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Don't know if it should be considered either obligatory or stupid to tolerate the interruptus of ad breaks every 8 minutes, but there's something about one-off screenings on television of long-lost movies – or just anything of demanding, pertinent interest – that possess(es) an urgency different from if you noticed the same title(s) at your local video store. So the fact that it's scheduled, like a festival screening, is one obvious explanation, but I'm also a sucker for free shit, and will endure the clockwork stoppages if it means saving the price of a rental, the fare of a return bus trip, and the getting-off-my-ass. It's true; I'm lazy and weak.
To reiterate my point, Florian Habicht's celebrated Kaihoke Demolition screens this Wednesday (10.30pm, TV2). The DVD is actually great, however for all television's maligned properties, as a medium for exposure it's basically unrivaled. Fast-forward to early Sunday morning (1.30am, TV2), and you have Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull on tap; realistically, past the point of awake-ness, but I haven't seen this in years. Later that night, somewhat surprisingly, is the subtitled domestic-romp Remember Me (9pm, Maori TV); it comes direct from the Italian Film Festival the previous year, and whilst vague in my mind, it's cinema-topography of the Italian female form plus a certain Monica Belluci is, for some reason, not difficult to recall.
Meanwhile, I wait patiently for Prime to repeat An Unmarried Woman (at an ungodly hour, if need be), which I know they have on their books, and will have to screen eventually. Dated feminist, semi-seminal late-70s film starring a largely forgotten Jill Claburgh it may be (and also glaring omission from that Chick Flicks book, if I read the index correctly), but it's so elusively obscure – not even available on DVD anywhere – that at times like these, you actually believe television can redeem itself if it's able to temporarily revive a small-but-significant movie on the verge of oblivion now and again.—TW
To reiterate my point, Florian Habicht's celebrated Kaihoke Demolition screens this Wednesday (10.30pm, TV2). The DVD is actually great, however for all television's maligned properties, as a medium for exposure it's basically unrivaled. Fast-forward to early Sunday morning (1.30am, TV2), and you have Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull on tap; realistically, past the point of awake-ness, but I haven't seen this in years. Later that night, somewhat surprisingly, is the subtitled domestic-romp Remember Me (9pm, Maori TV); it comes direct from the Italian Film Festival the previous year, and whilst vague in my mind, it's cinema-topography of the Italian female form plus a certain Monica Belluci is, for some reason, not difficult to recall.
Meanwhile, I wait patiently for Prime to repeat An Unmarried Woman (at an ungodly hour, if need be), which I know they have on their books, and will have to screen eventually. Dated feminist, semi-seminal late-70s film starring a largely forgotten Jill Claburgh it may be (and also glaring omission from that Chick Flicks book, if I read the index correctly), but it's so elusively obscure – not even available on DVD anywhere – that at times like these, you actually believe television can redeem itself if it's able to temporarily revive a small-but-significant movie on the verge of oblivion now and again.—TW
