Freeview Boxes : Classic or Dud?

Here's a list of Freeview channels from the Crystal Palace transmitter and which multiplex they're on. Basically, if you can get any channel on a "mux", you can get everything on that mux. My HD reception is crap at times (despite being so close to the CP transmitters); we don't have a rooftop aerial and delivery vans in the Sainsbury's car park seem to temporarily block out the mux the HD channels are on. I think there might be a Doug McClure film on Talking Pictures right now!

https://ukfree.tv/transmitters/tv/Crystal_Palace

Sony Classics is showing "Son of Paleface" right now, having shown "Duck Soup" earlier - two films where a character is pictured in bed with a horse. Can't complain tbh.

Tremendous post from Mike - a level of local obscurity and quirky technical knowledge that feels like the glory days of 2003.

I shall take that memory to Sainsbury's (car park).

Last night:

SATURDAY NIGHT & SUNDAY MORNING on Sunday classics - excellent. Wonder if it's actually the best of its genre.

THIS SPORTING LIFE: my first ever Talking Pictures experience. The adverts are always followed by a lengthy trailer of a forthcoming film. All these forthcoming films are oddly far off (like, two weeks away?) and, remarkably, all seem fairly obscure, bad or uninteresting. A baffling logic here.

As for THIS SPORTING LIFE: ultimately disappointing. I didn't remember it being quite like this: overlong, increasingly self-indulgent, the kind of film where a man smoulders then suddenly sweeps all the crockery off the table. The inchoate male rage becomes incredibly tiresome and unfocused. It also seems to go as far as domestic violence - he hits the woman he supposedly loves at least twice, not to mention forcing her to go to bed with him - which is never remarked on. I think that there were, partially observed, codes of conduct on such things even then - 'a bloke who raises his hand to a lass is a bad sort', etc - and it's disturbing to see this film disregard them.

That depends on whether he's supposed to be a hero. I'm sure he's not. The title is the first clue to that. That said, I watched the first hour but it was not the right mood for me last night.

All these forthcoming films are oddly far off (like, two weeks away?) and, remarkably, all seem fairly obscure, bad or uninteresting. A baffling logic here.

I always assume they just got a job of lot of (mostly bad) British movies that no-one else had any use for.

The Fast Lady was on Talking Pictures last week but, sadly, at a time when I was working. Stanley Baxter, James Robertson Justice, Julie Christie. Directed by Ken Annakin (whose Battle of the Bulge was on Sony Pictures this afternoon). Must be 40 years since I've seen that! Probably terrible. Strangest thing I've encountered recently was a 15min performance from 1949 by a pretty awful sentimental vaudeville crooner, probably a good 20 years past his peak... someone Baker?

Kenny Baker?

Found it! Ted Lewis.

It wasn’t this clip but this gives you a measure of the man.

https://youtu.be/eg7UKFGqAv4

How is that hat staying on?

ok, not strictly freeview, but we are in old films mode.

BBC matinees this week are all Ealing comedies*

M 15:15 school for scoundrels
T 15:25 man in the white suit
W 15:25 titfield thunderbolt
T 15:25 whisky galore!
F 15:30 lavender hill mob

seen them all before, would watch them all again.

* sfs not considered an ealing comedy

I missed Villain with Richard Burton on Talking Pictures TV last night (it'll be round again) - always remember Villain as being the film the BBC interrupted a late night screening of to 'go live' to the start of the first Gulf War - felt like the beginning of the end times, then, however melodramatic and distant that seems now.

Sure, 90% of the British stuff that Talking Pictures broadcasts is dull crap, but it is a fantastic resource for anyone interested in the history and content of our national cinema. The definitive account of The Huggett Family films is still to be written!

"What are you looking??!?!!" Hard to watch "Villain" without thinking of The Sweeney tbh, but it's definitely worth watching!

Also Burton kept reminding me of Bono, bizarrely enough - looks wise.

... "What are you looking??!?!!" that should be, ffs.

... "What are you looking AT??!?!!" AAAAAAAAAARGGHH!!!

"Girl with Green Eyes" on Talking Pictures. Never seen this before. Rita Tushingham is fantastic in it.

Fairly terrible British movie from 1972 on London Live right now, "All Coppers Are...", about a 'love triangle' between Ben Fogle's mum, a cheeky chappy Cockney crim and a boring posh policeman (played by Satyricon star, Martin Potter).

... sorry, keep forgetting that London Live isn't available outside London (I think), not that you're missing much.

LOL @ the filth getting a doing at a demo outside an Embassy in the most unconvincing London street Pinewood Studios had to offer - placards suggesting the demo is about torturers being harboured in the Embassy and, er, student grants.

just discovered there's a 1974 remake of brief encounter w. richard burton and sophia loren (also on london live)

it's not very compelling

When films like this occasionally turned up on the telly - before they had channels that show little else - I always used to make a jokey comment along the lines of "And people wonder why the British film industry collapsed?"

my gran (mum's mum, who ended her days in my parents' house) once walked into the room while i was watching some old B/W movie and just thought it was the funniest thing that a young person (as i then was more or less lol) was watching this format which had been ripped up and binned in her youth. i suspect the remake of BE was ordered up by ppl who thought the same way -- the idea of TV access to very old films is an 80s thing, more or less, occasional speeded-up clips of silent comedies notwithstanding

mark s 2020 stop saying more or less challenge

Post-Krays, I notice both "Villain" and "All Coppers Are" had gay gangsters. Also Robin Askwith and David Essex had blink and you'll miss them parts in the latter, David Essex had one line, something like, "'Ere, did you pull a bird last night?"

"Performance", too, tho obv that's a different thing to a point

Connections connections. We had T.P. McKenna as a London crime boss (in "Villain") one night and as a priest trying to talk sense into Rita Tushingham (in "Girl With Green Eyes") the next.

Mark's memories of the 1970s are stronger than mine, but I would say that there was a very big cultural attachment to vintage film then -- the obvious indication being Michael Parkinson's big interviews with veteran movie stars. And a great many TV sets then were still black & white anyway!

Michael Rodd's SCREEN TEST (19701-1984) is also relevant. I hope Steady Mike's reading this now.

Koogs: BBC is on Freeview, as much as any of these other channels are.

[*1970-1984]

this thread bumping reminds me to post

Talking Pictures Tv 17:50 today
Hell Drivers (1957)
which features, in no particular order, a doctor who, a james bond, a man from uncle, the prisoner, a professional, a ladykiller, and syd james.

How about SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS -- are any of us watching that?

I did. It was enjoyable.

Useful tip from Koogs on these BBC films.

(I think I'll watch the next two also.)

(But first: NOTTING HILL on Five Star tonight.)

I missed the beginning but caught most of it, SfS. Modern 4th wall stuff from Sim at the end.

Yes this was good.

I plan to watch THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT next.

NOTTING HILL btw was worth seeing but not that convincing.

Loving Star Trek at 10 o'clock every morning, courtesy of the Horror Channel.

are they showing the 16:9 version?

(i have the dvds of TOS sat in front of the tv, i think i've finished them but can't remember. there's no real end to it - the last episode is just another episode)

Voyager on later in the day too. and Lost in Space. and Time Tunnel (the original?).

No, it's not the 16:9 version. They're started showing them from the start, and the first season is pretty consistently good.

(listen out in TMITWS forthe same bubble sound effects they used for the car in SfS)

oh, joan greenwood.

Greenwood's voice a tremendous artefact. Or do I mean instrument?

The Green of the Voice

That's good, Ward.

THE TITFIELD THUNDERBOLT arrives on platform BBC2 at 15:25 today and departs at 16:45.

Terrible Doug McClure (biceps) / Caroline Munro (boobs) movie on this morning, on Talking Pictures, which I ended up watching because of the weird electronic score - which it turns out was composed by a guy from Manfred Mann.

in response to PF's earlier comment abt the attitude to old movies in the 70s -- my feeling is we had parky and rodd and also e.g. michael bentine's golden silents instead of actually being able to view old films. the bbc was taping over many of its own archives (= why it's a big deal when eps of dad's army are found in skips etc) and the culture at large was casually and thoughtlessly non-archival, the turn to the past as a large wing of ordinary popular culture came later, when video became a household item not an expensive specialist technology (and relatedly when the huge music re-issue projects arrived alongside CDs)

almost parky's entire sheen was as loveable curator of lost things we shd pay more attention to, old films and broadway and the las vegas swing era, which only works when we realise that it really was mostly lost (since he was a p terrible curator)

Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner on channel 50 today at 14:50 (didn't you just read that PF?)

clashes with Titfield though (and i saw it only a month ago)

I did, Koogs ! Had no idea the film was coming on today.

Cripes, it's Sony Classics. I really think I should watch this.