Movies

8:30pm – Saturday, August 4 on ABC2

It’s the late 1920s in Chicago where bootleg booze and gun-toting gangsters go hand in hand. Joe and Jerry, band musicians, have their evening’s employment interrupted when the nightclub is raided. Grabbing their instruments they flee down an alley and take refuge from the police in a garage. This choice of hiding place is a poor one as it turns out, and Joe and Jerry find themselves witnessing the St. Valentine’s Day massacre.

Unfortunately, Spats, the gangland boss, discovers them and Joe and Jerry must flee for their lives – by dressing up as women and joining an all-girl band on its way to Florida.

The two musicians get a little tired of their disguises, but Spats is still looking for them, and they don’t want to be thrown out of the band. The situation worsens when Joe falls in love with another band-member, the luscious ukulele-playing vocalist, Sugar. Then Osgood, a Miami Beach millionaire, falls in love with Jerry.

When Spats shows up to attend a gansters’ convention, Joe and Jerry grow increasingly desperate about their predicament. But when a rival gang leader takes Spats out of the picture, Joe and Jerry can become themselves again. Now they just have to explain everything to their sweethearts.

Directed by Billy Wilder, Some Like It Hot stars Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe and Joe E. Brown.

8:30pm – Sunday, July 29 on ABC1

Filmmaker Abi Morgan (Iron Lady, The Hour) adapts Sebastian Faulk’s epic love story set against the First World War into a haunting and powerful mini-series.

Lieutenant Stephen Wraysford (Eddie Redmayne) is stationed in the trenches of the western front in France in 1916. But Stephen’s mind is elsewhere, reliving his relationship with Isabelle Azaire (Clemence Posey), the married woman he met and fell in love with in Amiens during the summer of 1910.

Stephen is ordered to oversee the men digging a tunnel under no-man’s-land to the German trenches and witnesses the deadly effects of a flash flood in the tunnel. Tunneller Jack Firebrace (Joseph Mawle) is the last man out, bearing news of the death of one of the men.

Stephen later finds Firebrace asleep on guard duty, and summons him to his quarters the next morning to be court-martialled. But when Firebrace reveals that his mind too is elsewhere – at home, with his young son who is ill with diphtheria – Stephen abruptly lets him go.

On the next shift, Stephen and the tunnellers encounter German soldiers whose tunnel has intersected with their own, and a battle underground battle ensues.

8:30pm – Saturday, July 28 on ABC2

Zelig is Woody Allen’s hilariously inventive comedy and Leonard Zelig is its hero. He’s the ultimate camp follower, a celebrity nonentity who fits in everywhere – because he actually changes his personality and appearance to blend with his surroundings.

Conceived as a mock-documentary, Zelig is the ‘true’ story of Leonard Zelig’s amazing case history and his career as a public figure, the ‘human chameleon’ who fascinated the public and inspired a song, a dance craze and a movie. How did Zelig develop his unique talent? What does he hope to gain from his uncanny mimicry? And finally: Is there a real Leonard Zelig beneath his multiple exteriors.

Searching for answers – and saving Zelig from the clutches of a thoroughly baffled medical establishment – is Dr. Eudora Fletcher, played with straight-faced charm by Mia Farrow. She believes that Zelig can be cured.

After all, Zelig is only trying to fit in. He just takes his efforts to extremes.

Directed by and starring Woody Allen, Zelig also stars Mia Farrow and John Buckwalter.

8:30pm – Saturday, July 21 on ABC2

One day Miles Monroe (Woody Allen) goes into the hospital for a simple operation. The operation fails and Miles is wrapped in tin foil and cryogenically preserved. He wakes up two hundred years later in a bizarre world, ruled by technological automations. In this hilarious vision of the future, the world has managed to preserve only the worst aspects of twentieth century culture – a platitudinous political leader, Rod McKuen’s poetry, Walter Kean’s paintings, and McDonald’s hamburgers.

A stranger in a strange land, Miles is feared by the authorities and marked for death. Disguising himself as a robot, he manages to escape and is sent to the home of a lovely young woman where he is a servant. His misadventures continue and Miles is forced to flee once more, this time making use of a 200-year-old Volkswagen that, miraculously, starts on the first try.

Directed by and starring Woody Allen, Sleeper is a devastatingly funny attack on the mores of both modern and future man.

8:30pm – Saturday, July 7 on ABC2

Fielding Mellish is a tester of Rube Goldbergesque devices who suddenly finds himself caught up in an exciting world of revolutionary politics in South America.

There is ‘something missing’ in Fielding’s everyday life, though he can’t quite figure out what it is. He meets and falls for Nancy, an activist prominent in liberal causes. Through a hilariously bizarre set of circumstances, Fielding finds himself about to join the revolution in San Marcos, a little banana republic south of the border.

Directed by Woody Allen, Bananas stars Woody Allen and Louise Lasser.

8:30pm – Saturday, June 9 on ABC2

Three teenagers learn a lot about life and love one summer in this romantic comedy-drama. Kat (Annabeth Gish), Daisy (Julia Roberts), and Jojo (Lili Taylor) are three working-class women just out of high school who have jobs at the same pizza parlour in the resort community of Mystic, Connecticut.

Kat wants to study astronomy at Yale; when she starts baby-sitting for Tim (William R. Moses), a wealthy Yale graduate summering in Mystic, she finds herself falling in love with him, even though he’s married and nearly twice her age. Daisy, who isn’t sure what she wants from life, starts going with Charlie (Adam Storke), a recent law school dropout, though she starts to think that it may be more to rebel against her family than out of genuine affection. And Jojo is attracted to Bill (Vincent D’Onofrio), but she doesn’t want to get married (she’s already left him at the altar once); when Bill announces that he’s no longer willing to have sex without marriage, she has to decide if his affections are worth a lifetime commitment. Conchata Ferrell appears in a supporting role as Leona, the proprietor of the pizza parlour, who zealously guards the secret formula of her sauce.

Directed by Donald Petrie, Mystic Pizza stars Annabeth Gish, Julia Roberts and Lili Taylor.

Thursday June 7 at 9.30pm on W

Jim Broadbent, Gillian Anderson, Matthew Macfadyen and Sam Claflin take on the lead role of Logan Mountstuart in William Boyd’s adaptation of his best-selling novel. Told through Logan’s intimate journals, beginning with the idealism and arrogance of his youth, through the triumphs and tragedies of middle-age, to the unexpected dramas of his twilight years – his story reveals that all our lives are ultimately random, and defined by luck and seemingly inconsequential choices.

Cast: Jim Broadbent, Gillian Anderson, Matthew Macfadyen, Sam Claflin, Hayley Atwell, Tom Hollander, Kim Cattrall, Holliday Grainger.

8:30pm – Saturday, June 2 on ABC2

Saturday, 2 June 2012 Meet Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) and Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) – a couple who spend a lot of time trying to figure out how they can stay such good friends in spite of Harry’s staunch belief that people of the opposite sex simply can’t be friends.

The film explores what men and women have to go through to find each other. In this particular case, that perplexing and arduous process involves 11 years, several reruns of ‘Casablanca’, many marathon phone calls and countless tear-stained Kleenex.

Directed by Rob Reiner, When Harry Met Sally stars Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan and Carrie Fisher.

8:30pm – Saturday, May 26 on ABC2

While travelling with a busload of tourists in Spain, Lila (Maggie Smith), a prim, nervous forty-year-old English spinster, is unwilling to let anyone penetrate her staid reserve. After the amateurish approach of a Spanish gentleman both offends and frightens her, Lila meets Walter (Timothy Bottoms), an eighteen-yearold fellow tourist, and a hopeless college dropout who is so awkward that he’s comical.

Though he and Lila have nothing in common except a mutual lack of self-confidence, they are drawn to one another in a clumsy affair. Smitten with Lila, the impetuous youth tempts her into leaving the tour and traveling with him through Spain. When Lila has a minor accident en route, she is rescued by a Duke and taken to a lavish castle where he attempts to seduce her. Overcome with jealousy, Walter tries to persuade Lila to come back to him.

Directed by Alan J. Pakula, Love And Pain And The Whole Damn Thing stars Maggie Smith and Timothy Bottoms.

There’s The Block on Nine tonight with the first room reveal, The Biggest Loser on Ten will see another elimination and yet another twist to the game, while Dancing with The Stars on Seven will also see another couple go home tonight. 60 Minutes returns to Nine, followed by new The Mentalist on a new night, but WHAT ELSE is there to watch on TV Tonight? Continue reading »