Tivoplex
By John Seal
November 28, 2006
From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or underappreciated; they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times Pacific.
Tuesday 11/28/06
12:20 AM HBO Signature
La Puta y la Ballena (2004 ARG-ESP): For some reason the DirectTV listings for this film all truncate the titular word ‘puta' to ‘p...', which is a bit odd, considering that a)most English speakers won't know what the word means anyway, and b)when they find out it means ‘whore', they probably won't drop dead from shock. Released in the Anglophone world as The Whore and the Whale (sorry if that offends you), this Argentine-Spanish co-production stars Leonardo Sbaraglia as a Spanish Civil War soldier whose photographs inspires a 21st century journalist (Aitana Sanchez-Giton, the enigmatic waitress in Brad Anderson's The Machinist) to investigate the circumstances of his wartime demise. Shifting from the present day to the past and moving from Patagonia to Madrid and back again, this is a richly complex feature best appreciated on the big screen—but as that is unlikely to ever be an option for 99.9% or more of the population, this will have to do. Expertly shot by Jose Luis Alcaine and beautifully scored by Andres Goldstein and Daniel Tarrab, this is a classic example of magical realist cinema, and is a must-see for art-house mavens.
9:15 PM
Floating Weeds (1959 JAP): Warning: most viewers will consider watching Floating Weeds about as much fun as watching Paint Dry, so if you already got your fill of artsy-fartsy from La Puta y la Ballena, you may want to give this one a miss. Directed by Yasujiro Ozu, this is generally considered the Japanese director's finest effort (though how many can claim to have seen all of his 50 plus films?) and is certainly of a pastoral piece with the balance of his 1950s and ‘60s output. Ganjiro Nakamura stars as Komajuro, the aging patriarch of a troupe of kabuki actors traveling across medieval Japan, and the story revolves around his efforts to reconnect with an old lover and their illegitimate offspring. Komajuro is a bit of a blowhard with an oversized ego, and after being welcomed back with less than open arms, finds the secrets of his past intruding unpleasantly into the relationships of the present. This is deeply personal, unflashy filmmaking that will either enthrall you or bore you to tears. Either way, you'll know which camp you fall into within the first few minutes of Floating Weeds. Also airs 11/29 at 2:30 AM and 12:35 PM.
11:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Flesh (1932 USA): This very fine John Ford picture stars Wallace Beery as a dumb but loveable wrestling waiter who marries bad-girl Karen Morley and gets drawn into an underworld of fixed fights by Morley's old boyfriend, the caddish Ricardo Cortez (no, this film was not written by Barton Fink). For some reason, this film reminds me of G.W. Pabst's The Last Laugh, and while it can't quite measure up to that silent classic, it remains a powerful and ultimately moving film, especially during the final reel. Look for Warner Bros regular Nat Pendleton in a small role as one of Wally's wrestling chums.
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