Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

[colinr0380]

Only two particularly interesting films next week, but they're the first showings of big films: Lore on Channel 4 at 1.05 a.m. Tuesday 17th November, and Beyond The Hills on Film4 at 12.50 a.m. on Tuesday 17th November. Yes, the two world cinema premieres of the week clash in the otherwise barren schedules!

[colinr0380]

Next week's film premieres are the German film West on BBC4 at 10.30 p.m. on Sunday 22nd November (currently out on DVD only from New Wave), this year's Sundance documentary winner Cartel Land on BBC4 at 10 p.m. on Monday 23rd November (DVD only from Dogwoof), and on Channel 4 on Tuesday 24th November at 1.55 a.m. the Colombian film Gente de Bien (also DVD only from Network).

[colinr0380]

Quite a few things on next week. BBC4 is showing the Icelandic film The Deep at 9.00 p.m. on Sunday 29th November. The film was directed by Baltasar Kormákur, and serendipitously Channel 4 are also showing for the first time his follow up Mark Wahlberg film 2 Guns at 9.00 p.m. on Saturday 28th November! It's a Kormákur weekend!

Film4 are premiering Bernardo Bertolucci's Me And You at 11.15 p.m on Sunday 29th November. And also on Sunday Channel 5 are premiering the Disney version of The Little Mermaid, only 26 years after it was made!

Most exciting though are the couple of older films getting rare outings: BBC2 is showing the Allan Dwan directed western Tennessee's Partner starring Ronald Reagan at 6.55 a.m. on Saturday 28th November. And on Friday 4th December at 11.00 a.m. Film4 are showing Run Wild, Run Free directed by Richard Sarafian (probably most famous for Vanishing Point a couple of years after this) and with a cast including John Mills along with Mark Lester just after he starred in Oliver!

[colinr0380]

An eclectic mix of films next week:

Sunday 6th December has the premiere of the Disney Jungle Book (only 48 years after it was made) on Channel 4 at 5.25 p.m., then Quentin Tarantino solves racism in Django Unchained on Channel 5 at 10 p.m. Also on Sunday BBC4 is showing Wim Wenders' documentary-performance piece on Pina Bausch at 7.25 p.m. and then the Swedish crime drama Easy Money at 10 p.m. (I'd bet that Easy Money II will be on next week)

In the early hours of Monday morning (1.25 a.m.) Film4 premiere a period drama Summer In February starring Emily Browning and the actor who played a character who got into some kind of car accident in Downton Abbey. And on Monday evening at 10 p.m. BBC4 are showing Censored Voices, a documentary on Israel's Six Day War combining taped interviews from the time with modern interviews with the same subjects.

There are also a couple of film related items on the radio: Radio 2 has two one hour episodes at 10 p.m. on Monday 7th December and Tuesday 8th December in a series called Sinatra on Screen, presented by Angie Dickinson and featuring interviews with Kim Novak, Shirley MacLaine and Debbie Reynolds.

Then on Friday 11th December at 11 p.m. Radio 3 is broadcasting a new score to Nanook of the North by Canadian Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq and will apparently be streaming the film simultaneously on the Radio 3 website. I wonder if this new score might be something that will turn up on any home video reissue of the film?

[thirtyframesasecond]

Thanks, Censored Voices sounds one to record. I'd series link Storyville but I'd never get around to watching everything.

Speaking of Disney films, I was randomly channel-hopping last Sunday and The Little Mermaid was on C5!

And Downton's Dan Stevens might play a dandy gent in most things but I enjoyed his beefed up performance in The Guest!

[jlnight]

The Possibilities Are Endless, the film about Edwyn Collins, is scheduled for Tues 15th December on Film4.

[colinr0380]

Easy Money II is on BBC4 this coming Sunday, 13th December at 10.30 p.m.

However the most interesting item is tucked away on Film4 at 1.25 a.m. on Tuesday 15th December - the premiere of the French film Suzanne.

[colinr0380]

Next week is mostly about all the big TV series starting up: BBC's six part adapatation of War & Peace (starring Paul Dano) is starting at 9 p.m. on Sunday 3rd January, which slightly annoyingly clashes with Channel 4 showing the first of the eight part German series Deutschland 83.

BBC4 has the first of six new episodes of The Young Montalbano at 9 p.m. on Saturday 2nd January, and at 9 p.m. on Friday 8th January More4 are showing the first two episodes of the French political drama series Spin.

Also apparently the Movie Mix digital channel is showing The Passenger by Antonioni at 4.30 p.m. on Friday 8th January.

[colinr0380]

The schedules go culty-grindhouse-all out weird next week:

Probably the biggest film premiere of the week is The Human Centipede (Full Sequence) on the Horror Channel at 10.55 p.m. on Saturday 9th January. It will be the heavily BBFC edited version of course, but I'm sure that it will still be a gruelling watch even with some of the nastier moments removed, especially once getting into the garage in the second half. While it is appalling in many ways, it is also trangressive in the truest possible sense (in the way that it keeps going far beyond the point things could have been expected to have stopped, plunging into unrelentingly orgiastic and bloody nihilism) and surprisingly darkly amusing, especially in the scenes with the mother! I talked more about the sequel (with major spoilers) here, and while I haven't built up the courage to return to the film since, I'd stand by the opinion that it was impressive, all the more surprising coming sandwiched in between the more lacklustre other entries in the trilogy. Be warned that I'm pretty sure that I'll be voting for it in the upcoming 2010s List Project, with the added proviso that I'm not sure that anyone should actually see it!

EDIT: I've just had a worrying thought: what if all of those families on that Gogglebox series get subjected to it? (I can just imagine Caroline Aherne's voiceover now)

On Sunday 10th January at 3.10 p.m. the Movies4Men channel is premiering the 1978 "Dirty Dozen-sploitation" film Inglourious Bastards, although due to the early afternoon timeslot they've apparently chosen to show it under one of its alternative titles Counterfeit Commandos, which seems to have slightly missed the point of showing the film in the first place!

And then on Friday 15th January at 10.55 p.m., Film4 are showing the Shaw Brothers film The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, and according to the Radio Times this is apparently kicking off a small Shaw Brothers season over the next few Fridays, with subtitled screenings of King Boxer, Come Drink With Me and The One-Armed Swordsman.

[colinr0380]

Along with King Boxer on Friday 22nd, Film4 also have the other notable film premiere of next week - Alleluia at 11.10 p.m. on Saturday 16th January, which is another film loosely inspired by the Lonely Hearts killers whose story also provided the basis for The Honeymoon Killers and Deep Crimson.

[neilist]

BBC iPlayer Radio - Crossing the Border - Poetry and Film

Right from the birth of cinema, film-makers have experimented with poetry in film. Matthew Sweet explores this overlooked history.

The Russian pioneer film-maker Dziga Vertov developed his celebrated montage technique out of Mayakovsky's poetry and the GPO Film Unit's 'Night Mail' with W H Auden's closing poem owes a good deal to these Russian experimentalists. Starting at the unlikely site of the studio where scenes from 'Night Mail' were shot and recorded eighty years ago, Matthew establishes this iconic film as an important blueprint for poets and film-makers since.

In recent times, the poets Tony Harrison and Simon Armitage have both made documentary films where their poems replaced conventional commentaries. Matthew hosts a reunion between Tony Harrison and his collaborator, the film director Peter Symes, as they relive the powerful moment of filming of the exhumation of a body in a Neapolitan necropolis. This moment poses core questions about film poems: what does the viewer hear and see, how do word and image relate to each other? With Simon Armitage, Matthew learns how his poetry on film gives a voice to the marginalized. Now, a burgeoning movement of experimental film-makers are creating a new space for the production, curation and distribution of film poems in festivals and in digital media, so as the mainstream media fragment, film poetry is returning to its avant garde roots as was exemplified by early film poem makers such as Germaine Dulac and Maya Deren.

[jlnight]

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films - Film4, scheduled for Friday 12th February.

Apparently it's not quite as good as Not Quite Hollywood.

[colinr0380]

If you want a kickstart on the 2010s list project Film4 are premiering The East at 9 p.m. Wednesday 10th February.

I have a few issues with that film (spoilers in link), but I still found it a very enjoyable viewing experience, enough so that I'm thinking that it might have a spot near the bottom of my list!

[colinr0380]

BBC4 starts a new crime drama series and also continues British television's strange obsessive love affair with everything Baltasar Kormákur-related by screening the first two episodes of Trapped at 9 p.m. on Saturday 13th (Kormákur directed the first episode as well as the final, tenth, episode of the series, as well as writing and executive producing all of the episodes).

And then on Sunday 14th at 10.15 p.m. BBC4 is showing the premiere of Claude Miller's final film, Thérèse Desqueyroux. (On looking this up I was interested to note that Georges Franju had also previously made an adaptation of this novel back in 1962).

[domino harvey]

I liked Miller's Therese D quite a bit, nicely fatalistic and noirish in its second half. It really sells how godawful being stuck in such a system of codes and appearances would be

[colinr0380]

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films - Film4, scheduled for Friday 12th February.

Apparently it's not quite as good as Not Quite Hollywood.

This was a fun watch, although it did rush through a lot of the films in a neon pastelled, breakdancing, leotard (or just birthday suit!)-clad blur! I'm certainly more interested to watch Ninja III: The Domination than I had been though! (A woman possessed by a samurai spirit and instead of her head spinning around Exorcist-style instead apparently her whole body spins like a table football model!). And of course while the Lou Ferrigno Hercules film is cheesy, it does have an amusing visualisation of the creation of Ursa Major in effects that rival The Revenant for realism! I'm joking, but you can tell that long before they got their hands on Superman IV: The Quest For Peace that the Superman style of effects were heavily influencing Cannon Films!

It was great to see the brief snippets of interviews from a wide range of eclectic names, although this really was a whistle-stop tour of the output, rather than any deeper look into the films: Pete Walker talking despairingly about his unscary 'PG-rated horror film' featuring aging horror legends House of the Long Shadows; Molly Ringwald describing how baffled she was by Godard's lack of clear direction on King Lear and Alex Winter on his first role in Death Wish 3 and the cartoonish quality of those sequels. And Sybil Danning was great too on her various roles involving 'sexing up' different films. Though Franco Zefferelli gives a very moving tribute to Golan and Globus!

It sounds like a really strange company ethos though: making cheesy and almost childish films, yet filling them with tons of adults only nudity and sex that undermined even the attempts at serious productions! Trying to do politically-tinged action films with more wish fulfillment than any sense of reality (no wonder the film ends by stating that modern Hollywood films like Olympus Has Fallen, and presumably Michael Bay, have taken up the mantle of Cannon!) and grabbing big stars but then having no idea of what to do with them or how to handle them effectively (I love the anecdote about calling Sylvester Stallone's bluff by paying him the ludicrous fee he demanded and then just putting him as the lead in that arm wrestling movie Over The Top!) It sounds slapdash and haphazard in a way that created mostly terrible films by trying to make five below par films at once rather than focusing on making one or two good ones, along with trying to do blockbusters on the cheap. And what about that other story about Golan wanting "that Stone woman" for a new version of King Solomon's Mines and then being shocked at Sharon Stone being cast, as he'd actually wanted Kathleen Turner from Romancing The Stone!

But I suppose it led to some unforgettably unique films being made that otherwise never would have even been countenanced (And I guess at least they did Otello, Love Streams, Runaway Train and Shy People!). In that sense perhaps Tobe Hooper's LifeForce truly is the defining Cannon film!

EDIT: My own defining experience of a Cannon film has to be when I was about 8 or 9 and my primary school in Cornwall put on a school Christmas play (a version of Cinderella called 'Boilerella', which my best friend at the time played the lead role in!). Due to my stage fright I only had an extremely small role (the butler announcing all of the new arrivals at the ball, which was a long speech but just the one bit of dialogue! I also had the extremely crucial task of bringing in my cassette of Michael Jackson's The Way You Make Me Feel to play as the ballroom dance music!) and then was able to retreat into the backstage area where the teachers put Masters of the Universe on to keep all of the kids quiet!

I remember feeling quite sorry for all of the more ambitious theatrically inclined kids having to miss the film to go on stage! Although thinking back on it Boilerella might have made a good Cannon film in itself!

[kidc85]

That sounds great. Colin, if you're interested and have access to Netflix they have a great selection of Cannon Films including OVER THE TOP, HERCULES, DELTA FORCE, several AMERICAN NINJA films, a whole bunch of J Lee Thompson films (including a bunch of his Bronson fascist fantasies and KING SOLOMON'S MINES) and a couple of Chuck Norris films by my favourite genre director, Joseph Zito.

[jlnight]

Philomena - BBC2, Friday 26th February.

Inside Llewyn Davis - Film4, Weds 2nd March.

Re: Electric Boogaloo - there was a good webpage on Cannon Films that documented its history, I don't think it exists anymore. There was a sentence on it that nailed the essence of Cannon, something like it failed to make a distinction between high art and low art (the mention in the film about "a black-tie event for a Chuck Norris film!" was amusing). There was also a great collection of photos of cinemas in the Cannon chain from around the UK, dating from about '86 to '95. Some grim looking multiplexes in amongst them!

[Mr. Deltoid]

With More4 seemingly abandoning their afternoon matinee slot, digital channel Dave are picking up the baton next week, screening a week of mid-morning westerns, starting on Monday with Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians (11.00 Am). Tuesday sees The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid get a rare screening, followed on Thursday by Peter Fonda's The Hired Hand. Some good stuff there.

[colinr0380]

They're not exactly rare but its also nice to see BBC2 doing a Maureen O'Hara double bill tomorrow morning, with Jean Renoir's This Land Is Mine at 7.00 a.m. followed by Sam Peckinpah's first feature The Deadly Companions at 8.40 a.m.

BBC4 has the most interesting stuff of the week though, with on Sunday 21st The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution at 9.00 p.m. followed by Easy Money III: Life Deluxe at 10.45 p.m., which is the film that Joel Kinnaman starred in just before taking on Alex Murphy in the remake of RoboCop, that serendipitiously is itself getting its first television screening on Channel 4 at 9 p.m. on Saturday! (is this what marketing people like to call 'synergy'? Or just ubiquity?)

[jlnight]

Walter Hill's The Warriors gets an outing on Film4 on Friday 4th March. When was the last time that was on proper free-to-air telly?

[Jonathan S]

After Tonight (1933) BBC2 Saturday 5 March 6:05AM

A pre-Code WW1 spy drama, with Constance Bennett - one of the rarer RKO titles which I don't recall surfacing before on BBC. (Followed by an unusual daytime scheduling of Hammer's first Quatermass film!)

[GaryC]

After Tonight (1933) BBC2 Saturday 5 March 6:05AM

A pre-Code WW1 spy drama, with Constance Bennett - one of the rarer RKO titles which I don't recall surfacing before on BBC. (Followed by an unusual daytime scheduling of Hammer's first Quatermass film!)

Nothing comes up on BBC Genome so it doesn't look like it has been on the BBC before. Given that it'll most likely be on Iplayer for a week, it will have gone by the time I'm back in the country. Nice to see BBC2 showing some more out-of-the-way titles in the Saturday morning breakfast slot - not as many as they did in 2013 though. Wonder how many viewers they had then?

[jlnight]

Film4, Friday 18th March -

Oh! What a Lovely War, starts 1:25pm, then later on...
The Boxer From Shantung, 11:05pm, which is part of their Revenge of Martial Arts Gold season, the follow up to the earlier Shaw Brothers season. Again it is the first of four films on consecutive Fridays.

[Paul Moran]

After Tonight (1933) BBC2 Saturday 5 March 6:05AM

A pre-Code WW1 spy drama, with Constance Bennett - one of the rarer RKO titles which I don't recall surfacing before on BBC. (Followed by an unusual daytime scheduling of Hammer's first Quatermass film!)

Nothing comes up on BBC Genome so it doesn't look like it has been on the BBC before. Given that it'll most likely be on Iplayer for a week, it will have gone by the time I'm back in the country. Nice to see BBC2 showing some more out-of-the-way titles in the Saturday morning breakfast slot - not as many as they did in 2013 though. Wonder how many viewers they had then?

I'm not sure when I will actually watch it, but I recorded After Tonight on one of my HDD/DVD recorders, and dubbed it to DVD-R. (My DVD-R backlog now stands at 1080.)