Alex Cox points out something out in his article in today's Guardian Review which has been bugging me for a while: how come little or no subtitled films are shown on British TV nowadays? While I'm having a justfiable hissy fit, what about all this brilliant black and white films from a hundred years of cinema? You just know that if the buggers thought they could get away with it, we would be drip-fed colourisations of black and white films and dubbed versions of foreign films in between our dose of reality tv and watching England getting beat in various sporting events on mainstream TV.
I still get the piss ripped out of me in some quarters for admitting that I once went to see an Iranian film at the ICA - going against the grain of the chip on the shoulder workerism and inverted snobbery that I wear as a badge of honour - after doing a shift at a Warehouse I was working at ('Look at me, Ma - I'm Jude the Obscurantist') but there are so many great films out there that I can (just about) remember watching on late night BBC2 and Channel 4 years ago. Films that I know - this side of my lottery numbers coming up, and me being able to afford the collection of Tartan videos - I will never get the chance to see again. I mean films like Emir Kustirica's 'When Father Was Away On Business'; Louis Malle's 'Au Revoir Les Enfants'; Truffaut's '400 Blows'; Bertolucci's '1900' and Jean Vigo's 'Zero De Conduite' amongst many others. Brilliant, brilliant films that every bugger should get to watch just after the Weakest Link and just before Eastenders every weekday night on BBC1.
Okay that's enough pretentiousness from me, where did I put that Tom Clancy novel?
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