Hollywood Suite a great investment for movie fans
By Lethbridge Herald on December 5, 2020.
LEAVE IT TO BEEBER
Al Beeber
Lethbridge Herald
abeeber@lethbridgeherald.com
One of the smartest, and cheapest, investments I made this year was keeping the Hollywood Suite channels when the free preview ended on Telus.
Actually, the channels didn’t cost me a dime because I just dropped one of my other tiers and replaced it with Hollywood Suite. Coincidentally, another free preview has just started if you’re interested.
Unlike the Crave movie channels, which I keep only because they’re included with a package that also contains HBO, Hollywood Suite offers films that I actually watch.
While Crave certainly has newer films, they are seldom rotated and many titles are not that appealing. Yes, new films like “Us” and “Ford vs. Ferrari” have made the cut along with “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” but the gems are few and far between.
Hollywood Suite, on the other hand, has a huge selection ranging from the 1930s to the mid 2000s and its On Demand section changes frequently.
Among the classics I’ve watched on one Hollywood Suite channel — the 1970s one — are “Blackmail,” England’s first “talkie” which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock who has other films occasionally appearing on the suite including “Dial M for Murder” starring a creepy Ray Milland and “The Birds.”
I’ve also seen “Casablanca” and “Sunset Boulevard” which features superb performances by William Holden and Gloria Swanson, whose final appearance was in “Airport 1975,” which like the original, has also aired on Hollywood Suite.
Recently playing was 1949’s “Samson and Delilah” with Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr, who is the subject of a revealing documentary on another HS channel that discusses her role in the invention of a radio-guided torpedo in World War Two.
Lamarr’s invention is the basis for such modern technology as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and is a must-see for history buffs and movie fans.
Mature, who preferred to consider himself a golfer, is famous for a quote after he was rejected from admission to a country club because of his profession: “I’m no actor and I’ve got 64 films to prove it.”
The ’70s channel has also shown such films as “Grease,” “Saturday Night Fever” and other hits from that decade and the 1960s, among my personal favourites being “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Heat of the Night” and “Up the Down Staircase.”
The 1980s channel has shown such fare as “Top Gun,” “Dirty Dancing,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” and “Eddie and the Cruisers,” a film with an incredible soundtrack thanks to the under-rated John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band.
Two other channels focusing on the 1990s and 2000s also offer numerous movies that are worth viewing including “The Shawshank Redemption” and “Lost in Translation.”
The variety on these channels is truly amazing and there is literally something for every taste.
Some movies definitely haven’t aged well such as the Matt Helm secret agent series with Dean Martin which are just a little sexist.
Others are brilliant such as “The Seven Samurai” and “Rashomon,” two sub-titled Japanese classics I would highly recommend to anyone.
For the price, which is less than $10 a month for four channels plus an On Demand section, movie fans just can’t do any better for their money.
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