Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

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colinr0380
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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1001 Post by colinr0380 » Sun May 24, 2020 4:39 am

Educating Rita

I have swerved away from this film for a number of years after having been forced to study a scene from it at school back in the day and feeling a bit put off by some of the class comedy elements that felt a bit overwrought, but the film turned up on television last night and it turned out that it was the right time to give it a shot! It turned out to be fascinating and disturbing in equal measures but I'm leaning towards liking it very much, despite its parade of broad class caricatures. I think that a lot of British cinema has been indebted to this since in structure and themes (especially Billy Elliot), but there is a very interesting dark streak running underneath the action that really hit home on this particular viewing. I think you could also pair this up satisfyingly with Good Will Hunting too, of another working class person passed over at the 'correct' age yet almost inherently suited to the academic life belatedly getting their chance to prove their studying skills.

Rita (aka Susan) is a working class late 20s-something who decides to take an Open University course to 'improve herself', having become dissatisfied with the confines of her job as a hairdresser and expectations placed on her by the milieu into which she has been born and brought up. There has to be something more to life than just exchanging gossip in the salon and coming home to a loving but boring husband and going for drinks and singalongs in the pub every evening. The only change on the horizon appears to be having children, like every other young(ish) woman on the block (and that is what provides the final break with her husband and father in the middle of the film, at a family wedding where the younger than Rita bride is already four months pregnant, causing more ultimatums of Rita to knuckle down and do what is expected of her), but Rita wants to pursue something more and feels that 'educating herself' will provide the answer.

So she strides purposefully onto a university's hallowed grounds and barges into the room of the lecturer (though only so roughly because the door is conveniently stuck, not for any character-revealing uncouth reasons! Rita is 'uncultured', not uncouth!) that has been assigned to tutor her once a week by the OU, and finds Frank who turns out to be a washed up barely functioning alcoholic. Which perhaps amusingly suggests that the OU does not vet their teachers particularly well! Or perhaps more pointedly the suggestion that a university would assign their poorest teachers to do 'outreach' by teaching the part-time students in order to fulfill their remit in the most cursory of ways! Whilst Frank tries to get out of his duties (partially workshy and partially recognising that he cannot properly fulfil his duties as a teacher to someone as ambitious seeming as Rita?) and offers to send her to a different tutor, Rita demands that he teaches her because she finds him 'funny'. And things proceed from there, as Rita's interest in learning starts to rekindle some spark of passion in Frank also (both platonic and physical, which is Frank's fatal flaw, tying the two pleasures together even in as minor a way that occurs here), as he begins to stop drinking so much and get his life back together. But only for a little while...

So far, so conventional (albeit newly minted fresh conventions at this time), and indeed the first half of the film plays most comically broad, with Rita stumbling into respectable halls of learning and clattering down the cobbles of the quadrangle in high heels and mini-skirt. Frank is particularly (condescendingly?) amused by this but over time, and especially when Rita's home life starts to fall apart under the strain of her reaching for something beyond it, he decides to take Rita on as his personal project, in an almost Pygmalion manner. But, and this is where the film becomes really good, Rita's goals have not just ended with the decision to take an English Lit class to distract herself from her unfulfilling life for a year or two, but she has ambitions to remake herself on every level, and give herself not a specifically defined future but a lot of options for the future.
SpoilerShow
Which is mostly likely the reason for the final scene of the film, which I both love and have issues with simultaneously! Mostly because it ends at that supreme moment of success for Rita, now proudly going by her 'classier' original name of Susan again, as she sees Frank off at the airport (in a scene that pairs with Frank seeing her off on the train to Summer School) and, in a non-response to Frank's impetuous request that she come to Australia with him and start life anew there, states that she has lots of options from a 'job offer in London' to studying even more, to settling down and having a baby after all now that she has 'achieved her aims' to herself. The film ends with her seeing Frank off, ignoring his clumsy and desperate attempts to turn a teacher-student relationship into something more (perhaps for his own sake more than hers), and with a final look back on the first of these newly opened options that she has decided not to pursue, she strides off purposefully down the long concourse as the end credits roll.

We will never see her future after this moment, because this is her supreme moment where life is at its most open to her. Will she go on to open the Body Shop, or just back to working in the Bistro as a 1920s styled flapper girl, waiting on the new generation of students and being able to impart her knowledge to them in surprising ways? It seems unlikely that she is going to immediately shack up with a man and have kids (she is just as bored and unimpressed by fellow student "Tiger" as she was by her husband Denny, despite the presence of "Tiger" spinning Frank off into his own jealous alcoholic binge at the end of the film), but will she be fulfilled in her new life? We will never know, and never should. It is triumphant and a great way to end the film, but arguably superficially so because it has manufactured the triumph of a multitude of possibilities that inevitably are going to get immediately closed off in the very next choice that Susan makes on leaving the airport, and one can only hope for the best for both Rita/Susan and Frank in their new lives. But I did particularly like that maybe that uncertainty about the future is getting at the ambivalent feeling of both pride and fear that a teacher may have for a beloved student at the end of their schooling going out into the harsh world, maybe (most likely) never to be seen or heard from again.
___

There are a lot of overwrought moments in the early section of the film to do with sketching in the working class milieu and Rita's relationship with husband Denny - Denny knocking out a wall of their house with a sledgehammer (perhaps implying potential domestic violence, albeit only taken out on the walls at this stage(!), and turned into a lovely moment where untutored in the art of demolition Rita decides to swing the sledgehammer herself and brings the ceiling crashing down! There is a suggestion that maybe if she had taken some interest in Denny's pursuits, as well as vice versa of course, that things might have worked out with them); after finding out that Rita is continuing to take the pill and thus frustrating his attempts at starting a family Denny frustratedly taking out his anger at her on her books by burning them in a bonfire in the back yard; the moment with the customer at the salon finding out that Rita is reading "Of Human Bondage" and commenting that her husband has "a lot of books like that" too! And of course the bluntly coarse father demanding grandchildren as the cowed and tearful mother looks on with no voice of her own left.

I am not entirely sure that I subscribe to this being 'realistic' so much as interestingly heightened to highlight the drama, and that working class milieu would be pretty smug feeling if it was not for Frank himself having his own issues back at home with his wife cheating on him with the head of the university! So even being 'educated' does not stop one from having a crappy home life and needing to move on for everyone's sake (I think it is important that both Frank and Rita/Susan encounter their other halves and wish them all the best with their new lives without too much regret although maybe a little moment of sad remembrance of a part of their lives that is now permanently closed off to them. Rita in particular running into Denny again with a heavily pregnant new wife who both seem beatifically happy with their new lives, whilst Rita herself has, maybe not a pang of regret but more a moment of wondering what could have been, even if she knows that she never really wanted that, or would have fit into that role as well as Denny's new beau. I think that brief moment is a very touching one for both characters in that scene, with no animosity between them helping to humanise Denny a bit more than just being the 'controlling male figure' into someone pursuing his own dreams too and, from the outside at least, achieving the life he wanted. Presumably that is how he sees Rita too, looking back at her). Most importantly I really like that Frank taking on Rita as a kind of 'pet project' starts off with him being slightly condescendingly, but well meaningly, amused by her manner (there is even an anti-Pygmalion scene where Frank wants Rita to come to a party at his home but it feels like one where he is showing his work in progress off to his colleagues, even if Frank did not particularly intend for it to be that way, and Rita makes an exit from that party before she even truly arrives by never going inside) which then eventually twists around (with the fateful separation of Rita going off to Summer School) to Rita having surpassed Frank in works that she has studied and has her own ideas about the meanings behind literature that she has not learnt directly from him.

Rita passes Frank by later on in the film in almost all ways from educational to social and cultural. As in the Army, Rita gets her old life entirely broken down and then builds up a new one in the manner most suitable to the new times in which she is living. Whilst Frank is a relic whom even the famously laissez faire world of academia is having trouble supporting. And this is where the ideas behind the film become truly fascinating, complicated and somewhat upsetting because whilst this film is Rita's 'triumph', I felt the most moved by Frank's perspective on Rita. It is a self-pitying one for the most part but I particularly loved that moment of Frank saying again that he does not want to teach Rita after reading her first essay, because it is an essay full of passion and interest in the book under discussion but which entirely fails as an academic essay in the way that one would expect in order to achieve a high mark under exam conditions. That moment of Rita demanding - nay, begging - Frank to just tutor her in the 'proper way to write an essay', is probably the most heartbreaking thing in the entire film, as Frank knows that he can mould Rita into just another one of his students writing the perfect paper to achieve the final qualification at the end of the course, but in doing so he is destroying the individuality and singular response to a piece of literature that makes Rita's essay unique to her worldview. Whilst Rita herself is not seeing the worth of what is going to be lost by trying to mould herself, and her thinking, to match the received current thinking on a topic that is the one that practically guarantees the high pass mark. But is Rita the one deluded about what she is losing, or is Frank deluded in thinking that the worth of a book lies in what it inspires inside a reader on a personal level? Maybe Frank is 'too damaged' by literature because he is too engaged with it? His crisis is entirely coming from within himself (his own internal demons to match Rita's more external issues of ambition in the face of existential ennui and controlling family members), whilst Rita herself has never been anything less than honest about being on this course to better herself, not better the cause of English literature with new and idiosyncratic takes.

When you come from a working class background, the suggestion appears, you do not have the luxury of indulging in a book for its own sake but it has to be acting as a practical stepping stone to the next thing in your outside, real world life too, otherwise it is wasted time spent frivolously. Which is kind of a monstrous attitude to place on literature and approach to come to any work of art with (the demand that it improve you, or be of a 'practical' purpose or else what is the point?), but that is the attitude that Rita has towards education, and it does not really change. It is celebrated by the film but there is always that undercurrent, as Frank says at one point, that "you have just exchanged singing one song for another", but Rita is the one whose approach chimes with the times, not his.

But these questions are only more heightened in recent times with students paying for their own education and both the student body and the government funding the institution now both demanding (with some cause, now that they have been coarsely monetised) to see a 'guaranteed return on investment' for shelling out their big bucks. Studying for personal development without a carefully planned out life or career goal stretching in front of you into which your current academic course fits is a thing of the past, whilst studying for a pre-determined end goal takes primacy. Maybe it was ever thus but it does feel as if Educating Rita came in at the start of this trend ramping up massively with the opening up of further education to the masses, working as another early 80s Thatcherite film celebrating the 'go getting entrepreneur doing it for themselves' (contrasting interestingly with the contemporaneous Brideshead Revisited TV series, nostalgically looking back at a past era where Universities were more associated with being boarding schools for the elite, where qualifications seemed secondary to the campus life and connections made therein) but with a tinge of regret for actual human feeling towards the 'pure joy of learning' that likely was never entirely the main motivator in the first place.

I particularly like the Frankenstein referencing ending (Frank himself self-aggrandisingly refers to Rita as his creation in a slightly earlier scene) as Frank has banished himself to the wilderness (aka Australia) by his transgressive behaviour beyond the limits of what academia will put up with but has a final parting of the ways with his newly self-actualised 'creation' at the airport before it walks off to (at least try to) inhabit the new world that it has been unleashed into. And who is to say that it will not be successful in that task, for all the trials it has been through already? But is that a good or a bad thing, or even a thing worthy of note at all in the larger scheme of things?

(And I did find it darkly comic that Frank's poetry is apparently so good/so bad that it seems that it is the last straw in causing the superficially carefree seeming Flapper-girl character played by Maureen Lipman to attempt suicide! (Sort of underlining the point of the film that it is not the art but what you do with it that matters! The slightly disturbing implication here being that you do not actually engage with a piece of art so much that you yourself get changed by it, but instead only ever use it for the practical purposes of sitting that exam paper!) The romantically morbid Mahler provided the impetus, but apparently a terrible poet can have just as big an effect on finally putting those plans into motion! Sometimes art can just be that dangerous, full of eye-opening despair at the state of the world with no easy answers proferred!)

___

So I'm rather torn on this film but I ended up liking it quite a bit. Much more than Billy Elliot (which does however make a good companion to this film, particularly as it lets Julie Walters transition from the naive student to the jaded and faded teacher role herself), because it does not neatly provide all the concrete answers to the character's situation, and even provides that sense of ambivalence towards the quest having been worthwhile or not in the end anyway, or whether Susan (née Rita) has just moved into a slightly larger bubble rather than popping it completely.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sun Dec 06, 2020 8:16 am, edited 16 times in total.

jlnight
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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1002 Post by jlnight » Sun May 24, 2020 4:51 am

The Hand of Night, Fri 29th May, Talking Pictures. Also late Sat 6th June.

I Was a Fireman (Fires Were Started), Sat 30th May, Talking Pictures.
I Walk Alone, Sat 30th May, Talking Pictures. Also Wed 3rd June.

The Whip Hand, Sun 31st May, Sony Movies Classic.
Forever Female, Sun 31st May, Talking Pictures. Also Fri 5th June.

The Big Blockade, Mon 1st June, Talking Pictures. Also Sat 13th June.
The Day of the Jackal, Mon 1st June, Sony Movies Classic.
Vengeance (short), very late Mon 1st June, Talking Pictures.

John Betjeman Goes by Train (short), Thu 4th June, Talking Pictures.
The Rebel (1961), Thu 4th June, Talking Pictures. Also Sat 13th June.
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, Thu 4th June, Film4.
Mulk, late Thu 4th June, Channel 4.

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1003 Post by perkypat » Tue May 26, 2020 9:49 am

Is Mulk part of a new Channel 4 Indian film season? Cant find anything online.

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colinr0380
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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1004 Post by colinr0380 » Wed May 27, 2020 3:26 pm

perkypat wrote:
Tue May 26, 2020 9:49 am
Is Mulk part of a new Channel 4 Indian film season? Cant find anything online.
It only says that Mulk is showing as a tribute to Rishi Kapoor in the Radio Times, but it is in the usual late night Channel 4 slot for the Indian film season, so it may be kicking off another season. As jlnight notes that is the most interesting film of the week aside from Professor Marston and the Wonder Women on Film4 (which inevitably clash together during their last/first ten minutes).

Other than that it is pretty quiet, although E4 is starting to repeat the Buffy The Vampire Slayer television series from the very beginning every weeknight from 11 p.m. on Monday 1st, which is the first time that series has shown on Channel 4 or its spin-off channels. The whole series of Buffy got treated really well when it was previously shown on UK television in the primetime 6 p.m. slot on BBC2 (previously the Star Trek and Simpsons slot) back in the late 90s (with edits for that timeslot, although it also got an unedited late Friday night repeat screening too). However Channel 4 did pick up the Angel spin-off show for late night screenings, although after the 'Golden Age' of Channel 4 fully committing to US series in the 80s and 90s (Thirtysomething, Tales From The City, Oz, ER, American Gothic, etc) like every American imported television series of the 2000s they started strongly and then petered out into only showing the first couple of seasons and then dropped the show (or got out bid for it) to let it go off to the pay-TV Sky channels. (Lost in particular was the most frustrating example of that situation and hardened my resolve to never trust Channel 4 to follow through on an American imported show to the bitter end as compared to their regular full repeats of all of their homegrown shows, though from hearing reports of what happened after the end of Season 2 of that show it was probably for the best in the long run to have ended inconclusively but mysteriously there rather than disappointingly four seasons later!)

I presume that it is also probably part of the reason why The Wire got treated so shabbily as it came along right at the time that both the BBC and Channel 4 were dropping their interest in US drama series very low in that period as a kind of policy decision to focus on UK drama, but that had the effect of narrowing the range of material drastically (and ironically instead the BBC got their big breakout hit of the decade with Nordic Noir series The Killing when it was shown on BBC4!)
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sun May 31, 2020 10:39 am, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1005 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Wed May 27, 2020 3:37 pm

I was big fan of American Gothic back in the day. At least it only had the one season. I watched Midnight Caller with Gary Cole too even before that, and he's always someone I mix up with William Fichtner - though the latter has more of an obvious malevolence. I totally forget Sarah Paulson played the kid's sister, in what must have been one of her very early roles.

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1006 Post by colinr0380 » Wed May 27, 2020 4:06 pm

I always used to get her mixed up with Juliette Lewis at the time the show aired! :oops:

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1007 Post by jlnight » Mon Jun 01, 2020 8:25 am

The Beach, Fri 5th June, Sony Movies. Or...
Brimstone and Treacle (1982), starts Fri 5th June, London Live.

Life of Pi, Sat 6th June, Channel 4.

The Square (Ostlund), Wed 10th June, Film4.


I Was A Fireman was definitely the 74-minute version and went under that title. I recorded Fires Were Started off Channel 4 about 20 years ago but can't remember what the duration was.

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1008 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Mon Jun 01, 2020 1:00 pm

Shame they never show the Michael Kitchen Brimstone and Treacle.

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1009 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Jun 03, 2020 4:02 am

Rather low key next week, as it looks as if the showing of Mulk is going to be a one-off rather than the start of a new Indian film season.

jlnight has noted The Square on Film4 at 9 p.m. on Wednesday 10th June. The other big film is the premiere of Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom on ITV1 at 7.30 p.m. on Sunday 7th. Also on Sunday 7th BBC4 are showing a 2018 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Romeo and Juliet at 9 p.m., though I will probably end up missing this as it clashes both with Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom and the last two episodes of Dave/episodes 5 and 6 of Mayans M.C. over on BBC2.

By the way, that Dave series has been excellent! I particularly like that the latter half of the series has had entire episodes devoted to the supporting characters with Dave only appearing peripherally, and I did find the many episode later brief call back to the wooden bench with the hole cut in it in episode 8 an amusing surprise!

The second series of What We Do In the Shadows is starting with the first two episodes on BBC2 at 10 p.m. on Thursday 11th, which I have my suspicions may have been a little naughtily calculated to clash with E4 having moved its Adult Swim block of programming from Fridays to Thursdays for the recent Rick & Morty series that has been showing at 10 p.m. over there. Whilst Rick & Morty will have ended by next week, What We Do In The Shadows is now up against the Harley Quinn animated series over on that channel.

(I actually wonder if the BBC has something against the E4 channel as there was a recent interview with Tracee Ellis Ross on the Radio 4 Front Row programme where the presenter asked her to describe the premise of the Black-ish series "because most people in the UK will not have had an opportunity to have seen the show, as it is only on Amazon Prime", which had me almost shouting at my iPod that Black-ish has been broadcast on E4 for years as part of the same high profile primetime 7.30 p.m. slot that rotates between The Big Bang Theory/Young Sheldon, The Goldbergs and Brooklyn Nine-Nine!)

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1010 Post by jlnight » Fri Jun 05, 2020 10:25 am

Girl with a Pistol (1968), Thu 11th June, Talking Pictures. Also Thu 18th June.

Almost Famous, starts Fri 12th June, Sony Movies.

Goodbye Christopher Robin, Sat 13th June, Channel 4.
Finding Your Feet, Sat 13th June, Channel 4.

Mask (Bogdanovich), Sun 14th June, Sony Movies. (Also turns up on Sony Movies Classic)
Smashing Time, Sun 14th June, Talking Pictures. Also Tue 16th June.
Two Days, One Night (2014), late Sun 14th June, BBC2.

Ill Met by Moonlight, Tue 16th June, London Live.
Patti Cake$, Tue 16th June, Film4.

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1011 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Jun 05, 2020 1:32 pm

jlnight wrote:
Fri Jun 05, 2020 10:25 am
Goodbye Christopher Robin, Sat 13th June, Channel 4.
I'm quite interested in seeing that one, though I guess its 'biography of a children's author' structure puts it in the company of Finding Neverland, Miss Potter, Tolkien et al.

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1012 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Jun 08, 2020 2:44 am

Well I ended up having an unplanned Robert LaSardo-centric weekend! I re-watched the third Human Centipede film on Friday evening, in which LaSardo appears as the primary prisoner who takes the brunt of Deiter Laser's Ilsa-like castration based wrath, and then last thing on Sunday (still with ears ringing from Laser's shouty performance in that Human Centipede film) it was a pleasant surprise when LaSardo suddenly appeared in the final episode of the Dad series in the visualisation of Dave's "Jail" song, where his character gets genitally mutilated all over again! It is a strange bit of typecasting I suppose, but kudos for his being game for being involved in such scenes! A few more scenes like this and I will start thinking of him as the modern day Giovanni Lombardi Radice/John Morghen!

(Oh, and speaking of that Dave series the BBC did take pains to put an "upsetting content" warning before the ninth episode, which I think was to do with the scene of running over a rabbit with a car multiple times, only making its injuries worse with every semi-squashing it receives! (Though it could also have been for the diarrhoea sequence I suppose!) I did really like that this early scene does also pay off beautifully with the wedding speech that Ally makes at the end of the episode with her story about the magician's show as a child where a rabbit was magically transformed into her sister)

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1013 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Jun 09, 2020 3:28 pm

No date yet but Film4 have trailed that Call Me By Your Name is going to be shown on the channel at some point.

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1014 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Jun 10, 2020 4:00 am

Pretty good next week. In addition to the films that jlnight has already noted BBC4 are showing a 2018 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Macbeth with Christopher Eccleston and Niamh Cusack at 9.30 p.m. on Sunday 14th and also on BBC4 on Monday 15th the Storyville documentary strand is showing College Behind Bars at 10 p.m., although it is showing in a cut down to two episode version from the four episode PBS original.

Film4 are also showing Fun Size at 2.20 a.m. on Thursday 18th and after announcing and pulling it a few months back Happy Death Day is scheduled again for a 9 p.m. Friday slot on channel on the evening of the 19th. But most excitingly of all also on Film4 is a really rare repeat of Dancer In The Dark at 1.10 a.m. in the early hours of Sunday 15th.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Wed Jun 17, 2020 2:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1015 Post by jlnight » Sun Jun 14, 2020 4:35 pm

The Tin Star, Fri 19th June, Film4.
Street of Shadows, Fri 19th June, Talking Pictures. Also Fri 26th June.
Face/Off, starts Fri 19th June, Sony Movies.
Bright Young Things, starts Fri 19th June, London Live.

City That Never Sleeps, Sat 20th June, Talking Pictures. Also Thu 25th June.
I Am Not Your Negro, Sat 20th June, BBC2. Or...
Book Club (followed by Gifted), Sat 20th June, Channel 4.

All the Money in the World, Sun 21st June, Channel 4.

Boom in the Moon, Mon 22nd June, Talking Pictures. Also Thu 2nd July.
Call Me by Your Name, Mon 22nd June, Film4.
In Between (2016), Mon 22nd June, Film4.

Velvet Goldmine (follows Carol), late Tue 23rd June, Film4.


Fords on Water and Maeve are back in rotation on London Live soon and they are in a BFI triple bill, along with Symptoms, on Thu 25th June.

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1016 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Jun 17, 2020 2:45 pm

Really good next week. In addition to all the films jlnight notes above there is also the 2018 Alicia Vikander starring Tomb Raider film on ITV1 at 7.50 p.m. on Sunday 21st and a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet from 2016 at 9 p.m. on BBC4 also on Sunday 21st.

BBC2 is also showing On Chesil Beach at 9 p.m. on Wednesday 24th, which is Saoirse Rownan's return to starring in an Ian McEwan adaptation after Atonement. That clashes with Scandalous: The Tabloid That Changed America about the National Enquirer at 9 p.m. on BBC4.

But most exciting of everything next week is that the new 12 part third series of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads is starting on BBC1, first with two episodes from 9 p.m. on Tuesday 23rd and then with episode 3 at 7.30 p.m. on Thursday 25th. I don't think that I have been that excited for any series on the main BBC1 channel since that adaptation of Bleak House back in the mid 2000s! I am tempering my excitement a bit however as apparently ten of the twelve episodes are 'remakes' of the old monologues with new actors (including Kristin Scott Thomas!), and only two are going to be new stories.

The first episode is a new telling of one of the original series' most famous episodes, A Lady of Letters, with Imelda Staunton taking on the role that Patricia Routledge played so beautifully in the first series back in 1988.
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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1017 Post by jlnight » Sat Jun 20, 2020 9:03 am

Glastonbury (Temple), Thu 25th June, BBC4.

Rollerball (2002), Fri 26th June, Horror. Or...
When You're Strange (DiCillo), Fri 26th June, London Live.

Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, Sat 27th June, Talking Pictures. Also Tue 30th June. Alternatively...
Invasion U.S.A., Sat 27th June, Paramount Network.

Bus Stop, Sun 28th June, Sony Movies Classic. Or...
Out of Season (been on London Live), Sun 28th June, Talking Pictures. Also Thu 2nd July.
1985 (2018), late Sun 28th June, Channel 4.

Bloomfield, Thu 2nd July, London Live.

DMAX seem to have sneaked out some Bojack Horseman on Friday nights, late.

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1018 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Jun 21, 2020 1:52 pm

Also adding to the enormous pile of things getting premiered this week the 5 Star digital channel is showing the Seth Rogan/James Franco film The Inteview at 9 p.m. on Thursday 25th which in its lampooning of the state irked the North Koreans and caused that Sony e-mail hack. Which is probably the first time that anyone has thought about that film since it was released, even the North Koreans!

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1019 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Jun 23, 2020 1:53 pm

A few things but nothing that seems too outstanding next week amongst the premieres: BBC2 has a Disney produced Chinese natural history film Born in China at 9.45 a.m. on Saturday 27th. Directed by Lu Chuan, who previously directed the 2009 film about the Nanking Massacre, City of Life and Death! The ITV2 channel has two children's film premieres on Sunday 28th with The Nut Job at 3.15 p.m. (I get it: the nuts are meant to be a pun on testicles! It looks like it could be described as Fantastic Mr Fox-meets-Over The Hedge?) and the Alexander Skarsgard Legend of Tarzan film at 6.50 p.m.

Film4 is showing The Strangers: Prey At Night at 10.50 p.m. on Saturday 27th.

Channel 4 has Kate Winslet killing and eating Idris Elba to survive in the wilderness after a plane crash in yet another expression of Hollywood's unconscious racial privilege in The Mountain Between Us (either that or falling in love, or something similarly icky) at 9 p.m. on Sunday 28th. Also that evening jlnight has pointed out the most interesting film of the week with 1985 showing on Channel 4 at 1.10 a.m. in the early hours of Monday morning (A repeat of God's Own Country falls in between those two films).

BBC4's Storyville series is continuing with Welcome to Chechnya at 10 p.m. on Wednesday 1st followed by Jailed in America at 11.30 p.m.

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1020 Post by jlnight » Sun Jun 28, 2020 11:57 am

The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders, Fri 3rd July, Talking Pictures. Also Sat 11th July.
Erskineville Kings, Fri 3rd July, London Live.

Nate and Hayes (Savage Islands), Sat 4th July, Talking Pictures. Also Wed 8th July.
Keith Haring: Street Art Boy, Sat 4th July, BBC2.
Mary Millington's True Blue Confessions, starts late Sat 4th July, London Live.

The Dummy Talks, Sun 5th July, Talking Pictures. Also Thu 9th July.
The Country Girl, Sun 5th July, Talking Pictures. Also Tue 7th July.
Birdman of Alcatraz, Sun 5th July, Sony Movies Classic.
Harlow (1965), Sun 5th July, Talking Pictures. Also Thu 9th July.

Custody (2017), Mon 6th July, Film4. (followed by The Selfish Giant).
All The Young Men, starts Mon 6th July, Sony Movies Classic.

Boom in the Moon never turned up. It had a screening of Unearthly Stranger instead.

alacal2
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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1021 Post by alacal2 » Sun Jun 28, 2020 2:19 pm

There's still nothing on TV this week to come even close to Alan Bennett's Talking Heads series which continues on Monday. It's ironic that Bennett - who is pretty much a 'National Treasure' (a very reluctant one!) in the UK - writes so uncompromisingly about the hidden sadnesses of people's lives. I can only bear to watch these because they're tempered by his humanity.

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1022 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Jun 28, 2020 3:50 pm

alacal2 wrote:
Sun Jun 28, 2020 2:19 pm
There's still nothing on TV this week to come even close to Alan Bennett's Talking Heads series which continues on Monday. It's ironic that Bennett - who is pretty much a 'National Treasure' (a very reluctant one!) in the UK - writes so uncompromisingly about the hidden sadnesses of people's lives. I can only bear to watch these because they're tempered by his humanity.
"In stories saying it brings it on"

Here's the new version of A Lady of Letters with Imelda Staunton in the role :-$ (I slightly prefer the Patricia Routledge 1988 version, particularly for the heartbreaking way that Routledge almost bursts into tears at the final exchange about the 'kiddie', but this is still wonderful and in this version really emphasises the simmering anger of the main character. Also that episode feels as if it is probably a better fit for its original air date in the late 1980s with its emphasis on letter writing (it would be trolling on Twitter or Facebook now!) and later on doing the typewriter course that feels a bit quaint in 2020!). I still think that the ending is kind of how Jeanne Dielman could possibly have ended up if we had followed her after the end of her film! That video cuts off just before the final line of the last scene, but this allows for a comparison with the final scene of the 1988 version.

Its strange because Alan Bennett's voice and mannerisms (which comes through whoever is speaking his words, which is why his own monologue series was just as good) is ripe for parody, but the parodies mostly focus on the superficial surface of the twee suburban middle class nature of the participants rather than the often distressing, life-upending events that they are often speaking about. The monologues are often about the intimate apocalypses being faced all whilst keeping up appearances of a seemingly placid surface of respectable values, ticking clocks on the mantlepiece, twitching net curtains and chintzy soft furnishings.

I have to say that these monologues hit me even more powerfully than they used to. When I watched the previous series back in my teens and 20s they felt strangely nostalgic and comforting because they reminded me so much of the way my mum used to talk, or times when I was in another room reading and could just overhear the strains of my mother and grandmother talking and putting the world to rights in each other's kitchens over a cup of tea and a sandwich. Now I feel as if I have moved into the role of the monologue deliverer myself, not least because of the absence of others to be doing it instead of me (and I'm not doing half as good a job about organising my thoughts or speaking as eloquently), but also because the importance of speaking to oneself to gain better (though arguably dangerously one-sided) insight into one's own condition has only grown over the years. All the characters in the Talking Heads monologues, whether they have family or friends surrounding them (or the bluntly brutal hand of the authorities chiming in, often having grasped the wrong end of the stick in process), have nobody to actually talk to who would care to listen, so they are delivering their heartbreaking stories (whether explorations of their heart or deepest desires; empty justifications for actions; or working out their place in the world, or whether they even have a place anymore) to the quietness of empty rooms. Because those four walls will always be there in one form or another, and whilst they will never provide a response, only a pregnant pause at best, there is also the small comfort that they will also never talk back, interject or contradict the speaker as well! And maybe that's all we can ask for in terms of looking for help or sympathy when it comes to the big, life-upending situations.

(It is anti-social media in that sense! Although I suppose it could be argued that many people use social media as if they are not expecting a response to their comments anyway!)

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1023 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Jul 01, 2020 3:00 am

Only a couple of films of note next week, the most interesting one being the premiere of the French film Custody on Film4 at 11.20 pm. on Monday 6th.

Not too bad for horror films though: Film4 is showing Insidious: The Last Key at 11.20 p.m. on Saturday 4th, while on the same evening at 9 p.m. the Horror channel is showing The Rezort.

BBC4's season of Royal Shakespeare Company adaptations continues with Much Ado About Nothing at 9 p.m. on Sunday 5th. Also on BBC4, the Storyville season continues with Softie at 10 p.m on Wednesday 8th (retitled as "The Underdog and the Battle for Kenya"), which was only just shown at this year's Sundance film festival. That clashes with the first two episodes of Cate Blanchett starring series Mrs America from 9 p.m. on BBC2.

The last of the twelve episodes of the Takling Heads series (and the second of the newly written stories), The Shrine, is showing on BBC1 at 8.30 p.m. on Thursday 9th. And the latest Adult Swim series to show on E4 is The Jellies! from 12.45 a.m. in the early hours of Friday 10th.

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1024 Post by jlnight » Fri Jul 03, 2020 7:45 pm

The Slipper and the Rose, Tue 7th July, London Live.

The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974), Wed 8th July, Sony Movies Classic. (In recent times it would be the remake on telly).

Mad Dog Morgan, Fri 10th July, London Live.

The Eternal Sea, Sat 11th July, Talking Pictures. Also Thu 16th July.
The Man Who Could Cheat Death, Sat 11th July, Talking Pictures. Also Tue 14th July.
Felicity, late Sat 11th July, London Live.

The Stolen Jools (short), Sun 12th July, Talking Pictures.
The Grass is Greener (1960), Sun 12th July, Talking Pictures. Also Wed 15th July.
The Festival (2018), Sun 12th July, Channel 4. Or...
Gambit, Sun 12th July, Sony Movies Classic.

Malachi's Cove, starts Mon 13th July, London Live.
Summer of Sam, Mon 13th July, Sony Movies.

United Skates (Storyville strand, LFF 2018), Tue 14th July, BBC4.

Escape from Zahrain, Wed 15th July, Talking Pictures.
The Misfits, Wed 15th July, Sony Movies Classic.



Bloomfield never turned up in the end.

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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (UK)

#1025 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Jul 04, 2020 9:33 am

No date as yet but Blade Runner 2049 is upcoming on the ITV channels at some point (probably ITV1 or 2)

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