I watched 3 films in the last couple of weeks that had similar themes, namely facial disfigurement/transplants. I think I recorded them all off of TCM, too, which is such a great channel. They show their films in the original aspect ratio, uncensored, without commercials and their "station identifier" only pops up a few times for a few seconds during the show. Not only that, but Robert Osbourne comes on at the beginning [and end] of many showings and gives some background and insight on the film you are about to see. They are obviously great fans of the medium.

Contrast this with AMC, a channel I've grown to despise since it joined Shaw's lineup a month or two ago. For everything TCM does right, AMC finds a way to do it wrong. They have a large, annoying station identifier in the corner of the screen at all times during the film. Their films are almost always pan and scan. Their films are the "edited for TV" versions. I tried watching Exorcist II [III?] the other night and when this girl gets her shirt wet, they actually had the image blurred out so you couldn't see through her wet shirt! Ridiculous. The worst are the "commercials". AMC is actually commercial-free, like TCM, but they break from the film roughly every ten fucking minutes to show you the same crap over and over again. It's so-called "normal people" quoting movies they love or idiotic nobodies talking about how they somehow contributed to dreck like "Gigli". It's so fucking annoying and unnecessary. They also tend to show a lot of recent, mainstream films that I've already seen and have no interest in seeing again. TCM, on the other hand, shows a lot of older films that I've never seen and a lot of smaller art or independent films that never got much exposure. I especially like the films they've been airing on Friday nights on TCM Underground. [flash site] Good stuff.