Wii SPORTS CLUB
NINTENDO WIIU

Nintendo is rebranding  its  sports compendium,  ‘‘Wii Sports’’ as ‘‘Wii Sports Club’’ for the WiiU. It was always one of the best original Wii titles, thanks to its use of the innovative wand controller as everything from golf club to tennis racquet. The basics remain strong, with enhanced HD graphics and the option of online play. Also new are neat touches using the gamepad as an additional screen, for example, displaying a golf ball and club face on the ground, which you then swing the main controller – ‘‘club’’ – over. What we don’t like  is the paucity of content. Sports Club doesn’t add much to the original, and five sports seems a bit thin considering they could have packaged more from the original Sports Resort, which offered archery, cycling, jogging and more. That said, if you’re looking for something to play on your new WiiU, this is still a lot of fun. AH

FAMILY

DUMBO
DISNEY (G)

Walt Disney and his team were at their very best and least cloying in this 1941 fable about a baby circus elephant mocked for his giant ears. Nearly every sequence is a stand-alone triumph, from the whimsical opening with a stork delivering babies to various proud animal parents, to the later, surprisingly realistic depictions of Depression-era life on the road with a travelling circus (this was the first Disney feature with a contemporary American setting, a risk the studio would almost never take again). While the hero’s eventual triumph is never in doubt, there’s no shortage of traumatic moments along the way – culminating in the extraordinary, nightmarish Pink Elephants On Parade number, which suggests the animators had early access to LSD. JW

FREE–TO–AIR

SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN
Sunday, August 24, SBS, 8.30pm

Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul traces the intriguing journey of enigmatic 1960s singer-songwriter Sixto Rodriguez, who landed a two-album deal after being discovered in a folk bar by two Detroit record producers. His first album, Cold Fact, scored good reviews but didn’t sell, and after his second album bombed, he disappeared, like many before him, into obscurity.

But years later a bootleg of Cold Fact found its way to South Africa where it became something of a phenomenon. It was swiftly banned by the apartheid-era government assuring it achieved cult status and went platinum. But who was Rodriguez? Rumours abounded that he had spectacularly killed himself on stage, despite no evidence of this.

Two South African music fans decided to solve the mystery by piecing together clues from Rodriguez’s lyrics and tracking him down through the album’s producers, setting off a chain of events that are possibly even wilder than the initial rumours of his death. Even if you’re not familiar with Rodriguez’s excellent music, this is a fascinating doco. KN

CLASSIC

DUCK SOUP 
Universal (G)

The wildest movie the Marx brothers ever made, Leo McCarey’sever-relevant 1933 political satire is packed with puns, slapstick and surrealism as well as uncanny intimations of the real-life plunge into madness taken by Europe in subsequent years. Groucho plays the new president of the troubled nation of Freedonia, who insists on starting a war because “I’ve already paid a month’s rent on the battlefield”. Chico and Harpo are a couple of bumbling enemy spies posing as peanut vendors, whose running battle with a burly lemonade seller (Edgar Kennedy) can be seen as a parable about the idiocy of international relations. The deranged montage climax, with its wild leaps in continuity, suggests that nothing is sacred including cinematic storytelling itself. JW

DVD

GRAND DESIGNS SERIES 11
Roadshow, 3 discs, 517 minutes (PG)

This series is addictive, largely thanks to host Kevin McCloud. He knows his subject matter, asks all the questions the viewer at home would ask and explains projects and buildings and plans in beautiful language. In this series, which airs on ABC1 and the Lifestyle channel, there’s a wide variety of projects in a range of locations. From an impossible how-are-you-to-fit-all-of-that-into-this-block ultra modern homes in London, to a clever conversion of an old cinema in South Yorkshire, it’s mind-boggling what people are willing to take on. The challenges undertaken by inspired — and occasionally delusional — home builders are vital to keeping viewer interest in this series. Mind you, building a cottage in the Scottish highlands is just as interesting and fun to watch as the concrete bunkers in the big city. This is reality television, but nobody is acting for the cameras. Projects are shot over time, from idea through to finish with McCloud’s commentary giving insight and fleshing out the back stories. JK