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IT is great to see the first weekend of 2024 start off with an acknowledged Epic with Doctor Zhivago (Saturday 2.10pm RTE1).
Directed by David Lean, Doctor Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif) is a married physician and poet who falls for another woman, Lara (Julie Christie) against the backdrop of the First World War and the Russian Civil War.
Also starring Tom Courtney, Alec Guinness, Ralph Richardson, Geraldine Chaplin, Siobhan McKenna and Rita Tushingham, it is a film of some duration. In the cinema we had an Intermission, but now we have the pause button.
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It seems ages since our last doggie adventure in the Saturday evening slot, so A Dog’s Way Home (Saturday 6.35pm RTE1) truly lives up to its tag line “A lot can happen between lost and found”
A dog named Bella (voiced by Bryce Dallas Howard) gets separated from her owner and she takes on a four hundred mile journey to find her way home. Have the tissues ready because there is potential here for some ugly crying.
When one door closes, another opens, so when Washington policeman John Cale (Channing Tatum) gets turned down to be a Presidential Secret Service bodyguard he takes his daughter on the White House Tour.
However, he gets the opportunity to show off his talents when terrorists take control of the building in White House Down (Saturday 9pm RTE2).
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Jamie Foxx, as President James Sawyer, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, Richard Jenkins and James Woods keep suitably straight faces while mayhem explodes all around them.
Director Roland Emmerich, no stranger to the apocalyptic end of the world drama, does not allow any action movie cliché pass without comment. None the less, it is an entertaining enough yarn for a Saturday night.
What you are probably looking for now is a Julia Roberts Rom Com, hence My Best Friend’s Wedding (Saturday 10.20pm TG4).
Food critic Jules (Julia Roberts) has a pact with her lifelong friend Michael (Dermot Mulroney) to marry each other if they are both unattached at the age of twenty eight.
So when Michael tells her he is marrying Kimmy (Cameron Diaz), Jules enlists another friend George (a scene stealing Rupert Everett) to help her sabotage the wedding.
Excalibur (Saturday 11.25pm RTE2) is an all too rare showing of Director/Writer John Boorman’s version of the King Arthur legend.
Merlin (Nicol Williamson) schemes to bring a great king, Arthur (Nigel Terry) to power to unite the people and bring peace to the kingdom.
Unfortunately, Arthur’s reign is plunged into chaos when his wife Guinevere (Cherie Lunghi) and his greatest knight Lancelot (Nicolas Clay) have an affair, while his half sister Morgana (Helen Mirren) plots behind his back.
With a soundtrack featuring the music of Carl Orff and Richard Wager, this film is acknowledged as a major influence on Irish filmmaking, filmed in Co. Wicklow and launchong the film careers of, among others, Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart, Gabriel Byrne and Ciaran Hinds. Enjoy!
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