Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

[colinr0380]

Episodes 3 and 4 of The Vietnam War from 10 p.m. on Monday 2nd October on BBC4.

The Indian film season continues with the 2015 Bollywood film Dum Laga Ke Haisha aka the unflatteringly titled My Big Fat Bride, which makes the protagonist look extremely unappealing! Though the Indian trailer makes the film seem a little bit better, if still extremely broad! That's on Channel 4 at 3.40 a.m. in the early hours of Tuesday 3rd October.

And on Wednesday 4th October at 11.10 p.m. Film4 have the first showing of the Greek film Suntan (NSFW), which has only a couple of weeks ago been released on Blu-ray under that new Montage Pictures label.

[jlnight]

Maximum Overdrive, Sat 14th October, Horror. The version of Children of the Corn to be screened in the Stephen King season is the one from 2009.

Kurt Neumann's version of The Fly, which was shown on Quest last year, is also doing the rounds on Horror soon. Vivre Sa Vie is getting a repeat on Film4, late night Weds 11th October.

[colinr0380]

Also apparently Film4 is showing I Origins, by Mike Cahill (who previously made Another Earth) on Tuesday 10th October. While I loved Another Earth I remember this seeming like a premise too far at the time but it will be interesting to finally see it (and strange that it has come to UK television before Another Earth has). Here's the forum thread on the film

[colinr0380]

Parts 5 and 6 of The Vietnam War on BBC4 from 10 p.m. on Monday 9th October.

The Indian film season continues with Bajirao Mastani on Channel 4 Tuesday 10th October at 1.50 a.m.

And Film4 have a night of premieres on the evening of Tuesday 10th: the Jake Gyllenhaal boxing drama Southpaw at 9 p.m., followed by the above mentioned I Origins at 11.25 p.m., but most interesting is the screening of Behemoth, a documentary about steel miners in China, at 1.35 a.m. (Looking though his previous filmography on imdb Zhao Liang seems like the perfect director for a Second Run treatment)

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Three of Zhao's earlier features (Paper Airplane, Crime and Punishment, and Petition) are available in a French boxset with English subs, though it's fairly pricey (around £35). A less expensive option would be nice, along with the two features missing from the French set (Farewell to Yuanmingyuan and Together), though my admittedly naive hope is that someone does a home release of the five-hour version of Petition. I will say by way of warning that Behemoth is quite different in its scope and approach than the earlier Zhao films I've seen, which are more "conventionally" observational.

[jlnight]

The Outsiders (Coppola), Thu 19th October, London Live.

Eyewitness (1970), starts Fri 20th October, London Live.

Thinner, Sat 21st October, Horror.

My Bloody Valentine (1981), Sun 22nd October, Horror.

[colinr0380]

Episodes 7 and 8 of The Vietnam War on BBC4 from 10 p.m. on Monday 16th October. BBC4 also have the most interesting development of the week's schedules with the two part German/Czech mini-series about Martin Luther, Reformation (known as Himmel und Hölle, or Heaven and Hell, in its original language) showing on Tuesday 17th and Wednesday 18th October, starting at 10 p.m. Its got an interesting cast featuring Rüdiger Vogler (star of many of Wim Wenders' early films) and Joachim Król (who had parts in a number of Tom Tykwer's films).

BBC2 are currently running the latest three part Louis Theroux series, Dark States, at 9 p.m. on Sundays. The first episode Heroin Town is about how people who have developed a reliance on powerful painkillers are coping after a crackdown on over prescription. Episode Two showing next Sunday, Trafficking Sex, is set in Houston which is apparently the "nucleus for human trafficking in North America. The US Department of Justice estimates that at least one in five of all of the country's victims are trafficked through the city". And the third is apparently going to be themed around about murder.

The Indian film season is a day later next week, showing the 1957 film about a man struggling with unemployment and sliding into alcoholism Pyaasa (Thirsty) with Guru Dutt at 2.45 a.m. on Wednesday 18th October (it has been on television before but not since its premiere back in 2009).

There are also a few interesting American films next week. Film4 has Salma Hayek in Everly at 11.20 p.m. on Saturday 14th October, there's another alcohol-themed drama Smashed at 11.25 p.m. on Monday 16th October, and the post-JFK assassination film Parkland at 9 p.m. on Thursday 19th October. And the recently released on Criterion documentary Cameraperson is also on Film4 at 00.55 a.m. on Thursday 19th October.

[rattlebag]

Episodes 7 and 8 of The Vietnam War on BBC4 from 10 p.m. on Monday 16th October. BBC4 also have the most interesting development of the week's schedules with the two part German/Czech mini-series about Martin Luther, Reformation (known as Himmel und Hölle, or Heaven and Hell, in its original language) showing on Tuesday 17th and Wednesday 18th October, starting at 10 p.m. Its got an interesting cast featuring Rüdiger Vogler (star of many of Wim Wenders' early films) and Joachim Król (who had parts in a number of Tom Tykwer's films).

BBC2 are currently running the latest three part Louis Theroux series, Dark States, at 9 p.m. on Sundays. The first episode Heroin Town is about how people who have developed a reliance on powerful painkillers are coping after a crackdown on over prescription. Episode Two showing next Sunday, Trafficking Sex, is set in Houston which is apparently the "nucleus for human trafficking in North America. The US Department of Justice estimates that at least one in five of all of the country's victims are trafficked through the city". And the third is apparently going to be themed around about murder.

The Indian film season is a day later next week, showing the 1957 film about a man struggling with unemployment and sliding into alcoholism Pyaasa (Thirsty) with Guru Dutt at 2.45 a.m. on Wednesday 18th October (it has been on television before but not since its premiere back in 2009).

There are also a few interesting American films next week. Film4 has Salma Hayek in Everly at 11.20 p.m. on Saturday 14th October, there's another alcohol-themed drama Smashed at 11.25 p.m. on Monday 16th October, and the post-JFK assassination film Parkland at 9 p.m. on Thursday 19th October. And the recently released on Criterion documentary Cameraperson is also on Film4 at 00.55 a.m. on Thursday 19th October.

An excellent run down as ever chief. Thanks.

Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

[colinr0380]

Thanks rattlebag! Doing these posts is acting as a reminder for me so I'm glad they're of use to others too!

I caught Everly this evening and really enjoyed its heightened and blackly comic take on an action film (imagine elements of Kill Bill, Leon, the "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" shootout scene from Face/Off, Oldboy and R100 smashed together!). It is novel for having the camera stay locked inside that single apartment set for the entire film (albeit occasionally peeking out into the corridor, looking out the window, or showing events outside the room playing out through CCTV cameras!) which although it could run the risk of being seen as too mannered or 'stagey' felt both thematically appropriate (a film about a woman held captive in an apartment for years and her generally unsuccessful attempts to break out of her cage) and filmically striking. Though I should admit that I love films set within limited confines (Rope, Richard Linklater's Tape, and so on). The thing I was most reminded of was the way that apparently this same idea had been the original way that the screenwriter of Panic Room had wanted that film to play out: with no scenes at all filmed outside of the house to emphasise that claustrophobic, confined situation even more (and apparently at one point during the final act the Jodie Foster character in that film would have actually left, gone next door and hammered her way back into the panic room through the wall of the building, all played out through the sound of the commotion coming through the wall!)

I especially like the moments when the main character leaves the room, and the camera, behind to try and escape. There's a nice sense of the film itself perhaps being the thing holding her back from escaping, even into the respite of a well earned death at the end! We know that the heroine cannot escape because if she did the film would be over too soon, so she has to be dragged back to the room if only to let us continue to go on watching her struggle for longer. It might be a filmic conceit to keep everything confined but its one that feels extremely apt for the material. And it also leads to that great progression of seeing the the confined space itself get ever more destroyed throughout the course of the film until (like the characters themselves) there's not much left standing by the end.

[jlnight]

Whilst watching Maximum Overdrive an ad break trailed a movie season on CBS Action that featured Chuck Norris! A further inspection of their website reveals a few Cannon-related films are coming up on the channel, stuff like Missing in Action (already shown but on rotation), Braddock: Missing in Action III, The Delta Force, Delta Force II: The Colombian Connection, Firewalker, Messenger of Death (Charles Bronson), American Ninja II: The Confrontation, American Ninja III: Blood Hunt (the Dudikoff kid!).

Maybe the closest we'll get to a Golan-Globus/Cannon season.

[colinr0380]

Episodes 9 and 10 of The Vietnam War on BBC4 from 10 p.m. on Monday 23rd October.

The Indian film season returns to its previous slot with The Dirty Picture on Channel 4 at 1.50 a.m. on Tuesday 24th October.

Film4 have their usual horror season for Halloween next week, with a rare repeat showing of Candyman (the first in around five years) at 11.15 p.m. on Friday 27th October, and two premieres: A Dark Song at 11.15 p.m. on Wednesday 25th October (in a double bill with the The Babadook) and Tank 432 at 11.35 p.m. on Thursday 26th October (in a double bill with Yakuza Apocalypse).

And the Sony Movie Channel has the first showing of Chinese Zodiac starring Jackie Chan (which the Radio Times pithily describes as a "Largely incomprehensible adventure"!) at 6.20 p.m. on Saturday 21st October.

In terms of repeats, for John Hughes fans Sixteen Candles is tucked away at 1.25 a.m. in the early hours of Saturday 28th October on the 5 Star channel. And Film4 have a rare screening of the 1959 Douglas Sirk version of Imitation of Life at 11.00 a.m. on Thursday 26th October. But the film that most caught my eye is one of my favourite guilty pleasure disaster movies, Crack In The World, showing on Film4 at 11 a.m. on Sunday 22nd October (in an amusingly cheeky double bill with the more recent goofy Earth science film The Core! That's an example of film scheduling as film criticism right there!) and again at 4.40 p.m. on Friday 27th October. Its a 'guilty pleasure' because I love the kind of worldwide disaster film which follows the privileged characters watching global meltdown from a safely distanced perspective only for them to suddenly have to suddenly fight for their lives in the final act (that structure is kind of why I have a soft spot for the equally ridiculous Meteor too!), but unfortunately this film was seemingly made before the concept of plate tectonics was common knowledge so the entire premise, about experimental bomb tests accidentally fracturing the Earth's crust and causing a chain reaction of a single fault line racing across the planet from the epicentre, is a bit ludicrous now! Its no When Worlds Collide (still the ultimate disaster movie!) but if you can watch something like First Man Into Space (which was immediately outdated as soon as the first astronauts went outside of the Earth's atmosphere and didn't come back as a homicidal mutant!), then I suppose that this isn't too problematic either, and just viewed as a disaster movie with a fun climax I can recommend it as a entertainingly bleak watch! (Though of course something like The Day The Earth Caught Fire from around the same time is a much more sober look at global disaster!)

Crack In The World headlines Dana Andrews (who had form in disaster movies with Zero Hour! before this, and Airport 1975 after), but co-stars Janette Scott and Kieron Moore, both of whom had starred in the 1963 version of The Day of the Triffids a couple of years before this, for the same producer, Philip Yordan, who produced the 1964 version of The Thin Red Line in between! (And the director of that version of The Thin Red Line, Andrew Marton, was the director of Crack In The World!) Scott and Moore are both isolated together in the best section of that film adaptation of The Day of the Triffids too, as the couple trapped in their lighthouse fighting off the local fauna!

SpoilerShow

I also have a sneaking suspicion that Tim Burton might have paid tribute to the moment at the end of this film (in which amongst all of the mind-bogglingly irreversible natural disasters going on and against blood red skies, a small animal appears as if to show the two survivors that everything isn't entirely hopeless) at the end of Mars Attacks! Just replace Janette Scott and Keiron Moore hugging each other for Tom Jones belting out his greatest hit to his wildlife audience!

[thirtyframesasecond]

Hmm, reading between the lines from what Molly Ringwald has written, Sixteen Candles might've been an odd set.

[jlnight]

Aaaaaaaah!, late Sat 28th October, Film4.

Prevenge, Tues 31st October, Film4.

[jlnight]

Children of the Corn (2009), Sat 28th October, Horror.

What We Do in the Shadows, Sun 29th October, BBC2.

Scars of Dracula, Thu 2nd November, London Live.

Straight on Till Morning, Fri 3rd November, London Live.

The Anniversary, Sat 4th November, London Live.

Shalako, Sun 5th November, London Live.

October Ten Days That Shook the World, Sun 5th November, BBC4.

[colinr0380]

Aaaaaaaah!, late Sat 28th October, Film4.

I hadn't realised until seeing the preview for the horror film season on the channel a few nights ago (one that seems particularly focused on UK horror this year) that Aaaaaaaah! (one big 'A', seven little 'a's!) is the 'Mike Leigh meets Quest For Fire' (or 'Themroc meets Festen') film where all the dialogue is done in the form of grunts and growls! it has been getting pretty dire reviews across the board but has an interesting cast of familiar comedians from the last decade or so, particularly Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding from The Mighty Boosh (plus Toyah Willcox is in there too!)

The 2015 remake of Poltergeist is on Channel 5 at 10 p.m. on Monday 30th October. I've not seen it yet but it is apparently by the director of that animated children's film Monster House, which I remember finding one of the (intentionally) ugliest looking and most disturbing films I had seen in the last few years, which was even worse because it was intended for family audiences! But it would seem to make the director a more natural fit for a more adult story of haunted houses! (Incidentally, Monster House is up there with The Polar Express as one of the most disturbing films of the 2000s for me!)

Also tucked away on the 5 Star digital channel at 11.00 p.m. on Tuesday 31st October is the first showing of Deliver Us From Evil.

What We Do in the Shadows, Sun 29th October, BBC2.

As well as What We Do In The Shadows, Film4 is screening the previous film by the same director Taika Waititi , Boy, at 10.50 p.m. on Friday 3rd November. Its a Flight of the Conchords spin-off week! (EDIT: Ah, he's also the director of the latest Thor film out in cinemas this week, so that's perhaps another reason for his older films turning up on television all at once!)

And of course the Indian film season on Channel 4 continues, swapping nights again, with Lady of the Lake at 2.50 a.m. on Wednesday 1st November. It looks a bit Apichatpong Weerasethakul-influenced!

[colinr0380]

Wong Kar-Wai's The Grandmaster is coming up on Film4 at some point in November, as hinted at in the latest trailer for their fantasy film season.

(EDIT: And Phase IV, which hasn't been on UK television since 1993!)

[colinr0380]

Aaaaaaaah!, late Sat 28th October, Film4.

I hadn't realised until seeing the preview for the horror film season on the channel a few nights ago (one that seems particularly focused on UK horror this year) that Aaaaaaaah! (one big 'A', seven little 'a's!) is that this is the 'Mike Leigh meets Quest For Fire' (or 'Themroc meets Festen') film where all the dialogue is done in the form of grunts and growls! it has been getting pretty dire reviews across the board but has an interesting cast of familiar comedians from the last decade or so, particularly Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding from The Mighty Boosh (plus Toyah Willcox is in there too!)

I can see why Aaaaaaaah! rubs people up the wrong way, as it is intentionally crude, violent and silly to the extreme. You could in no way approach this as a realist piece (what if people invented all the trappings of modern life and technology, like cars, televisions, clothes and washing machines, cookers, plates and tables, but forgot to create the most important things like language or knives and forks, so every eating scene involves someone burying themselves face-first into the dish. And at least a fork would have helped affix the fried testicle later on, rather than having to chase it around a plate, teeth gnashing!) but as a kind of absurdist play about sexual and power dynamics that is upending the shared decent conventions of modern society to expose the essential irrationally absurd animality underneath (like Themroc, which this feels obviously indebted too) it works quite well.

I especially like the sections involving the satire of television, which of course was full of silent comedy sketch show-type pieces, as well as disturbingly child-like animated pieces (David Lynch's Dumbland series would fit perfectly into the schedule! Except that it still uses a few words). Especially that late 'family bonding in front of the television' scene with everyone responding with chattering laughter to the 'joke' on the television (of someone tripping over their own feet, which gets repeated a couple of times, once in slow motion with a different camera angle. So the visual culture seems quite sophisticated in this world, at least!). Then one character starts attempting to grunt something about the onscreen action (presumably over-explaining the joke to everyone else!) and gets a nice bonding moment!

And that final massacre scene felt quite strongly reminiscent of the ending of Ken Park, with the unhappy teen murdering the grandparents. Maybe that scene in Ken Park was all about lack of communication ending in tragedy too!

The one area that I don't know worked too well was the casting of familiar British comic actors in the parts, which might have led to audience expectations that the material would be funnier than it turns out to be! (Its much more violent-disturbing-abusive-sexual than comic hijinks) But then having many comic actors used to being inside absurd situations (as in something like The Bed Sitting Room) might be the only way to find people willing and able to go to such lengths the material requires, and provide that dangerous frisson for viewers too! On that note though, Toyah Willcox is fantastic as kind of a matriarch figure of the house bringing to mind her transgressively violent role in Jubilee of course, but also this feels like the perfect role for someone who both presented The Good Sex Guide and narrated explanations and motivations behind the childishly incoherent burblings of the Teletubbies for a decade!

[colinr0380]

It is pretty good for new films next week: Louis Theroux's My Scientology Movie is showing on BBC2 at 9 p.m. on Sunday 5th November. In terms of Hollywood films ITV2 has the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans tucked away at 5.20 p.m. on Sunday 5th November ("Release the Kraken!") and Film4 has A.C.O.D. at 10.55. p.m. on Wednesday 8th November.

The Indian film season continues on Channel 4 (slipping another day later!) with the Amitabh Bachchan starring (as a crotchety old grumpy dad) film Piku at 2.20 a.m. on Thursday 9th November.

October: Ten Days That Shook the World, Sun 5th November, BBC4.

But most interesting is that BBC4 seems to be doing a season of Russian programmes and films next week. On Sunday 5th November, Eisenstein's October is showing at 8 p.m., there is a half hour programme at 10.40 p.m. called The Space: Parade, which according to the Radio Times write up is "a modern reinvention by the National Dance Company of Wales of the experimental 1917 ballet Parade by Erik Satie, Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso, the production recreating Picasso's unusual cardboard costumes and explores connections between Wales and Russia".

And then following that at 11.10 is a very rare repeat showing of Gulag, a TV mini-series (which runs for three hours in the listings, but only for 130 minutes according to imdb, though they may only have the theatrical version details on there) starring David Keith (as an athletics reporter 'wrongfully' framed as a spy by the KGB and sent to the camps!) and Malcolm McDowell.

Even better than that though is at 10.20 p.m. on Monday 6th November BBC4 is showing Andrey Zvyagintsev's Leviathan for the first time.

Oh, and at 1.50 a.m. in the early hours of Tuesday 7th November, Channel 4 are premiering Xavier Dolan's Mommy.

[jlnight]

(EDIT: And Phase IV, which hasn't been on UK television since 1993!)

Phase IV, Tues 14th November, Film4. I think it had one more screening on Channel 4 in 1995.

Missing in Action is on again on CBS Action on Sunday 5th November. They appear to be lining up some more Cannon/Golan-Globus fare into December, like Avenging Force, Platoon Leader, River of Death (??) and Over The Top, the arm-wrestling film with Stallone!

[colinr0380]

And then following that at 11.10 is a very rare repeat showing of Gulag, a TV mini-series (which runs for three hours in the listings, but only for 130 minutes according to imdb, though they may only have the theatrical version details on there) starring David Keith (as an athletics reporter 'wrongfully' framed as a spy by the KGB and sent to the camps!) and Malcolm McDowell.

It turns out that the Radio Times listings got this wrong and it isn't the 1985 mini-series, but the documentary instead, which is even better!

[Jonathan S]

October: Ten Days That Shook the World, Sun 5th November, BBC4.

Out of curiosity, can anyone tell me about the version broadcast on BBC4 please? (I no longer have a TV licence.) Image quality? Score? Did it match any existing DVD editions? The UK ones looked lousy so I never bought them. Given the 1h 40m slot, it couldn't be the Filmmuseum restoration or the excellent version shown on Channel 4 in the 1990s, both of which run around 1h 56m.

[colinr0380]

I'm afraid that I didn't watch October, so cannot be too much help there.

[Colpeper]

The soundtrack was mono and the image was better than the 2010 Palisades Tartan DVD, judging by the Beaver review. There was slightly more in the frame on all sides and slightly better detail. It had Cyrillic title cards, but of course the subtitles were non-removable (not burned into the print though).

It lacked restoration and music credits, ending with a simple конец.

The first 5 minutes of the score was the opening of the Shostakovich Op. 112 Symphony No. 12 in D minor (The Year 1917), but thereafter I'm not sure. I presume the whole score was a Shostakovich compilation. Certainly no idea on orchestra nor recording. Duration was indeed 100 minutes 16 seconds.

By the way, thanks to colinr0380 for the regular updates in this thread, which I find invaluable.

[colinr0380]

Thanks! It was interesting to find out on receiving this month's Sight & Sound that apparently the screening on Film4 of that 2010 film Boy by Taika Waititi was apparently its first release in the UK, as it got a review in the magazine for its belated cinema release as well! (I've not really watched any of the Marvel movies at all yet, but the thing I am appreciative for is the way that the actors in these enormous films go off and do much more interesting other films in between as a palate cleanser, like Under The Skin or Snowpiercer, or that it results in a director's past filmography getting wider distribution almost purely just by virtue of having directed a Thor film!)

I missed October mostly because I was watching that Louis Theroux 'theatrical feature' My Scientology Movie, which turned out to be all of the things that I find a bit frustrating about Louis Theroux bunched together, and which overwhelms the great aspects of his style. When you are up against scarily cuckoo-bananas Scientology followers and I start feeling sorry for them being hounded instead of for the safety of Louis and his camera crew, there is a bit too much of an emphasis on Louis doing antics to prolong the running time than really being able to get to the heart of an issue (that documentary with that shouty BBC man probably still stands as the better 'investigation' into Scientology so far!). There's an absence there that staged re-enactments and speculative musings cannot really hope to gain much insight into, even if you do have access to someone who was once inside the cult and escaped (or was thrown out). And even though I want to sympathise with the guy who has left his entire life behind (family and friends) inside Scientology and is being (obviously, caught on camera) hounded whilst outside it, it still cannot entirely override my general concern that using artistic licence to stage little dramas undermines the situation rather than adds insight into it. All you are going to do is get lots of aspiring thespians trying to do their best 'looney Tom Cruise' impersonations!

Probably the closest comparison to this film is the Louis Theroux episode where he failed to meet Michael Jackson (because Martin Bashir, Princess Di's interviewer, was Jackson's documentary maker of choice at that time) and spent the episode with extended family members and Uri Geller before eventually witnessing the infamous baby dangling incident from afar. Being totally removed from any insight or access to the subject of the film (except through third parties with their own take on events. Eventually that episode felt more about Uri Geller and the Jackson family than anything to do with the Michael Jackson) kind of left the same empty hole there too, trying desperately to manufacture some dramatic tension, and made that particular episode feel a bit unfocused, but My Scientology Movie takes that to extreme (feature) lengths!

The best section really is the final part where it focused on the reasons why the guy who left the Church of Scientology still feels threatened and damaged by his experience with them, and why he has agreed to Louis and his crew doing the dramatisations and the documentary itself. It feels a bit like an attempt at a cathartic exorcism for the guy involved, and in orchestrating the re-enactments a way of controlling his own life again after having all control removed from him. And in his (rightful but still upsettingly raw) railing against Louis at the end, he exposes Louis's (and any documentarian's really) obvious role in all his films as a kind of concerned but eventually necessarily distant observer from the often psychological pain that his subjects are experiencing directly in front of him, and despairingly expressing to him maybe in the vain hope of some sort of answer or way forward being provided by the presence of the camera. That kind of comfort and closure is something no film, particularly a documentary one, can really provide even when it is in a position, as this is, to try and show its subject in the best possible light.

Though the film does feature the best 'camera crew face off' scene since Man Bites Dog, so that's something at least!

[Jonathan S]

The soundtrack was mono and the image was better than the 2010 Palisades Tartan DVD, judging by the Beaver review. There was slightly more in the frame on all sides and slightly better detail. It had Cyrillic title cards, but of course the subtitles were non-removable (not burned into the print though).

It lacked restoration and music credits, ending with a simple конец.

The first 5 minutes of the score was the opening of the Shostakovich Op. 112 Symphony No. 12 in D minor (The Year 1917), but thereafter I'm not sure. I presume the whole score was a Shostakovich compilation. Certainly no idea on orchestra nor recording. Duration was indeed 100 minutes 16 seconds.

Many thanks for the report on October. Despite the primetime slot, it sounds like a low-grade edition that isn't worth tracking down. But that's what I expected from the same channel that once broadcast Alexander Nevsky minus the entire climactic battle on the ice!