TiVoPlex
TiVoPlex for Tuesday May 25 2010 through Monday May 31 2010
By John Seal
May 24, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Tuesday 5/25/10
4:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
The Soldier and the Lady (1937 USA): This one’s quite the oddity: an RKO costume drama with scenes from a (reputedly superior) German film, Der Kurier des Zaren, edited into it. Viennese émigré Anton Walbrook stars as Michael Strogoff, an emissary of the Tsar sent to deliver orders to Grand Duke Vladimir (William Stack), whose army is engaged in a life or death struggle in Siberia against the Tartar hordes. Michael meets cute on the train with Tartar spy Zangarra (Margot Grahame), and things get even more complicated when he travels through his home village and must deny all knowledge of his own mother. Co-starring Fay Bainter (as Mom), Akim Tamiroff (as, naturally, a baddie), and Eric Blore (as, for a change, a journalist), The Soldier and the Lady is an enjoyable melodrama with lashings of mild sadism.
7:00 PM Sundance
Mermaid (2007 RUS): Mermaid is a Russian fantasy about Alisa (Masha Shalaeva), the product of a one-night stand who can move inanimate objects using only the power of her mind. She’s trying to live the life of a normal Moscow university student, but meets con man Sasha (Yevgeni Tsyganov), who convinces her to help him in his latest real estate venture: selling land on the Moon. Though this sounds like a recipe for Amelie-style quirkiness, Mermaid defies easy categorization, not least thanks to a surprising and unsettling denouement that will knock you back on your heels. Also airs 5/26 at 2:20 AM.
12:50 PM Starz
Soul Power (2008 USA): If you like soul music—sweet soul music—or outrageous seventies fashions, you won’t want to miss Soul Power. A documentary about the concert scheduled to coincide with 1974’s legendary Ali-Foreman ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ in Kinshasa, Zaire, the film features James Brown, Miriam Makeba, B.B. King, Bill Withers, and others. The only drawback is that we only get a few performances from each—presumably, there’s more on the DVD. Also airs at 3:50 PM.
8:30 PM Turner Classic Movies
Smoke Signals (1998 CAN-USA): A wry comedy-drama of contemporary Indian life based on a book by Sherman Alexie, Smoke Signals features Evan Adams as Thomas Builds-the-Fire, a homely, bespectacled type who inveigles himself into a road trip with perfunctory pal Victor Joseph (Adam Beach). Victor’s on his way to Phoenix to pick up the ashes of his estranged father, and grudgingly accepts his travelling companion in exchange for a free bus ticket. What follows is the most entertaining big screen bus trip since Midnight Cowboy, and the film benefits further from fine supporting turns by Gary Farmer and Tantoo Cardinal. It’s followed at 10:45 PM by 1998’s Naturally Native, another Native American-produced feature, and at 12:45 AM by 1920’s silent, but decidedly Anglo-oriented, James Fenimore Cooper adaptation Last of the Mohicans.
Thursday 5/27/10
3:30 PM Sundance
Treeless Mountain (2008 ROK): Writer-director So Yong Kim, responsible for 2006’s opaque character study In Between Days, returns with this superior drama of dysfunctional Korean family life. The story centers upon Bin and Jin, respectively three and seven-year old sisters temporarily left in the care of gruff Big Aunt (Mi-hyang Kim) whilst mother searches for their absent father. Big Aunt, who has a bit of a drinking problem, uses the girls as household servants, sends them out begging when funds run short, and promises them Mom will return when their piggy bank is full. When this condition is met and Mom still doesn’t return, the sisters strike out on their own to find her. This finely detailed drama won the curiously monikered Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at last year’s Berlin International Film Festival.
5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Nanook of the North (1922 USA): The grandaddy of American documentaries, Nanook of the North returns to TCM this evening. Directed by Robert Flaherty, the film portrays a (semi-fictional) year in the life of the titular Inuit, with particular focus on trading, hunting, and migratory patterns. Though much of Nanook was edited to fit within a loose ‘plot’ framework designed by Flaherty, the film remains a landmark achievement: it exposed filmgoers to indigeneous peoples and harsh environments they’d never seen before.
6:15 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Exiles (1961 USA): Long out of circulation (it only screened at three film festivals back in the day) and virtually unknown, this outstanding ‘lost’ feature was released on DVD earlier this year and received a deservedly rapturous response. Directed by USC film student Kent Mackenzie, The Exiles is a simple, searing tale of life on the mean streets of Los Angeles circa 1960. Mackenzie’s primary focus is on the Native American ‘exiles’ who have moved from the rez to the big city, and the result is a beautiful, tragic black and white time capsule, perhaps the closest American film has ever come to Italian neo-realism. It’s a remarkable film and not to be missed, especially considering future television screenings will probably be few and far between.
9:00 PM Fox Movie Channel
The Fly II (1989 USA): When life gives you decaying matter, make maggots. Hence this slightly inferior but still gruesomely enjoyable sequel to David Cronenberg’s Fly remake of 1986. Directed by special effects genius Chris Walas, The Fly II stars Eric Stoltz as Martin, son of the first film’s ‘mad’ scientist Seth Brundle. Martin seems like a perfectly normal child, and after Seth’s demise is adopted by Bartok (Lee Richardson), his father’s former employer. But Bartok’s intentions are less than charitable: he’s interested in using Martin as a guinea pig to test his own genetic theories. The results are suitably horrific, but the film evokes deep sympathy for poor Martin, perhaps the silver screen’s most sympathetic monster of the ‘80s. The Fly II airs this evening in widescreen, immediately following an encore screening of 1986’s The Fly.
10:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Broken Rainbow (1985 USA): I’m embarrassed to admit that, prior to right about now, I’d never heard of this film—which won the Best Feature Documentary Oscar at 1986’s Academy Awards! What was I doing on Oscar night that year—getting hot and bothered about Out of Africa and A Trip to Bountiful? I think not. Broken Rainbow documents the relocation of 10,000 Navajo at the behest of a wicked mining company—some things, it seems, never change. It’s followed at 11:15 PM by another variant on the Nanook of the North meme, 1930’s The Silent Enemy, which examines the lives of the Ojibwe Indians of Ontario, Canada.
Friday 5/28/10
1:00 PM Fox Movie Channel
A Letter to Three Wives (1948 USA): Let’s not disparage this film by calling it a ‘women’s picture’. Even though A Letter to Three Wives is focussed on the story of, well, three women, it will still be of interest to sensitive guys who enjoy long walks on the beach, the postal service, and good movies. Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, and Ann Sothern star as Deborah, Laura, and Rita, three married ladies chaperoning a group of children on a boat trip (thankfully, Cuba Gooding Jr. is not aboard). As the vessel prepares to pull anchor, they receive a last minute missive from landlubber Addie Ross informing them that she’s run off with one of their husbands. The question, of course, is which one? Recently parodied on an episode of The Simpsons, A Letter to Three Wives is tough to pigeon-hole: it’s neither straight-up drama nor straight-up social satire, but whatever it is, it’s another feather in the cap of director Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Jeffrey Lynn and the unrelated Kirk and Paul Douglas co-star as the three wives’ three hubbies.
Saturday 5/29/10
10:15 PM Turner Classic Movies
Birdy (1985 USA): It no longer plays quite as well as it did when I was an impressionable stripling of 22, but Birdy remains a memorable film about the crippling psychological aftereffects of war and the power of enduring friendship. Nicolas Cage plays a (physically) wounded GI sent to a veterans’ hospital to try and help his shell-shocked compatriot, Matthew Modine, rendered speechless and uncommunicative after his own tour of duty in ‘Nam. Cage’s job is to re-establish contact with Modine’s suppressed human personality, and though the film veers into Hollywood clichés and sentimentality (especially during its flashback sequences), at its heart are the two brilliant performances of its leads, especially Modine’s. TCM is, of course, airing a wide-screen print this evening, so if you’ve never seen Birdy before, now’s the time.
Sunday 5/30/10
9:05 PM IFC
Days of Glory (2006 FRA): Released in its native France as Indigenes, Days of Glory tells the episodic tale of four colonial soldiers fighting for liberté, égalité, and fraternité during World War II. Directed by Rachid Bouchareb, the film focuses on a quartet of Moroccan recruits fighting their way from North Africa to the European mainland, with the promise of future self-determination and freedom as incentive. They soon learn that their white brothers-in-arms get better food, longer leaves, and rise through the ranks faster than they do. Thematically provocative but stylistically old-fashioned, Days of Glory made such an impression in its native land that surviving North African war vets won back the pensions previously denied to them for decades. Who says art can’t change the world? Also airs 5/31 at 1:00 PM.
Monday 5/31/10
2:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
Nazty Nuisance (1943 USA): This World War II comedy is far better than it has any right to be. That’s almost entirely down to the performances of Bobby Watson and Joe Devlin as Hitler and Mussolini, as well as a badly outdated yellow face turn by Johnny Arthur as Japanese warmonger Suki Yaki. (I’m more inclined to overlook this sin than usual—after all, the depictions of Adolf and Benito are equally broad caricatures.) Call me easily amused, but it’s no mean feat when a 67-year old comedy can still make me laugh out loud.
3:35 AM Sundance
Story of Women (1988 FRA): Churned out by the ever busy Claude Chabrol, Story of Women is the tale of Marie (Isabelle Huppert), a working-class Frenchwoman living la vida terrible with her alcoholic husband and two snot-nosed kids during the early days of the German occupation of WWII. One day Marie assists a neighbor woman with an abortion, and decides that she’s finally found her calling. Yes, it’s a bit of a Gallic Vera Drake, but Marie is in it for the money, baby, and uses the proceeds to move on up to a nicer apartment and expand into the prostitution business. Needless to say, the Nazis don’t take kindly to such activity, and put her on trial. Based on a true story, Chabrol’s film doesn’t draw conclusions about the relative morality or immorality of Marie’s activity, instead emphasizing the abuses of state power to which she ultimately falls victim. Huppert is as excellent as ever and Francois Cluzet is also first-rate as crumb-bum hubby Paul. Also airs at 9:15 AM.
9:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Dirty Harry (1971 USA): It’s Clint Eastwood’s 80th birthday, and TCM begins the celebration with Ol’ Squint-eyes’ groundbreaking badass cop thriller, Dirty Harry. In the unlikely event that you haven’t heard yet, Harry Callahan is a San Francisco (oh, the irony!) policeman who’s sick and tired of street scum getting off with a slap on the wrist or less. Baghdad by the Bay is being stalked by a serial killer called Scorpio, and Harry decides it’s time to tear up the rule book in order to get things done and bring him/her to justice. The film that launched a thousand vigilante knock-offs, Dirty Harry gets a very rare widescreen airing tonight, and is followed at 11:00 PM by its immediate sequel, 1973’s Magnum Force.