TiVoPlex
TiVoPlex for Tuesday, February 26, 2008 through Monday, March 3, 2008
By John Seal
February 25, 2008
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Tuesday 02/26/08
2:15pm Flix
Equinox (1970 USA): Likely the last film to be inducted into the Criterion Collection - though Fiend Without a Face comes a close second - Equinox is a remarkable example of truly independent filmmaking and sheer willpower and determination. Shot over the course of three years, it was the brainchild of Dennis Muren and David Allen, who met through the pages of legendary pro-zine Famous Monsters of Filmland and worked tirelessly to create their own tribute to the monster genre that sired them. Work began in 1965 and was completed in 1967, but it wasn't until Blob producer Jack H. Harris saw the results that the film was re-edited and partially re-shot for a theatrical release in 1970. The simple plot revolves around three college chums who end up in a remote woodland cottage, where Professor Waterman (Fritz Leiber) has disappeared, leaving behind a mysterious book that, when opened, unleashes a horde of supernatural beasties animated by young Allen and colleague Jim Danforth. Presumably Flix is airing the 80-minute theatrical cut, which is the one we grew up watching on TV, and the one where the cast members - their scenes shot years apart - change hairstyles from moment to moment. That only adds to the hallucinatory wackiness of the proceedings, which surely influenced a young Sam Raimi when he began cooking up his Evil Dead saga. If you've ever felt inspired to pick up a 16mm camera and make your own movie, here's proof positive that it can be done, and that one day, someone may even recognize you for your efforts and slap a prestigious label on it!
6:30pm Sundance
Before the Flood (2004 GB): If you enjoyed, appreciated, or felt enlightened by the recently aired BBC documentary Five Disasters Waiting to Happen, you'll probably want to take a look at this one, too. Focusing on one of the pending catastrophes examined in Five Disasters, Before the Flood takes a more in-depth look at the dangers facing the Pacific nation of Tuvalu, where under the best of circumstances high tide means flooding in the streets, well-water contamination, and the threat of disease. Once one of the poorest nations in the world, Tuvalu made a killing in the 1990s by selling their internet domain name, but global warming is inevitably going to leave them with nothing at all. Also airs 2/28 at 9:30pm.
9pm More Max
El Metodo (2006 ESP): If you missed this riveting Spanish film when it aired late one night in January, here are three more opportunities to give it a look. If you've ever suffered through a particularly intense job interview, you'll enjoy El Metodo (The Method), a Spanish drama about the grueling hiring procedures utilized by a Madrid corporation. Set against a backdrop of anti-globalization protests, the film focuses on seven hopefuls competing for a single position. Amongst the candidates are brown-noser Enrique (Ernesto Altiero), male chauvinist pig Fernando (Eduard Fernandez), ladies man Carlos (Eduardo Noriega), corporate secretary Montse (Natalia Verbeke), and an undercover mole in their midst tasked with winnowing the field from within. A blunt critique of the bloody battlefields of modern capitalism, El Metodo was a huge hit at Spanish-language film festivals around the world and richly deserves the wider audience it will finally receive courtesy of premium cable. Also airs on Cinemax 2/28 at 11:20pm and 2/29 at 2:20am.
Thursday 02/28/08
9am Fox Movie Channel
Dragonwyck (1946 USA): Gene Tierney stars in this atmospheric Gothic meller, the freshman effort from director Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Set during the 1840s, the film tells the story of Miranda (Tierney), a young woman hired to au pair on behalf of wealthy Nicholas Van Ryn (Vincent Price). After arriving at the Van Ryn estate, Miranda finds her employer and his wife estranged from their child (Connie Marshall) and the local tenant farmers in rambunctious mood. After Nicholas is widowed, he determines to wed Miranda, and much to her everlasting regret, she accepts his offer and returns to bleak Dragonwyck, where things soon take a turn for the deadly. If you're a fan of such maiden-in-distress films as Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) and Otto Preminger's Laura (1944), you should get comparable mileage from Dragonwyck.
10:40am Encore Dramatic Stories
Nobody Knows (2004 JAP): Feral children in Tokyo alert! Well, that may be a slight overstatement, but this excellent and affecting drama does tell the tale of four fatherless children left to their own devices in a big city apartment. Mother Keiko (played by Japanese pop star "You") has had the misfortune of getting knocked up by four irresponsible louts who have consequently abandoned their offspring, leaving her to raise them on her wages as a...well, it's not quite clear what she does, though we can guess it's not strictly on the up-and-up. The children stay inside and don't even go to school, and the only skill they get to practice is counting the money during one of their mother's frequent and lengthy disappearances. Directed with subtlety and sympathy by Hirokazu Koreeda (After Life) and based on a true story, Nobody Knows is a quietly moving experience, and appears in its essential original aspect ratio this morning.
11pm Turner Classic Movies
Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964 GB): When Bryan Forbes The Whisperers reappeared on TCM earlier this month (naturally earning itself a TiVoPlex recommendation), I placed it within the context of this earlier Forbes effort. Now Seance on a Wet Afternoon gets an airing, and though the film is not quite as obscure as The Whisperers (for one thing, it had a domestic DVD release several years back), it's just as worthy of your time and attention. Richard Attenborough and Kim Stanley star as Billy and Myra Savage, a crooked couple marketing Myra's services as a psychic in an effort to earn a quick quid. Myra concocts a scheme where the dastardly duo will kidnap the child of a wealthy couple and hold her for ransom, all whilst feeding the police and the couple "psychic clues" as to the child's whereabouts and well-being. The plan works like a dream until Inspector Walsh (Patrick Magee) decides to pry a little further into the Savage family background. The film's title is an apt reflection of the damp, musty feel of the Savage's bleak suburban manse, and the proceedings are suffused with an aura of grim inevitability, rendering this a suitably chilly but wonderfully evocative film indeed.
Friday 02/29/08
5pm Sundance
Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005 ROM): A huge hit on the festival circuit, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu somehow managed not to get nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006, a non-feat that has been emulated by its 2007 Romanian compatriot 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days this year. Does the Academy have something against Southeast Europeans? Or are these films simply too grim and uncompromising to appeal to the voters' notoriously conservative taste? I suspect it's the latter, as Lazarescu is hardly laugh-a-minute material, and doesn't feature much in the way of uplift or retribution. Written and directed by Cristi Puiu, the film stars the late Ion Fiscuteanu as the titular drunken sot, who, feeling unwell one day, calls for an ambulance without giving so much as a thought to his emergency services co-pay. Upon arriving, the paramedics decide Mr. Lazarescu needs to be hospitalized but his night has just begun, and he soon finds himself shuttled from institution to institution in search of care. A depressing but oh-so-timely exegesis on the travails of contemporary health care in supposedly enlightened industrial societies, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu will have you re-examining the relative merits of Hillary and Barack's healthcare proposals and double-checking to make sure you've paid your insurance premiums.
Sunday 03/02/08
12:30am Turner Classic Movies
The Dresser (1983 GB): Produced at a time when the British film industry was at the lowest of one of its many low ebbs, The Dresser stood out as one of the few quality pictures produced on that sceptred isle during the early '80s. Directed by Peter Yates and written by the inimitable Ronald Harwood (The Pianist, Diving Bell and Butterfly), who apparently based it on his own relationship with actor Donald Wolfit, The Dresser stars Albert Finney as a gone-to-seed Shakespearean actor treading the boards in London at the height of the blitz. He's attended by Norman, a man-servant (played with tremendous conviction by the underappreciated Tom Courtenay) who keeps him on a relatively even keel whilst reminding him which role he's playing tonight. Whether it's Lear, Othello, Richard III, or another of the Bard's immortal characters, Norman is the one who seems to be calling the shots, and the film echoes some of the master/servant memes explored in Joseph Losey's The Servant (1963). The Dresser doesn't dive quite as deeply into that film's murky waters (though there is homoerotic subtext here should you want some), but it is a brilliantly and intensely realized character study that bottles the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd for cinephiles.
7am IFC
Chan is Missing (1982 USA): Wayne Wang was the first Asian-American filmmaker to draw critical attention and achieve commercial success with Chan is Missing, an art-house hit that found itself added to the National Film Registry in 1995. In retrospect, the film is neither as good nor as groundbreaking as it looked back in the day, but it's still an intriguing little puzzle box of a picture. Set and shot in San Francisco's Chinatown, the film is a low-intensity mystery about two cab drivers searching for the titular Chan, who owes them $4,000 and has seemingly done a runner. It's primarily an excuse to show off the Chinatown most gweilo neither see nor understand: the reality behind the restaurant and knick-knack shop facade. As slice of life or social-realist document, the black-and-white Chan is Missing is first-rate; as narrative story, not so much.
7:30pm Turner Classic Movies
Unforgiven (1992 USA): Clint Eastwood's magnificent revisionist Western makes its wide-screen television debut this evening, as TCM closes out this year's 31 Days of Oscar celebration with '90s night. Eastwood's developing talent behind the camera had been evident for years, but it was Unforgiven that finally brought it into sharp focus for filmgoers and Academy voters alike, and The Man With No Name has been a staple at Oscar night ever since. You probably don't need a plot synopsis for this one, but the film explores many of Clint's favorite topics, including America's fetish for violence and the ethical and moral issues that accompany that fetish. If you've never seen it, tonight's your night.
Monday 03/03/08
3pm Turner Classic Movies
The Trouble with Harry (1955 USA): One of Alfred Hitchcock's lesser-known films, The Trouble with Harry is also one of his few out-and-out attempts at a comedy. This being Hitch, of course, it's a very DARK comedy, but one filled with plenty of mirthful moments nonetheless. Since the film bombed at the box office during its initial run - apparently a title character who was dead from the start of the film was a bridge too far for middle America - it's languished in semi-obscurity, and continues to divide Hitchcock fans, many of whom loathe it. Set in the bucolic backwoods of rural New England, the film stars Edmund Gwenn, John Forsythe, and Mildred Natwick as locals who can't quite figure out how to keep Harry's body from popping up without attracting the attention of local sheriff Royal Dano and implicating themselves in his demise. The Trouble with Harry can, perhaps, be considered a through-the-looking glass reinterpretation of Hitchcock's 1948 experiment Rope. In that film, two murderers try to conceal their victim from a roomful of inquisitive eyes; in this one, a town full of innocents try to conceal Harry from each other whilst trying to solve the crime (if, indeed, a crime has been committed at all). This film also marked the first collaboration between Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrmann, and includes the screen debut of Shirley MacLaine as a guileless local mother whose cute but meddlesome child is portrayed by the Beaver, Jerry Mathers.
6:30pm Turner Classic Movies
Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood (2008 USA): I haven't viewed this brand-new TCM original documentary yet, but the channel's record speaks for itself and the subject matter is as fascinating as ever, so I'll offer a fervid recommendation for this sight unseen. There's little information on the TCM Web site regarding the details - they don't even indicate who narrates the film, or mention any of the interview subjects - but mark this one down as essential viewing.