Films On Terrestrial Channels Late At Night.

[Rolf Lundgren]

BBC2 showing 2001 the other week and BBC1 showing Die Hard With a Vengeance on Saturday night took me back to when this was a more regular thing. There's something about these being on terrestrial channels that make them more appealing to watch and I'm not entirely sure why. If Die Hard for example was on Film 4, movies 24 or some other Freeview channel I wouldn't have been bothered but because it was BBC1 I stuck with it. I would suppose it's because it feels like more of a collective, shared experience even though really it isn't.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I always thought quantel was mostly clever switching tech.

Throw momma off the train and serial mom are another pair of classics.

[Delete Delete Delete]

I picked up a lot of my favourite films from those Rebel Teen seasons they used to have on Channel 4. Heathers, Pump Up The Volume, Dazed And Confused, Poison Ivy and The Warriors.

[mothman]

Die Hard WAV was on AGAIN?! It's genuinely been on BBC1 at least twice a year, going back a few. Don't they have anything else to show? Funny thing is though, it's aged much better than the first two.

[Dr Rock]

Nothing has aged better than Die Hard 1.

[hewantstolurkatad]

In Ireland, on RTE2 for years you had them fulfilling some kind of cultural EU broadcasting obligation by showing a film from somewhere else in Europe every Thursday at approx 00:30. You pretty much had a 50/50 split of things that were well good or at least international hits (ones which stand out include a ton of Almodovar and Kaurismaki, Werckmeister Harmonies, Das Boot, Good Bye Lenin), and random stuff that had like a couple dozen ratings on IMDb and seemed to have done well at the one festival they screened at.

TG4 a few years earlier had a much more interesting range of non-English language films on Friday nights. I was way too young to remember many but I definitely saw Akira Kurosawa's Dreams and I'm pretty sure I saw Man Bites Dog.



Much less familiar with english output. I kind of feel like a lot of the stranger stuff on BBC was supplanted by Northern Ireland specific stuff a lot of the time?

[buzby]

Slight deviation, but what typically generated the graphics on most 90's sci-fi? Usually they were supposedly supercomputers but they usually used telly/cga monitors with quite obvious composite effects like dot crawl.

Do ypu mean the CGI effects shots, or the stuff that appears on monitors built into the sets?

Before editing and prints went digital, each frame of a CGI effect shot would be rendered and output to a special high-resolution CRT monitor that would project the image onto a film negative. Each frame was usually sanned in 3 passes, one of reach of the primary colours to maximise resolution. Later on laser based scanners were developed that output the raster image line by line directly onto the negative (like a laser printer for film).

For TV shows that were shot direct to video (like B5) they used video sync/genlock interfaces like the Video Toaster (they only used an Amiga to drive it for S1). They never produced a PAL version though, so in the UK you would have to use something more like the dedicated (and very expensive0 Quadtel Paintbox video effects and graphics system.

The stuff for monitors and CRTs on sets was usually done as video loops (in the very early days like HAL's monitors in 2001 they used back-projected film) The refresh frequency of the monitors would be changed to prevent any flickering effect due to the shutter speed or scan rate of the cameras

[Blumf]

... the film has without doubt the most alarming final shot of any movie ever produced, to the extent that I don't think it's actually broadcastable anymore. Spoiler: it's a crash zoom into a baby boy's down belows, accompanied by the sound of an old lady screaming.

On TalkingPictures at the moment they're rotating a film called Payroll (1961). In one of the early scenes you see a man come home to his family, the wife is in the bathroom washing their young daughter (2-ish?) and the image of the girl has obviously been blurred out recently.

Pretty sad state of affairs. Evidently, back in the day, nobody batter an eyelid at a kid in a normal kid situation, but now we've got to stop the paedos crawling into their TV screens.

The film's pretty decent, give it a punt. Filmed around Gateshead and Newcastle upon Tyne, which make a change.

[SteveDave]

I remember seeing "Head" the Monkees film on S4C late one Friday night when I was about 17. I remember laughing heartily at "Weeeeell, let me tell you one thing son...nobody ever lends money to a man with a sense of humo(u)r" and the fact that Peter was whistling "Strawberry Fields Forever" as he entered the bathroom at the start of that scene. I bought the soundtrack the day after.

Another one was the French film "Sitcom" on Channel 4 a few years later. When I bought it on video a few years later still I was shocked to see an erect penis between some breasts in one scene cut for TV.

When I say shocked I mean delighted.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Another one was the French film "Sitcom" on Channel 4 a few years later. When I bought it on video a few years later still I was shocked to see an erect penis between some breasts in one scene cut for TV.

When I say shocked I mean delighted.

A couple of years ago around Christmas I went to the cinema to see Trading Places having only seen it on the telly before. Seeing JLC inexplicably get her breasts out was a bit of a 'well I don't remember that!' moment.

[Gulftastic]

A couple of years ago around Christmas I went to the cinema to see Trading Places having only seen it on the telly before. Seeing JLC inexplicably get her breasts out was a bit of a 'well I don't remember that!' moment.

I've never seen a version of that film without that scene. It's one of the top three 'norks out' scenes in cinema history.

The others are her out off of Baywatch in 'Under Seige' and Halle Berry in 'Swordfish'.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I've never seen a version of that film without that scene. It's one of the top three 'norks out' scenes in cinema history.

The others are her out off of Baywatch in 'Under Seige' and Halle Berry in 'Swordfish'.

I certainly don't remember it from the numerous times I saw it on telly. I also didn't remember the topless ladies in the party he was having where he chucks them out for having no respect for the house.

[Gulftastic]

I certainly don't remember it from the numerous times I saw it on telly. I also didn't remember the topless ladies in the party he was having where he chucks them out for having no respect for the house.

Are you watching in the UK?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Are you watching in the UK?

Yes.

[Wet Blanket]

There's a tit version and a non-tit version

From IMDB

When Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis) takes Louis (Dan Ackroyd) home with her, she undresses and examines her makeup in a large vanity mirror. In the theatrical release, she is bare-breasted; the scene was filmed again with her clothed for the television version.

[Sin Agog]

There's a tit version and a non-tit version

From IMDB

In the censored version of her striptease from True Lies, she strips all the way down to her woolen kaftan.

[Gulftastic]

There's a tit version and a non-tit version

From IMDB

I am genuinely shocked to hear this. I have never seen this censored version. Didn't even know it existed till now.

[Phil_A]

Talking Pictures is only available on an HD Freeview box despite not being broadcast in HD!

Damn, you're right! The freeview decoder in the telly is too old to get HD channels, but I remembered I had a BT Box lying around - just plugged it in and boom, there it was (along with a few other extra channels I'd never even heard of).

[Sebastian Cobb]

Part of the Freeview HD spec involves an IPTV mechanism where the only thing transmitted is effectively a url to the stream.

My telly is just old enough it can't quite cope with it for some reason. Or it could be on the same mux as BBC Four, which is the weakest one round here and the ratty bit of coax in my gaff needs a bit of persuasion to pick it up.

[buzby]

Part of the Freeview HD spec involves an IPTV mechanism where the only thing transmitted is effectively a url to the stream.

My telly is just old enough it can't quite cope with it for some reason. Or it could be on the same mux as BBC Four, which is the weakest one round here and the ratty bit of coax in my gaff needs a bit of persuasion to pick it up.

Talking Pictures isn't an IPTV channel. They lease bandwidth off the Freeview COM7 mux. COM7 is one of the two later muxes that were added for HD and carries a mixture of SD and HD channels (CBeebies/BBC4 HD, BBC News HD Al Jazeera HD, Vintage TV, VIVA, a couple of CBS channels) nut broadcasts in DVB-T2 so you need a HD receiver to pick up the channels on it. COM7 and COM8 have not got full national coverage either.

They also lease bandwith off Sky, Virgin and Freesat if you have got any of those.

[Avril Lavigne]

A Kermode-introduced showing of Evil Dead 2 on Channel 4 in the late 90s got me into a horror obsession at 14 that has effected my life in a variety of significant ways.