Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

A subforum to discuss film culture and criticism.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#401 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Feb 07, 2017 9:09 am

colinr0380 wrote:The thing that immediately stuck out to me in the schedules next week was BBC4 screening Author: The JT LeRoy Story at 11 p.m. on Wednesday 1st February.
I’m a bit torn (bifurcated?) on the whole J.T. LeRoy thing. On the one hand I think the imagination and writing talent on display that people responded to was definitely there (and there is a brilliant sense that it needed the input of, albeit unwitting, outside collaborators to fuel the creation of such an elaborate back story seemingly improvised on the fly), to such an extent that I’m actually more interested in what Laura Albert does as an 'actual' fiction writer now than I ever really was when there was a real figure of J.T. LeRoy just articulately drawing from his ‘real life’ incidents and putting it down in writing! What will she write now that she is not inextricably tied to the persona she created? Will that expand the horizons of her writing into other areas, or did it need that persona to bounce ideas off? I even think it was a wonderful idea to work through your issues ‘safely’ through a proxy. After all isn’t that what all writers do to some extent? (Either using proxies to work through their own issues, or deal with those of the wider society as a whole)

As an audience member I don’t particularly feel deceived by any of this situation (Elephant is still a magnificent piece of work, both writing and directorially however that is apportioned, and that sublimation of filmmakers watching college kids only feels heightened by the real life ‘deception’!), and as a distant observer this really all just adds an extra interesting dimension to Elephant, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, the discussion piece on Criterion’s My Own Private Idaho disc, etc. I don’t feel the ‘revelation’ damages the work, and in some ways deepens it in a fascinating way. But then I should admit that in general I don’t think that ‘based on a true story’ holds more inherent worth, or more caché, than a fictional piece (I guess if someone thinks that only a person who has lived the exact life they are describing can talk about a specific social group or situation then I can see why there might be that sense of betrayal arising, but that has always seemed a reductive approach to take to literature!). In both you should be able to discern the hand of an author guiding their narrative, and that aspect hasn’t really changed despite any re-framing going on outside of the text.


On the other hand I think the whole J.T. LeRoy persona spilling into real life was awful and really should have been stopped extremely early on before it deceived people. Gus Van Sant and Asia Argento in particular seem to get horribly badly deceived by this whole situation. Sure I can understand Laura Albert’s attempts to defend her actions by saying that they (and all the other celebrities) were latching onto this evocative ‘hustling trailer park kid’ as much as she was using them, but to have gotten to the point of building up actual friendships (and more), was far beyond the line of acceptable behaviour! Plus when you start actually dragging other people, willing or not, into your deception to playact characters in real life, that should be another warning siren that you are doing something rather problematic! (Not to mention solipsistic in trying to mould real life into your perception and interpretation of it, such that becomes rather stifling and airless. It does make me wonder what Laura Albert thought of Synecdoche, New York though! Or at least I want Criterion to call on Albert to write the liner note essay for their inevitable edition of that film!)

Albert talks about other writers using pen names, but didn’t seem to get the idea that you still retain your own persona while being liberated from all your authorial baggage on the page! It almost inverts here to being constrained on the page by the persona whilst being liberated and fêted in the celebrity, pop culture sphere. Until eventually you have to turn back to being ‘Laura Albert’ to get some respite from that and have your work on Deadwood assessed fairly.

In the end it probably is another cautionary tale piece on 'true artistic expression' and actual talent being co-opted (albeit willingly!) and eventually destroyed by celebrity culture, as well as of the dubious veracity of 'autobiographical' literature, no matter how poetically expressed! Its just in this case that 'co-option' caused reciprocal damage to all sides.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#402 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Feb 07, 2017 4:20 pm

Next weeks films are quite eclectic:

As mentioned by jlnight above The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is on Film4 at 11.15 p.m. on Saturday 11th February. It is probably worth giving a strong warning about how tonally different this sequel is from the grubby, nerve-shattering original. Compared to the first film's relatively bloodless but psychologically brutal film, this one is much more of a gory black comedy that sort of plays into all of the preconceptions that might have been there around how nasty and crude the first film was supposed to have been! Its also made during Tobe Hooper's period of working with Cannon Films and just after he made the (much better!) naked space vampire movie LifeForce (NSFW). Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 fits better into that company than as a sequel (the tonal whiplash between the first Texas Chain Saw Massacre and this one is perhaps the most violent thing about it!) and is very much a Cannon Film, for better and worse!

Its also got Dennis Hopper in it, the same year he was in Blue Velvet! His performance is similarly deranged, but his scenes are the best in the film (he's the only one who seems to be able to nail the tone the film is trying to go for in his performance, especially in this scene!) and his character is actually being used as the 'representative of normality' in some ways, which may suggest just how far gone the rest of the work is into grand guignol!

But if you can get through the ickily drawn out radio station scenes of a lady being menaced by someone wielding an improbably large chainsaw as a phallic symbol (I get it, its meant to be like a penis!), then you should be fine!

Then if you haven't had enough gruelling torture and punishment after that, M. Night Shyamalan's notorious flop adaptation of an anime series The Last Airbender is getting its first screening on Channel 5 at 5 p.m. on Sunday 12th February.

After enduring the above you may wish you were unable to see, and luckily BBC4 have you covered with the premiere of the dramatised-documentary Notes on Blindness at 9 p.m. on Thursday 16th February. (This seems timed to coincide with the BAFTA Film awards ceremony the previous Sunday, in which Notes on Blindness is nominated in both the Best Documentary and Best British Film categories)

In terms of repeats, there are a couple items of note. The Horror channel is screening the Hammer film Night Creatures (aka Captain Clegg) at 12.50 a.m. on Sunday 12th February. And most excitingly at 3 p.m. on Thursday 16th February, Film4 are screening Phil Karlson's film noir Kansas City Confidential.

jlnight
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:49 am

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#403 Post by jlnight » Wed Feb 08, 2017 10:07 am

How to Get Ahead in Advertising, Sat 18th February, London Live.
Stevie, the 1978 Glenda Jackson film, Sun 19th February, London Live.
Other films coming up on this channel include Intimate Games (!!), Privates on Parade and Nuns on the Run!

Life Animated, Mon 20th February, BBC4, part of the Storyville strand.

jlnight
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:49 am

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#404 Post by jlnight » Sat Feb 11, 2017 11:31 am

A Private Function, Thu 23rd February, London Live.
Intimate Games, Fri 24th February, London Live.

The screening of Notes on Blindness that Colin mentions is apparently available with the audio description and "heightened soundtrack" as well (BBC red button).

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#405 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Feb 14, 2017 8:03 pm

Only one really notable new film showing next week, but its the premiere of Christian Petzold's Phoenix at 11 p.m. on BBC4 on Sunday 19th February.

jlnight
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:49 am

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#406 Post by jlnight » Fri Feb 17, 2017 9:52 am

12 Angry Men, Sun 26th February, Film4.

Wild Tales, Thu 2nd March, Film4.

Alternatively: Privates on Parade, also Thu 2nd March, London Live.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#407 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Feb 17, 2017 1:33 pm

It sounds as if they are doing a Handmade Films season on that London Live channel!

jlnight
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:49 am

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#408 Post by jlnight » Tue Feb 21, 2017 9:51 am

You could be right. All we're really waiting for is a screening of Shanghai Surprise or whatever it's called! In the meantime Nuns on the Run is scheduled for Sat 4th March (in between A Private Function and Privates on Parade).

London Live also has Sex with the Stars the night before (Fri 3rd March).

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#409 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Feb 22, 2017 7:31 pm

Ah, Nuns On The Run! I love that film (and remember watching it with my dad as a kid!). I even think its a bit better than Sister Act, which came along a couple of years later and which followed many of the same beats (convent under threat of closure being saved by an unorthodox scheme) but was a bit more pious than "Nuns", in the sense that Sister Act involved mentoring a choir while the closest our opportunistic criminals turned undercover nuns got to female bonding was that steamy scene in the showers! It is one of those films in which it is refreshing that our ne'er do well lead characters don't really become better people for their culture clash experiences, and in a way the audience ends up celebrating their attempts to escape, well, everyone at the end! I don't think it was an accident that I saw it on Channel 4 back in the early 90s in a season of films that also featured Bill Murray's Quick Change, which it pairs up quite nicely with! (Siskel & Ebert hate it by the way!)

And while I'm not Catholic I'm grateful for the unforgettable profane mantra on how to perform the sign of the cross "Spectacles, Testicles, Wallet and Watch!"

Plus Janet Suzman is great in the same kind of Mother Superior role that Maggie Smith would have in the later film! Not to mention the fantastic line from one of the nuns shouted at a truck driver blocking the road during the final chase sequence: "Get out of the bloody way!". Or the perfectly appropriate use of Yello in his opening and ending credits!
___

Some other stuff next week:

The big film is the premiere of the Dardennes Brothers film Two Days, One Night on BBC4 at 9 p.m. on Sunday 26th February. That is immediately followed on BBC4 at 10.30 p.m. with the 100 minute documentary Hockney, about the painter.

On a similar documentary vein, BBC1 on Tuesday 28th February at 10.45 p.m. has the 95 minute documentary Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, featuring the final interview with the writer.

Other than that there are just a couple of curios: at 10 p.m. on Sunday 26th February BBC2 are showing Life of Crime, based on an Elmore Leonard novel The Switch (the premise actually reminded me a lot of that Danny DeVito and Bette Midler film Ruthless People! I wonder if The Switch inspired that film?). At 9 p.m. on Sunday 26th February the Horror channel are showing the 2010 remake (with Amber Heard) of the 1970s British film And Soon The Darkness. And then Film4 picks up the horror baton at 9 p.m. on Monday 27th February with the first screening of Parisian catacomb exploration found footage piece As Above, So Below.

jlnight
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:49 am

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#410 Post by jlnight » Sun Feb 26, 2017 1:18 pm

Luigi Cozzi's Hercules, in a double bill with the Electric Boogaloo documentary, Fri 10th March, Film4. Ha ha, brilliant!

Peter's Friends, Sat 11th March, London Live.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#411 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Mar 01, 2017 1:52 pm

I'd love it if Film4 actually did an all out Cannon Films season some time, having now done Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and the 1983 Hercules. At the very least Breakin' or LifeForce would be worth a screening, or the sequel to Hercules! (Let alone the more arthouse pieces like Love Streams!)

At 10 p.m. on Saturday 4th March BBC2 is screening a half hour interview with Martin Scorsese that took place during the recent BFI film season of his work, and following that up with a screening of Mean Streets.

Film4 have a film starring the recently deceased Miguel Ferrer screening at 1.40 a.m. on Monday 6th March: Wrong Turn At Tahoe.

The BBC seems to be on a mission to make Sunday night as uplifting as possible by scheduling the premiere of Thomas Vinterberg's "schoolteacher wrongly accused of sexual abuse by his pupils and facing persecution from his community" drama The Hunt on BBC4 at 9 p.m. against the frankly bizarre sounding film adaptation of the "hit musical based on the true story hunt for a serial killer" London Road, with Olivia Coleman and Tom Hardy, showing at 10 p.m. on BBC2! (This is exactly the kind of material that looks like it really needs someone like Chris Morris at the helm to work properly though!). For more true crime (albeit with less of a song and dance made out of it) on Tuesday 7th March at 10 p.m. BBC4 is showing the two hour documentary Killing For Love.

But perhaps the most interesting film is tucked away at 11 a.m. on Sunday 5th March on Film4, with the first showing of The First Film, a documentary suggesting that Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince beat the Lumiere Brothers to the punch of making the first film! (Cheekily followed up immediately afterwards by a screening of Hugo!)
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sun Mar 19, 2017 8:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
Dr Amicus
Joined: Thu Feb 15, 2007 10:20 am
Location: Guernsey

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#412 Post by Dr Amicus » Thu Mar 02, 2017 6:02 am

I hadn't seen any broadcast details, but OJ: Made in America is on the iPlayer for the next three weeks or so.

User avatar
thirtyframesasecond
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2007 1:48 pm

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#413 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Thu Mar 02, 2017 10:01 am

Dr Amicus wrote:I hadn't seen any broadcast details, but OJ: Made in America is on the iPlayer for the next three weeks or so.
Think the DVD release is either this or next month but I saw it was on iPlayer so will try to catch it here.

jlnight
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:49 am

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#414 Post by jlnight » Wed Mar 08, 2017 6:18 pm

Goin' South, Sun 12th March, Spike.
Only just spotted this ex-Moviedrome film!

Boyhood (following School of Rock), Mon 20th March, Film4.

Girlhood, Tues 21st March, Film4.

London Live never did show Sex With the Stars. Shame!

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#415 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Mar 08, 2017 7:09 pm

And Goin' South is the middle of the three films that Jack Nicholson directed, coming after Drive, He Said (available in that BBS boxset) and followed over a decade later by the ill-fated sequel to Chinatown, The Two Jakes.

The most interesting films next week have been released on home video by Artificial Eye. On Wednesday 15th March at 11.15 p.m. Film4 are screening the Polish film Ida. And at 9 p.m. on Sunday 12th March BBC4 are screening the Indian film The Lunchbox.

There's also a strange coincidence in the weekend featuring two premieres of fictionalised films 'inspired by' true crimes - at 9 p.m. on Saturday 11th March Channel 4 is screening Room (vaguely alluding to a Josef Fritzl-style situation), and at 10 p.m. on Sunday 12th March BBC2 are screening The Face Of An Angel, vaguely based on the Meredith Kercher murder case.

BBC2 also have a screening of A Simple Plan at 1.05 a.m. on Saturday 18th March, making for a nice Bill Paxton tribute.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Fri Mar 10, 2017 4:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.

jlnight
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:49 am

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#416 Post by jlnight » Fri Mar 10, 2017 4:02 pm

Correction:

Boyhood (following School of Rock), Tues 21st March, Film4.
Girlhood, Thur 23rd March, Film4.

I would highly recommend Electric Boogaloo tonight. Film4 should definitely do a Cannon season although last year ITV4 showed Death Wish 3-5. Part 5 had Saul Rubinek and Miguel Sandoval in it too! And Runaway Train is always on Movies4Men.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#417 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Mar 10, 2017 4:46 pm

I'd love to see that competitive arm wrestling(!) film Over The Top some time! Apparently only made because they called Sylvester Stallone's bluff on the ridiculous fee he asked for to be in a Cannon Film but had no proper film to put him in!

It looks as if Boyhood and Girlhood are going to be part of Film4's upcoming "Coming of Ages" season, which is also going to feature the premieres of Young Adult and Paolo Sorrentino's Youth.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#418 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Mar 14, 2017 12:59 pm

Where to start with next weeks films? Probably with the biggest event, which is from 9 p.m. on Sunday 19th March BBC4 premiering the latest in Edgar Reitz's Heimat series, the just under four hour prequel Home From Home: Chronicle of a Vision. Then at 10 p.m. on Monday 20th March BBC4 are showing the documentary about the filmmaking couple kidnapped to make feature films for Kim Jong-il,The Lovers & The Despot.

For some obscure reason (they're not showing the film afterwards or anything like that!) Channel 5 are showing the making of documentary Platoon: The True Story at 10.30 p.m. on Saturday 18th March.

As mentioned above Boyhood, Young Adult and Girlhood are getting screened on Film4 Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights respectively. But there are a few other big films premiering too - at 9 p.m. on Saturday 18th March Channel 4 are showing Luc Besson's Lucy. At 10 p.m. on Sunday 19th March BBC2 are showing Noah Baumbach's While We're Young, and at 9 p.m. on Friday 24th March Channel 5 are showing that Brad Pitt starring WWII tank film Fury (followed in a strange double bill choice by Schindler's List!)

Repeats-wise, at 3.05 p.m. on Saturday 18th March Film4 are showing one of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films, Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (also repeated on Monday afternoon), and I also noted that the Horror channel is showing Anthony Hickox's film that followed Hellbound: Hellraiser II - the vampire-western Sundown: the Vampire in Retreat at 00.40 on Friday 24th March.

Plus Channel 5 have a whole new batch of US and/or Canadian TV movies every weekday afternoon with evocative titles shrieking out warnings like Running For Her Life (starring Claire Forlani!), Locked Away, Deadly Departure (with Dina Meyer from Starship Troopers! And its called Turbulence on imdb, which might have been changed as it could have caused a bit of confusion with the 1997 airplane-set Turbulence film!), Killer Obsession and Love You To Death! (come to think of it The Lovers & The Despot would make an excellent title for a TV movie! "She was a lover. He was a despot. They came from two separate worlds and only cinema could bring them together. But at what cost?")

jlnight
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:49 am

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#419 Post by jlnight » Sat Mar 18, 2017 6:02 pm

Things to Come (1936), starts Sun 26th March, London Live.

Youth, Tues 28th March, Film4.

High-Rise, Wed 29th March, Film4.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#420 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Mar 23, 2017 8:10 am

Beyond Youth and High-Rise next week BBC2 have the first showing of Cold In July at 10 p.m. on Sunday 26th March. And though it doesn't sound great the Horror channel is showing Bad Milo! at 11.20 p.m. on Friday 31st March (which looks like it could be the goofier, bottom focused, male equivalent of The Brood!)

In terms of repeats it looks like Film4 is doing a season of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films, as they have Terror By Night on at 3.05 p.m. on Sunday 26th March, and again during the afternoon of Friday 31st. And there is a repeat of Sergei Loznitsa's documentary Maidan at 1.10 a.m. in the morning of Thursday 30th March, also on Film4. Film4 also have another screening of the Sabu starring 1942 version of Arabian Nights at 1.15 p.m. on Monday 27th March.

jlnight
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:49 am

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#421 Post by jlnight » Thu Mar 23, 2017 4:43 pm

Un Chien Andalou, Tues 4th April, BBC4, as part of Surrealism Night.

then later:
Andrei Rublev, Film4. The start of an Andrei Tarkovsky season! 1989, here we come.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#422 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Mar 23, 2017 9:47 pm

I really liked Girlhood, though I think its much better if seen less through an 'ethnographic Ken Loach social realist' lens than as being sort of in the vein of a 1930s gangster crime drama! This might just be me but I liked it even more when I started thinking that it had some strange structural similarities to something like the 1983 Scarface, as a girl falls in with local gangs, gets introduced to drugs and catfights to prove superiority amongst local gangs, all whilst having coercive family troubles (including a sister who potentially may be following in her footsteps whom she wants to keep ‘pure’ and unsullied). She eventually seems in danger of losing her kindly aspects of her nature as she begins to enjoy the power of her new lifestyle (with the suggestion that she is maybe giving into her violent tendencies in herself that have always been there) and the way that she 'hardens' as she moves from being coerced by her abusive brother and from being an onlooker on the sidelines of gangs into becoming a central figure of these situations and taking more control of her life (it is a pretty good film for showing that process of being 'indoctrinated' ever deeper into a troubling criminal underworld, not just because you have to through your life circumstances but also because there are some elements of friendship and belonging there which make linking up seem appealing too). Though in taking that control of her own life she eventually has to let go of a number of people, and become more callous and detached from the situations around her. Especially when she gets pushed into ‘actual, more official’ (i.e. male) criminal gangs, where she is used as a glamorous figure wandering through posh parties in a white wig and red dress to dispense drugs to the clients. It might only be one small degree of separation from the prostitute she now shares a flat with, but at least she has her own football computer game that she can play with the sound on, unlike when she was living with the abusive brother! (Much to the consternation of her rather useless boyfriend, who after a really great 'ilicit first kiss' scene in a gloomy stairwell amusingly just becomes kind of the ‘gangster’s moll’ figure of the film, getting used for sex and rightly rebuffed at the very end of the film when he belatedly tries to ‘protect’ Vic by wanting to marry her just after she has dealt with all of the worst trials of life that she perhaps could have used his help in facing earlier! I also like at the mid-point of the film, when Vic is flying her highest, she decides to go and 'claim her prize' in the middle of the night, objectifying her boyfriend as an ownable status symbol much as Al Pacino claimed Michelle Pfeiffer for his own at the mid-point of Scarface!)

It’s a little strange in its implied message that the actual criminal gang at the end is perhaps where Vic really, unquestionably, belongs. Especially in a society where there are no other viable options given beyond the basics of education or menial work. The early sections of the film are perhaps a bit obvious in setting up these aspects, from the way that all the groups of girls chattering quieten down when passing by the looming gangs of guys, or the distrust of the education system, or the vaguely sketched in, barely present mother busy working a menial cleaning job, who is only able to try to get Vic into a similar cleaning job where she works. Something which causes Vic to make her first steps towards independence by threatening the boss into firing her!

It is kind of a film about Vic moving through her ‘girlhood’ in the form of groups essential for her development that have to be ‘grown through’ in some ways. The mother is barely there even at the beginning, with the coercive brother being the big issue to deal with. Then after being rejected from school for poor test results (the break with ‘normal society’) Vic falls in with the gang of ‘cool girls’ who initially treat Vic badly until she gets in with them. They introduce her to busting out dance moves, glamorous (though slightly too mature for their age) dresses, drug-induced karaoke miming to musical numbers and fistfights with other local girlgangs for their tanktops which get posted on social media for the world, or at least the block, to see (it kind of goes a bit Switchblade Sisters at some points!). But even this gang, who we spent the majority of the film with, start to fall apart. We see that some of them have menial cleaning jobs too, or that there was a previous fourth member of the gang before Vic who left when she got pregnant. One of the other members of the gang who Vic looks up to, Lady, gets beaten and humiliated in one of the girlfights and it falls to Vic to fight to regain the honour not just of Lady but of their gang too. And worst of all, we later find that Lady’s actual name isn’t that appropriate for a no nonsense tough girl! It is all rather disillusioning for Vic and is fascinating but emotionally painful to see her move from wide-eyed hero worship through full acceptance to finally growing past the gang that meant so much to her in her formative years (as well as from compliance to her brother’s threats and the protection of her sisters, to having to abandon them all and escape that family situation), all at the age of 16!

I love the staging of that final shot too, as Vic makes an attempt to contact her younger sister only to walk off when she answers the intercom and then we get the magnificent shot that encapsulates the entire character as, in front of a blurred out backdrop of a twinkling cityscape (there are a lot of beautiful shots of cityscapes in this film, suggesting distant promises of a better life) Vic begins to cry on the right side of frame, moving out of shot as we hear her sob. Then, still focused on that blurred backdrop, Vic walks back into shot, composed and determined before walking off to the left, off into her new life (I'd like to imagine as the eventual crime boss of one of the tougher Paris banlieues! Or at the very least the Nikita for the new millennium!).

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#423 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Mar 28, 2017 8:14 am

jlnight wrote:Un Chien Andalou, Tues 4th April, BBC4, as part of Surrealism Night.
then later: Andrei Rublev, Film4. The start of an Andrei Tarkovsky season! 1989, here we come.
Yes, this is pretty exciting. This is another one of those situations where the films were last shown so far back that I would have to ask when the last time either Un Chien Andalou or the Tarkovsky films were shown on UK TV (though I have a suspicion that Un Chien Andalou only got shown on the older equivalent of BBC4 long before the digital switchover?). Solaris got shown by BBC2 back in 1996 and has had about three or four screenings on Film4 in recent years, so that is relatively well shown. However Andrei Rublev, showing on Wednesday 4th April at 00.10 is now the next most shown Tarkovsky, and this is the first time it has been seen on television since its BBC2 screening back in 1995, just under 22 years ago!

I assume this is the three hour version (that was the one last shown in the 90s on BBC2) and not the extended one as presented on the Criterion DVD. The running time is three hours and fifty minutes, but that likely has to account for Film4's commercial breaks too. I'll also be curious if they leave the infamous 'horse scene' in there! (They probably will if it passed BBFC classification)

The Radio Times mentions Ivan's Childhood, Stalker and The Sacrifice (along with Solaris) at least in the upcoming Film4 season. No mention of Mirror and Nostalghia as yet, but hopefully they will be in there too.

Other than that, there isn't much next week. Though the Horror channel is showing Eyes of Laura Mars at 10.50 p.m. on Saturday 1st April, which is another film that hasn't been shown on UK TV for at least a decade, and maybe closer to two decades!

Jonathan S
Joined: Sat Jun 07, 2008 3:31 am
Location: Somerset, England

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#424 Post by Jonathan S » Tue Mar 28, 2017 11:33 am

colinr0380 wrote:Though the Horror channel is showing Eyes of Laura Mars at 10.50 p.m. on Saturday 1st April, which is another film that hasn't been shown on UK TV for at least a decade, and maybe closer to two decades!
It's actually been shown a a few times on BBC1 - and if I recall correctly, since 2009, the year Genome ends. It's quite amusing to me that it ended up on BBC1 and now The Horror Channel. I remember when it was first released it was regarded as a rather arty film, the subject of scholarly essays and shown at my university arts centre.

jlnight
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:49 am

Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#425 Post by jlnight » Tue Mar 28, 2017 4:23 pm

colinr0380 wrote: The Radio Times mentions Ivan's Childhood, Stalker and The Sacrifice (along with Solaris) at least in the upcoming Film4 season. No mention of Mirror and Nostalghia as yet, but hopefully they will be in there too.
According to Film4's twitter feed (no, me neither) the channel is showing the whole lot! Back in 1989 Channel 4 showed the almost complete retrospective but instead of Andrei Rublev they screened the documentary Directed By Andrei Tarkovsky (Michal Leszczylowski).

Post Reply