TiVoPlex
By John Seal
March 8, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Tuesday 3/9/10
2:00 AM Sundance
Let's Get Lost (1989 USA): Like many jazz musicians, Chet Baker had substance abuse problems. Those problems eventually killed him, but before they did, he carved out a remarkable career as both singer and trumpet player, and that's the focus of Bruce Weber's gauzy hagiographic documentary, Let's Get Lost. Featuring interviews with many of Baker's relatives, contemporaries, and admirers, as well as rare and revealing footage of the man himself, the film is a visually stunning tribute to this incredibly talented and deeply troubled Adonis.
Wednesday 3/10/10
Midnight Turner Classic Movies
Hakuchi (1951 JAP): TCM shines the spotlight on Akira Kurosawa this month, and amongst the usual suspects (Seven Samurai, Kagemusha, etc.) are some rarities that you probably haven't seen. Heck, I certainly haven't seen them all, either, so this is terrific news for admirers of the great director. Hakuchi, an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, is the first of the "overlooked gems" on offer this month, and stars Rashomon's Masayuki Mori as a guileless veteran struggling to regain his soul and find his place in post-World War II Japan. Though the film also features Kurosawa regular Toshiro Mifune, it's not entirely successful, thanks in part to production company Shochiku's ruthless cutting of 99 (!) minutes of footage. Still almost three hours in length, Hakuchi surely isn't the adaptation Kurosawa intended, but it remains a fascinating if flawed attempt to bring a great book to the screen. It's followed at 3:00 AM by the more familiar The Lower Depths (1957), another Kurosawa adaptation of a Russian story - this one by Maxim Gorky.
5:30 AM IFC
New World Order (2009 USA): The world of right-wing conspiracy theorist and alternative medicine enthusiast Alex Jones is examined in this non-judgemental but revealing documentary. Jones, who runs the website Prisonplanet.com, believes that 9/11 was an inside job, that the participants in the annual Bilderberg conference are our real masters, and that the gubmint is coming for us so we'd better buy lots of guns and ammo, but New World Order doesn't examine the merits or demerits of each theory, preferring to concentrate on the obsessive behavior of its subject. As director Luke Myer has noted, this isn't a film designed to make people believe one theory or another: it's a film about those who resolutely reside far outside the parameters of the dominant paradigm and, right or wrong, have the courage to tell the world what they think it needs to hear. Also airs at 10:15 PM.
5:00 PM HBO 2
An Omar Broadway Film (2008 USA): No, not Omar Bradley, Omar Broadway. Omar is an inmate doing time for a carjacking, and this HBO original documentary is his story - and the story of his fellow inmates in Newark, New Jersey's brutal Northern State Prison. Gleaned from footage shot on a camera illegally smuggled into Northern with the assistance of a sympathetic guard, An Omar Broadway Film is the stuff of verite dreams, and a damning indictment of our laughably mis-labeled correctional facilities. Also airs at 8:00 PM.
Thursday 3/11/10
2:15 PM Turner Classic Movies
Police Dog Story (1961 USA): Director Edward L. Cahn sure knew how to churn ‘em out: Police Dog Story is one of 11 films the man helmed (at the not so tender age of 62!) in 1961 alone. B-movie queen Merry Anders stars as Terry Dayton, a journalist writing a specialty piece about Wolf, a stray dog adopted by the police and turned into a super K-9 trained to smash the mob. Officer Edwards (James Brown...no, not THAT James Brown) is in charge of Wolf, and the team are soon hot on the trail of the scumbags responsible for the death of fellow cop Dana (Barry Kelley). As the film's poster breathlessly declares, "man's best friend becomes killer's worst enemy!"
5:00 PM Sundance
Rescue Dawn (2006 USA-GER): I'm gonna get on my knees and pray...I won't get fooled again! On at least two previous occasions, I've reported pending widescreen airings of this film on Showtime 3. They never panned out, but now that Rescue Dawn is appearing on Sundance, the odds are increasingly (though still not overwhelmingly) in favor of a letterboxed broadcast. So, in case you missed one of those recommendations, here's what I wrote about the film: German bad boy Werner Herzog briefly dipped his toe into the mainstream with this exciting film about American prisoners of war during the Vietnam conflict. Christian Bale stars as Dieter Dengler, a German immigrant who joins the US Air Force, only to get shot down whilst flying a combat mission over Laos. Imprisoned and tortured by the Viet Cong, Dieter meets fellow POWs Duane (Steve Zahn) and Gene (Jeremy Davies), and though the three are desperate to escape, they disagree vehemently about how to do so. Filmed in lush jungle reminiscent of Herzog's Aguirre the Wrath of God and FItzcarraldo, Rescue Dawn is a fictional representation of the events depicted in the director's earlier documentary, Little Dieter Learns to Fly. Also airs at 11:50 PM.
Friday 3/12/10
3:00 AM HBO 2
The Queen and I (2008 SWE): Communist filmmaker Nahid Sarvestani fled Iran shortly after the 1979 revolution when it became clear to her that the new regime was going to be no more friendly than the Shah's towards secular leftists. She settled in Sweden, and thirty years later met Queen Farah, the widow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. This documentary examines the relationship that developed between these unlikely comrades, who, though miles apart ideologically, still share a deep and abiding love for their homeland. Though the film ultimately feels like a bit of a puff piece - Sarvestani couldn't bring herself to ask her friend the really tough questions - it's still interesting stuff. Also airs at 6:00 AM.
3:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
633 Squadron (1964 GB): Here's a World War II flag-waver that always seemed to be on TV when I was a kid, but rarely gets shown these days. Cliff Robertson stars as RAF Wing Commander Roy Grant, a Canadian flyer tasked with a tricky mission: to destroy a Nazi rocket fuel factory in Norway. The factory is well-guarded, perhaps even bomb-proof - but the brave lads of 633 Squadron are determined to succeed! If the plot sounds familiar, it should, because it's quite similar to that of The Dam Busters (1955), a superior aerial adventure about the RAF's attempts to destroy the Mohne and Eder dams in Germany's industrial heartland. A fine supporting cast - including Harry Andrews, Donald Houston, and Maria Perschy - and some genuine Mosquito fighter-bombers, however, make 633 Squadron a must-see for war movie buffs.
9:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
The Collector (1965 GB-USA): William Wyler's creepy tale of quiet madness returns to the small screen this morning after a lengthy absence. Terence Stamp stars as Freddie Clegg, a sensitive and obsessive young Englishman with a low-paying position in a high street bank. When Freddie wins the football pools, he chucks in his job and invests his money in a country estate, which serves as a repository for his extensive butterfly collection. But poor Freddie has fallen for beautiful art student Miranda (Samantha Eggar), and the socially inept fellow doesn't know that women and insects must be treated differently. Based on a novel by John Fowles, The Collector is a tense, ahead of its time psychological chiller, and an unlikely Oscar contender that earned Academy Award nominations for Wyler, Eggar, and screenwriters John Kohn and Stanley Mann.
3:15 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Walking Stick (1970 GB): It's TiVoPlex Movie of the Week time! This unheralded British feature has aired in the past on TCM UK, but only in pan and scan. Now finally getting the widescreen broadcast it deserves, The Walking Stick features broody, moody David Hemmings as Leigh, an artist living the bohemian lifestyle in London's (then un-redeveloped) Docklands. He makes friends with crippled sweet young thing Deborah (Samantha Eggar, who apparently specialized throughout the sixties in vulnerable female roles), a polio victim with weak legs and unloving parents (Phyllis Calvert and Ferdy Mayne). But Leigh has an ulterior motive: he's going to use Deborah to help him rob the auction house at which she works. If moral ambiguity is your bag, or if you're a fan of either Hemmings or Eggar, you won't want to miss this very special, very rare treat, which also features a terrific Stanley Myers score.
9:00 PM Sundance
Nathalie... (2003 FRA): Wanna see Gerard Depardieu do the nasty? Yeah, me neither. If that sounds like a good time to you, though, by all means check out Nathalie, in which the ol' schnozzola plays an upper-middle class bourgeois who wife Fanny Ardant suspects is having an affair. So she hires a prostitute (Emmanuelle Beart) to entrap hubby...and things just get uglier from there. Especially when Gerard takes his clothes off.
11:30 PM Turner Classic Movies
Shanks (1974 USA): The final film directed by William Castle, Shanks hasn't been seen on television since an airing on TNT's 100% Weird many moons ago. It's a decidedly strange affair, and stars Marcel Marceau as the titular (mute, of course) puppeteer who has learned how to re-animate and control the dead. Quite how Marceau got roped into doing this film I don't know, but the end result is the oddest film in Castle's long career of oddness. Even more bizarrely, Shanks earned an Oscar nomination for Alex North's score, which never struck me as being particularly special.
Saturday 3/13/10
7:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
In Fast Company (1946 USA): Part 2 of the never-ending Bowery Boys series features the gang getting mixed up in a crooked taxi business. Even at this early date, the series' formula was well established, but it's still a cut above much of what was to follow. Look for reliable character actor Luis Alberni as a grocer.
5:00 PM HBO
Monsters vs. Aliens (2009 USA): Even though my son is now a teenager, I still have a soft spot for animated kiddie movies - so I dragged the whole family off to see Monsters vs. Aliens during its early 2009 theatrical run. And, hey...it wasn't so bad! Though no one's idea of high art or even low camp, it's just a good old-fashioned blockbuster with some cute characters and an impressive array of voice talent, including Reese Witherspoon, Hugh Laurie, and Will Arnett. And I'm not too proud to admit I laughed out loud at the line "boys, set the terror level at code brown, 'cause I need to change my pants!" Also airs at 8:00 PM.
11:30 PM Sundance
A Christmas Tale (2008 FRA): Catherine Deneuve plays Junon, a woman in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant, in this excellent family drama from director Arnaud Desplechin. The story takes place during a family Yuletide reunion, at which Junon must not only mend fences with estranged son Henri (Quantum of Solace's Mathieu Amalric) but find a suitable marrow donor. Guess who's compatible. Merry effing Xmas, indeed.
Sunday 3/14/10
9:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Magician (1926 USA): Director Rex Ingram is probably best remembered today for epics such as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) and Ben-Hur (1925), but this picture proves he was equally adept at melodrama, too. Based, surprisingly, on a Somerset Maugham novel, The Magician tells the tales of an alchemist (Golem-director Paul Wegener) working feverishly to create a homunculus. And what do you need in order to create one? Why, virgin blood, of course; a helpful dwarf assistant to collect it; and an outlandish lab with all the latest bells and whistles. Interesting footnote: future British auteur Michael Powell served as Ingram's assistant director on this production.
11:30 PM IFC
Slaughterhouse (1988 USA): Or, as it was aptly re-titled for syndication, Bacon Bits. This fair to middling slasher stars Don Barrett as Lester, a hog farmer about to lose the old homestead to foreclosure. Son Buddy (Joe B. Barton) is a mentally challenged man-mountain who also happens to be a dab hand with the tools of the family trade, and Lester concocts a plan to save his forty acres: have Buddy kill off the bankers! So far, so good, but then a carful of annoying teenagers turn up, and Slaughterhouse gets diverted into well-worn slice and dice territory. It's not great by any means, but neither is it the worst the genre has to offer—and it does make its widescreen television debut this evening.
Monday 3/15/10
5:00 AM HBO Signature
Sleep Dealer (2008 MEX): I haven't seen this made-in-Mexico sci-fi pic yet, but it did extremely well on the festival circuit - including winning the Amnesty International Film Prize at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival - so I'll definitely be giving it a look. Plot synopses suggest it's a blend of bleak future and Matrix memes, with perhaps a dash of Brazil thrown in for good measure.
6:00 PM Playboy
Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens (1978 USA): This week's Russ Meyer flick was the Oakland-born director's final theatrical release. It's very far from his best, but if you're an admirer of Uschi Digard or Kitten Natividad, they're both here; as is Meyer regular Stuart Lancaster as the delightfully named Man from Smalltown U.S.A. Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens is as close as Russ came to making a genuinely pornographic film, which is probably why it's considered one of his least satisfying efforts.