Films on TV You Always tune in for...

Whether it be 20 mins in, or just about to wrap up. What movie can you just not turn the channel after going to it.

C7's-

Forrest Gump
Ghostbusters
Jaws
Tim Burton's Batman


Now i know most movies showed on TV are edited for content and w/e but that doesn't make these movie's unwatchable (IMO) like some (ie The Big Lebowski, Pulp Fiction, Scarface etc..)

Yousa?

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Generally it's pre-1950s stuff and/or things on TCM. Frankly if I'm flipping around and find Jaws on TBS or Chinatown on Cinemax, I am not tempted to stop and see them panned and scanned all to Hell (and edited for content and full of commercials on TBS). It may sometimes inspire me to go running as fast as I can for the DVD, to cleanse my cinematic palate, but I would never sit and watch say Raiders of the Lost Ark on frippin' broadcast TV. Ick. Why?

Now, if something like His Girl Friday is on TCM, THAT I will stop and watch, no matter where it is in the movie, and despite the fact that I've seen it probably eighty to a hundred times. But if I'm flipping around and happen to hit Ghostbusters on say Comedy Central, there is NO WAY I'm going to watch it on that channel. Absolutely not. And I couldn't love Ghostbusters more. It's precisely because of that true love that I refuse to watch it panned and scanned and full of commercials. That's cinematic blasphemy, I says.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

What do you mean, "panned and scanned", exactly? I think I have an idea, but I just need to know.

The one movie I think of instantly is Scarface. Fortunately, the last network I saw it on released it in practically unedited form. Another one would probably be Heat. I've seen that at least half a dozen times on cable in the past few months.

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Pretty much the only movies I can stand to watch on TV are the ones that I grew up watching on TV, like "Troop Beverly Hills" and "Ghost." Anyone remember those good ole Sunday afternoons on the WB?

Any Sam Peckinpah's western.

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Really? After a decade of DVDs you've missed this somehow? HERE is a thread from back a ways, but it should walk you through the basics. The short version: since the 1950s, movies have been shot in various widescreen processes. TV screens, like the original movie screens, are essentially square. Modern films are usually some form of rectangle. In order to fit that rectangle into the square, the image must be cropped and then artificially panned. The way to combat this without a widescreen television set is to "letterbox" the image. This results in those "black bars" at the top and bottom of the screen.

The classic example of the problem is Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper....



To fit that rectangular image into a square, you have to cut out half of the Disciples....





Un-letterboxed movies do this in every single shot...












So....yeah.

DePalma and Michael Mann are two directors who love composing for the cinematic widescreen. You are missing a whole lot of image when you see it cropped for TV.










But, you know....enjoy.

And there's that thing they do, move focus from one side of the screen to the other so that the whole image can be seen, and it's (especially in the older movies) done in a very irritating way.

Yes, that's the scanning in pan-and-scan. After you've made that square form the rectangle, the shot doesn't often stay still. New artificial "pans" and "scans" are put in to try and show some of the information that has been cropped. For instance, when one of the characters speaks who is in the shot the director and cinematographer designed but has disappeared thanks to the cropping, the image will shift so that you can see who they've cut out. Annoying as all Hell.

And while it's nice that they may scan over to show you who's talking, it's criminal that you can't see what the actor is doing when they aren't speaking. The best thespians convey so much when they are seen listening on camera.

I had no idea that's what pan and scan meant. We must not have that in England, 'cause I've never seen it. They crop some movies on terrestrial tele, but on digital you can choose for pretty much everything to be shown in widescreen.

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I want this film on TV, it is like Greys Anatomy..

Well, Holden, it really doesn't bother me too much whether or not they pan-and-scan. If I want to watch a movie for the visual brilliance alone, I'll watch the DVD. If I just want something to keep me occupied for however long it has to run, I'll take the cable version.

The one time pan-and-scan really annoyed me was with John Carpenter's The Thing. Did make it worse, all right.

Last night, I watched some of The Color Purple on TV because I hadn't seen all of it. It was pretty good! I will have to check it out on DVD later.

oh my god, the color purple. i so gave yoda a lecture on that, like 5 years ago, i still don't think he's watched it!

ok, so i'm super weird about re-watching movies. notes:

- i don't like to buy movies unless they so moved me emotionally that i must add them to my collection.
- i AM a book collector, so generally a movie must hit me like a book, lingering and drawing on me. even then, a movie might do that to me and i won't actually buy it.
- so i own like, less than 5 movies. i know, i know.
- in order to re-watch a movie, it is not procured by me. ie, it must "cross my path" generally at someone else insisting, renting it, or it shows up, as this thread raised, on TV all on it's own and I HAPPEN to cross it's path. then, and only then, will i re-watch the movie, even if it's an absolute favorite.
- i don't know why i do this. it might be because i want to hold on to how most movies originally made me feel, like a blossoming love affair, and i fear going back to it again and again will ruin it/wear out the love. i dunno. i'm just ... weird.

ok, so ...

MOVIES

- Terminator 2 (only 2, no other version)
- The Color Purple
- Agreed re: His Girl Friday. Top Hat. Most quality musicals, generally black and white preferred. Stuff with Barbra Stanwyck and Betty Grable and Ginger Rogers and Cyd Charisse. Rita Hayworth. Katharine Hepburn. Cary Grant and Bob Hope and Marlon Brando. Generally romance related. Sometimes Bogey. These I generally can't bring myself to change the channel on, however, I don't own ANY of them.
- Remains of the Day
- the made for tv british version of Pride and Prejudice
- Shawshank Redemption
- La Femme Nikita (both versions)
- Persuasion
- Pitch Black/Chronicles of Riddick (I can't help it)
- Othello (Laurence Fishburne)
- Howard's End
- Elizabeth

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life without movies is like cereal without milk. possible, but disgusting. but not nearly as bad as cereal with water. don't lie. I know you've done it.

me am always stay in HBO because of old and new movies they've aired..

I don't watch any on TV

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Any Stephen King movies and over the Christmas season, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Dr. Seuss' The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and many others. I also try and catch other "made for tv" movies like For the Love of Nancy, On The Edge of Innocence, Her Costly Affair, To Live Again...there is just too many. Any other movie that comes on that sounds good, I'll watch it!

Well, my rule about watching a movie on TV is; it must be a movie I've already seen in the theater. That way, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything because it has been edited, scaled to fit the screen and has commercials. I already saw it in it's true form, now let's watch it on TV out of curiosity, more or less.

The movie I must watch on TV whenever it's on, no matter where I come in? Woody Allen's "Love & Death". I've lost track of the number of times I've seen it. I have the lines practically memorized. It's also the type of comedy that you can begin watching at any time and not really need to know what's going on at the moment. It's Woody's early "gag-to-gag" style of film making. Still hilarious today. (It was on TCM last night. Yeah, I watched it again.)

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"Not everyone who drinks is a poet. Some of us drink because we're not poets." - Dudley Moore, "Arthur"

War movies (The Dirty Dozen, Kelly's Heroes), or anything by Billy Wilder.

I'll also pretty much give anything I haven't seen before a look, especially if it's an oldie. My ex-wife had a saying about me: "If it's in black and white, it's gotta be good," because I have a tendency to flip through the channels, only pausing when I see something in black and white.

There are a few absolute classics that I've seen in this way. The Apartment is one, but my favorite time was when I was up very very late, around 2:00 AM flipping through the channels and said to myself "Hey! Tony Curtis in a drama....and Burt Lancaster too!" I decided to watch for a few minutes and was soon aware that I was watching something truly special. Of course, the film was Sweet Smell of Success; a movie that truly deserves to be called great. I had never even heard of it before that night, and although I've seen it many times since, that first viewing has always stuck with me.

Right now, I'm watching Addams Family Values on Bravo.