Tom's TV picks, week beginning 11 December 2011

Two absolute must-sees in a double-header on Thursday night:

At 10pm, SBS1 is screening Dirty Pretty Things (2002), a film which lifts the lid on the precarious existence of the hundreds of thousands of "illegal immigrants" who keep British industry, in this case hospitality, ticking over. Despite their contribution, they are harassed at every turn by heartless immigration officials, which helps of course to keep wages low and the workers scared. But in this case the workers begin to overcome their fear and take a stand. Great acting by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sophie Okonedo (who turned up recently in The Slap) and even Audrey Tatou who shows in this that she can do more than light and frothy. Sergi Lopez adds to his list of menacing roles as the evil hotel manager who is involved in a very dark scheme to exploit the hapless migrant workers.

Followed immediately afterwards by:

The Colonel (2006) (11.45pm, SBS1) in which a senior French military officer's brutal deeds in Algeria during its war of independence are exposed many years later. Blurb says: "A "Reformed Colonel" is found dead in Paris, a couple of decades after Algeria's struggle for independence was won from France. Lieutenant Galois is assigned the investigation of this murder. She receives the diary of Lieutenent Guy Rossi who served under The Colonel in Algeria in 1956, and has been reported as missing in action since 1957. The revelations found in Rossi's diary go far beyond The Colonel's actions in Algeria, and give an insight on how dirty Algeria's War for Independence really was." Directed by Costa Gavras, which is always an indicator of quality.

And, for something completely different on Friday night, the rarely-screened (and only recently rediscovered after having disappeared for decades) Wake in Fright (renamed "Outback" in international release) (1971) on ABC2 on Friday at 9.30pm. A teacher wanders into an Outback Australian town intending just to stay the night. Instead, he is quickly drawn into the town's life centred on drinking to excess, brawls and 'roo hunting. Dark black drama. An excellent antidote to the romanticisation of the Australian bush which has been a central theme of Australian nationalism since the days of Henry Lawson and The Bulletin and which continues to this day with rubbish like Baz Luhrman's Australia or pretty much any tourism promo you care to mention.

Tom's TV picks, week beginning 4 December 2011

Tuesday at 8.30pm: Go Back to Where You Came From, on SBS1. If you missed this first time around, make sure you catch it on repeat. It's reviewed here:
http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=6955:go-back-to-where-you-came-from&Itemid=453

Tuesday at 10.05pm: My Perestroika on SBS1. Documentary depicts the devastating consequences of the USSR's very own "structural adjustment programme" in the 1980s which Gorbachev started in an attempt to deal with the long-standing crisis of Soviet state capitalism and which was continued at a more rapid rate under the tender watchful eyes of right wing US-trained economists after the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s. There were those on the left who supported perestroika on the grounds of making Russian "socialism" "more efficient". Others attacked it because it further undermined the Stalinist "planned economy" inherited from Brezhnev. Revolutionary socialists saw it as an attempt by the Russian ruling class to save their system at the expense of workers. This documentary shows what 25 years of capitalist restructuring has meant for the working class of the USSR. Does much to explain the collapse of support for Putin evident at this weekend's elections.

Wednesday at 9pm: Another one hour special for The Thick of It on ABC1.

Thursday at 8.30pm: Here I Am (2010) on ABC1. There's been a slew of films in recent years which present a picture of Indigenous people in which the coercive and genocidal policies of courts, police, mining companies, pastoralists and governments are more or less absent from the script. See, for example, "Samson and Delilah". The reference points are almost entirely internal to the community involved. The problem with this "interior" approach to film making about Indigenous life is that the attempt to escape simply seeing Indigenous people as "passive victims" of overwhelming forces can all too easily swing in the other direction, placing individual choice at the centre. It's as if Indigenous people's "lifestyle choices" can be understood in the same way as, for example, the wretched characters in "The Slap". This approach very easily slides into victim blaming. "Here I Am" has its heart in the right place, in its tender portrayal of a young woman's attempt to get her life straight after two years in jail on a drugs offence, but by abstracting from the monumental insititutional structures of oppression faced by young Indigenous women, the director, Bec Cole, too easily leaves the door open for the idea that Aborigines should just try to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps". Get clean, meet a nice guy, get a job, reconcile with your mum and you've got a bright new future. A cruel delusion maybe shared by middle class film-makers but which bears no resemblance to reality.

Saturday at 10.40pm: The Front Page (1974) on ABC2. Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, on their tenth movie pairing, team up with a young Susan Sarandon. Blurb says: "Hildy Johnson is the top reporter on a Chicago newspaper during the 1920s. Tired of the whole game he's determined to quit his job to get married. His scheming editor, Walter Burns, has other plans though. It's the day before guilty (but insane) murderer, Earl Williams, is due to go to the gallows and Burns tempts Johnson to stay and write the story." Movie depicts mainstream journalism as a despicable trade in which ethics are completely dispatched for the sake of a "good story", real or fabricated.

And don't forget part 3 of The Promise on Sunday night at 8.30pm on SBS1.

Tom's TV picks, week beginning 27 November

by Tom Bramble on Saturday, 26 November 2011 at 19:39

 

Two things worth watching on Sunday night.

8.30pm on SBS1: The Promise: part 1 of a new series. Here's the blurb that outlines the basic story: "Just as 18-year-old Londoner Erin sets off to spend summer in Israel with her best friend, Eliza, she unearths an old diary belonging to her sick grandfather, Len. Intrigued by the life of this old man she barely knows, she takes the diary with her and is stunned to learn of his part in the post-WWII British peacekeeping force in what was then Palestine. Left to her own devices when Eliza begins national service in the Israeli army, Erin witnesses the complexities of life, for both Jews and Arabs, in this troubled land."

So, shades of Ken Loach's "Land and Freedom" in the basic plot device. The plus points: the series shows how Israel was born in violence and how that violence is maintained today. For those who don't know much about the Israeli colonial project it will be quite an eye-opener. And the Zionists hate it, which is always a good recommendation. Wikipedia records that: "A press attaché at the Israeli embassy in London condemned the drama to The Jewish Chronicle as the worst example of anti-Israel propaganda he had ever seen on television, saying it "created a new category of hostility towards Israel"".

The downside: it's a British production and seriously underplays the role of the British in facilitating the Zionist project in the 1930s and 1940s - quite an historical distortion in that respect. And, as the blurb suggests, despite the ranting of the Zionists, it does at times tie itself in knots trying to present a "balanced" view. But it gets better as the series progresses, the compulsory romantic interlude notwithstanding.

12.10am on SBS1: Ae Fond Kiss: speaking of Ken Loach, any Loach film, even a bad one, is better than most. And this is by no means bad. Indeed, it's rather good: "Sparks fly in Glasgow's south side when Casim, a young Muslim, falls in love with Roisin, an Irish Catholic. Casim's parents try their hardest to make him marry the girl they have chosen for him back in Pakistan, but Casim and Roisin are devoted to each other and determined to stay together." A small-scale, intimate film that shows decent people trying to overcome family prejudices that in turn are born out of the wider crucible of colonialism and racism. Even though one barracks for the couple, you are also invited to understand why it is that the Pakistani family are so set against their son marrying "out" of the community. 

Wednesday 9pm on ABC1: The Thick of It: The best political satire on TV in an extended one-hour special. Pitch black comedy.

On Friday night there are two programmes both worth watching and both at 9.30pm:

ABC2 is screening Fear of a Brown Planet: 75 minutes of incisive comedy which skewers racism in Australia, while SBS2 is showing The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey a film featuring the hero of the Indian revolt of 1857 who leads his men in a courageous fight against the corrupt and exploitative East India Company. This is British colonialism as it really was: "dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt", as Karl Marx described the rise of capitalism.

Tom's TV picks week beginning 20 November

Tom's TV picks week beginning 20 November

Slim pickings this week. After Sunday's documentary on Daniel Ellsberg (The Most Dangerous Man in America), I can really only suggest two picks this week:

Tuesday 22 November at 10.05pm on SBS1: The Pipe
"A compelling documentary film four years in the making, The Pipe tells the story of the small Rossport community which has taken on the might of Shell Oil and the Irish State. The discovery of gas off this remote coastal village has led to the most dramatic clash of cultures in modern Ireland. The rights of farmers over their fields, and of fishermen to their fishing grounds, has come in direct conflict with one of the world's most powerful oil companies. When the citizens look to their State to protect their rights, they find that the government has put Shell's right to lay a pipeline over their own. Already 5 locals have spent 94 days in jail rather than let the proposed Shell pipeline cross their lands. This once tranquil area is engulfed in turmoil, as huge numbers of police drafted in. Normal policing has broken down following baton charges, surveillance, arrests, and a hunger strike by a local schoolteacher...".

And, possibly this:

Thursday 24 November at 7.30pm on SBS2: Trails from the East: Syria and Jordan: the Great Enemy
Part 10 of a series of 13 documentaries from Holland exploring nations and cultures in Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Blurb says: "In "The Great Enemy", the train ride goes from the Iraqi-Syrian border to Aleppo, Syria. From there the train continues to Damascus and Amman (Jordan), until Aqaba, bordering Israel. This episode explores how travellers manage their relationship with their enemies, Israel and America. One traveller claims he does not want to be seen as a terrorist, while the train conductor praises Palestinian suicide bombers. Outside of the train we meet Rana Husseini, a Jordanian journalist, who questions honor killings in her country and is therefore often accused of being pro-American". Hmmm...

There's also the regulars (Pride and Prejudice tonight, Sunday, on ABC1 at 10.35pm; The Killing on Wednesday night on ABC2 at 8.30pm; Friday Night Lights on, yes, Friday night, also on ABC2 at 8.30pm). And, for a bit of light relief, Tampopo (Japan, 1985) (Monday at 10.30pm on SBS2).

Tom's TV picks week beginning 13 November

Thursday at 1.30pm (SBS1): "The Coca Cola Case": unions and lawyers take on the big American corporation and try to bring it to book for its appalling abuse of workers' rights at its operations around the world. A one-hour Canadian documentary.

Thursday at 11.10pm (SBS2): "Once you're born, you can no longer hide" (Italy, 2005): A touching film about a young Italian boy, Sandro, who is forced to confront the reality of his privileged existence when he encounters refugees trying to get into Italy. One review says, and I concur: "The basic plot sounds like it could be tedious--a boy from a wealthy industrialist family who is thought drowned is saved by a refugee boat. He becomes especially close to a Romanian brother and sister and in many ways ties his own fate to theirs. The film is so beautifully directed--subtle, never obvious, not belabored or sentimental--that it feels as much like it is observed so much as created for the screen."

Saturday at 1pm (SBS1): "Black Music: An American Revolution", Part 2 of this documentary takes the story from the civil rights era to gangsta rap and overproduced R&B; in my view, from treasure to trash, though I know some comrades will strongly disagree!

Saturday night: two very different films...

At 9.30pm, SBS2 is screening "Crossed Tracks" ("Roman de Gare") (France, 2007), a Hitchcockian thriller directed by noted French film director Claude Lelouch. Haven't seen this, but here's the blurb: "The successful novelist Judith Ralitzer is interrogated in the police station about the disappearance of her ghost-writer. A serial-killer escapes from a prison in Paris. A missing school teacher leaves his wife and children. In the road, the annoying and stressed hairdresser Hughette is left in a gas station by her fiancé Paul while driving to the poor farm of her family in the country. A mysterious man offers a ride to her and she invites him to assume the identity of Paul during 24 hours to not disappoint her mother. Who might be the unknown man and what is real and what is fiction?"

At 10.50pm over on ABC2, you can see"It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) by Frank Capra. One of the best known and loved films of the 20th century. Heart-tugging small-town populism as Everyman George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, reviews the impact of his life on his community. As he does so he discovers that his actions over the years, although seemingly relatively inconsequential at the time, have lifted up everyone in the town, except dastardly Moneybags Mr Potter who is out to wreck the town for his own selfish pecuniary motives. The film is an ode to human decency and is one movie everyone should see at least once in their lives. Difficult to believe that the director was a registered Republican! See this for some interesting background on one of Hollywood's best 20th century directors: http://www.crossleft.org/node/6547

Tom's TV picks week beginning 6 November

Tom's TV picks week beginning 6 November

by Tom Bramble on Tuesday, 08 November 2011 at 16:43

 

Three picks dealing with racism and anti-racism, one just a damn good police procedural...

Tuesday at 8.30pm (SBS1): "Breaking into Europe": a documentary detailing the struggle by migrants and refugees to bust Europe's racist immigration laws and find a way into the UK. The blurb says "In a ground-breaking assignment, two reporters set out to follow the journeys that these migrants take along the most popular and dangerous routes to the UK". If you liked that wonderful French movie "Welcome" (http://www.welcomemovie.com.au/) this could be worth watching.

Wednesday at 8.30pm (SBS2): "The Killing". We're now on Episode 2 of this great 20-part Danish series about cops trying to track down the killer of a 19 year old student. Here's the blurb: "The body of the missing student is found in an abandoned car, and details of her suffering are uncovered. Suspicion falls on local politician Troels Hartmann when it is found that the car is registered to his campaign office. Detective Inspector Sarah Lund keeps postponing her departure, and tension arises between her and her new partner as they investigate the connection to city hall." Plenty of political skullduggery, red herrings and twists and turns keep you involved right the way through the series. It's on repeat so if you missed it first time, don't miss it second time around. Series 2 is shortly to be screened in the UK so with luck SBS will screen that following Series 1.

Friday at 8.30pm (ABC2): "Friday Night Lights". I recommended this last time but it's suddenly taken an interesting turn with the Black members of the Texas school football team, the Dillon Panthers, rebelling against their racist coach. Hitherto quite unpolitical player "Smash" Williams emerges as a leader.

Saturday at 1pm (SBS1): "Black Music: An American (r)evolution". Episode 1 (of two), entitled "We Shall Overcome", traces the history of Black music in the States from early Negro spirituals through to the civil rights era.

Tom's TV picks week beginning 30 October

Not much on this week, but here's a few selections.

Sunday
10.30pm: Pride and Prejudice (1995) on ABC1. The best, if you haven't already seen it two or three times. And even if you have, I hope you'll agree it's worth another round, with part 1 starting tonight. Beautifully acted, beautifully scripted and with a first-class wise and witty heroine, Lizzy Bennett.

Monday
10.30pm: The Blue Kite (1993) on SBS2: A Chinese family survive the hardships of life in Beijing from 1953 to the Cultural Revolution in 1968 as the Communist Government sought to crash industrialise the country and suppress the rights of the working class. Banned in China. A humanist sentiment pervades the film.

Tuesday
10pm: Gaddafi: Our Best Enemy on SBS1: a documentary which traces how Gaddafi was rehabilitated by the West as he became a useful "asset" to the West in the War on Terror and control over the region's oil supplies. Tony Blair and Condoleezza Rice get skewered.

Friday
8.30pm: Friday Night Lights on ABC2: the fortunes of the local football team dominate life in small town Texas in this long-running series (it's been on weekly since August, but you can quickly catch up with the basic story). Rather more involving than your average story about football jocks, the characters are all well developed, the businessmen are venal, the players are a pretty mixed bunch and are all dealing with tricky family issues as well. It doesn't set the world on fire but it's a good use of 45 minutes on a Friday night.