SBS loves the smell of celluloid on Saturdays
SBS ONE will be screening classic war films from this Saturday night, beginning with Apocalypse Now.
- Published by David Knox
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SBS ONE will be screening classic war films from this Saturday night, beginning with Apocalypse Now (1979).
Next week it has Full Metal Jacket (1987), with Empire of the Sun (1987) and Life is Beautiful (1997) also on the way.
Meanwhile Movie Mayhem with Marc Fennell (he would be the film critic who is not retiring) returns next Wednesday night with the sci-fi Gantz 1 & 2
Apocalypse Now Redux
From Francis Ford Coppola comes the ground-breaking masterpiece, Apocalypse Now, starring Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, and Robert Duvall. The movie follows the central character, U.S. Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard on a mission to kill the renegade and presumed insane U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel Walter E. Kurtz.
8:30pm Saturday SBS ONE.
15 Responses
For people losing sight of the SBS Charter.
sbs.com.au/aboutus/corporate/index/id/25/h/sbs-charter
People might also remind themselves that SBS has a substantial radio network in addition to its television channels. And a budget to live within.
I don’t mind SBS showing these particular movies, but I won’t be watching.
Movies with advertisements embedded and the station watermark on screen the whole time? I don’t think so!
Foxtel movie channels with no ads once the movie starts, and no screen clutter for me.
They showed them all last year too. Apocalypse Now is a bloated if brilliant film, the Redux version is positively obese created to sell more DVDs. Dredging whatever old stuff you show every year from your vaults on a theme isn’t much a of film festival.
Yes foreign settings but Full Metal Jacket was filmed in England with transplanted Spanish Palm trees (which is why the landscape looks like something out of a bad SF film) and Apocalypse Now was filmed in and around Manilla. They were both made for middle class white audiences, which gives aways SBS’s target demographics these days.
@Dr_Rudi: Bend It Like Beckham and The Queen were both played numerous times on commercial TV which is what I was referring to in my initial comment.
As I’ve already said I don’t have an issue with English-language movies or content on SBS but does it need to be recycling content already played over and over on commercial TV.
@ Andrew – I take it you missed the recent series of British films then. that Sandy Gore presented ?
Nowhere Boy, Bend It Like Beckham, The Queen, Match Point, Ghost Writer ….
Really, a more mature approach in future thanks.
The Curiosity in this lineup for me is Empire of the Sun (A great film) I recorded this a few months ago when it was on Gem on a Saturday arvo.
Apocalypse Now Redux has been on Ch10 a couple of times.
Full Metal Jacket has been on SBS once or twice.
Life is Beautiful- it will be interesting if they show the Dubbed version or the one in Italian with English Subtitles. Both versions are included on the DVD/Blu Ray as a 2 disc set..
This is hardly new territory, SBS screened Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket ages ago as part of their Stanley Kubrick showcase. That they are willing to show longer ‘arthouse’-y films is one of their points of difference, just sayin’.
MJL-the redux/director’s cut AN has been shown previously by CH 10-is now the default version shown as is the case with Terminator 2 and Aliens.
? The directors of these movies include Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Stanley Kubrick, the bodies of work are critically acclaimed. I believe SBS’s charter is to show the very best films by the very best directors.
And of course, we can’t forget that SBS ran a festival of Stanley Kubrick’s films, a documentary about Kubrick and even an April Fool’s mocumentary about how he was employed to fake the Moon landings.
Wish they would show Hamburger Hill.
SBS are actually showing Apocalypse Now Redux.
It goes for nearly an hour longer than the standard version and I doubt any commercial networks has ever shown it.
Point taken with Life Is Beautiful.
But I don’t have an issue with SBS showing English-language films but rather they seem to be going down this track of showing mainstream US or UK films that have in some instances been shown already a number of times on commercial TV.
Fine for them to show English-language films but SBS has always had a unique take on what movies it picks up, now it’s just picking up the dregs that commercial networks are seemingly not interested in anymore. They are meant to be the network with a defined point of difference, not more of the same.
This is new for them to be showing big budget Hollywood movies that have been shown (and often) by the commercial channels-first time I can remember this happening-‘Sin City’ (on SBS tonight) was on only a few weeks ago or so…
Life is Beautiful is foreign language so I presume no objection there. The others are US blockbusters albeit with foreign settings. That said, SBS has been airing English-speaking movies for years.
Really, SBS? Is this really adhering to your charter??