Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

[colinr0380]

According to the Radio Times, the next three films in Film4's Martial Arts Gold season following The Boxer From Shantung are going to be Return of the One-Armed Swordsman, Five Deadly Venoms and Eight Diagram Pole Fighter.

And on Sunday 13th March at 10.30 p.m. BBC4 are showing François Ozon's In The House.

[jlnight]

Catch Me Daddy, Film4, Weds 23rd March.

[colinr0380]

I was interested to note next week on Wednesday 23rd March at 3.15 p.m. that one of Channel 5's run of afternoon TV movies is the Hallmark channel film Mystery Girl (aka A Crush On You) which was directed by Allison Anders! This seems quite a far cry from the grungy punk aesthetic of Border Radio!

[antnield]

Spike Lee's Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall is screening tomorrow (March 19th) on BBC2 at 9pm.

[jlnight]

I'm So Excited - BBC4, tomorrow (Sun 20th March).

Little Blue Girl - BBC4, Friday 25th March. Janis Joplin documentary that apparently played at last year's London Film Festival.

Most interestingly London Live seem to have lined up The Breaking of Bumbo for Friday 1st April. I hope it's not an April Fool's joke!

[colinr0380]

Lots of first showings of films turn up next week:

Brian De Palma's Passion on BBC2 at 11.50 p.m. on Saturday 26th March. I liked this a lot, though its not top tier De Palma. BBC1 is also repeating Snake Eyes at 11.45 p.m. on Wednesday 30th March.

The Disney film Basil The Great Mouse Detective gets its first showing at 2.50 p.m. on Channel 4 on Easter Sunday, 30 years after it was made (though it has serious competition from Channel 5 scheduling a repeat of Watership Down against it!). And BBC4 has the premiere of the Susanne Bier film Love Is All You Need at 10 p.m. (just after the concluding episode of Bier's recent BBC series The Night Manager finishes on BBC1)

BBC2 are also showing the Ben Whishaw starring Lilting at 11.05 p.m. on Friday 1st April, follwed by a repeat of I Am Love, with Tilda Swinton.

Then Film4 take the new film honours for the rest of the week with the first showing of Lincoln at 9 p.m. on Wednesday 30th March and Starred Up at 10.50 p.m. on 31st March. Although even better is the premiere of Grand Central in the early hours of Tuesday 29th March, at 1.35 a.m.!

Plus BBC4 are showing the Liam Neeson narrated 1916: The Irish Rebellion documentary on the Easter Uprising on Easter Monday at 10 p.m. and also have an hour long tribute to Peter Maxwell Davies at 8 p.m. on Friday 1st April.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Not even sure Passion got a cinema release here, but will Sky+ it. I really like Snake Eyes though!

I'll try to Sky+ the Easter Rising doc; we did this at A-Level history and hopefully it debunks the myth from Michael Collins that the Croke Park massacre happened because a Gaelic footballer kicked the ball over a British tank and cheered!

[jlnight]

Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD - Weds 6th April on Film4.

London Live have a few things coming up with a Handmade connection: Water (the Dick Clement film) on Saturday 2nd April, The Missionary (following another screening of Breaking of Bumbo) on Sunday 3rd April, then Bullshot (in a double-bill with Water) on Thursday 7th April.

[colinr0380]

Also tucked away next week (at 10 p.m. on Thursday 31st March on the 5 Star channel) is the premiere of Silent Hill: Revelation. It's not very good at all but if you want to look at the flaming wreckage of yet another failed videogame to film series its available! I did a review on it on Letterboxd a while back and will copy it across here:

Major spoilers:

Oh boy, what a mess. This is a pretty horrible review to write - as someone who loved the tone, atmosphere and performances of the first film and was excited that this sequel was going to tackle the follow up game material from Silent Hill 3 related to this story there was so much potential here. And the casting makes it seem as if everything is going to be OK - Sean Bean gets to reprise his role, Deborah Kara Unger and Radha Mitchell are back. And new characters are played by great character actors Martin Donovan and Carrie Anne Moss.

So what went wrong? The director in his commentary appears to think it was slavishly following the material from the game and previous film, but there was so much potential there for a follow up that I don't think being constrained by the material is the issue. I think the issue is that the film doesn't really do much with the material it has. Take the returning actors: all feel like disconnected cameo turns more than integrated performances. Sean Bean's character is the most telling one: he has more to do with the plot of this one compared to the first (though I loved his investigative yet fruitless scenes in the original film) and is actually finally in Silent Hill here, yet he is given far less to do. This is a great example of an actor being given what seems like a jucier part but one that actually has them doing nothing at all!

Whereas the original film had a wonderful atmospheric tone with many longeurs of searching through the ash covered town, (something which in a way helped to tie it together with its game series involving long stretches of exploration punctuated by action), this sequel is structured more like a series of horror film set pieces, disconnected from each other rather than scarily flowing into each other in the manner of a dream.

I also think that the change in director from Christophe Gans (who is a master of building strange worlds, less so at coherent narratives, though Silent Hill wasn't too bad for that as it works on obscure narrative meanings) to Michael Bassett (who is good at creating moments but less so at linking them together, though at least this film is better than the depressing Solomon Kane!) is also a problem. While the first film, despite its fair share of exposition, was content to leave some events enigmatic, here the sequel falls into the trap of having characters explaining every little detail of how the world works to each other, which only serves to remove the mystery and highlight the plot holes.

Deborah Unger turns up for a completely expository scene only to immediately disappear (though the flashback clips from the first film do show those great beautiful pre-corruption shots of her looking almost like Faye Dunaway! It is sadly telling though that all of the extensive flashback footage from the first film that turns up here looks far better than this film does!), as does Michael Donovan as a private investigator who gets about a minute of screen time. Malcolm McDowell is in there too, for obscure reasons.

The only way I can describe this is that this sequel feels like one of those Nightmare on Elm Street sequels (say part four or five) that were part of a continuing plot but felt tonally quite different from the original films, as the filmmakers damagingly play around with aspects of the series. Revelations isn't a bad film per se, and enjoyable with lowered expectations, it is just an extremely disappointing one. Spooky atmosphere and longeurs are sacrificed for expostion and pacily unmemorable action set pieces. Dream-like narrative melds uneasily with standard plot beats. Thinking about it, the film isn't just like the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels but also like the Hellraiser sequels, especially in the way that thematic monsters are being replaced by generic gross looking threats. The 'look' of the monsters takes over from what the meaning of the look was attempting to convey.

And finally I think the 3D here causes huge problems. It might just have been that I was watching the film in 2D on a DVD but the imagery looks extremely computer generated this time around. This could be the 3D or the lower budget meaning that the same imagery from the first film could not be pulled off to the same standards, but it occasionally looks as if the actors have been fuzzy-felted onto the backgrounds, walking briskly in place but moving towards the camera at a different speed, that kind of thing. There is also a very fake looking CGI monster that turns up and destroys immersion.

A depressingly poor film. I'm giving it an extra half star (to 1 1/2 stars!) for the committed performances from all of the actors (including the young leads who sadly have their efforts come to naught) and the tie ins with the first film and the game series. It is just a shame that the film itself could not have been better.

[colinr0380]

Two interesting films next week:

At 1.25 a.m. on Tuesday 12th April Film4 are premiering the Argentinian film The Boss, Anatomy of a Crime, which does not appear to have any UK home video release or even BBFC certificate, suggesting no theatrical release either! The Radio Times write up is as follows:

A morally taxing courtroom drama from Argentina, exploring the case of a shop worker who is driven to murdering his manipulative and abusive boss, a corrupt butcher. Exposing the shocking realities behind what is essentially modern slavery, as well as some questionable butchery practices, the abuse Joaquin Furriel's soulful protagonist endures adds an emotionally powerful punch.

One of the actors in the film, Germán de Silva, was in a small role in the anthology film Wild Tales the same year (the gardener being groomed as the potential patsy for the hit and run accident in "The Deal" segment). The director of The Boss, Anatomy of a Crime, Sebastián Schindel, has according to imdb at least only made documentaries before this first feature.

Then tucked (almost hidden!) away on the Spike digital channel on Friday 15th April at 11.00 p.m. is the premiere of David Mamet's Redbelt, which I've been vaguely interested in seeing following a number of positive comments on the forum about it. I'll finally get my chance to assess it for myself now!

[jlnight]

Respectable - The Mary Millington Story is playing at the Regent Street Cinema tomorrow. London Live will also be showing it on Tuesday 12th April.

They have also lined up All Neat in Black Stockings for Sunday 17th April.

[jlnight]

Locke - Tues 19th April, Film4.

The Mai Zetterling film Scrubbers is on London Live on Thursday 21st April.

Satan's Slave from Norman J. Warren gets a screening on the Horror Channel, Sat 23rd April.

[colinr0380]

Not too much next week but the big premieres are both interesting:

Channel 4 are showing Ender's Game at 7 p.m. on Saturday 16th April. Amusingly since we had a discussion a while back on the violence in the film being toned down from the books, and violent urges let loose or held in check being one of the primary themes of the story, Channel 4 are apparently editing their screening for violence! I presume it is going to cut down the arguably rather unnecessarily graphic "Giant Killer" computer game section, though I could also see the classroom fight at the beginning and the later fight in the bathroom getting toned down a bit too. It'll still be worth a watch though, curiously well timed to screen in the week that Harrison Ford turns up in the latest Star Wars film on DVD and Gavin Hood's latest film Eye In The Sky gets a UK theatrical release!

And then at 10 p.m. on Sunday 17th April BBC2 are showing The Spectacular Now, which is surprising mainly because this film has come straight to television and has never received either a theatrical or even DVD release in the UK! Because of that lack of theatrical or home video release it has not been through the BBFC rating process either, but I seem to recall that there is some loophole where a broadcaster can vouch for the content of the material that they broadcast on their channel to allow them to show uncertified films. Here's the forum thread on the film.

[jlnight]

Nymphomaniac: Vol. I - Mon 25th April, Film4.

Nymphomaniac: Vol. II - Tues 26th April, Film4.

[colinr0380]

If they don't have a commerical break with the old J.R. Hartley Yellow Pages advert in there during Volume II, Film4 will have missed out on a golden opportunity!

[jlnight]

There seems to be a theme running through this:

Blue is the Warmest Colour - Wed 27th April, Film4.

The Duke of Burgundy (followed by Stranger by the Lake) - Thu 28th April, Film4. Stranger by the Lake is apparently 'edited for content'.

[colinr0380]

Here we are: they're going to be part of a "Love & Sex" season that also includes the premiere of Spike Jonze's Her and the Norwegian film Blind, along with repeats of Lovelace and Sex, Lies and Videotape.

[Jonathan S]

Hunt the Man Down (1950, Movies4Men, 9.15 am, Monday 18 April) is a rarely-seen RKO B noir; I don't recall the BBC ever showing it, though presumably it must be licensed from them. It's often dismissed as a routine murder mystery, and in some ways I'd agree, yet the film gains a truly noir quality from its

SpoilerShow

extraordinary emphasis on physical and mental disabilities, and its stark contrast between the pre and post-war lives of several of its characters.

By the way, does anyone know an online UK TV listing site which allows you to browse any channels separately for the week ahead by scrolling downwards through the programmes? The best I've found is tvguide.co.uk but it's clunky compared to the recently closed locatetv.

[colinr0380]

Film4's Love & Sex season as discussed above is obviously the big news of next week (I'm presuming by the running times that it will be the theatrical cut rather than the director's cut of Nymhp()maniac that gets shown), but the BBC have a couple of interesting things both on Sunday 24th April: at 9.00 p.m. on BBC4 there is an episode of Arena called All The World's A Screen - Shakespeare on Film, which is a discussion of all the various Shakespeare adaptations on film (according to the Radio Times Kurosawa, Welles, Zeffirelli, Lurhmann, Olivier, Polanski, etc. Plus D.W. Griffiths' silent version of The Taming of the Shrew, the Taviani Brothers' Caesar Must Die and the spaghetti western Johnny Hamlet. Though I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they find room for stuff like Joe Macbeth, All Night Long and Jubal too. Not to mention A Thousand Acres, O, Looking For Richard and the Kozintsev and Derek Jarman adaptations!), which is followed at 10 p.m. by a screening of Forbidden Planet

While on BBC2 the latest Louis Theroux documentary is showing at 9 p.m. called Drinking To Oblivion, which involves "Theroux spending time at London's King's College Hospital, a specialist liver centre, where he immerses himself in the lives of patients who are in the grips of alcohol addiction", then following that at 10 p.m. BBC2 has the first showing of the film Half of a Yellow Sun, starring Thandie Newton, Chiewetel Ejiofor and John Boyega.

But also worth noting is the film tucked away on the "True Entertainment" digital channel, the channel usually dedicated to TV movies, Danielle Steele adaptations and episodes of MASH and Touched By An Angel. At 9 p.m. on Saturday 23rd April that channel is showing the premiere of the Zhang Yimou film The Flowers of War set around the time of the Nanking Massacre and starring Christian Bale.

[jlnight]

Day of Anger, the Tonino Valerii western, is on Sat 30th April, Movies4Men. Has that ever been on TV before?

Following on from BBC4's Shakespeare thing is the Kozintsev Hamlet on that same channel, Sun 1st May.

[colinr0380]

Day of Anger, the Tonino Valerii western, is on Sat 30th April, Movies4Men. Has that ever been on TV before?

It has but only extremely recently, premiered on that Movies4Men channel back on Saturday 5th March.

[Jonathan S]

Like many of M4M's presentations, the transfer (though clearly from a good source) looked very jerky - and it's the much shorter 86-minute version, English audio of course.

[colinr0380]

I wasn’t too taken with the Arena programme on Shakespearean films, which rubbed me up the wrong way almost immediately by suggesting that every other Shakespeare adaptation (from Kosintsev to Kurosawa!) was influenced by Olivier’s Henry V! Where was the objective evidence for a quote such as that? Would nobody have been interested in Shakespeare without Olivier?

Also I did laugh at the slightly dismissive reference to Forbidden Planet (a screening of which immediately followed) with the sniffy line “some people even made science-fiction adaptations!” over a brief shot of the opening titles. What is worse about that dismissal is that later on in the programme it delineates various adaptations of The Tempest, touching on Jarman and Greenaway thankfully but then ignoring Forbidden Planet (perhaps the most radical adaptation) for the more ‘safely radical’ image of Helen Mirren’s female Prospero in Julie Taymor’s Tempest adaptation! (And on that note, no mention was made of Taymor’s even better and more radical Shakespeare adaptation, Titus!)

Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet and The Tempest were focused on in the latter sections to show various adpatations. Apparently Hamlet is the most complex of Shakespeare’s plays. Though I can think of several much more complex! And for some reason the programme celebrated the Freudian take on Hamlet’s relationship with his mother, which strikes me (especially in light of the Derek Jacobi playing of the role) to be rather wrongheaded! However it also ties in with the later comments on the Zefferelli version of Romeo & Juliet being radical in using a method approach to acting. They’re interesting takes but weirdly superficial at the same time.

Romeo & Juliet got a strangely telling discussion, being described in comparison to Hamlet as “Shakespeare’s most simple play”, which is something I have difficulties in subscribing to also. It might seem simple when produced in a standalone version (which all these various film adaptations are, superficially celebrating the pure tragic love story) but it becomes quite complex when slotted into all the other Shakespeare plays about insipid young lovers! (all the “&” plays)

I also have issues with celebrating the Zeferelli and Luhrmann versions (including using a lengthy clip from the most irritating part of Lurhmann’s version – the frantically embellished gas station fight scene at the opening - in order to celebrate the ‘radical’ nature of the adaptation) , whilst ignoring one of the better recent adaptations: that 2012 Swarovski crystal-produced piece that features gorgeous sets and a vapid pretty-boy Romeo with fuller pouting lips than the leading lady! (the one concession to the current era of “Young Adult” adaptations where the dull clotheshorse men outprettify the more tousled and down to earth young ladies!)

So while it was nice to see Kosintsev and Kurosawa namechecked, this struck me more as a Cliff Notes version of Shakespeare adaptations on film (by the way the lauding of Olivier’s Henry V also included offhandedly saying that there were no important previous Shakespeare adaptations before this point!) I also have the following issues:

The programme seemed surprised at the spaghetti western version of Hamlet, called Johnny Hamlet, seeming to suggest that this was an irreverence too far. But it was also seemingly used to emphasise how ‘complex’ Hamlet is over all of Shakespeare’s other plays! And that non-English language filmmakers liked doing strange revisionings from the 1960s on! I got the impression that the programme makers would have their minds blown if introduced to something like the New York set (but Shepperton Studio filmed) mobster film Joe Macbeth from the mid-50s or the 1990 film Men of Respect starring John Turturro, which is also based on Macbeth.

On that note, Macbeth is apparently “the most difficult Shakespeare play to stage” – my money would go on Antony and Cleopatra for that honor, to the extent that viewing the play in its BBC adaptation I got the impression that it was almost hamstrung by being focused on events too big to be contained by the stage.

Oh and there was no mention of Comedy of Errors getting remade as Big Business starring Lily Tomlin and Bette Midler! No My Own Private Idaho either, not even in the Chimes At Midnight section, which also seemed a strange omission.

[colinr0380]

On a happier note though, rewatching Sex, Lies and Videotape last night reminded me of just how great Laura San Giacomo was in her role as sister to Andie MacDowell, having an affair with all of the men in her life seemingly just for the hell of it! It also reminded me that the year afterwards (maybe in a nod to her Soderbergh role?) she also turned up in a wonderful small role as the streetwalking best friend and roommate of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, giving her an emotional send off!

[beamish13]

On a happier note though, rewatching Sex, Lies and Videotape last night reminded me of just how great Laura San Giacomo was in her role as sister to Andie MacDowell, having an affair with all of the men in her life seemingly just for the hell of it! It also reminded me that the year afterwards (maybe in a nod to her Soderbergh role?) she also turned up in a wonderful small role as the streetwalking best friend and roommate of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, giving her an emotional send off!

I've always loved San Giacomo. She was terrific in the NBC sitcom Just Shoot Me! alongside George Segal and Wendy Malick.