If you like big boobs and gratitutious violence this movie delivers big time. Set in a small town where young unruly teenagers from all over the country come for the biggest spring break bash at the towns lake.An earthquake of massive magnitude creates a rift underneath the lake that opens the cave where these prehistoric razor teethed little teenage loving fuckers have been trapped for years thinking about the porno gore fest they will unleash when the doors open. The movie has a lovely intro reminiscent of dimension film intro like scream, urban legend etc.

The violence is gory, gratuitous and convincingly staged, It has a poor story line and very little character development. The special effects dudes did a great job, the carnage looks impressively (or nauseatingly) real, there were times in the movie I actually felt really sick, The carnage in this movie is incredible, with each death more imaginative and bad-taste funny than the last. 

The director remained true to pirhana fans and kept it as trashy as the original recapturing the spirit of "B" grade movies. The movie hired the talent of several famous actors, Elizabeth Shue, Ving Rhames, Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Lloyd, Jerry O Connel and the dude that plays "Carlos" in "Desperate housewives" .Unfortunately however the 3d glasses do absolutely nothing and was completely uneccasary.The movie has a running time of 88 minutes and wastes no time getting to the point. Pirhana is strictly for "b" grade, pirhana and jaws fans, it gets a strong 6 out of ten for me, and definately worth a second watch.

We spent the afternoon today at a mall doing the usual mundane bill paying stuff, thereafter had a late lunch at Wimpy. As usual, I ordered my regular Chicken burger and chips with a strawberry banana smoothie, "U" was contemplating ordering the boerie wors meal which is new on the wimpy menu but I changed her mind to the "No limit chips and coke" burger meal.

This meal costs R49-95 and promises a regular refill of chips of coke, on request of course, the rules were,

1. no takeaways and

2. no sharing

but they don't really enforce it. So lets take the following into consideration, a standalone burger meal costs R34-95, and a regular portion of chips costs R9-50,

Before I look into Wimpy's deal let me delve into the psychology of the consumer.So here is the mentality an all you can eat restaurant fosters,a "No limit Chips and Coke" customer like myself goes to the restaurant with, "I have to make this work". "I have to get as much value out of this deal as I can. I'm going to show these fucks and I'm going to get even!" Every time we go to one of these places, we’re doing all these mental calculations on how much we should eat to have made it a good ‘deal’ when we’re stepping out. It’s man against math out here. Irrational as it may seem, we’re so obsessed with this sort of behaviour that we’ll continue eating serving after serving  just so that we have the mental satisfaction of knowing that we’ve had more food than we paid for, and that we beat the system

Its just a consumerist challenge that warps our sense of value. My reasoning is,1 portion of chips is all I can endure, I feel that wimpy is generally overpriced with their meals and I think the Burger meals should be R25-95 at best, withstanding the current price though, wimpy can now add R15-00 to their overpriced meal, of which the average customer can only endure 1 more portion of chips and maybe 1 more glass of coke, lets leave out the fact how unhealthy this whole exercise is. Therefore if I dont behave like a greedy bastard and go to wimpy and buy a burger meal this is what it would look like.

1 x burger meal           - R34-95 (this includes, 1x burger, 1x portion chips, 1x 27ml coke)

add the following below to meet minimum requirements of average customer

1 x extra portion chips -R  9-50

1 x regular coke           -R10-95  (by now you should have figured out that 275ml of coke 

                                               isnt ordinarily R10-95)

Total                         - R55-40 but because we giving you a choice of our no limit deal 

                                              we will slash R5-45 from the total cos.

I feel violated as a consumer, having thought I was getting value for money, I mean, one never anticipates to be caught in a web of consumersim deciet, I was attracted by the allure of the Bright signage and the statistical consumer trend of fast food. I am a just another consumer stat.  : (

With that said the only way to score from this deal is to be ridiculous, here how.

1. Go with a friend to wimpy Friend "A" must order the nolimits deal and friend "B" must just order a regular chicken burger and normal tap water, this will allow sharing of friend "A"s meal with Friend "B" bottomless coke and bottomless chips.

2. Take a day off from work, and sit at wimpy from the morning till the afternoon, and order the No limits meal, take advantage of the chips,particularly if you are training legs on that day. Remember to take along your own lunch as well to supplement wimpy's burger meal.

After watching Christian the Lion reuniting with his former owners I was touched and felt that I have to find a lion park because this was such an amazing story.

On Saturday afternoon "U" and  I visited the lion park which is situated just outside of Randburg on the corner of Malibongwe and the R511. Entrance fee to the park is R115-00 per person (adult) and will definately be money well spent. Activities at the park include the self drive, the guided tour, giraffe feeding, the night tour, the cheetah walk and the cub petting. We arrived at the park at 4pm, it was still very hot and all we had on our mind was the cub petting.

The tour guide gave us instructions on how to behave within the Cub pen, no bags allowed, no feeding of cubs, always pet them on their bodies only with an open palm and press generally harder than you would on a dog because the have very thick skins, do not pet them on their heads and do not play with their tails because this will agitate them and make them very irritable. Groups of 8 people are allowed in at one time.

All the cubs in the compound were under 11 months old and the reason that the cubs are isolated from their parents or the pride is because, sometimes mothers reject their newborns, thus babies have low chances of survival in their prides. When this happens they are removed them their prides and are hand-raised in the cub nursery.

This is the first time in my life I have ever experienced playing with lion cubs, I was awe struck, to be in the presence of these magnificent animals, the smallest cub is three months old, wide eyed and innocent he was frolicking within the compound enjoying all the attention from all the visitors, he is roughly the size of an adult pitball, slightly bigger. All the cubs I felt have a very tough skin and enormous paws that almost looks uncomfortable when they walk, like a person trying walk with big shoes. The cubs are very sociable and are very inviting to everybody that visits them, they also play with each other and sometimes get aggressive in a playful way. The large white cub is the eldest of the cubs and looks very majestic.

Afterwards it was off to see Gambit and Purdy, Purdy is the female but wasn't around we only saw her later, Gambit is a male-giraffe, and he's 10 yrs old, he likes to eat everything, when we got to him he was trying to reach for a branch that was slightly taller than him and his tongue, "U" felt sorry for him cos he looked very hungry and bought a packet of giraffe treats for R30-00 from the tour guide, for the time that "U" had the packet of treats, Gambit was her best friend, reaching out his thick Greyish black thorny tongue to scoop up treats, it was over within a matter of minutes, while we had it,he was attracted to the treats like you cant believe, he had a hypnotic gaze salivating at the prospect of giraffe treats in his giraffe mouth, it some points "U" instructed him to chew his food and he momentarily obediently listened and chewed as fast as he could to get the next load. 

We finished off the park fairly quickly and proceeded to the self drive, at the entrance of the self drive the park security guards had their hands full trying to stop Purdy from running out of the park, she looked very adamant about wanting to leave and was hovering around the entrance for quite a while. The self drive offers people the opportunity to drive in the open field in the midst of zebras, springbok, wildebees and several buck, the road is a dirt road and at the very beginning offers you the oppurtunity to detour and see the main attraction first, the lions.

The self drive took us approximately 10 minutes before we got to the lion camp site which comprise of three camps not very large in size that were all interconnected to a hub of park security guards that police the area making sure everything is safe. First off I have to say, during the self drive, you are driving amongst the lions and they are free to roam, these lions are massive and some of them look well over 200kgs and the only seperating you from them is your thin car window.The First camp had two white lions, a marvel to look at and wonderous to behold, in the second camp we saw three massive white lions with huge manes, they looked ferocious and I don't care that they are fairly domesticated, they were bright, lustrous and had a gratifed coat, they all sat there majestically unaffected by all the traffic in their camp. These lions seemed more mature than the the lions in the third camp we were about to see.

The third camp had the most lions all of them grouped in their pride,these guys seemed more playful but a lot more threatening than any of the other camps, they were very inquisitive and investigated all the vehicles that were passing through, on several occasions, lions peaked into our car as if they were looking for something, this made me extremely nervous, on one ocassion a lion looked as if it was charging toward our car, it wasnt, it was charging to the vehicle behind us a dark blue Volvo s40 station wagon with a woman driver and several children in the car, the lady panicked when the lion tried mounting her car from the back and drove into a diverted lane dragging the lion at the back of the vehicle for a few seconds. 

The lions also expresed a lot of interest in the Hyundai gets in front of us which also happened to be a light shade of blue. We did two rounds of the third camp and thereafter proceeded out of the lion camp. On our way out one of the huge white lions roared with flavour, to hear that, to feel that was as scary as it was amazing, the sound of the roar bellowed and took presedence of whatever song we were listening to on Radio Jacaranda, with that we made our way out.

 On our way out from the park we encountered some more hostility but this from Purdy and Gambit, they both wanted to leave the park and were threatening the guards. Saturday afternoon was a very eventful afternoon, we had a great day and an amazing oppurtunity to interact with the lions, Lion park is definately worth a trip because the experience is priceless

 

This is the second time this year that Mbhazima Shilowa is being axed from Cope. Lolo Mashiane, Shilowa’s ally and Cope’s administrative whip and liaison, was also axed for refusing to co-operate with a forensic audit trying to establish how millions of rands allocated to the party by Parliament and the Independent Electoral Commission were spent. 

How amazing is it that Lolo didnt know she was axed until she was contacted by the media to comment about her axing. The announcement of Shilowa and Mashiane’s axing was made by party leader Mosiuoa Lekota at Parliament shortly after a meeting of the party’s congress working committee, which Shilowa attended. 

Shilowa’s axing related to a letter – a copy of which the party had given to the media – to Parliament’s financial department declaring that Cope had in place effective, efficient and transparent financial management and internal controls.It was signed by Shilowa. The name of Anton Louw, at one time an internal financial consultant to Cope, was written, but not signed, beneath Shilowa’s, confirming the statement.

So Anton Louw alleges that Shilowa wanted to backdate his time as a financial officer of Cope which Louw claims would have been unlawful. We are to believe that the gripe of the argument is about the misappropriation of party funds from The government and the IEC but other members argue that Lekota is merely using delay tactics, those who are afraid of democratic processes. It has nothing to do with finances as they were all members of the Congress National Comittee. Prolonging of the National congress will make the President more un popular. Everybody can see that the President doesn't want the Congress to go ahead, in fact he is not ready. 

We will just have to wait and see what the future holds for the fate of Cope.What a bunch of dumbasses!!

This has to be one of the coolest games I've come across. Its a strategy board game where players set up the game board according to pictures displayed on different challenge cards, then try to maneuver their Rover through a safari of wild animals, including zebras, lions, and rhinos. There are forty different challenges offering hours of engaging play, while fostering problem-solving and strategy skills. The escape rover can move sideways as well as up-down, and you play on a 7x7 grid.

Originally I Found the game at the V and A waterfront in Cape Town, where they were promoting it on a giant board challenging customers to complete the puzzle, but that was the original rush hour which I had to have after playing the giant board game.  My dad gave our original set to our little 5 year old neighbour who used to spend hours at our place trying to solve the various puzzles, so on Saturday when I saw I more challenging  version of the original I had to have it, if I didn't have any money I would have asked somebody in the store to buy it for me, if nobody bought it for me, I promise I would have stolen it.

I bought Safari Rush Hour from Toys R Us at East Rand Mall, it costs R169-90, but if you enjoy good strategy games this will definately be worth a buy.

In recent years we have seen Indian cinema improve in leaps and bounds, and I'm not just referring to mainstream commercial cinema which has the sole aim of entertaining and making money in return but also parallel cinema or the Art cinema which aims at sensitizing the people on various social issues and problems of the society. Where commercial cinema appeals to all sections of the society, parallel cinema appeals mainly to the intellectual class and a half. A general awareness among people has increased and art cinema is being more and more appreciated by a large number of people. This trend is also fast becoming apart of South African cinema culture with the presence of more and more cinema nouveau's


Last night I was scouring around the internet for Indian Anime and came across some interesting projects to hit the big screen soon, all of this enthusiasm has recently come about with the release of Enthiran - Robot, Superstar Rajni's latest movie which is breaking box office records in India and all over the world.

first up is the Mahayoddha Rama Trailer- A 3D Indian Animated movie based on the Ramayana an ancient sanskrit epic based on the the duties of relationships, portraying ideal characters like the ideal servant, the ideal brother, the ideal wife and the ideal king with a prince of persia twist, the trailer looks like the opening theme for a cheap video game and the 3d animation looks like it was done by a student, nevertheless its a worth a watch and will definately be a stepping stone to better 3d animation.

Second up is Arjun an animated 2d animation that looks very promising, the animation looks very similar to the typical disney animations like Mulan, Anastasia, Tarzan, spirit etc. The movie focuses on the Indian mythological warrior prince Arjun, one of the five Pandavas. Arjun is a blend of CG and 2D. The storyline begins with Arjun as a nine year old boy and follows him till he grows into the warrior that the world knows him as. It explores his life with his brothers in Hastinapur, his training and education and his ultimate discovery of the warrior within himself. This looks great and I am really looking forward to watching the series and the movie 



Check out the Arjun trailer


 

Third is the Krishna trailer, this teaser trailer is very short and there is almost no information available about the production of this movie, all that I can assume is that the story line is about the god-child, a prankster, a model lover, a divine hero and the Supreme Being. As he is described in the Mahabaratha scriptures. Of all the trailers this looks the best and has a very kung fu panda feel..



Watch the krishna trailer here

The last of the anime trailers is Sultan which being written, produced, designed, and directed by Soundarya Rajinikanth, daughter of Rajinikanth. Pre-production of the film began in 2007 and filming took place intermittently until 2010. The film is expected to be released in English, Tamil, Hindi and Telugu. The film's lead character is an animated version of Rajinikanth, who will also lend his voice for the dialogues while. The film has a massive production budget and is due to be distributed through Warner bros and released next month world wide. This trailer looks very disappointing with all the hype surrounding it, at best it looks like the final project of an average animation 2nd year student., i hope the final movie looks better than this.

And then on a final note, local film maker Kumaran Naidoo, from broken promise fame and Run for your life series has taken a step into a different genre, action horror in his latest movie, The House Knows, its been about two years since his last movi. The trailer although cheesy is well constructed and concise definately a step up fromhis previous endevours.

On the left is the advert as it appeared on page 7 in the Sunday Times supplement "Its my business on 3 October 2010. On the right is the original poster painted by Boris Vallejo of the 1983 National Lampoons Vacation movie starring Chevy Chase as Clark Griswold, is it me or is there a striking resemblance between these two pictures?

The advert is aimed at glorifying small business owners who are able to offer retirement savings, life and disability cover and family funeral benefits to employees/staff

But just as a matter of interest,  the poster of the movie struck me immediatly because it is a favourite and because Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell are amongst some of my favourite Fantasy artists particularly because of the works on the Xmen trading cards in the mid 1990's.

Although the advert has its merit and strongly drives across the point that the boss is the hero, the concept design for this advert is a shameless rip off and the "not" creative designer should be ashamed of himself trying to pass it on as his own idea. I think advertising agencies who produce work like this should be named and shamed on the Andy Rices ad feature on Jenny Cryws Williams's show.

 The Joburg Pride Board hosted Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender and supporters of the community on Saturday 2nd October at the Zoo lake park to celebrate sexual diversity 

The 2010 Pride Parade, featuring a host of colourful floats and thousands of revellers, kicked off from Zoo Lake Sports Club at 10am through the streets of Rosebank. This is the first time I attended a gay pride festival, the event was a spectacle, filled with drama and drag queens amongst the many that attended, It was a very colourful day with thousands of happy people from all over the country taking to the streets. Some outfits were modest while others pulled out all the stops and took it to the extreme. 

Within the parameter of the park, patrons were only allowed to use the pink currency where they had a kiosk where real money could be exchanged for "gay tokens". The event also staged participants for the upcoming Mr. Gay and Lesbian South Africa, contestants of the event were showcased to roaring applauses from the thousand strong crowd. An event of this magnitude can only be made possible by the right sponsorship and this event was sponsored by 94.7,the joburg city council, power play the drink, the well being organisation and several other businesses.

It was 30 Degrees today in Joburg, perfect weather according to some, I also had the opportunity to take several photos, the subjects of my photos were more than willing to strike a pose whenever I puled out my er... camera, check them out here www.flickr.com/photos/sagrenm or just click on flickr photostream on the side. Great music, good company and the village all made for a fun filled day thats secured the Joburg Gay pride day a permanent spot on my calendar,