So, I open the newspapper today and discover that they would be showing Godard's
King Lear at primetime in a cable channel, not any cable channel but one that
was once good enough they used to do a two-week Jean Renoir or Douglas Sirk
retro (and keeping the correct aspect ratio of almost everything) but that now
was perverted for commercial reasons to the point that no one could still
recognize it. But today they would be showing a Godard - and not any Godard film
but that specific one - at 8PM (the channel belongs to the group that is HBO
biggest competition here at the same moment there other film channels were
showing Aquamarine, Domestic Disturbance, Boys and Girls, and Doom). The film
starts and I notice that the channel was forced by Godard's movie to create a
new subtitle system and adding white subtitles for the words written on the
screen to there usual yellow subtitles for dialogue. The film keeps going,
including its many references to Godard interest in Bugsy Siegel and Mayer
Lansky, and then it happens closing to the end at the top of the screen the
words "NEXT ON: RAIN MAN" and I start to laugh hard for minutes, it was just the
most amusing thing I've seen in a film this year, the channel programmer doesn't
know but he might have by complete accident create the finest godardian effect
the man never did.

Filipe