This Weekend in HD: January 7-8

January 6, 2012 0 Comments

SoHo Highlight: Boardwalk Empire (Sky 10, 8.30 Sunday, 5.1) With Margaret pondering the consequences of sin, Nucky prepares her for a worst-case scenario as Esther Randolph plays out her trump cards; Jimmy revisits his college days, when he met Angela (above); Mickey Doyle chafes at sharing his liquor profits; Eli refuses to cop a plea; Nelson Van Alden’s past comes back to haunt him. Warned The AV Club of season two’s penultimate episode: “This show’s whole story may have just gone way off the rails. But even if it did, it did so with panache, and by no means without forewarning.” Time magazine summed it up thus: “A little Jacobean drama and a whole lot of Oedipus made for an insane, no-brakes hour of television.” ✭✭✭✭

Saturday

Trade Zone Gone Fishin’ (TV3, 5.30) ✭✭

Keeping Up With the Joneses (TV One, 7.00) When bushfires break out at Coolibah, Milton has an up-close experience with one of the most spectacular natural phenomena in the outback. ✭✭✭

Sunday

North (TV One, 7.00, R) Marcus Lush travels by boats to the Bay of Islands where he falls in love with light houses and islands again. ✭✭✭✭

Movie: Aliens in the Attic (TV3, 7.00, 5.1) Knee-high ETs invade a family on holiday in this comedy starring Kevin Nealon (TV’s Weeds), Ashley Tisdale (High School Musical) and Doris Roberts. Boston Globe thought it “made from the bland corporate DNA of Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel”. (2009) ✭✭

Movie: Die Hard: With a Vengeance (TV3, 8.45, 5.1, R) The third in the series sees Bruce Willis’ likable larrikin of a cop square off against a rhyming time-bomb terrorist played with wicked, erudite relish by Jeremy Irons. It turns out he has a personal score to settle with Willis while hatching a heist that could bring down the world’s industrial economies. So unfolds an elaborate scenario that’s far-fetched but savvy enough to punctuate the overkill of explosions, car chases and shoot-outs with wit, style and inventiveness. Samuel L Jackson co-stars. (1995) ✭✭✭

Sky Movies Premiere: Gulliver’s Travels (Sky 20, 8.30, 5.10) Jack Black, Jason Segel and Emily Blunt star in a dumbed-down dramatisation of Jonathan Swift’s satire from Monsters vs Aliens director Rob Letterman. As Variety said: “A classic ready-made for the era of big-budget 3D spectacle gets the least classy treatment imaginable.” (2010) ✭

Sky Movies Greats Premiere: Layer Cake (Sky 22, 8.30, 5.1) Matthew (X-Men: First Class) Vaughn’s directorial debut was a densely-layered underworld thriller about a drug deal that spirals out of control into an international turf war. A masterful, menacing mix of smarts, thuggery and migraine inducing intrigue, it stars Daniel Craig, Colm Meany and Michael Gambon. (2004) ✭✭✭✭