Movies they ought to show on TV

bnt

We have thread for recommended movies on TV, and I think we should have a thread for movies we think they ought to show on TV. I personally define such movies as ones I would like to see at some point, and which I think others might enjoy, but not "must see" movies that I feel I have to buy to see as soon as possible. I also have a sneaking suspicion, based on previous coincidences, that this forum is read by one or more people who can influence what is shown on TV. (I can't point at any examples of this, though!)

For starters, I would point any TV scheduler at Roger Ebert's Great Movies list. I've seen only a fraction of the films on that list, and want to see more of them, ones that I would never know to seek out.

I know that it can take a while for films to become available for TV, so I don't expect e.g. the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall until this coming Christmas at the earliest. But what about Lars von Trier's Melancholia, or The Descendants by acclaimed director Alexander Payne & starring George Clooney? Both came out in 2011, but I've yet to see them listed on any channel. Inception is from 2010, and I vaguely recall seeing it listed once, but it was such a huge movie you'd expect it to be on some channel a lot more.

(Not that I spend my time scanning all the channels, but if it's on one of the major channels, I'll probably notice. )

Adamantium

Super 8 is never shown

brian_t

bnt wrote: »

Inception is from 2010, and I vaguely recall seeing it listed once, but it was such a huge movie you'd expect it to be on some channel a lot more.

(Not that I spend my time scanning all the channels, but if it's on one of the major channels, I'll probably notice. )

Inception was on last month and listed in the Recommended Movies on TV thread

Warper wrote: »

Inception is on tonight @ 9.30 RTE2, must watch it again, never got all the love for it so must see if i was missing something

Birneybau

Adamantium wrote: »

Super 8 is never shown

Yeah it is.

johnny_ultimate

Most of the films mentioned above are very easy films to access - well known recent films that can be easily gotten a hold of cheaply through many sources - including frequent television screenings! TV with its immersion breaking ad breaks might be one of the single worst ways to watch any film if you can avoid it anyway.

What I'd like to see are more rare and unusual films screened, and not just in graveyard slots. Outside of maybe the likes of BBC Four and the odd TG4 screening, there are sadly few 'curated' channels these days like Film or Channel 4 were at their peak. Stations have access to resources the general public don't, so it would be great if they could screen more films that are hard to see otherwise, or at least ones you can't buy for a fiver down in your local Xtravision.

The US TCM screened an incredible 119 films from all throughout film history and around the world (29 countries featured!) to accompany their showing of A Story of Film. Now that's an amazing thing to see on television, and would adore to see a project of similar scale and depth over here.

SuprSi

Leon. One of my favourites movies and I've never seen it on telly. I realise it's easily accessible and can be purchased but for such a good movie to never be on TV is a travesty.

Pretty sure that every film mentioned had been on TV multiple times.

If you're relying on TV to watch a film then you're doing it wrong. I know that it's impossible to buy every film you want to watch but I'd rather wait a year to buy a film than watch it on pretty much any channel b that RTE and others think it acceptable to interrupt a film for the lotto or news updates is ridiculous. As are the ads, there's no thought put into where the break should be and it's common for an ad to start mid sentence. Both RTE and C4 put an ad in Saving Private Ryan during the beach invasion and ruined it.

FilmFour are equally bad, watching Rising Sun a month our so back and there was a 5 minute ad break and when ether film resumed I assumed that there would be another half hour before the next one but no, 2 minutes after it came back it cut to another ad break. In the space of 12 minutes there were only 2 minutes of the film shown.

And then you have channels messing with aspect ratios, cutting the credits short, censoring moments and so on. Bar TCM and MGM there's no channel I'd ever regularly watch a film on

bnt

Deleted User wrote: »

If you're relying on TV to watch a film then you're doing it wrong.

That's not what I said, though - I'm talking about films that are not" "must see" movies that I feel I have to buy to see as soon as possible". Movies that "it would be nice to see", in other words. I DVR movies and skip over ads, so that doesn't bother me.

I didn't do an exhaustive search of TV schedule history before I used those examples - and they're just examples. So it doesn't surprise me that some folks here remember that some of them have been on. By "on TV" I mean more than just the occasional late night showing, maybe a bit more than that. But I would like to see more than yet another showing of 27 Dresses or The Sweetest Thing. :eek:

Technocentral

Two come to mind: "The Year of Living Dangerously" and "Auto Focus".

e_e

Some Edward Yang, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Hong Sang-soo and Tsai-Ming Liang films wouldn't go amiss, especially since the majority of their movies aren't available on region 2.