Saturday, September 30, 2006

One Irritating Thing About TCM in Canada

This post serves a bit of a dual purpose. First of course is to register my irritation about something that Turner Classic Movies does with their Canadian feed, and that is to sometimes show different films in Canada than they do in the United States.The other purpose is to thoroughly lord the fact that I get TCM (and AMC now, though it really isn't worth the effort anymore) because I have Shaw Cable while my friend and fellow habitue of the alt.movies.silent newsgroup Stephen Cooke does not. I'm tempted to add a "Nelson Muntz" like HA HA here, so I will

HA HA

Most of the time I confess that the substitutions aren't really a problem for me. TCM has to substitute for films where they don't own the Canadian broadcast rights and can usually find a movie in their library that's just as a good and sometimes better - or at least something that I have a greater desire to see - than the movie that they're not going to show. But this Sunday they're showing the recreation of the classic (and lost) silent horror film London After Midnight to Americans. Canadians get The Boob with George Arthur and Joan Crawford. Which is fine I guess, except that it's October and TCM usually loads up on horror films and I've been hearing about this film for years, and this recreation for almost as long. Still it's not as bad as on October 29 when TCM in the USA is showing the 1925 Phantom of the Opera while TCM in Canada is showing Cabin In The Sky, which isn't even a silent. I ask you, is that fair?

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