TiVoPlex
TiVoPlex for February 2 2010 through February 8 2010
By John Seal
February 1, 2010
From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or underappreciated; they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times Pacific.
Tuesday 2/02/10
2:05 AM Encore Action
The Don is Dead (1973 USA): Don Rickles? No, still with us as of this writing. Don Duck? No, still happily glad-handing the crowds at Disneyland. (And at Disneyworld. Not quite sure how he manages to hold down both gigs.) Don Corleone? Ah, now there's the rub...or, perhaps, the rub-out. Produced in the wake of Francis Ford Coppola's hugely successful family drama The Godfather, The Don is Dead stars Anthony Quinn as Don Angelo, a Mafia kingpin suckered into a mob war by rival Orlando (Charles Cioffi). Amongst the other made men snarling their way across the screen are Robert Forster, Abe Vigoda, Victor Argo, and Al Lettieri. Directed with the sure, if conservative, hand of Richard Fleischer, this not terribly original crime drama will still please fans of the gangster genre.
10:05 AM The Movie Channel
Head Trauma (2006 USA): The search for a decent contemporary horror film generally takes one down a grim, lonely, blood-stained path that leads directly to a fully accoutred abattoir, where the unfortunate searcher is gutted, trepanned, and suspended from a meat-hook. It's a thankless task, but when one finally stumbles across a goodie, the feeling of triumph, of having overcome adversity against all the odds, is indescribable. And by indescribable, of course, I mean a satisfied warm glow, akin to the glow generated when you burn a big pile of zombies. Such is the glow you will feel when watching Head Trauma, an evenly-paced and (shock! horror!) logical thriller about depressed schlep George (Vince Mola) who moves into his grandmother's abandoned house with dreams of refurbishing it. George can't quite put his plans into action, however, and the house—and his mental health--slowly begin to disintegrate around him. Writer-director Lance Weiler's only previous film, 1998's The Last Broadcast, was also very good—and as he seems to produce a new film once every eight years, we can probably expect his next magnum opus in 2014. Also airs at 1:05 PM.
5:00 PM Flix
Blood Feud (1979 ITA): I first saw a Lina Wertmuller film—her phantasmagorical 1975 feature Seven Beauties—in the early ‘80s, and loved it. Starring louche Giancarlo Giannini as a foolish man stumbling his way blindly and inelegantly through the darkest days of World War II, Seven Beauties is a visually impressive and thematically fascinating film, worthy of comparison to the best of Fellini. I was convinced I'd found my new favorite auteur in Wertmuller. Shortly thereafter, I saw her 1974 film Swept Away. Yuk! How could the same person—a woman no less—direct such a piece of sexist garbage? Needless to say, my subscription to the auteur theory ended shortly thereafter. Which brings us to Blood Feud (or as it's known in Italy, a country apparently never at a loss for words, Fatto di sangue fra due uomini per causa di una vedova - si sospettano moventi politici), a film Wertmuller made a few years later with a trio of Italy's greatest stars—Giannini, Sophia Loren, and Marcello Mastroianni—as the three participants in a Mussolini-era love triangle. I've never seen it, but it's airing in widescreen tonight—and I might just be ready to give Wertmuller another try. Or maybe I'll just watch Seven Beauties again.
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