The Apu Trilogy

TCM is running Indian director Satyajit Ray's "Apu" trilogy tonight in prime time. I have to admit that I've only seen the first of the three movies, back when TCM was doing the Story of Film series and ran a whole bunch of interesting foreign movies around the otherwise bland documentary. So I can't really comment about the trilogy as a whole.

As for the first movie, I'd have to say that for me it was the sort of thing where it was nice to mark it off the list of things I haven't seen before that everybody says is a classic that anybody who claims to be a film buff should have seen. But at the same time, it's also the sort of thing I wouldn't go out of my way to watch a second time. Not that I disliked it; instead, it's more that I found it a bit too slow moving and having the sort of "slice-of-life" theme where you really have to care about the characters presented. Other "slice-of-life" movies have had much more interesting characters from my point of view.

Also note the starting times. Apparently TCM is running a brief piece on the restoration of the films that will run after Robert Osborne's introduction, followed by the first of the three movies. However, both that brief piece and the first movie are listed as starting at 8:00 PM. So if you're looking to record the movies, you're definitely going to have to record the first one manually.