Friday - 3 February 2006
Hope and Faith - MNET Open Time 18:30
A reluctant Faith finally agrees to have Charley fix her cracked tooth.
Charmed - SABC3 19:30
After being presumed dead, the Haliwell sisters begin their demon-free existance with new identities.
George Lopez - SABC3 20:30
Max gets an incredibly sexy new tutor and Carmen has dating troubles with Jason. The house is plunged into teenage angst.
Movie: Blade:Trinity - MNET 20:30
BLADE: TRINITY is the third installment of the film series adapted from Marvel comics. Here, a new challenge faces the preternaturally sharp hunter, Blade (Wesley Snipes) when a group of vamps resurrect the long-slumbering "Drake" (Dominic Purcell)--the ancient and all-powerful Count Dracula--and Blade meets the ultimate opponent. Teaming up with the Nightstalkers, a group of similar-minded hunters led by tough slayer-hottie Abigail (Jessica Biel) and her joke-a-minute partner Hannibal (Ryan Reynolds), Blade is ready for battle. However, Drake's handlers are an unruly bunch themselves, with sassy goth wench Danica (Parker Posey in a wonderfully exaggerated performance) doing her best to make things as unpleasant as possible. What's more, while Danica's vamp team is harvesting homeless people for their blood, the Nightstalkers' scientist creates a potion that can not only kill Drake but can take the entire bloodsucking race with him. And thus, David S. Goyer continues the BLADE cinema series, satisfying fans with plenty of the nocturnal monster mystique they so desperately crave.
Crossing Jordan - SABC2 21:00
Garrett travels to Mexico in an attempt to catch a serial rapist who escaped from his clutches 5 years previously.
Movie: Titus - SABC3 22:00Based on Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus (one of the Bard's lesser-known and most gruesome works), director Taymor (Broadway's The Lion King) brings this adaptation to life with dazzling imagery and haunting immediacy. Titus (Anthony Hopkins) is a victorious Roman general who makes two mistakes: supporting the wily Saturninus (Cumming) as the new Emperor, and wronging Tamora, Queen of the Goths (Jessica Lange), by killing her eldest son. Murder follows murder as the tides of fate change, as Tamora is aided by her two reckless sons and her Moor lover, Aaron (Lennix). The body count is raised higher and higher until Titus finally holds a very special dinner banquet.
Saturday - 4 February 2006
Movie: Bend it like Beckham - SABC 3 19:30
Like most everyone else in England, Jess Bahmra (Parminder Nagra) idolizes professional British football player David Beckham. But Jess is different from most fans; she's a talented player in her own right. Unfortunately, her traditional Indian parents (Anupam Kher and Shaheen Khan) have other plans for their youngest daughter. They expect Jess to follow in the footsteps of her sister, Pinky (Archie Panjabi), who is preparing to marry in a traditional Indian wedding. When Jess meets Jules (Keira Knightley), who plays for a local female football team, she pursues her own dream and begins to play, keeping her participation a secret from her parents and often leading to disastrous results. To complicate matters even more, both Jess and Jules are enamored with their coach, Joe (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). Ultimately, Jess has to decide whether to live life on her terms or act in accordance with her parents' wishes. This charming coming-of-age tale is also an intriguing look at Indian culture in England. Juliet Stevenson is superb as Jules' tarty, ultra-feminine mother.
Strictly Come Dancing - SABC2 20:00
The premierre of South Africa's take on the international reality show. Eight celebrities are matched up withh professional dancing partners.
Movie: The Bourne Identity - MNET 20:00
As THE BOURNE IDENTITY begins, a man who may or may not be Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is found floating in the Mediterranean Sea and is hauled onto a fishing boat. When the ship's doctor examines the unconscious castaway, he discovers two bullet wounds and an implanted device that displays a Swiss bank account number. With nothing but this code, the amnesiac Bourne travels to Zurich and gains access to a safe-deposit box containing a gun, thousands of dollars in various currencies, and valid passports from numerous countries--each listing a different identity. Within minutes, Bourne is on the run from a seemingly ever-present agency, relying on language and fighting skills he didn't even know he possessed. Offering $20,000 for a ride to Paris, Bourne gains the reluctant help of the nomadic Marie (Franka Potente). Meanwhile, the shadowy organization, headed by a tough-talking bureaucrat (Chris Cooper), sends numerous assassins (including the Professor, played by Clive Owen) after Bourne and Marie. As their situation grows more perilous, the two strangers struggle to find out who Bourne really is and why they are being hunted.
Movie: What's Eating Gilbert Grape - SABC3 21:45
Bizarre, whimsical, and touching scenes mark WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE. Johnny Depp is Gilbert, the eldest brother in a large family of a very large (morbidly obese, actually) mother (Darlene Cates) who hasn't left the house since her husband committed suicide years before. Leonardo Di Caprio who received an Academy Award nomination for his role, is Arnie, Gilbert's retarded teenage brother who needs constant supervision (he's often found scaling the town water tower). Caring, passive Gilbert is burdened beyond reason, living a dead-end life in a dying small town, stocking shelves at a grocery store whose business being taken over by the new mall supermarket. Gilbert's best friends (Crispin Glover and John C. Reilly) see their futures in the form of undertaker and Burger Barn owner, and Gilbert's other social life is taken up with a random affair with a frustrated and reckless housewife (Mary Steenburgen). Everyone needs the constantly patient Gilbert, whose future seems equally grim until well-traveled, straightforward Becky (Juliette Lewis) and her nonconformist grandmother (Penelope Branning) come to town. Their camper is in need of repair, so Becky stays long enough to actually have an effect on Gilbert, making his new life spiral in wild ways. Based on the novel by Peter Hedges (who also wrote the screenplay), WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE is quirky, irresistible, and endearingly eccentric without being a freak show.
Movie: The General's Daughter - ETV 21:55
When the daughter of a well-known and well-respected base commander is raped and murdered, the undercover military investigator (John Travolta) assigned to the case discovers a shocking labyrinth of murderous sexual obsession and deceit. Based on the novel by Nelson DeMille and also starring Madeline Stowe
Movie: High Crimes - SABC1 20:00
You live the life you had always pictured: a thriving career, a beautiful house, and most importantly, a wonderful husband. Someone you love and know better than anyone else. But suppose everything you know - everything you trust - about him and your life together may be a lie. For Claire Kubik, that nightmare scenario has become all too real. Claire, a high-powered attorney, and her husband Tom, a successful contractor with his own business, lead the idyllic Marin County life. They're madly in love and planning to have a family. But a random crime - a bungled burglary - at their home triggers a chain of events that shatters their world. Starring Ashley Judd, Morgan Freeman and Jim Caviezel
Sunday - 5 February 2006
Extreme Makeover Home Edition - MNET Open Time 17:00
'The Walswick Family'. When Martha Walswick lost her husband following a three-year fight with cancer last summer, this brave woman told her nine children, that they needed to pull together for what she called their 'new adventure'. Movie: The Bone Collector - ETV 20:00
He's the expert, and she's the eyes and ears stopping a serial killer's murderous rampage. Lincoln Rhyme was the leading expert in criminal forensics until an injury left him paralysed, depressed and incapable of working. But when a gruesome murder in Manhattan leaves detectives baffled, they call on Rhyme to help solve the mystery. Amelia Donaghy, a street cop whose quick thinking preserves a gruesome murder scene, is enlisted by Rhyme to be his on-the-scene forensics expert. As Donaghy investigates, her wireless connection to Rhyme gives him the eyes and ears to stop the psychopath - before she becomes his next victim. Starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie.
Movie: Bourne Supremacy - MNET 20:00
Two years ago, Jason Bourne thought he had walked away from his past. But now, his past is about to return. Bourne and Marie have maintained their anonymous, underground existence at the cost of permanence. Fueled by splintered nightmares and haunted by the past he cannot remember, Bourne moves Marie from city to city, trying to remain one step ahead of the threat implicit in every unexplained stranger's glance, every 'wrong number' phone call - that at any second, without any warning, he might get pulled back into the world he hopes he left behind. When an operative appears in the sleepy village that has been their latest home, Bourne and Marie collapse their lives and head out. His past at the door, their only chance now is to run. But once a line is crossed and the stakes in a new global game of cat-and-mouse are raised, the Jason Bourne created by Treadstone - the covert, now dismantled operation that spawned cold-blooded, professional assassins - returns.
Movie: Out of Africa - SABC2 21:00Adapted from Isak Dinesen's novel, OUT OF AFRICA, this film plaintively tells the story of two troubled adults who meet and fall in love in the African wilderness. Karen Blixen-Flecke (Meryl Streep) is a modern woman, caught in the shortcomings of a practical marriage. Finch Hatton (Robert Redford) is a gallant British hunter, lonely, but unable to commit. As they two meet and begin a torrid affair, they set out on an epic adventure in the badlands of Africa--an adventure that real-life Karen Blixen-Flecke would later novelize under the pen name Isak Dinesen.
Sydney Pollack's opus, OUT OF AFRICA, is a full, visually compelling film. Its storyline evokes a plethora of emotions, ranging from fear and loathing to hope and the elation of love.
Movie: Ruthless People - SABC2 23:00In this comedy from the directing team responsible for AIRPLANE!, two kidnappers discover, to their shock, that the husband (Danny DeVito) of the wealthy woman (Bette Midler) they've snatched won't pay the ransom and is, in fact, celebrating the possibility that she may be murdered. It isn't long before the abductors understand why: their captive, who harangues them with a never-ending stream of abuse, is more trouble than she's worth. But as they get to know her, and learn more about her husband, it dawns on the kidnappers that he's no treasure either--and that getting abducted may be the best thing that's happened to their victim in a long time.