The good & the bad

The old saying rings true: anticipation makes the wait worthwhile. What an eventful year 2007 was, in the field of entertainment... From Queens and Kings triumphing at the Oscars to Spidey (Tobey Maguire) and Johnny Depp's Captain Sparrow swinging their way to the big screen, from Sylvester Stallone (Rocky Balboa) and Bruce Willis (Die Hard 4.0) rediscovering their action roots to the Transformers invading summer giving Stallone and Willis a run for their money.

We had the passing away of two iconic directors, Michelangelo Antonioni (Blow-Up) and Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal), paid tribute to beloved Scottish actress Deborah Kerr (From Here to Eternity) followed by the sudden passing away of the unattainable fruit to 007's eyes, the original and best Miss Moneypenny, Lois Maxwell. We also chastised Mel Gibson's drunken frail shenanigans slurring the Jews to celebrating the return (finally!) of British film-making at its best. Last year was jam-packed with fast-paced entertainment that either swiftly grabbed audiences' attention or put off their high expectations with them ranting "more of the same".

January started on a high note, with film releases and actors unveiling their Oscar potential. The month's most anticipated movies were undoubtedly Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain starring X-Men's Hugh Jackman and Brit beauty Rachel Wiesz. The Pursuit of Happyness, starring a bespectacled, grey-haired Will Smith, helped the actor rebrand his look, and shed his Fresh Prince image. Emilio Estevez's ensemble piece Bobby tackled in an effective manner the Robert Kennedy assassination from the eyes of the guests that stayed at the Ambassador Hotel, while Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel made for compulsive viewing.

The Last King of Scotland not only crowned director Kevin Macdonald's career in more ways than one; it commended Forest Whitaker, having garnered a well-deserved Oscar for his performance as the despot Idi Amin. James Christopher, chief film critic of The Times of London, summed it up: "Forest Whitaker not only plays Idi Amin, the most celebrated lunatic in African history, he is half convinced he actually is him". Last King also made a star out of cheeky looking Scottish actor James McAvoy who then featured in Jane Austen's coming-of-age tale Becoming Jane and Atonement, co-starring Keira Knightley. It was not just the young that shimmered; veteran actors like English thespian Peter O'Toole, who was Oscar-nominated in Venus, summed up that colourful phrase: "There's still life in the old dog yet".

What came as a bit of a disappointment personally earlier on in the year was The Illusionist (Edward Norton). Despite receiving positive reception, there was no way it could outwit The Prestige in terms of mystery and masterful storytelling.

2007's revelation was The Black Book, which although displaying yet again Paul Verhoeven's lusty approach to film-making, was equally memorable in its depiction of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

Come February, female actresses took the Oscars by storm. Dame Helen Mirren triumphed at the Oscars winning the Academy Award for best actress for The Queen at the age of 61. Mirren competed against acclaimed fellow actresses Dame Judi Dench, aged 73 (Notes On A Scandal) and Meryl Streep, aged 58 (The Devil Wears Prada). Justice was finally served in last year's Oscar night as Martin Scorsese finally won the well-deserved Oscar accolade for best director and best picture for his superb Irish mob thriller The Departed. What a sight for sore eyes to finally see the director of Goodfellas not walk away empty-handed this time round; Scorsese's one-liner was spot-on: "Could you double check the envelope, please?"

They said he wouldn't but he did, love him or loathe him. 2007 marked Sylvester Stallone's mighty comeback as Rocky Balboa. The actor is not yet ready to hang up his action gloves in an era of younger screen contenders. Roll on Rambo IV.

Indeed, 2007 will forever be embedded in our psyche as the year of the threequel. According to the KRS top 10 film list, Shrek the Third hit number one locally, despite not garnering any praise abroad.

Ocean's Thirteen popped the inevitable question as to how to sustain the momentum of the first instalment while completely erasing from the audience's pysche the mediocre second instalment: Simply add a star like

Al Pacino to your recipe list. After being utterly disappointed by Ocean's Twelve I welcomed this threequel with open arms as it recaptured the spirit of the 2001 original.

James Bond watch out. If back in 2004 spy film afficionados hung on to their seats with the thunder-pounding Bourne Supremacy sequel, the Ultimatum threequel proved you could go a third step further and concoct a second sequel complementing the first and second instalments, vigorously strenghtening the franchise. Bourne Ultimatum's fast-paced edginess can be summed up in the brilliantly executed London Waterloo station sequence and its no-holds barred action as seen in the foot chase across the Tangiers rooftops not to mention its plot twists.

Sadly, Spidey was left looming in the wings. Spiderman 3 had simply too many villains (Green Goblin II, the deadly Venom and Sandman) and was constantly trying to keep up with the countless storylines that focused on Peter Parker's internal dilemmas. Let's hope that director Sam Raimi will play his cards right in the fourth instalment with the introduction of the Lizard nemesis.

Pirates 3: At World's End reunited Johnny Depp's Captain Sparrow and Geoffrey Rush's Barbossa from the first instalment after the Pirates 2 cliffhanger ending kept all Pirates buffs scratching their heads in awe. The problem with this threequel in particular is that no amount of group reunions and wisecracks can make up for a plot that is staggeringly too long.

The mother of all bad movies had to be SuperBad followed by Norbit.

Summer 2007 will be forever defined by Transformers. Twenty years from now students will be given lectures that if Jurassic Park set the standard for CGI effects in the 1990s, Transformers was the master of CGI effects par excellence during the first decade of the 2000s. The grouping of Spielberg, Michael Bay and new A-lister Shia LeBouf, who will be appearing in this year's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, was clearly a match made in heaven.

Quentin Tarantino entertained us with Death Proof signifying Kurt Russell's return to the big screen and while the fickle Paris Hilton was arrested and managed to land herself in jail for 45 days as a result of driving violations, motion pictures highlighted historical events that shaped the world including current atrocities that are occurring in Iraq and Pakistan.

The Good Shepherd directed by the Don, Robert De Niro was essentially the Spy version of The Godfather, narrating the events that helped build the CIA. I could tell Francis Ford Coppola was the executive producer of the film as the scene where the CIA agents are analysing the reel-to-reel tape of the mysterious couple's whispers, echoed the scene of Coppola's The Conversation, when Gene Hackman's Harry Caul is editing the tape to make sense of the shady couple's murmur. Current events were highlighted in A Mighty Heart where Angelina Jolie played Mariane Pearl, the wife of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal South Asia Bureau Chief who was tragically beheaded in Pakistan, to Lions for Lambs starring Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, The Kingdom (Jamie Foxx) and Rendition starring Jake Gyllenhaal and also Meryl Streep.

The British managed to reinvent themselves with directors Danny Boyle (Sunshine), Paul Greengrass (Bourne Ultimatum) and Michael Winterbottom (A Mighty Heart) injecting their British feel and energy to American-made films. Meanwhile, British-made film This is England, set in early 1980s punk/Thatcherite England, could still shake us to the core through its ingenious script reminding us that 25 years later we are far from being free of the brutal realties of xenophobia.

December saw the release of The Golden Compass, this year's Lord of the Rings extravaganza, that not only received harsh criticism before it was released but it was also locally hailed as being anti-Catholic. Despite the dragging drab Saw sequels, Horror still managed to scare the living daylights out of us with the sequel 28 weeks later and Rob Zombies's Halloween remake.

This was also a historic year for television. We saw veteran English broadcaster Sir Michael Parkinson retire (I feel he is irreplaceable) and Jade Goody gobbing out literally at Bollywood superstar Shilpa Shetty which goes to show (local production companies please take note) how low the TV Big Brother reality syndrome can sink. 2007 has shown once again how on the other side of the Atlantic, the last decade has been the golden age of American drama. It was the end of an era as The Sopranos Mafia series finally closed its doors with the much-debated cult open ending that is available on www.youtube.com

24 season 6 was a giant improvement upon the lame season 5, reclaiming its twist upon twist action where our favourite TV secret agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) returned from the Chinese prison at a nasty price being delivered to the terrorists for torture. While season 6 kept us on edge, the Spy series would garner tough competition from Prison Break season 2. Season 2 gained momentum as finally Michael (Wenthworth Miller) and Lincoln (Dominic Purcell) escaped from Fox River. We would be introduced to a new powerful character, Special Agent Alexander Mahone (William Fichtner) who relentlessly leads the massive manhunt to find the eight escapees. Audiences relished the cliffhanger ending that saw Michael and Mahone imprisoned in a new but deadly prison, namely Sona Prison in Panama.

Third time's a charm as Prison Break season 3 improved on the blueprint set in season 2 causing a sensation on the internet as all episodes were posted on the YouTube website and its net clones enraged 20th century Fox executives who subsequently tried to erase the clips from the net unsuccessfully. Local cable subscribers eat your heart out!

Another series that like vintage wine gets better with age is CSI. Crime Scene Investigation season 7 kept a very good pace introducing the miniature serial killer and a new character, CSI Mike Keppler (Liev Schreiber) who is introduced as Gil Grissom's (William Petersen) replacement after Gil goes on a sabbatical. It's a pity Keppler was killed off as I feel the producers could have developed his character further.

J.J. Abrams's Lost season 3 focused on the group's capture by the Others; it gave away more secrets on the survivors through the intriguing, well-renowned flashback sequences and revealed how the leader of the Others, Benjamin "Ben" Linus (Michael Emerson) landed on the mysterious island in the first place.

On the other side of the pond, what flew the flag for British television was the second season of Life on Mars, where new acclaimed actor John Simm plays a 21st century detective who following a car crash, finds himself marooned back to 1973. The series' aura of the supernatural, coupled with its social commentary, is one of the best shows to have hit TV screens, and is proof that British drama can still hold its head up high among its American counterparts.

2007 will go down in television history, as the Twin Peaks season 2 DVD set was finally released after so many years of speculation; till then die-hard Peakers had to contend only with the Season 1 DVD boxset. Peakers rekindled their obsession with David Lynch's early 1990s, sinister and surreal murder mystery detective series set near the Canadian border whose bucolic surroundings hide the dark and the heinous.

Last year, TV and cinema entertainment blended the good with the bad. This was perhaps a year that strove for pure entertainment setting the benchmark for 2008.

So my fellow film buffs let us look forward to another year of exciting entertainment.