Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

[jlnight]

To make up for my lapse in concentration, I flag up for your viewing attention Kurosawa's Ran, Sun 8th May, BBC4 of course.

As for the Nymphomaniac films and Blue is the Warmest Colour, since when did Film4 start getting all explicit on us? Body doubles and prosthetics indeed.

[colinr0380]

Though its still nowhere near the rudeness that Film4 foisted on people back when it was a £5.99 a month subscription channel! I knew someone with connections and badgered them into recording screenings of Romance and In The Realm of the Senses from the Cinema Extreme season, and while I didn't get to see the films until much later on DVD I'm pretty certain that Film4 showed Taxi Zum Klo and the first Urotsukidoji film too!

They also premiered Salo back in 2001, a year or so after the BFI first got it past the BBFC - I remember cutting out the outraged Daily Mail article on the BBFC decision for posterity! (The Film4 screening is also where the Mark Kermode documentary on the Criterion re-release comes from)

For all of the naughtiness going on in the current Love & Sex season, I don't think Film4 could get away with screening any of the above films (or, say, the director's cut of Nymph()Maniac) these days on a free-to-air channel!

[jlnight]

My copy of Taxi Zum Klo comes from that FilmFour screening back in 2006, I think, before it went non-subscription. Kermode's intro claims that the channel themselves had to submit it to the BBFC and got an uncut 18 by using the terms of the Obscene Publications Act to take the work as a whole as not seeking to "deprave and corrupt". Still strong stuff though and not one for the casual channel surfer.

[colinr0380]

You know, the most transgressive/refreshing thing about Blue Is The Warmest Colour to me was all of the casual smoking going on! It sort of points up how rarely it gets shown on screen when at least the first section of the film is full of teens sneaking off for a crafty cigarette in between lessons at school!

Although I like to think of myself as open minded as the next prude I did have to draw the line during that gay pride parade at seeing someone painted blue like one of the Na'vi from Avatar! (Ironically they didn't look to be too warm in the brief shot they were in!) As soon as you make it normal and acceptable for people to paint themselves entirely blue, where will it end? I'll tell you where - with James Cameron making more films in the series, and none of us want that!

[kidc85]

The BBC iPlayer have added some old Storyville docs, available to stream for a year or so, including Pennebaker's WAR ROOM, PUSSY RIOT - A PUNK PRAYER and Morris' TABLOID.

[GaryC]

Last night BBC4 showed Gregori Kosintsev's Hamlet for the first time since 1973 (and almost certainly letterboxed into Scope for the first time). It was shown in HD and it is on BBC Iplayer - for the full thirty days (i.e. twenty-nine from today) instead of the usual six for feature films.

[colinr0380]

Next week other than BBC4 showing Ran (though sadly not A.K.!) it is a little quiet film-wise. Although Channel 4 is premiering the Disney film The Rescuers (39 years after it was made) at 3.50 p.m. on Sunday 8th May, and Film4 are showing that religious-infidelity drama Second Coming, starring Idris Elba, at 11.35 p.m. on Monday 9th May.

Something else that did catch my eye though is that Spike digital channel is showing that extremely strange John Huston film The List of Adrian Messenger at 2 p.m. on Tuesday 10th May. This is the film where Kirk Douglas seems to be competing with Alec Guiness in Kind Hearts and Coronets in taking on multiple roles, and which also has various big name stars doing tiny cameo performances unrecognisable under layers of make up until the big end credits reveal of each of them! I think the last time the film was shown on television was when it turned up near the end of Mark Cousins's run of the Moviedrome series.

[colinr0380]

The big film of this next week is Film4's premiere of The Master on Monday 16th May at 11.10 p.m. - I'd stick by my previous opinion on this that it is a great film but one that the audience needs to sort of immerse themselves into the tone of more than the plot. I'd only add that Laura Dern almost single-handedly steals the film in her questioning scene.

And the next Louis Theroux documentary A Different Brain is on BBC2 tonight at 9 p.m., which is going to follow staff and patients at the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Trust, focusing on re-learning skills and personality changes brought on by brain injuries and the effects that has beyond the patients.

[colinr0380]

Not too much next week though BBC4 at 9 p.m. Wednesday 25th May has Going Going Gone: Nick Broomfield's Disappearing Britain, in which the documentary filmmaker looks at two 19th century buildings that have been left to fall into disrepair: the Cardiff Coal Exchange and the Wellington Rooms in Liverpool, with the implication that they have been in some ways ideologically abandoned.

In some ways the Liverpool set film in particular seems like Broomfield returning back to the subject matter of his very first film from 1969 Who Cares?

[jlnight]

Virgin Witch, starring what'sherface from 'Allo 'Allo (and her sister), Sat 4th June, Horror Channel.

[colinr0380]

Only one notable film next week, but its a big one: Film4 has the premiere of Hirokazu Kore-eda's I Wish (aka Kiseki, or Miracle) from 1 a.m. on Tuesday 31st May. I think this is a magnificent film and its probably going to place highly on both my 2010s and Films of Youth lists!

[colinr0380]

A fascinating sounding film on BBC2 at 6.10 a.m. on Saturday 4th June: the premiere of Finishing School, a film from 1934 starring Ginger Rogers and Frances Dee, years before she was one of the leads in I Walked With A Zombie!

[GaryC]

A fascinating sounding film on BBC2 at 6.10 a.m. on Saturday 4th June: the premiere of Finishing School, a film from 1934 starring Ginger Rogers and Frances Dee, years before she was one of the leads in I Walked With A Zombie!

It's also the only Hollywood film of the 1930s (co)directed by a woman other than Dorothy Arzner - Wanda Tuchock, who was primarily a scriptwriter. This is her only feature directing credit, shared with George Nichols Jr.

It just about comes in at the end of the Pre-Code era and was condemned by the Legion of Decency.

[jlnight]

Apparently Norman Warren's Prey is on the Horror Channel, Sat 11th June.

We Are The Best! - Thursday 16th June, Film4. (The Punk Singer follows in a double-bill).

[colinr0380]

I'm ambivalent about Prey but its certainly a film (as with Inseminoid!) that's well worth watching now that it has turned up on television. While it is one of the more notably silly moments, I don't really have too many issues with the hilarious but thematically appropriate 'slow motion wallowing in the lake' scene! It also has a very funny line when the alien-man is introduced to the suspicious and grumpy butch lesbian and offered a cup of tea: "I suppose you take sugar, all you men do!"

I wonder how well it would work in a double bill with Under The Skin!

[colinr0380]

If anyone's wanting an update on Koko following on from Barbet Schroeder's film, BBC1 have an hour long documentary Koko: The Gorilla Who Talks To People at 8.30 p.m. on Wednesday 15th June.

(The main thing I learnt from the accompanying article in the Radio Times is that Koko now apparently has a crush on Benedict Cumberbatch after watching DVDs of him!)

[jlnight]

Farewell To The King, one of John Milius's post-Red Dawn films, is on Weds 22nd June, movies4men.

[antnield]

Chris Hedegus and D.A. Pennebaker's new film, Unlocking the Cage, screens on BBC4 on Weds 22nd at 9.00pm.

Official website.

[exidor]

Mark Cousins' A Story of Children and Film is on Film4 on Monday night/Tuesday morning at 01:30.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Mark Cousins' A Story of Children and Film is on Film4 on Monday night/Tuesday morning at 01:30.

Really loved this, and I don't know if they're still there, but the BFI and Edinburgh Filmhouse has loads of these films available for streaming.

[colinr0380]

The only particularly notable film this week is the premiere of The Hypnotist directed by Lasse Hallström and featuring Lena Olin amongst the cast. Its on BBC4 tonight at 9 p.m.

Although also Odd Thomas, the Dean Koontz-based supernatural thriller is getting a first showing on Film4 on Tuesday 5th July at 9 p.m., presumably also to pay tribute to Anton Yelchin who starred in it. And the Spike channel is screening the 1964 Fail-Safe at 2 p.m. on Wednesday 6th July.

The Horror channel has a couple of notable repeats across the week. The ghostly sexual assault film The Entity is on tonight at 10.45 p.m., Oliver Reed stars in The Curse of the Werewolf on Monday 4th July at 9 p.m., Amityville III: The Demon (aka the Richard Fleischer directed 3D one featuring Meg Ryan in one of her first feature film roles and Candy Clark among the supporting cast) at 10.50 on Tuesday 5th, and the 1990 Tom Savini directed remake of Night of the Living Dead (which I think is terrible, turning a bleak tale into an action one, but which lots of people apparently like!) is at 9 p.m. on Wednesday 6th.

Although my interest was taken by the film being premiered tonight on the Horror channel at 9 p.m. and repeated on Friday called Burning Bright, which sounds terrible but has perhaps the best imdb plot summary I have ever read!:

In Montgomery County, Kelly Taylor is ready to go to college and takes her autistic brother, Tom, to a specialized institution. However, the bank informs her that she does not have sufficient funds in her account to honor her check. Her stepfather, Johnny Gaveneau, withdrew the money from her account the day before. When Kelly arrives home, Johnny reveals that he used the money to buy a tiger for his 'safari show' project. In addition he has the house reinforced, in order to protect it from hurricanes, so all the windows and external doors are covered with wood. When Kelly awakes, she finds that the starving tiger is inside the house and Tom and she are trapped with the ravenous animal.

I mean there's bad parenting and "Oops, I barricaded you in the house with a ravenous tiger" parenting! I wonder if there are specific apology cards from Hallmark available for such an event?

I'm also betting that the autistic brother comes up with the perfect solution to catching the tiger while the girl ends up fighting it with her bare fists whilst dressed only in a dirty tank top!

[domino harvey]

I've seen Burning Bright, it's actually an okay movie. Here's what I wrote up in the Horror List Thread a few years back:

Burning Bright (Carlos Brooks 2010) Here is a premise so outlandish that the desire for the film to be good approaches righteousness: A conniving widower plots to rid himself of his bratty stepdaughter (Briana Evigan, the wet-blanket from Sorority Row) and autistic stepson by trapping them inside during a hurricane… and then releasing a tiger into the boarded-up family home. Yes, this is a real movie. And yes, it plays things Very Seriously, which works sometimes-- I loved the ridiculously entertaining scene early on where our heroine finds herself stuck in a laundry chute with the orange beastie poking its head and paw and whatever else up into the crevices after her-- but the animal quickly wears a path of destruction through the house that leaves few credible options for legitimate plot furtherance. There's a good hour-long programmer in here like they used to make 'em, but stretched out even to a relatively slight eighty-five minutes (and that includes the astonishing eight-minutes of closing credits), it's all thinner than it needed to be. It doesn't help matters that the autistic boy is obnoxious beyond belief-- he makes Max from Parenthood look like Cary Grant-- and even before he wallops his helpful sister in the head with a remote for daring to suggest that maybe TV Time shouldn't coincide with Tiger Time, I was ready for her to feed this burden to the beast and be done with it. Not the sentiment the film desires, I assure you. Still, the pic offers exactly what it's sold as: Anonymous college-something running around in a tank top, evading a killer tiger in her house by hiding under beds, behind kitchen islands, etc. And in that we can call the film a success, however minor.

[colinr0380]

It does make me wonder what teenage girls hid from killers behind before kitchen islands were invented! I guess all of these moments can perhaps trace their origin back to the kitchen scene in Jurassic Park.

[jlnight]

London Live have a few things coming up:

Little Dorrit, the Christine Edzard film, is scheduled for Sat 16th July. Parts 1 and 2 apparently, 4 hour timeslots each!

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Sunday 17th July.

Downhill, a 1927 Hitchcock film, Monday 18th July.

[colinr0380]

A few quirky premieres next week:

The Danish take on a Captain Phillips-like situation, A Hijacking is on BBC4 at 9 p.m. on Saturday 9th July. Also on Saturday at 10.50 p.m. the Horror channel are showing the 2013 US remake of a 2010 Mexican film We Are What We Are. The original film at least was part of that early 2010s cycle of abusive family (or coercive patriarchy really) horror films along with The Woman and Mum & Dad.

Then on Wednesday 13th July at 1.10 a.m., Film4 are screening Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence.