Team America: World Police

I've been looking forward to this ever since I heard that Trey Parker was doing it. I think it was worth the wait. Filmed in what Gerry Anderson would have called Supermarionation (ie completely with Thunderbird style pupets) this is a political / movie / hollywood spoof that has the usual gross out moments that you'd expect from the makers of south park. It has some hilarious moments - love the way they trash paris and egypt whilt catching some bad guys with weapons of mass destruction, and it's worth hanging on through the credits for the Alec Baldwin special song at the end. The vomit scene is amusing but the panthers are hilarious. Everyone's a target, especially Hollywood big budget movies but the real winner is probably the hilarious soundtrack. It's also incredibly well filmed, with really complex puppet shots and great camerawork.

UGC Cinema
Colour
****

Rodan

Made in 1956 this cousin of the Godzilla movies made by Toho (their first colour movie!) is a nice little monster movie. It carries a cautionary tale of messing with nuclear weapons because they lead to some monster maggots attacking some mines then - everyone gets attacked by Rodan(s). Has some high production values with great miniature sets, mad characters and UFO's.
There's trouble in them there hills...

DVD Region 1
Colour
***

The Munsters

Ahhh.
The Munsters... This is one of my favourite TV shows of all time. Herman is so cool.
This DVD has been a long time coming, and they've only released season one at the moment.
Not a lot of extras, but it does have the 15min pilot that has never aired. Watched the first two shows with Jake - he liked it too.

DVD Region 1
Black & White
*****

Rescue Me

Denis Leary plays a NY fireman in this new series. Leary usually delivers the goods (I love his stand up) unless the cast includes Sandra Bullock, luckily she's not in this and it wasn't bad. Got a little cheesy re: 9/11 at times, but the scene where he was bribing his kids was great and his dead mates (a la Six Feet Under) was ok too. Looks promising...

Sky (Episode 1.1)
Colour
***

Las Vegas

Sky have kicked off some new series of US dramas, this is season two of Las Vegas - a glitzy show based in a casino. I like this, it follows the Montecino Casino security team and their boss played rather well by James Caan. The most entertaining parts are usually the completely ridiculous technology that they have in the casino. In this one they use a security camera to zoom in on a dudes arm, then thermal image it, then mess with the contrast and enhance it - and voila! they are able to read a serial number on a microchip he has embedded under his skin.

The A-Team would have been proud.

Sky (Episode 2.1)
Colour
***

Elephant

Gus Van Sant's movie about a normal day in a high school that is anything but normal.
Based on recent school shootings in the USA this follows life in a school in Portland Oregon. Using steadicam it has great cinematography that follows the kids around the school halls, replaying aspects of the day as various characters lives intersect. Powerful stuff.

DVD Region 2
Colour
****

They Came to Rob Las Vegas

This movie from 1969 is a pretty cool heist movie.
I kinda like the 60's cheesy music, along with everyone smoking and calling each other 'cat' but this is also a good story which involves robbing an armoured car in the desert, they actually bury it underground and fool everyone for a while. Lots of subplot with Jack Palance as a Treasury Agent who is after the owner of the security company too.

Sky Movies
Colour
***

The Commander - Virus

This was a two part (3 hour) TV crime drama written by Linda La Plante and starring Amanda Burton. I enjoyed it and thought that the idea of a hacker changing medical records was more creative and scary than the usual hacker stuff. All in all not a bad show.

ITV
Colour
***

Derren Brown: Messiah

Caught up with this tonight, from Friday - Mr Brown visits the USA to meet various leaders of differing belief systems that range from UFO abductees to Mediums and Christian church leaders. The aim is to see if by using his skills he can fool each one of them into endorsing him. As the show progresses most of them fall for it, from cold reading to remote drawing demonstrations these people take it all in. He says the aim of the show is to raise questions about what we accept and believe. I think his approach can do this, but the people he chose for the show were a little off the wall, as he says in the show the reading section was diffcult to perform as he was messing with peoples lives - this one was uncomfortable.

Overall I think that Penn & Teller did a better job of this whole thing in there recent b******t series, more open and honest and with more information. I guess Derren has a problem in this area - it's tricky to expose something as a fraud, when it's the tools you use for your own show as well - not sure if he's really the guy for the job. Don't get me wrong, I know that he never claims any special powers etc. but I think he makes a better performer than exposer...

Channel 4
Colour
**

I Spit on Your Grave

Yikes. Video Nasty time - I was interested in seeing if this was as shocking as it was when I saw it back in the early eighties. Also known as Day of the Woman this was a really notorious movie that fell foul of the whole video nasty thing at that time. I was trying to work out what was more shocking, the film or the fact that it was not that different from some stuff I'd seen on TV the other week... probably the latter! There's some strong stuff in there still, don't get me wrong this is not for everyone, but it's scary how strong some TV drama is these days and I guess that's scarier than this movie!

DVD Region 2
Colour
**

Without a Paddle

Nice buddy movie about three dudes who, following a friends funeral, go on a search for hidden treasure! Some good gags - the white water rafting was funny as was the scene where the rednecks were singing "do you really want to hurt me" modified to "Yes, we really want to hurt you!" Cool.

UGC Cinema
Colour
****

Cold Case

Caught up with 4 episodes of this show from season one seeing that season two kicks off later this week. It's a great show with Detective Lilly Rush investigating various old and cold cases.
Very stylised with some good characters and great music.
Episodes: Sherry Darlin' > Hubris > Glued > The Letter

DVD-R
Colour
****
.

Garfield

Watched this one again with the boys - it's not that bad, saved by Bill Murray doing the voice for a pretty good cgi Garfield.

The perfect main human characters played by Breckin Meyer and Jennifer Love Hewitt seem to be bred for such roles, maybe they keep them in the cupboard somewhere and only let them our for such roles... scary.

DVD Region 2
Colour
***