The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 70

THURSDAY DECEMBER 2 PREVIEW GUIDE ROBIN OLIVER I ABC, 8.30pm CURSE OF THE BLAIR i numm i WITCH: Nine. 9.30Dm. The 2 aim is to get a few thousand Etejj extra bums plonked on seats at the local nickelodeon, but this is a cut above the usual "making of programs which have become part and parcel of the promotional kit for any new flick thought worth its box office salt. The Blair Witch Project is the story of three film-makers who vanished in a Maryland forest while making a documentary on the local legend of the Blair Witch. This piece uses documentary techniques to examine the legend, the fears of evil sprits still held by the people of Burkitsville, a small community within the forest, ritualistic murders at nearby Coffin Rock in 1886, the child massacres of 1941 and the fate of the three film-makers.

THIS IS YOUR LIFE -I Sporting Greats: Nine, Vj 830pm. A highlights pack-w age from this lame, seemingly penny-pinched and poorly presented series includes the surprises sprung on Ron Barassi, Richie Benaud, Ian Chappell, Betty Cuthbert, Melinda Gainsford-Taylor, Dennis Lillee, Greg Norman and the late T.J. Smith, and will therefore be considered above suspicion. MARTIAL LAW Captive T00 Hearts: Seven, 8.30pm. Waiting for Sammo Hung EataJ to fly into action gets tedious, but the reward is a smart sense of humour.

This time, a babies-for-sale racket gets the chop. Average. THE Gurindji people of Australia's deep red heart have an intriguing, inspiring recent history. In the '60s, disgruntled Gurindji stockmen were among the worst off in the country, paid meagre amounts of flour and sugar for their labours. Spurred on by this adversity, they went on strike in 1966 and, in 1971, scored a landmark victory when the Government granted them a parcel of sacred land.

Effectively, the Gurindji had made the first successful Aboriginal land claim. Wrap Me Up In Paperbark touches on that story, but its focus is another Gurindji struggle. Speedy McGinness and his sister, Kathy Mills, want to move their mother's remains 600 kilometres south from her Darwin grave to Gurindji country. With the exception of Eddie Mabo's posthumous relocation, say the film's producers, this would mark a historic first if, that is, Speedy can surmount a pair of obstacles. Not only does he have to secure the green light from the red-tape brigade in the Northern Territory Government, he must persuade his siblings that their mother, Kingarli (one of the stolen generation), would want it thus.

This revealing yarn teems with classic Aussie characters. (As a postscript to the documentary, last week the Northern Territory's Cemeteries Act was amended to allow just such a relocation. Now, all that stand in Speedy 's way are his sisters. Methinks the NT Government was a pushover by comparison.) Sacha Molitorisz Ho diddly hum Fry, Leela and Bender make a disappointing debut. As Ned Flanders might say, ho diddly hum.

With its citizen versus the state, fish-out-of-water, seize-your-destiny set-up and it's unhidden borrowings from films from Sleeper to Gattaca, Futurama makes for spectacularly conventional, unimaginative sci-fi. And it's barely funny, even for a pilot or the more narrowly focused sci-fi spoof it threatens to evolve into. Whither "Mmmm Were we spoiled by The Simpsons? Matt Buchanan DOUG ANDERSON FOKV KFECTIO Seven, 7.30pm FUTURAMA, Matt Groening's follow-up to Tfie Simpsons, might invite a curious conflict of loyalty among his fans. If they judge the show by the extraordinarily high standards set by his previous work including the Life in Hell strip there is every chance they won't like it. But given that most brilliant rivals of Tfie Simpsons Duchnan, South Park and King of The Hill were not simply better for having to survive comparison with Springfield's finest but, inspired by Tlie Simpsons, developed our expectations of what TV (as opposed to merely animated entertainment) can do, then Futurama, like the new boy at school who just happens to be the son of The Creator, deserves no special favours.

We don't care who your dad is. Eat our, ahem, shorts. So, to be blunt, Futurama 's first day at big school is a bit boring. Admittedly it's a pilot episode and it is the chore of a pilot episode to devote itself to introducing characters, establishing the certainties of its world and simply put, to explain itself. And to that end, we are- briskly introduced to our central character, Fry, a hapless delivery boy who backs into a cryogenic unit on the eve of 2000 and, 1,000 years later, finds himself defrosted in a city that looks as if it has been restyled by Luc Besson on a commission from the Jetsons.

Here, them to fulfil an assortment of dreams and desires. Unpromising comedy with surreal overtones as the Crazy Gang, Alastair Sim and others grind through farcical music hall routines. ACROPOLE (1995) On SBS at 12.20am (Friday) GRAINY trailers of pre-war Greek films outlining the career of a child actor, Lakis Loizos, star of innumerable weepers, begin this musical. It then settles in during the late 50s and early '60s, where the now grown-up Loizos is a competent tradesman, resigned to playing featured extra roles working for an agency supplying talent for movie crowd scenes. Is a comeback possible? Is Lakis's star waiting to rise again or explode? A crisis at the Acropole, a variety theatre in Athens, run by a self-made entrepreneur of the Old School, Mr "Prince" Sparides, offers an opportunity.

On the opening night of his new musical spectacular, Prince has been obliged to dismiss his leading lady for (once again) being too drunk to perform. This is the debut of the theatre's inter season, a major event not just for the social set who adore the glitter and extravagance of the Acropole 's Hollywood-style revues, but for the public clamouring for vaudeville-style vulgarity and variety. Loizos, who has done some cross-dressing during his career decline in sleazy American nightclubs, accepts Prince's offer to play the female lead, Libelei. He is a huge success, upsetting the Acropole 's resident artistic director and setting in train all kinds of cross-pollinating intrigues. The film seems to be heading nowhere fast in a blaze of syncopated campery that wouldn't make the cut at Mardi Gras, but might well adorn the opening credits in a 007 film.

Loizos may not compare with the ambitious and doubly damned Heinrich Hofgens in Mephisto, but he is nonetheless an actor with debts to settle and dividends to receive. He is splendidly played by Lefteris Voyatzis and the film is rich in its nostalgia for the era. A UDIO SIL VER SERIES FULL METAL THEATRE Fry's eagerness to reinvent himself is. matched only by the future government's determination to tell him what to do. The future, it seems, is a kind of anti-America, a place where only one person can be president, and every individual's future is determined by an implanted "Fate" chip.

Fry refuses his befriends a griping, booze-gargling, wiseacre robot named Bender and inspires the cyclopian chip-implanter, Leela, to be herself, ditch her own chip and join the two of them. Silver Centre Channel Af iiiwittMmwMtei I i I 1 I I I I Jig. I 1 I'll 1 A I 1 sf" MONITOR "I THE OMEGA MAN (1971) On Nine at lam (Friday) REMEMBER the spectre of death in Siiiiimon Reynold's celebrated AIDS commercial set in a tenpin bowling alley? In a fortuitous reminder that today is National Aids Awareness Day, Seven trundles out this old sci-fi shocker in which. Charlton Heston plays Robert Neville, a scientist who has survived a bacteriological attack on Los Angeles only to find himself pitted against a legion of lepers and sightless morlocks led by the spectral Brother Matthias (Anthony Zerbe). Holed up in his fortified penthouse listening to Beethoven and awaiting better times, Neville repels the scaberous hordes at home and during foraging expeditions in the ghostly city.

Bless my soul and flame thrower! During a light looting expedition to Macy's, he finds the Earth Mother in the person of Lisa (Rosalind Cash). She and a troupe of cute orphans, spared the effects of plague, are the future hope in this hopelessly flawed but intermittently entertaining story. Chuck ensures their security by an act of sacrifice, going out in an allegorical crucifixion scene as tawdry as the one which sullied the end of Cool Hand Luke. Too over the top to be taken seriously, but marginally more optimistic than the seminal Soylent Green. A better version of Richard Matheson's novel (Tlie Last Man On Earth) can be found in the Vincent Price film of that name.

IN GOLD WE TRUST (19S0) On Seven at noon THE Six-Million Dollar Man set the standard. Nine US PoWs are offered for resale at $US54 million in gold. The ransom is paid but the men aren't released. Beware the wrath of the CIA spumed as ex-green beret, Oliver Moss (Jan-Michael Vincent), gets busy. ALTS BUTTON AFLOAT (1933) On ASC at L30am (Friday) HALF a dozen matelots encounter a genie whose magic powers enable 1 Silver Series Range ASW-210 ASW-110 (Powered subwoofers using metal alloy cones) This is one of the best home theatre speaker ensembles that I've ever Just Buy Them.

Joe Hageman Home Theatre Magazine, June 1999. i ii Mr Manufactured in England QUALITY Hi-Fi Pty Ltd 93 YORK STREET, SYDNEY PH: 9299-1005 9299-2628 www.qualityhifi.com.au. com.au SMH The Guide, November 29-December 5, 1999).