I've recently noticed that "The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain" is being shown constantly on TV. Not just on one channel, but multiple ones, that I'm not aware are affiliated.
I mean, the Indiana Jones movies are aired at least once a year, on some channel or another, but "The Englishman..." has been shown a lot in the span of maybe just a year.
So, what are some movies that seem to be aired on TV very often where you live?
In the UK it seemed that The Mummy was being shown every weekend for a while.
It amazes me that out of the millions of movies that are available the same one gets repeated over and over!
It might be that channels are trying to get their money's worth out of the movie package they buy. And maybe some movies are so cheap they get them with something else. I don't remember exactly how it works lol
But both seem so be inaquous fun, family oriented movies, that you don't need to be very involved in, so maybe that has something to do with it.
There aren't many movie channels on US cable, unless you pay for premium channels... like Starz, HBO, Cinemax, Showtime.
The only good one is TCM... maybe IFC or Sundance plays some decent movies but I think they have commercials.
Movieplex doesn't have commercials but it usually plays mediocre movies over and over. I can't tell what they are because life is too short to watch bad films on purpose.
There aren't a ton of movie specific channels here either, I don't think. And of course the quality varies and you get the same 5 movies shown over and over on some of them. If I had to guess, I'd say we have more channels whose programming is entirely made of TV shows. The only premium channels I can think of are HBO/Cinemax and sports channels. Don't networks with mixed programming show movies?
We also get a lot of foreign channels, some show movies, but some don't have translation. And the Germans dub everything... I recently found a set of Serbian channels that show a good variety of movies, but I'm limited to stuff that's in English. I was so excited for Delicatessen the other day, and then I remembered it's in French, and I can't read Serbian well or quick enough to understand the subtitles.
Anyway, TMI maybe lol. But even if you don't really watch them, you might notice something being shown with unusual frequency just channel surfing.
F/X, TNT... some of these mixed programming stations do show films but the ads are so long and frequent that it makes the experience unwatchable... I own many dvds/blurays so I have a lot of films to watch and I do pay for cable, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon... once in awhile I'll watch a bootleg stream if I can't find it... but I try hard to pay for shows because I want the industry to survive. I go to movies in the theater too.
I'd like to watch more Eastern European films... It's hard to tell which ones are good because like Indian and Turkish films... many of their IMDB ratings are overinflated especially Serbian films. I tried to watch Pretty Village Pretty Flame... but the quality of the stream was poor and probably the subtitles. It seemed interesting, but much seemed lost in translation. Maybe one day I'll find a blog where someone explains the best films to watch from that area.
I'm not as familiar with EE cinema, as a whole, as I'd like to be either. Some ratings are inflated, but sometimes the rating has to do with the cultural relevance of the film, or that it speaks to the local audience in a way that a foreigner wouldn’t necessarily fully “get”. Especially when it comes to comedies, so much of the humour is in the language or is so culturally specific, that there's no way to translate that into English without losing something.
Anyway, something I feel comfortable recommending is The Unknown Soldier's Patent Leather Shoes (Лачените Обувки На Незнайния Войн, 1979). I think it’s a really interesting film, despite its cultural specificity. Plus it's on Youtube and DVD with English subs. There are probably others as well, but I can't think of any right now :)
Thanks! I'll try and check that one out.
shareMy basic cable has quite a lot of channels that play movies.
AMC
TCM
TNT
TBS
Lifetime
Lifetime Movie Network
Sci-Fi
GRIT
Bounce
Comet
This
There could be more but can't think of them right now.
Jurassic Park always seems to be on.
shareOn the Movies channel they couldn't let a week go by without a John Wayne movie. It's usually Rio Bravo and of course, Rio Grande. Most days it's westerns but they lean toward John Wayne the most.
shareI also wish there was more variety, Forrest Gump is on every few weeks, great movie, but it doesn't need to be shown so often, Shawshank Redemption, Rocky, The Godfather, Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, Mrs. Doubtfire, Westerns with Clint Eastwood and John Wayne.
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