboratory. He is intent on finding a cure for the dreadful disease, but has little success.

Based on the 1954 science fiction novel of the same name by Richard Matheson, I Am Legend is fabulously entertaining. Though I generally tend not to waste my time watching monster or zombie movies, I Am Legend provided a fresh angle on that genre. Highly recommended!

What would movie time be without a decent animated feature? Madagascar maintains the benchmark other animated features by Dreamworks have set. It’s the story of Marty the Zebra who yearns to leave the Central Park Zoo to see the wild. The penguins are the star of show, in my opinion. Their escape from the zoo prompts Marty to follow them and he gets himself and his mates caught and placed on a cargo ship destined for Kenya. Naturally, Alex the lion, Melman the giraffe and Gloria the hippo are non too pleased at being locked up in crates that accidentally fall overboard and get washed up on the shore of Madagascar. Marty faces a bit of a struggle to convince his friends that the wild is a great place to be. In particular, Alex discovers that meat is hard to come by and that he may have to hunt his best friend. The penguins don’t really enjoy Antarctica as much as they expected to and return the cargo ship to Madagascar. Great entertainment for young and old with the promise of Madagascar 2 opening in theatres later this year.

Last, but certainly not least, is Munich, the motion picture based on the 1972 massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich. The killings by the Black September terrorist group spark a retaliation by the Israeli government and the movie documents how the group lead by Avner Kaufman hunts down the members of Black September to take revenge. Spielberg is known for his long historic dramas. This one is long, but absolutely riveting. As someone who knows very little about the incident in 1972, I found the movie to be a great way to learn a bit more about the goings on during the turbulent early 70′s. Avner‘s group is hardly very professional and seems to select complicated means of dispatching their intended targets, often using complex bombs and remote trigger devices. Daniel Craig deserves the peanut of the movie award for his poor version of a South African accent in the role of Steve, one of the four members of Avner‘s team: if you want a South African accent done right, get a South African actor! Actual television footage from the 1972 hostage drama is interspersed with gritty visuals of the team going about its killing spree in Europe. As a thought-provoking drama, Munich is highly recommended.

For fanboys, the news of the first trailer for The Watchmen should be good. Here are the live-action representatives portraying the well-known characters:

The trailer may be viewed here.

A couple of images from the trailer added.

Coming in 2009…