TiVoPlex
TiVoPlex for Tuesday, December 18 through Monday, December 24, 2007
By John Seal
December 17, 2007
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Tuesday 12/18/07
Midnight Flix
Wetherby (1985 GB): A top drawer cast is the highlight of this complex drama written and directed by playwright David Hare. Taking place in the eponymous Yorkshire town, Wetherby stars Vanessa Redgrave as Jean Travers, a schoolteacher struggling to put an old and tragic love affair behind her. Bad memories flood back after an uninvited guest to her dinner party (Tim McInnerny) kills himself in her living room, and his death forces the locals to re-examine their own wretched lives. Amongst those affected are the Pilboroughs (Judi Dench and Ian Holm), P.C. Braithwaite (Tom Wilkinson), and Karen Creasy (Suzanna Hamilton), as well as Travers herself, represented by flashbacks featuring daughter-of-Redgrave Joely Richardson as a younger iteration of down-in-the-dumps Jean. According to Hare, Wetherby is primarily about the English penchant for repressing one's feelings, and the film accurately depicts the quiet despair of its characters, who have kept too many secrets for far too long. If you're familiar with English reticence, you'll appreciate all this, but those who unashamedly air their dirty laundry by chatting loudly into their cell-phones whilst on the bus may find the proceedings a wee bit slow and depressing.
11am Sundance
Grbavica: Land of My Dreams (2006 OST-BOS-CRO-GER): If you head south from Wetherby, turn left at Gibraltar, and head due east, you'll eventually arrive in Grbavica, a neighborhood within the city of Sarajevo. The feature film debut from Bosnian director Jasmila Zbanic, Grbavica takes place during the late 1990s, a time when the newly independent nations constituting the former Yugoslavia were struggling for stability, and stars Mirjana Karanovic as Esma, a single mother trying to care for her stroppy daughter Sara (Luna Mijovic). When Sara is invited on a school field trip to visit the graves of Bosnian war heroes, Esma is forced to reveal the less-than-complimentary truth about her daughter's father, a truth that threatens to re-open the freshly healed wounds of ethnic and religious strife. The winner of the Golden Bear at 2006's Berlin International Film Festival (as was Wetherby in 1985), Grbavica is a well-acted but clumsily structured drama with a dénouement that undoes much of the good work preceding it.
6:30pm Sundance
Somba Ke: The Money Place (2006 CAN): If you've never heard of Somba Ke before, you're far from being alone, but this remote Canadian region just south of the Arctic Circle has actually played an important role in world history. Somba Ke (in the native aboriginal tongue, The Money Place) provided the Manhattan Project with its start-up uranium, without which an American atomic bomb would not have been possible. Today, the area is still a source of uranium, and with the nations of the world scrambling for energy resources is currently undergoing a gold rush of sorts as prospectors try to stake claims to its remaining undeveloped riches. This documentary takes a look at the atomic legacy left behind by the pioneers of the 1930s and ‘40s, whilst casting a jaundiced eye on the deleterious effects of current efforts to mine radioactive gold. Also airs 12/20 at 9:30pm.
Wednesday 12/19/07
12:45am Turner Classic Movies
Chicago Syndicate (1955 USA): Not that I keep track of such things, but surely this is the first time in the five-year history of this column that the first four films include place names in their titles? I'm going to put this down to coincidence and NOT plough through the archives to see if this has happened before, but if some enterprising reader wants to take up the challenge, have at it. Anyhoo, Chicago Syndicate is a rarely-seen Columbia second feature about Barry Amsterdam (Dennis O'Keefe), an accountant hired by the Feds to get the goods on Mob boss Arnie Valent (Paul Stewart), whose last book-balancer came to a sticky end. Stewart is, as always, terrific, and the cast also includes Allison Hayes (two years before she became the 50-Foot Woman) and, in a very rare dramatic performance, rumba master Xavier Cugat. It's as unambitious and unsurprising as you would expect a Fred Sears-helmed film to be, but hasn't had a television airing in a long time.
6am Turner Classic Movies
Mr. Winkle Goes to War (1944 USA): Edward G. Robinson didn't get comic parts all that often, but when he did he proved himself more than capable of playing for laughs. If you don't believe me, check out the wonderful Larceny, Inc. (1942), or this thoroughly amusing wartime effort about a meek bank clerk whose efforts to open his own repair shop fall by the wayside after his draft notice arrives. Henpecked to death by wife Amy (Ruth Warrick), Wilbert Winkle (Robinson) responds to the notice with enthusiasm, finds himself immediately inducted for active duty, and manages to return home an unlikely hero. Gently comedic and thoroughly patriotic, Mr. Winkle Goes to War is no Preston Sturges yuk-fest, but more than passes muster thanks to Robinson's first-rate performance.
Thursday 12/20/07
1:25am Flix
The Thief (1997 RUS): A huge critical and festival hit that was nominated for Best Foreign-Language Film at the 1998 Academy Awards, The Thief tells the tale of six-year-old Sanya (Misha Philipchuk), a boy born in the immediate and poverty-stricken aftermath of the Great Patriotic War. Living from hand to mouth, Sanya is befriended by Tolyan (Vladimir Mashkov), a mountebank whose charming ways and relative wealth soon entrance mother Katia (Yekaterina Rednikova), who sinks her claws into a man who seems to offer a measure of stability. Alas, that stability is illusory, and Tolyan soon reverts to thieving type, sending his new "family" fleeing from boarding house to boarding house as he picks the pockets of tenants and landlords alike. Although The Thief is a character study first and foremost, the political terror of the Stalin years is always hovering in the background, and the film draws some none-too-subtle parallels between the Georgian strongman and Tolyan. It's a film that can induce laughter or tears in equal measure, and comes strongly recommended.
3:45pm Sundance
U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha (2005 SAF): I haven't seen this musical drama yet, but one of the themes of this week's column seems to be hard-to-pronounce titles, so I can hardly overlook it. Apparently an updated take on Bizet's opera, Carmen, transported from Spain to South Africa, the film includes the entire libretto, performed in Xhosa. Khayelitsha is a neighborhood within the city of Cape Town, and the film won the Golden Bear at the 2006 Berlin International Film Festival, neatly tying it to both of this week's OTHER recurring themes (place names in titles and the BIFF, for those with incredibly short memories). Did Sundance and Flix staff get together in Area 51 or The Bermuda Triangle and plot these strangely synchronous programming choices? If Jack Palance were still with us, this would surely be worthy of investigation by Ripley's Believe It or Not!, but perhaps Henry Silva's Bullshit or Not? team can get on the job.
Friday 12/21/07
4pm Sundance
Persona (1966 SWE): With the passing of the legendary Ingmar Bergman this past summer, it's time for a retrospective look at the great man's morose output. Sundance avoids the obvious choices (Seventh Seal, Virgin Spring) in favor of Persona, one of the bleakest entries in the director's frequently very bleak filmography. It stars Bibi Andersson as Alma, a nurse caring for Elisabeth (Bergman's muse Liv Ullmann), an actress who has lost either the ability or the will to speak. Talkative Alma keeps chatting away to the non-responsive Elisabeth, and slowly but surely finds her own personality being subsumed by that of the stoic woman in her care. Persona also features some out-of-character cinematic touches by the sad Swede, including snippets of silent comedies, inappropriate music, intentionally damaged frames, and a brief glimpse of the film crew at work. This is truly Bergman's most Godardian film, playful and somber in equal measure, though its playfulness is definitely not of the laugh-out-loud variety. It's followed at 5:30pm by Cries and Whispers, an unbearably heavy 1973 effort starring Ullmann as a 19th-century caregiver keeping watch over her sister's sickbed, and at 7pm by the frothy romantic comedy Smiles of a Summer Night (1955).
9pm IFC
Nightwatch (1998 USA): An underappreciated thriller and one of the better Hollywood remakes of recent vintage, Nightwatch features Ewan McGregor as Martin Bells, a law student who moonlights as a morgue night-watchman. Martin imagines his job will offer him plenty of study time as well as a wage, but finds himself being undone by his own paranoia and the morgue's disturbing secret stalker, a necrophile who sneaks in after hours to have his way with the customers. Based on a Danish film of the same title and written and directed by Ole Bornedal, this is an effectively creepy offering that benefits from an excellent supporting cast, including Nick Nolte, Josh Brolin, Brad Dourif, and Patricia Arquette. It makes its wide-screen American television premiere this evening and also airs 12/22 at midnight.
Saturday 12/22/07
5:30am Turner Classic Movies
Bush Christmas (1947 AUS): No, not BLUE Christmas, BUSH Christmas, and we ain't talking about our funky president, either. This holiday season, take a trip to the outback with quintessential Aussie thesp Chips Rafferty, here playing horse thief Long Bill, leader of a gang of miscreants who encounter a group of children and their gee-gees somewhere back of beyond. A huge hit in Australia and Britain, Bush Christmas is considered a holiday classic in those territories, but makes its American film debut this morning. It was remade in 1983 with Nicole Kidman (!), but the original is, of course, superior.
Sunday 12/23/07
1am Turner Classic Movies
Where It's At (1969 USA): David Janssen plays A. C. Smith, a Type A Las Vegas casino owner who tries to bring son Andy (Robert Drivas, in a low-key but effective performance) into the business. The uninterested Andy turns the tables on his father, leading to an unlikely-though-plausible family hug at the end of the picture. An interesting aspect of Garson Kanin's screenplay is its refusal to commit on Andy's sexuality; he's presented with willing female partners throughout the film (including the astonishing Edy Williams and cute-as-a-button Brenda Vaccaro) but never consummates the relationships, and doubt is repeatedly cast on his manhood. I don't know if Drivas was gay, but the fact that he died of AIDS at the age of 47 lends a bittersweet piquancy to his performance here. Shot on location at Caesar's Palace, this is a trip down memory lane for anyone who spent time in Sin City back in the ‘70s, and you'll see lots of big names in lights on marquees, though alas, Totie Fields is not amongst them. A fascinating period piece with that extra layer of sexual ambiguity to spice things up, Where It's At remains an unfairly overlooked oddity from director Kanin.