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Lionheart (CFF), Sat 29th Jan, Talking Pictures. (on before)
Evil Dead II, Sat 29th Jan, Horror.

Where the River Runs Black, Sun 30th Jan, London Live.
Lilies of the Field (1963), Sun 30th Jan, BBC2. (recently on London Live)

The Soldier (1982), Mon 31st Jan, Talking Pictures. Also late Sat 12th Feb.

Misha and the Wolves, Wed 2nd Feb, BBC4.

Das Boot, Fri 4th Feb, Great Movies Classic. (on before)
The True History of the Kelly Gang, Fri 4th Feb, Film4. Or...
Doctor Blood's Coffin + The Bloody Judge + The Strange Woman, Fri 4th Feb, Talking Pictures. (Cellar Club)

Not too bad next week.

The Will Smith film directed by Ang Lee Gemini Man is showing on Channel 4 at 9:30 p.m. on Saturday 29th (someone's seen Looper!)

The big news of the week is that BBC3 is returning to the television airwaves after six years of being an 'internet channel' only available through the BBC's iPlayer. Since I am going through a CBBC phase at the moment (acting my age ), I had noticed with a bit of disappointment that since the 1st January the CBBC channel was going off air at 7 p.m. rather than running until 9 p.m. (particularly disappointing in that Saturday evenings at 7 p.m. was when they would show a feature animation before closedown. Did you know they made a weird version of The Wizard of Oz with Tom and Jerry in it?), but it was obviously changed because we are back to BBC3 occupying the same broadcast band running from 7 p.m. to 4 a.m.

Anyway not too much of interest on there. Ru Paul's Drag Race series is officially on the television now. And there is a premiere on BBC3 with the Irish film The Young Offenders showing at 10 p.m. on Wednesday 2nd. That got spun off into a series in 2018 that has run for three series so far, all of which have been shown on BBC1, but this is the first time that the 2016 film has been shown.

BBC4 is showing a 1973 Parkinson interview with Orson Welles at 10:45 p.m. on Saturday 29th and Misha and the Wolves at 10 p.m. on Wednesday 2nd.

Capping off a week devoted to ne'er do wells is the Australian film The True History of the Kelly Gang at 11:20 p.m. on Friday 4th.

And keeping up the Australian theme there is a half hour "This Cinematic Life" career interview with Nicole Kidman on BBC4 at 7 p.m. on Sunday 30th which promises to at least glancingly mention Dogville. Hopefully Birth might come up too. (EDIT: No mention of Birth at all and only the briefest single mention of Lars von Trier by the interviewer that goes nowhere. But a lot about Kubrick and working on Eyes Wide Shut. I had not realised that the Blue Room play that Kidman was in on the London stage after this was based on a work by the same author. And Kidman also does a Nicolas Roeg shout out in mentioning Walkabout as a film that she admired as a youngster)
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Repeat-wise, BBC2 is showing Apostasy at 11:30 p.m. on Saturday 29th. Sunday 30th BBC2 is doing a tribute to Sidney Poitier with Lillies of the Field at 3:30 p.m. and In The Heat of the Night at 10 p.m.. BBC4 has a double bill of Rio Bravo and The Searchers from 8 p.m. on Thursday 3rd. Most excitingly on Friday 4th BBC2 are showing The Titfield Thunderbolt at 3 p.m.

And after The True History of the Kelly Gang on Friday evening there is a rare repeat of Buffalo Soldiers at 2 a.m.

Hellfighters, Sat 5th Feb, Great Movies Action. Or...
Blow Your Own Trumpet (CFF), Sat 5th Feb, Talking Pictures.
Persian Lessons, Sat 5th Feb, BBC4. Or...
Last Summer (1969?), Sat 5th Feb, London Live.
Joe Cocker: Mad Dogs & Englishmen, late Sat 5th Feb, Sky Arts.

Sorry We Missed You, Sun 6th Feb, BBC2.

The Outsiders (1983), Mon 7th Feb, Talking Pictures.

Black Rain (1989), Tue 8th Feb, Film4.

Basic Instinct, Fri 11th Feb, Great Movies. Or...
Girl on a Motorcycle, Fri 11th Feb, Great Movies Classic. (been on TPTV) Or...
The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) + I Bury the Living + Hollow Triumph, Fri 11th Feb, Talking Pictures. (Cellar Club)

Really good next week, though there are a couple of scheduling clashes to contend with.

The big clash happens on the evening of Saturday 5th when Channel 4's premiere of Men In Black: International at 8:30 p.m. coincides with the premiere of Holocaust drama Persian Lessons at 9 p.m. on BBC4 (which is followed by a programme of Michael Parkinson's chatshow interviews with David Niven from the 1970s at 11 p.m.) and Blue Story at 10 p.m. on BBC3.

Ken Loach's gig economy film Sorry We Missed You is showing on BBC2 at 10 p.m. on Sunday 6th, followed by a repeat of the Versus documentary about the filmmaker.

The other clash occurs on the evening of Wednesday 9th, with BBC4 airing Zimbabwe election documentary President at 10 p.m. and BBC3 airing Booksmart also at 10 p.m.

Though the most interesting looking film of the week is Norwegian disaster drama The Tunnel showing on Film4 at 11 p.m. on Friday 11th. Just the trailer is making me think that I should pull out my old VHS copy of Sylvester Stallone's Daylight film!
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Repeat-wise, BBC2 is showing The Young Victoria at 5:20 p.m. on Saturday 5th as a tribute to Jean-Marc Vallée. Film4 is showing Xavier Dolan's It's Only The End of the World at 1:10 a.m. on Monday 7th. Film4 are showing a triple bill of Shane, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and El Dorado from 11 a.m. on Tuesday 8th, ITV4 is showing a different Steven Seagal film from the usual suspects of Under Siege and Half Past Dead with A Good Man at 10 p.m. on Wednesday 9th, and the RadioTimes is still insisting that Film4 is premiering Dogs Don't Wear Pants despite its screening at 2 a.m. on Thursday 8th being the third time it has been shown!

BBC4 has a double bill of Fort Apache and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon from 8 p.m. on Thursday 10th. And Film4 has a sci-fi double bill of the 2012 remake of Total Recall (which serendipitously coincides with the Red Letter Media review that touched on it from a couple of days ago) and Hideo Nakata's Chatroom from 11:15 p.m., also on Thursday 10th. And Paris, Texas is showing on Film4 at 1 a.m. on Saturday 12th, following the premiere of The Tunnel.

This was fascinating: a video about the ITV strike of 1979. I guess that one of the effects of the strike was Margaret Thatcher's willingness later on to bring Channel 4 to the airwaves in order to break up ITV's monopoly of the commercial channels?

The Clue of the Missing Ape (CFF), Sat 12th Feb, Talking Pictures.
Khartoum, Sat 12th Feb, Talking Pictures. Also Wed 16th Feb.
Juggernaut (1974), Sat 12th Feb, Talking Pictures. Also Tue 15th Feb. (been on Film4)

The Mouse on the Moon, Sun 13th Feb, Talking Pictures. Also Fri 18th Feb. (been on Great Movies)
Johnny Guitar, Sun 13th Feb, Great Movies Action. (on various channels before)
Overland Pacific, Sun 13th Feb, Talking Pictures. Also Thu 17th Feb.
The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, Sun 13th Feb, BBC4.

The Careless Years, Mon 14th Feb, London Live.

The Great Flamarion, Tue 15th Feb, Talking Pictures. (see Fri)

Try Harder!, Wed 16th Feb, BBC4.
Life is Sweet, late Wed 16th Feb, Film4. (on before)

Burnt Offerings + The Incident (1967) + The Great Flamarion, Fri 18th Feb, Talking Pictures. (Cellar Club)


Last Summer was not the 1969 film from Eleanor and Frank Perry but a 2018 film set in Wales.

I wonder if BBC4 will be double billing The Most Beautiful Boy In The World with Death In Venice?

jlnight wrote: Sun Feb 06, 2022 2:46 pm Burnt Offerings + The Incident (1967) + The Great Flamarion, Fri 18th Feb, Talking Pictures. (Cellar Club)

Interesting. I suspect The Incident is a TV premiere - the film was banned by the BBFC at the time and passed (at 12) in 2014 and I have no memory of it being shown on UK TV before. It's also notable as Martin Sheen's debut and being
one of the last major-studio films of the 1960s to be made in black and white.

The Incident (1967) was a staple of Sky Movies Gold between October 1995 and September 1997. No BBC screenings, no Channel 4 screenings, no ITV outings that I can find. Was it definitely banned? There was certainly no theatrical release in the UK.

jlnight wrote: Tue Feb 08, 2022 4:52 pm The Incident (1967) was a staple of Sky Movies Gold between October 1995 and September 1997. No BBC screenings, no Channel 4 screenings, no ITV outings that I can find. Was it definitely banned? There was certainly no theatrical release in the UK.

Yes, submitted to the BBFC twice in 1968 and rejected both times. Presumably the subject matter (two young men terrorising the passengers in a late-night subway train) had a lot to do with it. As this is Talking Pictures TV, expect an advisory before the start for discriminatory language, both racial and homophobic.

The film makes an interesting comparison with Dutchman (1967), also black and white, also set on the NYC subway (though actually a British-made film) and dealing explicitly with racial tensions especially. In that case, the BBFC did pass it with a X certificate, but it was no one's idea of a commercial release - based on a one-act play, it's just 55 minutes long. It has been on British TV, some ITV regions a long time ago though. It contains one of Shirley Knight's best performances.

Pretty quiet next week, mostly leaving BBC4 to pick up the slack in the schedules. As jlnight has noted the biggest premiere is probably The Most Beautiful Boy In The World on BBC4 at 9 p.m. on Sunday 13th, which I have been avoiding up to this point because of its advertising making it seem a bit worrying in its somewhat mercenary seeming attempts at 'reframing a narrative' into something more palatable for modern sensibilities.

BBC4 is also showing the first two episodes of the six part French series La promesse at 9 p.m. on Saturday 12th. And BBC4's Storyville documentary strand is showing Try Harder! at 10 p.m. on Wednesday 16th.

And the Horror channel is showing What Keeps You Alive at 9 p.m. on Sunday 13th, which appears to be a lesbian Antichrist?

TV-wise BBC2 is showing the latest three part Louis Theroux series Louis Theroux's Forbidden America from 9 p.m. on Sunday 13th. The first episode is about far right online influencers (someone called Nick Fuentes), and there are going to be episodes on pornography (Which is going to update his last 2012 film on the subject with a look at internet-based OnlyFans-style entrepreneurs) and hanging out with gangsta rappers. So its not departing too far from his usual wheelhouse, just maybe updating things for the current social media age and concerns.
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Repeat-wise nothing too exciting, although Film4 are showing Wim Wenders' The American Friend at 1:10 a.m. on Wednesday 16th and Mike Leigh's Life Is Sweet at 1:20 a.m. on Thursday 17th. I most want to highlight though Film4's repeat of Vinyan at 1:30 a.m. on Friday 18th. It is still amusing to see that trailer trying to compress a film full of long takes and dream-like hallucinatory atmosphere into a fast-cutting jumpscare horror! Which inevitably means that they have to use images from the climax in the advertising, but even then they still don't have that much 'conventional' imagery to work with (the very best scene of that film is the eerie red-tinted silent dream sequence in the raining indoors club that occurs early on)

A Hitch in Time (CFF), Sat 19th Feb, Talking Pictures.
Pride and Prejudice (1940), Sat 19th Feb, BBC2.
Master of the World, Sat 19th Feb, Talking Pictures. Also Mon 21st Feb.
Kes, Sat 19th Feb, Talking Pictures. Also Thu 24th Feb. Or...
Bohemian Rhapsody, Sat 19th Feb, Channel 4.

Carry On Columbus, Mon 21st Feb, Talking Pictures.
The Neon Bible, late Mon 21st Feb, Film4.

Chicken Ranch, Tue 22nd Feb, London Live.

Theatre of Blood + Scream and Scream Again + The Dunwich Horror, Fri 25th Feb, Talking Pictures. (Cellar Club)


Dutchman (1967) did indeed have a couple of screenings, one on ITV London in 1975 and the other in the Granada region in 1977. Shirley Knight turned up in the most recent episode of The Outer Limits (The Man Who Was Never Born) and also Juggernaut, both on TPTV.

Great news about The Neon Bible, the most obscure, hard to see Terence Davies film. I think that film has not been shown on television since its Channel 4 premiere back in March 1998!

I’m sure it did get a Film4 screening a few years back, but can’t be more specific. Or sure even. Anyway, I haven’t seen it since it’s original cinema release, so looking forward to revisit it.

Is there any particular reason for its relative unavailability? Rights issues?

As for Scream and Scream Again, it will be interesting to see which score it has. I have an old off air Recording which has the electronic score added for its video release and, iirc, even omits the songs from Amen Corner.

I think that it has just been neglected by all parties as it was somewhat unsuccessful example of a British filmmaker attempting to do a period set American film based on a novel (I kind of bracket it in with that Merchant-Ivory production The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, the only film directed by Simon Callow), before Davies had the breakthrough with The House of Mirth. Once that happens, you probably do not want to remind people about the false start five years earlier! But that's what makes it such an interesting curio.

That television season of Channel 4-backed premieres in early 1998 showed the Quay Brothers' Institute Benjamenta the week or two after The Neon Bible, which similarly has never been shown on television again, but at least that has had a good BFI disc release in recent years. That was one of the great things about Channel 4 funding theatrical productions back in the day, because whatever they turned out like they had to give at least a single token screening on Channel 4! And the schedules from that time are filled with interesting films that disappeared after their single screenings and never got shown again on Film4 and barely got a VHS or DVD release at the time. For example Dennis Potters' Secret Friends got a single showing in 1994. The same with Louis Malle's last two films with Damage (screened in 1995) and Vanya On 42nd Street (over the Christmas period in 1996). Paul "W.S." :-$ Anderson's Shopping only got shown the once. Or other things like Angels & Insects (the first Mark Rylance film I ever saw!) Hollow Reed and that adaptation of a David Mamet play American Buffalo with Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz, both of which screened in a week of Channel 4 films in late 1998 as part of the celebration in the run up to the official launch of Film4 as a subscription channel.

(I mean Roman Polanski's Death and the Maiden was a Channel 4 co-production and only ever screened the once, in 1996, the week before Shallow Grave premiered and shook the idea of a psychological thriller up, making the Polanski film look a bit tame in the process!)

We appear to have someone at Film4 getting a bit adventurous in the late night schedules now. Last year there was that run of really obscure films from the early 1980s (Runners, Playing For Keeps, Red Monarch, Cal) that had not been aired in decades, and in recent weeks we are starting to get things like a repeat of Babymother (which premiered back in 1998 and then disappeared for over twenty years before a showing in October 2019, which preceded the BFI putting it onto Blu-ray in 2021), tomorrow night's 2 a.m. screening of Beautiful Thing (that got premiered on television in 1997 then disappeared for about fifteen years but is now back in pretty regular rotation), or Mike Leigh's Career Girls a couple of weeks ago. It may be too soon to hope that this will lead to repeats of long unscreened films like The Disappearance of Finbar (last shown in 1998), Welcome II The Terrordome (last shown in 1996 but which appears to be coming soon from Criterion), that French-Canadian take on Hitchcock's I Confess Le confessional (last shown in 1997) or Trojan Eddie, since presumably they all have different rights issues due to being mostly co-productions, but I guess that if someone at least has access to the archives of the "Film on Four" stable they might be able to air films similar to those in the wee small hours! If they have managed to rediscover The Neon Bible of all things, anything should be possible!

(I also wonder if a lot of this is pandemic related - as with BBC4 becoming an "archive" channel now - that has led to the TV channels to look into their back catalogues for properties that have long been overlooked but suddenly now could be called back into service?)

colinr0380 wrote: Sun Feb 13, 2022 5:45 pm I think that it has just been neglected by all parties as it was somewhat unsuccessful example of a British filmmaker attempting to do a period set American film based on a novel (I kind of bracket it in with that Merchant-Ivory production The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, the only film directed by Simon Callow), before Davies had the breakthrough with The House of Mirth. Once that happens, you probably do not want to remind people about the false start five years earlier! But that's what makes it such an interesting curio.

That television season of Channel 4-backed premieres in early 1998 showed the Quay Brothers' Institute Benjamenta the week or two after The Neon Bible, which similarly has never been shown on television again, but at least that has had a good BFI disc release in recent years. That was one of the great things about Channel 4 funding theatrical productions back in the day, because whatever they turned out like they had to give at least a single token screening on Channel 4! And the schedules from that time are filled with interesting films that disappeared after their single screenings and never got shown again on Film4 and barely got a VHS or DVD release at the time. For example Dennis Potters' Secret Friends got a single showing in 1994. The same with Louis Malle's last two films with Damage (screened in 1995) and Vanya On 42nd Screen (over the Christmas period in 1996). Paul Thomas Anderson's Shopping only got shown the once. Or other things like Angels & Insects (the first Mark Rylance film I ever saw!) Hollow Reed and that adaptation of a David Mamet play American Buffalo with Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz, both of which screened in a week of Channel 4 films in late 1998 as part of the celebration in the run up to the official launch of Film4 as a subscription channel.

(I mean Roman Polanski's Death and the Maiden was a Channel 4 co-production and only ever screened the once, in 1996, the week before Shallow Grave premiered and shook the idea of a psychological thriller up, making the Polanski film look a bit tame in the process!)

We appear to have someone at Film4 getting a bit adventurous in the late night schedules now. Last year there was that run of really obscure films from the early 1980s (Running, Playing For Keeps, Red Monarch) that had not been aired in decades, and in recent weeks we are starting to get things like a repeat of Babymother (which premiered back in 1998 and then disappeared for over twenty years before a showing in October 2019, which preceded the BFI putting it onto Blu-ray in 2021), tomorrow night's 2 a.m. screening of Beautiful Thing (that got premiered on television in 1997 then disappeared for about fifteen years but is now back in pretty regular rotation), or Mike Leigh's Career Girls a couple of weeks ago. It may be too soon to hope that this will lead to repeats of long unscreened films like The Disappearance of Finbar (last shown in 1998), Welcome II The Terrordome (last shown in 1996 but which appears to be coming soon from Criterion), that French-Canadian take on Hitchcock's I Confess Le confessional (last shown in 1997) or Trojan Eddie, since presumably they all have different rights issues due to being mostly co-productions, but I guess that if someone at least has access to the archives of the "Film on Four" stable they might be able to air films similar to those in the wee small hours! If they have managed to rediscover The Neon Bible of all things, anything should be possible!

(I also wonder if a lot of this is pandemic related - as with BBC4 becoming an "archive" channel now - that has led to the TV channels to look into their back catalogues for properties that have long been overlooked but suddenly now could be called back into service?)

Yeah, it's good to see some of the old Film4 (or to get all retro, Film On Four) productions get an airing. If anything though, it only serves to remind one how much more adventurous the old Channel 4 (and the first few years of Film4) used to be when it came to their film schedules. I mean, they was always limited by what in-house productions they actually had (and let's not forget that back in the day they also produced crap like Young Soul Rebels, London Kills Me & Peter's Friends), but they commissioned a plethora of superb short-films and animations and even had regular, dedicated strands (Short & Curlies, Shooting Gallery, etc.) to show them. Their commitment to world cinema was exemplary as well, as was their film seasons and curated weekends (Banned Weekend, Animation, mid-90's horror-triple bills where I was first saw the likes of Tod Slaughter, Roger Corman, the premiere of Browning's Freaks (?), etc.)
As for BBC4 becoming an archive channel. Well, it would be nice, though how deep a dive they take remains to be seen. The BBC had a pretty good 90's in terms of production and co-production, with a lot of stuff still MIA on physical media, but then we all know we'll probably be waiting a long time for that. Even stuff that used to get screened regularly haven't seen the light of day in years (Small Faces, I Went Down, etc). Weren't the BBC also responsible for co-funding Svankmajer's Faust? Hard to imagine that one got a quite respectable mainstream (well, BBC2) Xmas premiere in 1995! I'd personally love to see some of their Screen Two films repeated, but we'll just have to wait and see I guess!
And, of course, we all know you meant to say Paul Anderson's Shopping Colin, although PTA's version would have been one for the ages!

That's the one where Jude Law gets pelted into unconsciousness by a shower of frogs when trying to rob a store right?

Yes, the BBC definitely did Faust. Though that reminds me that as well as Alice Film4 was involved with Little Otik, again another film that only screened the once on their channel.

In terms of the BBCs archives, Screen Two productions would be good (something like The Hour of The Pig or Priest would be great to see again), but I am keeping my fingers crossed for some repeats of the early 90s "Performance" strand of filmed theatrical productions, which to take this a little back to Terence Davies, features a version of The Deep Blue Sea!

colinr0380 wrote: Sun Feb 13, 2022 7:10 pm That's the one where Jude Law gets pelted into unconsciousness by a shower of frogs when trying to rob a store right?

That's the one!
Ahh, Shopping. Whatever happened to the concept of ram-raiding? It was quite the British moral-panic for about five minutes in the mid-90's. No branch of Rumbelows was safe! Think there may have been a gratuitous RR scene in '96's Boston Kickout as well, but I can't recall!

I think the delinquent youths started "git surfing" instead!

Mr. Deltoid wrote: Sun Feb 13, 2022 7:01 pm...but they commissioned a plethora of superb short-films and animations and even had regular, dedicated strands (Short & Curlies, Shooting Gallery, etc.) to show them.

I loved The Shooting Gallery in particular, the overnight block of three to four hours of short films on a weeknight. It was at its height in 1995-1997 but I even liked those late 2000s editions which had Shane Meadows introducing a (shorter) selection of curated films. Your mention inspired me to do a YouTube search for one of my favourite shorts that appeared in that strand (and favourite horror short film too), the blackly comic Left Hand Drive. It had not registered before now that it was written by novelist Christopher Fowler!

I keep meaning to revisit some of my recorded VHS tapes of those Shooting Gallery evenings. Just looking at that continuity clip I linked to revealed that the early short films by Tamara Jenkins (who would go on to direct Slums of Beverly Hills and The Savages) got shown.

Well The Most Beautiful Boy In The World was not as terrible a film as I had been anticipating, but still as expected had little to nothing to say about Death In Venice itself, or any great shocking revelation about Andrésen having suffered anything like sexual abuse or on set bullying, etc. It just seemed that Björn Andrésen was pushed into auditioning for the role by an ambitious grandmother and felt overwhelmed and pushed around during the promotional side of the film afterwards, being embarrassed at being the centre of attention from reporters whilst not being able to speak up for himself in a foreign language and treated as Visconti's (not as hot as during filming: you'll have to buy tickets to see them at their best!) arm candy during the press junket. But isn't that every actor's fate to have to put up with during the wearing but necessary promotional portion of their film in having to grin and bear (or nod blankly at) their director going a bit gauche and nutty during a press conference at Cannes?

(There is also that bit about Visconti 'owning' Andrésen's looks for three years, contractually preventing him from making films that might capitalise on that fame (or to prevent the mystique from being ruined by making a string of terrible films that would undermine his inscrutable characterisation in Death in Venice? The mystical attraction an artist feels towards a muse after all is shattered once they become an actual person, and the whole of Death In Venice hinges on that aura) which seems in there to suggest a kind of implied link to the 'Hitchcock destroying Tippi Hedren' idea of preventing them from escaping the clutches of a controlling director. But even that seems contradicted by Andrésen making claims about not having wished to be an actor and having been pressed into the audition by his grandmother, and even making films after the contract was up. So even that aspect seems rather murkier than it is being presented as)

And the most disturbing thing in the film is not the vaguely implied idea that the apparently "entirely homosexual" crew took him to gay clubs and gave him pills once the film was safely wrapped and his innocence could be corrupted, but that Andrésen himself went on a drinking binge to cope with his nerves and deep-seated depression from the misfortune of (unwittingly? really?) becoming a gay icon rather than having lots of women flocking around him instead (there's a really uncomfortable implication from his speech that he feels that all homosexuals are predatory and just waiting to pounce that probably only really makes sense once Andrésen inevitably and unsurprisingly brings out his Bible and starts quoting from it in the final moments of the film).

Really it seems that it is a portrait of a person who is tormented by having an iconic role (and one which did not require them to 'act' per se but to more be an obscure object of desire at that) that they will never be able to escape from, and how that only deepens their suspicion and depressive ideas about who is watching and for what reason that were present in their life long before they reached Visconti's set. For all that this film tries to imply that Death In Venice damaged the child actor in some way, the second half of the documentary when it all turns into a "Who Do You Think You Are?" episode about Andrésen's family, the loss of his mother (who also seemed to be suffering with some sort of deep seated depression) and then the trauma of losing his own son making him distant from his daughter (or would that distance always have been there? Is it nature or (lack of) nurture?) which sends him on a similar drinking binge to that which occurred during the time of the great stress of being in the limelight, pretty clearly suggests that there was always a particularly Swedish sense of inward looking melancholy surrounding the person himself that really could not be blamed on a filmmaker coming in and 'ruining' him. Maybe at the most blamed on the ambitious grandmother for seemingly not asking him if being in a film was what he wanted, telling him that audition would require him to be in a bathing suit, and spelling out the likely effects that being in such a large film would have on him?

But really this still feels very disingenuous as a critique of Death In Venice. Particularly in the rather misleading use of the audition footage suggesting that a slavering Visconti was stripping boys naked for his own amusement, when really any film that hinges on the notion of impossible beauty that almost entirely takes place on a beach would necessarily need to have to cast for someone who looked the part in swimwear!

Incidentally, the BBC added an action line offering "organisations for support" for those who were upset by the material in the film, but I'm not entirely sure what kind of support need was meant to have been triggered in the viewer? Maybe an organisation that helped with depression? I think I was forced to take swimming lessons in school back in the day, and I found the exposure quite traumatic (more because I was terrible at diving and ended up doing a quite painful belly flop from the diving board in front of the class), so maybe there is a support organisation telephone line to help with the lingering traumatic embarrassment from that?

I quite liked the ending of putting Andrésen in the Dirk Bogarde seer role watching himself as a young man in the surf before he dies, just for how subversive that might be in equating him with the gaze he seems to only define as lustful and acquisitional when it comes from others, when it could actually mean (and does as shown in his context) so much more.

I suppose tellingly the moment I liked the most was the surprise appearance in the Japan section of manga artist Riyoko Ikeda to talk about the impact that the character of Tadzio had on her and other bishonen artists, especially in her creation of Lady Oscar, The Rose of Versailles! (Which actually got a live action film adaptation directed by Jacques Demy!)That truly was a moment of lightness and joy that momentarily cut through the miasmically doomy grey clouds of self-pitying smoke surrounding poor Björn Andrésen!

Also Björn: clean your damn cooker once in a while!

Quiet but interesting next week. As jlnight has noted Bohemian Rhapsody is showing on Channel 4 at 9 p.m. on Saturday 19th, but most exciting is that after postponing the planned screening in October due to the proximity to the David Amess situation, BBC4 is going to finally premiere the Dardennes Brothers film Young Ahmed at 11:30 p.m. also on Saturday 19th.

CBBC has a premiere too, of the Ratchet & Clank movie, based on the long running series of Playstation games. That is at Noon on Saturday 19th. I should also note that CBBC is doing a Wide Sargasso Sea-style(?) prequel to Oliver Twist in the form of Dodger, with Christopher Eccleston as Fagin!

BBC4's Storyville series continues with Mission: Joy at 10 p.m. on Wednesday 23rd.

And E4's Adult Swim block has moved away from Smiling Friends to showing Teenage Euthanasia starting at 1:50 a.m. on Friday 18th
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Repeat-wise we have already been talking about the big one with the Terence Davies film The Neon Bible showing at 2 a.m. in the early hours of Tuesday 22nd. The Horror channel is showing The Brood followed by Land of the Dead from 11 p.m. on Thursday 24th. BBC4 is showing The Third Man at 8 p.m. on Thursday 24th, The Man In The White Suit is on BBC2 at 1 p.m. on Friday 25th and the Mike Figgis film Internal Affairs is showing on BBC1 at Midnight on Friday 25th.

ITV1 is also showing Notting Hill on Saturday 19th, which seems to be timed to coincide with the release of the last film directed by Roger Michell, The Duke, coming out in cinemas the following Friday.

Footnote to previous posts: The Great Flamarion (1945), just about to start on Talking Pictures TV as I write, had its UK TV premiere (unless someone knows otherwise) on the same channel on Tuesday morning.

Seventy Deadly Pills (CFF), Sat 26th Feb, Talking Pictures. (on before)
The Honey Pot, Sat 26th Feb, Talking Pictures. Also Mon 7th Mar. Or...
Knives Out, Sat 26th Feb, Channel 4. Or...
Blinded By The Light, Sat 26th Feb, BBC2.
Morons From Outer Space, Sat 26th Feb, Talking Pictures.

Finders Keepers (1966), Sun 27th Feb, Talking Pictures. Also Wed 2nd Mar.
Butch and Sundance: The Early Days, Sun 27th Feb, ITV4. (been on TPTV)

The Happy Thieves (1962), Mon 28th Feb, Talking Pictures.
Rita, Sue and Bob Too, late Mon 28th Feb, Film4. (recently on TPTV)

The Fall of the House of Usher + Gog + Frogs, Fri 4th Mar, Talking Pictures. (Cellar Club)


I apparently saw The Neon Bible back in 2010, so it probably was on Film4, so yes, Dr Amicus is probably right.

Very quiet next week with little except three premieres (plus the final two episodes of La Promesse on BBC4) inevitably all clashing together at 9 p.m. on Saturday 26th. The big one is of course Knives Out (which features so many unlikeable characters fighting over a likely to be proven pointless legacy that it could almost be The Last Jedi!) on Channel 4 but BBC2 has Bruce Springteen-sploitation film Blinded By The Light at 10 p.m. (ah, to remember the days of the Cold War and Bruce Springsteen being relevant and in the news!), which is (loosely I guess, since he has never exactly seemed the musical-type from his articles) based on the biography of Guardian journalist Sarfraz Manzoor.

Though of course the most important, hard hitting film putting across a powerful and necessary message out of the three films clashing together has to be Zombeavers on the Horror Channel at 9 p.m.! I cannot wait for all of the puns! (Spoiler: the word "Beaver" might have an alternative meaning!). This is from the director who went on to that killer drone movie a few years later.

Keeping with the crazed and violent animal theme Channel 4 is showing the Shaw Brothers(?!?) film Patrick at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday 27th. From the director of Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, which probably explains the Jennifer Saunders cameo in the trailer.

BBC4's Storyville documentary season continues with Writing With Fire at 10 p.m. on Wednesday 2nd, which is nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the upcoming Academy Awards. And BBC2 have the first in a six part series at 7:20 p.m. on Sunday 27th in which Stanley Tucci travels around Italy sampling its food.

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Repeat-wise nothing much either. Film4 is showing Junior at 4:20 p.m. and Meatballs at 11:15 p.m. on Sunday 27th, presumably in tribute to Ivan Reitman. And the 5star digital channel is showing The Warriors at 11:20 p.m. on Friday 4th March.