In this show we revisit a true classic - The Seven Year Itch (1955) a romantic comedy from director Billy Wilder, starring the legendary Marilyn Monroe!
Showing posts with label classic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label classic. Show all posts
Saturday, 19 October 2024
Commentary Club 103 - The Seven Year Itch
Friday, 6 September 2024
COMMENTARY CLUB 100 - Planet of the Apes
"Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!"
For our hundredth episode we revisit one of the greatest science fiction films of all time - the original Planet of the Apes (1969) starring Charlton Heston, Kim Hunter and Roddy McDowell.
Saturday, 27 January 2024
Commentary Club 088 - King Kong (1933)
First show of a new year and we are looking at an all-time classic - the original King Kong from 1933!
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Saturday, 23 December 2023
COMMENTARY CLUB CHRISTMAS SPECIAL - White Christmas
For this year's Christmas special, we are going for a old fashioned classic - White Christmas (1954) starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen.
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Saturday, 18 November 2023
COMMENTARY CLUB 085 - Dawn of the Dead (1978)
"When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth!"
This time we are doing one of the kings of cult movies - George A Romero's zombie masterpiece - Dawn of the Dead! And what's more, we are looking at the longest version - the Cannes Cut - for full fat zombie apocalypse action!
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Saturday, 2 September 2023
COMMENTARY CLUB 081 - The Muppet Movie
For our classic film selection this time, it was Teresa's pick which will bring us such cinematic firsts as a frog riding a bicycle! Yes it's The Muppet Movie (1979), the first big screen outing for everyone's fuzzy friends!
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Sunday, 10 April 2022
HYPNOGORIA 210 - Nightmares of Nosferatu Part III - Orlock Unleashed
In this chapter we untangle the twisted tale of Nosferatu's rampage in cinemas, and chronicle how the vile Graf Orlock faced his most deadly foe, Florence Stoker, who very nearly succeeded in having the film destroyed by fire forever!
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Tuesday, 19 January 2021
COMMENTARY CLUB 042 - Jack the Giant Killer
In this podcast we go back to 1962 for a classic fantasy adventure Jack the Giant Killer! A magical tale based on British folklore starring Kerwin Matthews and Torin Thatcher, directed Nathan Juran, and with creature FX by Jim Danforth.
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Thursday, 17 December 2020
COMMENTARY CLUB CHRISTMAS SPECIAL 2020 - Scrooged
For our Christmas special this year we have a real classic - the celebrated comedy take on A Christmas Carol starring Bill Murray and Karen Allen - Scrooged (1988)!
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Saturday, 14 November 2020
COMMENTARY CLUB 039 - The African Queen
Can you make a torpedo? Join us on an epic adventure across Africa with some Hollywood's brightest stars as we revisit a true classic - The African Queen (1951) starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn and directed by John Huston.
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Thursday, 9 July 2020
COMMENTARY CLUB MINISODES 19 - The Black Adder - The Black Seal
In the next of our stay in, stay safe comedy podcasts, we look at the sixth and final episode of The Black Adder - the tragic tale of the Black Seal! The most cunning plan and the most evil men in England plot to take the crown... Who will survive, and what will be left of them?
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Friday, 14 February 2020
COMMENTARY CLUB - Valentines Day Special - Hellraiser
DIRECT DOWNLOAD - Valentines Day Special - Hellraiser
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Thursday, 16 January 2020
COMMENTARY CLUB 22 - Seventh Voyage of Sinbad
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Sunday, 24 February 2019
GREAT LIBRARY OF DREAMS 57 - The Story of Medhans Lea
DIRECT DOWNLOAD - The Story of Medhans Lea
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Sunday, 3 February 2019
GREAT LIBRARY OF DREAMS 56 - The Monkey's Paw by WW Jacobs
Mr Jim Moon reads one of the all time classic tales of terror - The Monkey's Paw by WW Jacobs
DIRECT DOWNLOAD - The Monkey's Paw by WW Jacobs
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Saturday, 20 October 2018
Commentary Club 001 - Monty Python and the Holy Grail
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Saturday, 22 March 2014
MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975)
Now what can be said of such a classic comedy movie from one of the greatest comedy group ever that hasn't already been said? And doesn't just descend into a tangle of quotes lines?
Well this... (which you may read in an outRAGEous French accent Cleese style if it helps)
...To start with, it's often overlooked how well-filmed this movie is. Directed by the two Terrys, both had little experience behind the camera but both had plenty of ideas how it should be done. And indeed the pair proceeded to drive the rest of the Pythons and the crew completely nuts by making them stand around for ages until they could get the perfect. And the bulk of filming was outdoors on locations, this meant waiting until the weather would deign to cooperate.
However their patience did pay huge dividends, for just look at the use of light and shadow and the dramatic cloudscapes they capture in this movie. Seriously folks, you don't often see such painterly cinematography, mainly because experienced directors wont waste time and money waiting for the bloody weather to get its act together. However I'd also argue that few directors have the same kind of visual imagination of the Pythons that leads to standing around in drizzle just waiting for that moment when the sun breaks through the shot will look like a painting by an old master.
The other mostly over-looked point concerns the film's structure itself. The plot line is fragmented and almost non-linear, and many have pointed and said it is just a set of themed sketches. And furthermore, the received wisdom goes this was because the Pythons were coming to the big screen from a small screen sketch show. Indeed their first foray into cinema - And Now for Something Completely Different (1971) - had been just a re-filming of a selection of sketches from their TV show. And hence Monty Python and the Holy Grail is often seen as an interstitial stage between their original sketch show and the full fledged comedy narrative of their next movie, arguably their cinema masterpiece, The Life of Brian (1979).
But hold on! While that theory fits a nice pattern, it based upon looking at the history of the performers rather than the background of the source material the movie is parodying. Yes, we all know that the Pythons are having a surreal laugh at the legend of King Arthur.... but which legend? Unlike other classic myths and folk tales, there is no definitive version of the Arthurian stories. Rather there is a great swath of different versions all telling different stories, with an array of different knights, and many of them are incompatible and contradictory. Most don't tell the whole of King Arthur story, frequently being episodic and lacking a proper end.... Sound familiar?
Yes folks, the ramshackle structure that veering all over the place like a pair of coconut laden swallows in a high wind isn't just sketch based comedian not knowing how to construct a feature length story for the big screen, but a joke in itself on the nature of Arthurian legends!
Now go away before ah taunt you a second time!
Sunday, 20 February 2011
HYPNOBOBS 21 - The Horla by Guy de Maupassant
It's back to the fireside once more this week, as Mr Jim Moon delves into classic French literature to unearth a seminal vampiric tale of creeping fear, dread and madness, THE HORLA by Guy de Maupassant...
DIRECT DOWNLOAD - HYPNOBOBS 21 - The Horla by Guy de Maupassant
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Monday, 22 November 2010
Dig For Victory - The Glory of MINECRAFT !
Back when video games were young and dinosaurs ruled the earth, I recall that one fine day an old chum came to visit. Having tethered his pteradon, he dashed up the drive way carrying a strange black box and demanded access to my television’s rear. Despite fearing that my idiot lantern was about to be molested, I let him have his way...
...And thankfully rather than being an early form of teledildonics, that black box of tricks turned out to be was the ill-fated Sega Saturn and what he had to show me was the father of the RTS genre, the original Command & Conquer which he memorably described as “like playing with Airfix toy soldiers again... But the best thing is you don’t have to do all that tedious tidying ‘em away afterwards!”. Needless to say I was very soon hooked again on video games, and the release of the sequel Red Alert was a major factor in buying my first proper PC, and so without that game you might not be here today reading this rambling introduction.
However aside from commanding miniature plastic armies, my favourite toy was Lego. These incredibly painful to stand on in bare feet building blocks* dominated my childhood – a Lego set was one of the earliest Christmas presents I remember, and the huge crate of bricks it eventually became was the last toy to be resigned to the darkness of the attic.
Now there have been many games over the years, including the original Command & Conquer, that have in some way recaptured the love of building stuff that Lego used to deliver. However despite the extensive world building offered by many titles down the years, none have quite completely captured the joys of those multi-coloured plastic bricks, even games bearing the Lego name. That is until the dawn of Minecraft
WARNING! Reading further may lead to you never getting a single damn thing done ever again!
No, seriously! This game is probably more addictive than crack, more dangerous than cake, and more reality warping than the true black meat (the flesh of giant aquatic Brazilian centipede)!
And I take no responsibility for loss of earnings, health issues, relationship break-downs, or any other resultant conditions or circumstances stemming from becoming a minerholic after reading this review...
So with that dire warning and ad hoc legally binding agreement in place, now read on...
To quote its maker, "Minecraft is a game about placing blocks while running away from skeletons. Or something like that”.
What? That’s not sold you already? Oh alright...
In my previous musings on video games, I remarked on my worries that as the hardware wars progress, with bigger and flashier consoles flooding the market on a regular basis, that little attention was being paid actual gameplay, and that the imagination and creativity of blokes hammering out code in bedrooms that spawned so many classic titles over the years was being lost in a fog of corporations and a mire of massive development teams. Indeed it would seem to appear that increasingly modern games are simply retreads of old titles in new and gaudier clothes; fifth hand ideas and concepts tarted up with graphics many times more advanced than their sources but often delivering a fraction of the gameplay of their grandfather titles.
However Minecraft is a glorious return to the days of independent development – it’s wonderfully imaginative, utterly immersive and serves up hours of fun. It’s the creation of just one guy - Markus Alexej Persson, or Notch as he is known to minecrafters the world over. It’s a sandbox game that has been released online - www.minecraft.net
- which you can play in your web browser, or if you buy it, download and play offline. And even though it’s not actually finished yet, already the game is becoming something of a phenomenon.
Minecraft comes in two flavours Classic and Alpha. Classic is available to play for free online and is an early incarnation of the game. It’s missing a lot of the features now in the current version Alpha, but it does give you a taste of what it’s all about, so do go and have a look for yourselves!
On your first look at the world of Minecraft Classic, if you’re not into retro-gaming you may well wonder what all the fuss is about as the graphics look somewhat primitive. But once you start wandering about a bit it all starts to make sense – it’s like rambling through a brand new world made from Lego; it’s colourful and slightly surreal as everything is made from blocks including the shining square sun but utterly charming.
You have an inventory of different blocks and items to build with. A left click with the mouse lets you dig by destroying blocks in the landscape and right clicking places a new block or item. Now although there are no enemies to fight or stuff to harvest and make, it is tremendous fun just messing about trying to build something. A simple pleasure to be sure, but after a few hours of arsing around attempting making a house and generally having a whale of a time, I was warming up the old credit card to get the full version Alpha.
Now Alpha, again the game randomly generates a world composed of blocks and you are free to explore, build and generally muck about to your hearts content. There are no missions, levels or any of that bobbins – you are completely free to do as you will. Of course, as the game’s title suggests, there are great caverns beneath the earth to discover and forgotten dungeons filled with goodies to loot and baddies to vanquish.
But unlike Classic, in this world you have to collect all the blocks you need, so you have to harvest wood, hunt animals, make tools, dig for ore and make all kinds of gadgets and items. However in Alpha the perpetual sunny afternoon of Classic is gone and there is a day and night cycle... And at night the monsters spawn; giant spiders and zombies that reckon you are tea, vicious skeletons that will turn you into a pin cushion with their deadly arrows, and the dreaded creepers which sidle up to you and explode, not only killing you but blowing up everything nearby.
"Sod off! I'm trying to build an aqueduct!"
When you die you respawn and there are no limits to the amount of lives you have. Now some might say that this effectively takes away any challenge, but believe me dying is to be avoided. You see, when you die you drop all the equipment and goodies you’ve gathered, which is a major pain when you’ve worked for ages to create some high quality armour and diamond tools and are loaded to the gills with precious materials. Usually most of it will be lying at the site of your death to pick up again but it is a major headache to reclaim it if that location happens to be far away from the fixed point where you always respawn and/or in an area crawling with monsters.
But while the assorted monsters provide the necessary degree of challenge for a good game, the real fun comes with the creativity. To begin with, a tremendous amount of imagination has gone into the game design, such as a very clever system of crafting different items by combining them in different patterns on a 3 x 3 grid in the inventory. And in terms of gameplay, it’s great fun to try out different combinations of things to and see what appears. But also the game really fires your own imagination – once you get your living arrangements sorted out, do you want to go exploring, delve into dungeons, start farming or perhaps build a giant statue of Homer Simpson?
The genius of Minecraft is that you can do all these things and more. It combines the best elements of RTS, god sims, first person shooters and RPGs but also manages to be a canvas for your creativity. And almost equally addictive as the game itself is looking online at what other people have created in their blocky Edens. YouTube is awash with videos of folk showing off their endeavours - for example, here's a fellow who is building a 1.1 scale replica of the New Gen Enterprise! Impressive stuff to be sure but this team project - a recreation of York Minister in Minecraft - is even more breath taking. Check out these shots - here's an exterior view and this is the choir and altar inside. However to see really see the full beauty of this epic Minecraft construction, check out this video that shows it's construction and tours the finished edifice. It is truly incredible what wonders you can create in this game!
One word of warning however, Minecraft comes with no instructions and you will need to regularly consult the Minepedia wiki to identify items you’ve found or things you’ve encountered. However I’m sure that eventually the game itself will incorporate a tutorial and tool tips. So then, when starting out I would recommend checking out this First Night Survival Guide.
Also if you want to see the game in action and gains some handy advice for how to play, I highly recommend watching SeaNanners' series of Minecraft videos on YouTube. Not only are they are wonderful introduction to how the game plays and a great source of tips, they are also highly entertaining, and often hilarious.
Dawn chez Moon
As I said earlier Minecraft still isn’t actually finished. However it is still fully playable, with the updates being tweaks and additional fun stuff. For example, a major update was released this Halloween which along with adding the ability to make jack-o-lanterns out of pumpkins, introduced a whole other dimension, the Nether to travel to via magic portals. This spooky realm is the Minecraft equivalent of Hell - full of new strange creatures and resources.
And if you do buy Alpha, all subsequent updates and upgrades are free. But as the game is still being developed, Minecraft is currently going for half price which is just under a tenner. Now this is an absolute bargain, but in all fairness, it will still be a steal at £20 when it’s finished.
Why? Well it’s simply the sheer amount of time you can lose playing this game – these days most big name games are often only delivering 20 or 30 hours of gaming before the story runs out. But with Minecraft, as it’s a sandbox game, the only end is when you’ve decided you’ve had enough, and oh boy do you get a lot of game time out of Minecraft - I’ve only had the purchase version for four days and already I’ve had well over 30 hours of gameplay out of it and I’m still just getting to grips with the basics of the game!
But aside from delivering the very best value for money, Minecraft is just an absolute joy to play. I don’t know about you, but I’ve found that over the years increasingly mission and level based games often end up uncompleted in my hands for the simple reason that after a while the game just starts to become more a chore than a fun challenge. Let’s be honest, often in a shooter or RTS you end up wishing they’d just ditch the *ahem* story line, which seems to involve each progressive level becoming more of a massive pain in the arse, and just let you play with all the toys in the game world.
But Minecraft let’s you completely off the leash, with the great god Notch giving you a world of your very own and saying ‘Go ahead, play!”. You make your own story in this game, and whether it turns out be a tale of being the architect of wondrous castles, a farmer, a delver in the dim secrets being the earth’s crust, or even a landscape artist, it’s never anything less than complete fun.
Call me cynical but the bigger the games market becomes it seems the less game content we are being delivered - as games studios always have their eyes on flogging you an expansion pack or a revamped version the following year. Minecraft feels like a return to the simpler values of old – born of a desire to create a fun filled game that you can happily play with for weeks rather than just a handful of hours. And this desire to simply make an excellent game shines through in the myriad ways you can amuse yourself in a world of brightly coloured blocks.
In short, Minecraft is a real triumph of rewarding gameplay over flashy gimmicks, and proof that one man with imagination is still more than a match for bloatware titles made by vast development teams. It’s also a massive victory for independent development and distribution. But perhaps best of all Minecraft is a gigantic win for gamers everywhere.
*”Put your slippers on!!!” – my Mum, virtually every day as a nipper
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
LATE NIGHT DOUBLE FEATURE
Cinema and television have developed a curious relationship which over the years has blossomed into a strange form of sibling rivalry. The pair are repeatedly waging war for the hearts and minds of viewers; whenever annoying little brother TV starts acting up and getting all the attention, Cinema is quick to cry “it’s not fair!” and then hits him over the head with a pair of 3d specs when Mother’s not looking. However like the best squabbling brothers, should Cousin Radio or Uncle Theatre proclaim them both to be vapid idiots, they will rapidly form a united front. And when it comes to the new arrival in the Media Family, little Baby Internet, the pair stick together so tightly you couldn’t squeeze a post card between ‘em…
But in recent years, the dynamics of their relationship has started to alter significantly. After their initial bickering in the ‘50s when the cathode ray tube started making eyes at the silver screen’s audience, there was a long period of almost détente. In the following decades, where everyone knew whose toys were whose: TV could show movies after a set period of years had elapsed and this arrangement worked well – the movie studios got cash for old flicks and the networks go audience grabbing movie premieres. But then in 1980’s TV got pally with a snotty little kid from next door called Video…
Now at first, Hollywood saw this new comer as just another dirty trick in the audience wars from television. But after a time, it became clear that the new kid was just a big thorn in the side to television networks as it was to cinema. For while the theatre chains may have start bringing in more screens, lower prices and suffer all the technical palaver of a 3D revival, the studios were coining it in from video rentals and too a lesser extent sales. Whereas the television premiere of a movie was no longer quite the big event it used to be, and reruns of old films were not longer picking up the audiences as they used now Hollywood’s back catalogue was increasingly being released on video. However the limitations of the video format meant that movies on TV still had an audience as television could deliver far superior picture quality and sound than your average rental cassette. Plus the advent of cable and satellite channels ensured movies would get to the old goggle-box just as quickly as they hit the rental stores.
However little did anyone realise that the snot-nosed brat would grow up and spawn DVD and home cinema – a new generation that has well and truly put the wind up both Cinema and TV. Renting videos was a popular past-time – a trip to ye olde video shop was a staple of the weekend entertainment for everyone growing up in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s – however sales of movies on video was always more modest. However with the advent of films on shiny CD sized discs, suddenly we all went mental for building our own film libraries – alleged in just their first few years in the shops, DVD sales topped the amount of pre-recorded videos bought ever.
And while the film studios and theatre are rushing back to 3D to save box office takings and hastily looking to upgrade older venues, at the end of the day, despite all the carping the cinema will survive and continue to do what it always has done with very little actual change. Even in the face of the coming brave new digital world, which the internet is merely the embryonic stage of, the movies will continue thanks to their ace in the hole – bloody gigantic screens. And until we all live in a decadent society where we all dwell in mansions, the appeal of seeing something yards high will always get bums on seats.
But for TV, it’s a different story; these days television is largely turning away from movie screenings to win big audiences. They will still bother to acquire blockbuster titles to wheel out for the holidays, but increasingly for peak viewing times such as Christmas they are looking to reap the really big ratings with a reality TV final or a special episode of a flagship series. Increasingly move showing are just filler rather than the rating magnet in a schedule. After all, in world where you can pick up just about any movie reasonably cheaply on disc, and soon with a mere click of a mouse, there’s no need for television to be screening movies anymore.
The upside of all of this is that the quality of TV shows is undoubtedly rising; no more do television series look like the poor country cousins of cinema outings. But aside from smarting up their act in the production values department, we are seeing something of a renaissance in television drama with hosts of interesting new shows flourishing on both sides of the Atlantic.
But there is a serious downside to all of this. These days we take for granted the on demand access we enjoy to cinema’s past. However before the VCR appeared, it was a very different story. If you didn’t see a movie at the theatre that was it; it was gone and unless there was a re-release to theatres or it appeared at a film festival, the only chance you had of seeing it again was a television screening.
All of which I know it sounds like utter insanity now, in a world where you can buy Avatar on disc even though it’s still showing in some theatres. And make no mistake, I’m far happier living a world where I can revisit obscure classics like Carnival of Souls or Here We Go Around The Mulberry Bush anytime I like, rather having to sacrifice black cats to the dark gods of TV scheduling in the vain hope of a rare screening in the dead of night.
But, it has to be said there was a kind of magic to those pre-video days. Every week you’d scan the TV listings, paying meticulous attention into the afternoons and late night slots where many an old gem was tucked away, looking out for particular titles to appear in the schedules. And then having swept the lists for showing of those movies you were dying to see, you’d cross reference any film showing on the idiot lantern that week with your reference books, making sure you weren’t going to miss some previously unheard of treat. Then finally often you’d end up watching any movie that was on, as it was our only chance of seeing at all.
Bah, you kids have it easy these days! And get off my lawn!
But possibly pointless nostalgia for those long ago times when it was a lot harder to be a film fan aside, I do have a serious concern about living in the Magic Land of On Demand. And that is, with the option to watch anything you fancy, at any time, budding film buffs are far less likely to stumble across old classics and obscure curios, the way us old gits did.
Here in the UK the venerable BBC, and to lesser extent Channel 4, used to do a sterling job in putting together whole seasons of themed movies. Now around the turn of millennium, note just before the DVD effect really hit the film/TV relationship, Channel 4 decided to flush intelligent programming down the pan and set about devolving into a station devoted to bloody Big Brother and endless repeats of soddin’ Friends. But also, sadly the showings of vintage films began to disappear from the Beeb throughout the Noughties too. And in this case, the decline in film season on the BBC seemed to operate in tandem with us all building film archives in our own living rooms. And now none of the major networks are doing much at all to introduce viewers to cinema history anymore.
And judging from my experiences channel surfing while on trips to the USA, over the pond the situation is no better either. Even with the hundreds of channels available to viewers on both sides of the Atlantic, you’re hard pressed to find much movie-wise that wasn’t made in the last ten years.
All of which is a bit of shame, particularly as the BBC is one of the few networks that doesn’t screen adverts during its programs – an ideal arrangement for film buffs who don’t want to see a director’s vision buggered up with vapid tosh about margarine. And while I don’t miss the days when you had to stay up half the night just to catch a rerun of an old AIP flick before it was cast back into viewing oblivion, the on demand world is robbing us of the delights of stumbling across an old gem you’ve never heard of by chance. While I grant that you may discover some vintage flick occasionally in the morass of cable or satellite, such token and random showings just don’t really compare with a properly scheduled season of movies on one of the major channels i.e. where a wide general audience will discover them.
Now I cut my film buff teeth on the seasons of late night horror films the BBC used to run on Saturday nights throughout the ‘70s and early ‘80s - I have written before of the influence of these double features. And it is quite telling that when I started this reviewing lark, my first point of call was the old Universal horrors I’d enjoyed so much as a child, and indeed my very first review mentioned these BBC2 horror seasons.
I came to these films purely for the monsters and scares, which indeed they did deliver. But I came away with far more – encountering classic directors diverse as Robert Wise and George Romero, intelligent producers like Val Lewton, effects wizards like Roy Ashton and Phil Leakey, and a host of wonderful performers from yesteryear too numerous to mention. Moreover I learned that film had a history to study, that who was directing and what studio produce the movie was a better indicator of quality than who starred in it, and how to appreciate movies made with an entirely different visual grammar to that I was used to.
As I’ve said before horror is a broad church and when you get into the full historical spread of the genre it leads you out of the ghetto of B movies into green and pleasant lands of cinema as an art form. In this sense, horror is a gateway drug to art house, foreign film, and silent cinema, not to mention opening doors to literature too. Although traditionally derided by mainstream critics, increasingly there are many in the business of cinema, both film makers and reviewers, who got the movie bug via classic shockers and monster flicks.
Hence I can’t help feeling that the BBC is letting down budding film fans. Horror often has a big appeal to the young and so re-airing some of the old masters would be an ideal way to get people interested in films on TV again. And while I fully appreciate that a season of obscure French nouvelle vague flicks would most likely be ratings death, I’m sure that a season of classic horrors could find a reasonable audience and fire the imaginations of a new generation.
And I am not alone as there is a campaign to persuade the BBC to revive the tradition of the late night double features…
The details are here at the campaign’s blog.
Plus there is a Facebook page here.
Also you can post remarks onto this thread at the Beeb’s Points of View website.
And finally, and most importantly, the petition is here for you all to sign.
And please, please, please do sign. As there is a wider issue here than just bringing the likes of Lugosi and Lee, Universal and Amicus and sundry other creatures of the night back into the public consciousness, because if this campaign is a success it’s just the first step in getting classic cinema back into the schedules properly.
For too long, TV has been stuck in a rut, rerunning the recent blockbusters we’ve all seen already either in theatres or on disc. And frankly as the reach of the on demand world grows larger there is increasingly little future in this approach. But since the turn of the century, we’ve seen a boom in festival events and conventions – contrary to the predictions that the digital age would turn us all into web potatoes, it seems like the internet has prompted more people tha never before to meet up and host events for like minded individuals.
And so I believe there is a market and an audience just waiting to be discovered if channels like the BBC, who wish to uphold such Reithian values of informing and entertaining, were to start and presenting seasons of vintage movies as film festivals for your living room. Indeed rather than the endless screening of the box office big guns we already have in our DVD collections anyway, such virtual cinema festivals could well be the real future for film on television.
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