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From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or underappreciated; they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times Pacific.

Tuesday 04/17/07

12:05 PM Starz In Black
The Girl With Brains In Her Feet (1997 GB): If you enjoyed Bend It Like Beckham, you may not care too much for The Girl With Brains In Her Feet - but if you thought Bend It Like Beckham was a bit trite and predictable, you'll love it. Produced by fiercely independent money man Don Boyd, this is a marvelous kitchen sink drama that oozes period authenticity thanks to some excellent location work in Leicester and features an unpredictable story about adolescent love, sex, and sport in early 1970s Britain. I can't say enough nice things about this little picture: it's a quality production all the way around, with a wonderful cast and a busy story line that will keep you intrigued to the end. Of particular note are Amanda Mealing as the prototypical struggling and bitter single mum, Mossie Smith as her world weary sister, and Joshua Henderson as an ethereal itinerant who takes advantage of the film's heroine, Jackie (Joanna Ward). My only quibble is with the busy songtrack, which threatens to overwhelm the dramatic proceedings from time to time. Overall, however, this is a low budget delight that warrants a much wider audience than the one it has heretofore had. Also airs 4/18 at 2:35 AM.

6:30 PM Sundance
Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (2006 SUI): If you're a current affairs junkie, chances are you're familiar with the ‘peak oil' theory. In a nutshell, that theory asserts that the world's reserves of crude oil are very close to being maximized and will soon begin to decline, whilst demand, of course, will continue to increase, ultimately leading to a bleak Hobbesian future where developed countries will struggle to control the third world nations that house this vital natural resource. The theory is far from proven at this point - if you believe the oil companies and some industry analysts, we've yet to scratch the surface of reserves - but this Swiss documentary makes a convincing, calm, and clinical case that we are indeed nearing the nexus where demand will outstrip supply. Should the theory be correct, the future will feature permanent economic retraction, more war, mass starvation, and worse. Stop the world, I want to get off! Also airs 4/19 at 9:30 PM and 4/22 at 12:30 PM.

9:00 PM More Max
The Notorious Bettie Page (2006 USA): Gretchen Mol earned well-deserved complimentary notices for her performance as cheesecake goddess Bettie Page in this above average biopic. It helps that the subject matter is not entirely familiar to most of us - indeed, even for pop culture mavens, Page remains an enigma, her voluminous output only recently beginning to arrive on DVD - and as a result the film is not reliant on chronological recreations of well-documented events. And who better to bring her life story to the screen than director Mary Harron, whose earlier film I Shot Andy Warhol managed to work the same magic on behalf of would-be assassin Valerie Solanas? For anyone interested in the history of the stag reel or the development of feminism, or just enjoy ogling an outrageously sexy woman in slinky black under-things, The Notorious Bettie Page is absolutely essential viewing. Note that this evening's broadcast marks the film's American television debut, but the film airs in widescreen on 4/23 at midnight and 3:00 AM.

Wednesday 04/18/07

6:15 AM Turner Classic Movies
Child of Manhattan (1933 USA): This obscure Columbia weepie is based on a play by Preston Sturges, but thematically it's pretty far from the man's later acerbic social comedies. John Boles plays Paul Vanderkill, a child of affluence - his granddad lucked into some prime Manhattan farmland back in the 19th century day - who knocks up taxi dancer Madeleine (Nancy Carroll) and is forced into a marriage of convenience in order to avoid bringing shame to the family name. When the baby dies in childbirth, the distraught Madeleine flees for the remote vastnesses of Mexico, where she hooks up with good-hearted cowpoke Panama Kelly (western star Buck Jones). Will she saddle up permanently with Panama - or return to a life of blue-blooded luxury? Jane Darwell, Nat Pendleton, and Betty Grable round out the cast of this overwrought but entertaining melodrama.

7:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Brute Force (1947 USA): A first rate penitentiary-set noir from the great Jules Dassin, Brute Force stars Burt Lancaster as nail-tough inmate Joe Collins, newly returned to the general prison population after doing time in solitary. Sadistic jailer Captain Munsey (Hume Cronyn) has it in for Collins, who is well respected by his fellow cons, and assigns him to a particularly filthy detail cleaning out the sewer system. Collins and company decide to turn waste water into waste-ade, and with the aid of cellblock bigwig Gallagher (Charles Bickford) plot a prison revolt that will help conceal their escape plans. One of the great ‘liberal Hollywood' social pictures produced by Mark Hellinger, Brute Force was beautifully shot by William Daniels, whose fine work would also grace Hellinger's final picture, The Naked City, a year later. Perhaps the greatest prison break movie this side of Jacque Becker's Le Trou, Brute Force also features Yvonne de Carlo, Jeff Corey, Whit Bissell, and calypso singer Sir Lancelot in supporting roles, but it's Cronyn's performance as the neo-Nazi Munsey you'll remember.

Thursday 04/19/07

2:00 AM IFC
Spaghetti West (2005 USA): Ah, the spaghetti Western: who would ever have dreamed in 1964 that one Sergio Leone film - A Fistful of Dollars - could spawn an entire genre that would eventually encompass well in excess of 500 films over the following decade? This IFC original documentary takes a look at this unfairly maligned genre, and whilst it's much too short - only an hour long! - it includes lots of clips and exclusive interview footage of genre biggies Clint Eastwood, Alberto Grimaldi, and Ennio Morricone. It's a great way to introduce yourself, or someone you love, to the distinctly odd but addictive pleasures of the Euro-oater.

5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Make Mine Mink (1962 GB): Sometimes, dreams do come true. I've been dying to see this very British comedy of errors for nearly 30 years, ever since it disappeared into the vaults after a few local TV airings back in the 1970s. There were rumors of a brief VHS release back in the ‘80s, but I never saw a copy, and repeated efforts to get one on Ebay came to naught. Now Make Mine Mink is making its premium cable debut on TCM, and I can't wait. Terry-Thomas stars as Major Rayne, a retired Army officer who decides to supplement his pension by stealing some mink coats with the help of some equally clueless amateur felons. Based on Peter Cokes' play A Breath of Spring, this is farce at its finest, or at least so it seemed back when I were a lad. I'm betting it's still pretty funny - after all, how can any film featuring Hattie Jacques, Irene Handl, and Kenneth Williams NOT leave you laughing? Heck, it even features an appearance by future Liberal Party Member of Parliament Clement (grandson of Sigmund) Freud in a supporting role! Definitely the pick of the week.

Friday 04/20/07

1:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
Life of Vergie Winters (1934 USA): If you enjoyed Child of Manhattan, you should plan on watching this RKO meller, which also stars John Boles, this time as politician John Shadwell. Shadwell is married to wife Laura (Helen Vinson), but has long maintained some action on the side in the form of the titular Vergie (Ann Harding), a simple milliner who bears him a child but, for the sake of her lover's political future, must surrender her child to adoption. This being a post-Code film, it can only end in tears, and there's plenty of misery and retribution to go around before the final reel unspools. Lon Chaney Jr. co-stars along with Walter Brennan and Donald Crisp.

11:30 PM
It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958 USA): The time: sometime in the far distant future - say, 1973 or thereabouts. The place: the first manned expedition to Mars. The problem: a space creature hitching a ride back to Earth, planning to bring its own special blend of madness and mayhem to the big blue marble. Yes, it's Alien, made 20 years before its time, though only set a few years before Ridley Scott's monster movie was produced, which was also set in a far distant future - say, the 21st century or thereabouts. What goes around comes around, apparently, but It! The Terror From Beyond Space is a decidedly down at heels Edward L. Cahn rush job featuring no one more famous than Marshall Thompson and Dabbs Greer amongst its cast. Still, if you're interested in seeing the space-time continuum bent all out of shape, watch this one back to back with its more famous chest-bursting offspring.

Saturday 04/21/07

1:45 AM Turner Classic Movies
The Killer Shrews (1956 USA): This is one of my favorite sci fi cheapies, mostly because the titular creatures are actually dogs unconvincingly disguised as giant, carnivorous shrews. An independent feature helmed by genre specialist and special effects expert Ray Kellogg (The Giant Gila Monster), The Killer Shrews stars Ken (Festus) Curtis as Jerry, a mad research assistant whose unauthorized experiments go terribly awry, resulting in an island full of extremely uncomfortable looking coon dogs in oversized plastic fangs chasing granite-jawed sea captain Thorne Sherman (The Dukes of Hazzards' Sheriff Rosco) and dishy dame Ann (1957's Miss Universe Ingrid Goude) from pillar to post. No truth to the rumor that Jerry was dabbling with contaminated wheat gluten in the laboratory.

Sunday 04/22/07

12:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
Penny Princess (1952 GB): A not terribly engaging romantic comedy, Penny Princess is primarily interesting today as an early example of actor Dirk Bogarde's work as a romantic lead. Bogarde, who was gay, spent the first ten years of his career following the Rock Hudson career path in films such as this, in which he portrays a handsome cheese salesman who falls in love with beautiful New Yorker Lindy (Yolande Dorian), a shop-girl who is also heir to the throne of a bankrupt European principality. Love and some very lightweight humor are in the air, as the couple must bring modern finance to the throne and help return the tiny nation of Lompidorra to financial health. Shortly after appearing in Penny Princess, Dorian married director Val Guest, and the couple remained together until Guest's death only last year. Look for bespectacled (and typecast) Richard Wattis as a hotel receptionist.

8:15 PM IFC
Naked (1993 GB): Actor David Thewlis seems to be winking perpetually at the audience; witness his sly turn as the Hospitaler in the recent (and otherwise fairly dreadful) Kingdom of Heaven. In Naked, however, Thewlis gazes forth with a withering, dour glower that will have most viewers squirming uncomfortably in their seats for the ensuing two hours-plus. In fact, in the vast pantheon of unpleasant and generally clueless film characters, David Thewlis' Johnny must rank close to the top. This is Mike Leigh's most brutal and downbeat film; if you are disturbed by the sight of amoral men beating their women, you'll want to give it a miss (If you're not disturbed, please seek help). Either way, this is a terrific film with an amazing performance by Thewlis and the first major role for the incredibly talented and sorely missed Katrin Cartlidge.

11:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Mephisto (1981 HUN): The Best Foreign Film Oscar winner in 1982, Istvan Szabo's Mephisto stars Klaus Maria Brandauer as Hendrik Hoefgen, a successful stage actor whose rising popularity amongst the Nazi elite forces him to make a choice between his career and his conscience. It's a rather dry, plodding affair, but Brandauer is excellent as the bemasked Hoefgen, whose fictional life story parallels that of beknighted German film director Leni Riefenstahl, and the period detail is truly outstanding. As an added attraction, Mephisto makes its widescreen American television debut this evening.

Monday 04/23/07

4:30 PM Showtime
Awesome, I F...'in Shot That!(2006 USA) : Dude, this documentary is wicked! Shot entirely by 50 amateurs given cameras by The Beastie Boys, it's the resultant verite record of the alterna-rap super group's 2004 appearance at Madison Square Garden. Frankly the kids in the audience didn't do all that well, as the film required considerable post-production work to get it into releasable condition, so it's essential viewing for fans of the Beasties and best avoided by everyone else. Also airs at 7:30 PM.

6:00 PM Sundance
We Jam Econo (2005 USA): Frank Zappa, Henry Rollins, Bob Dylan, Fugazi. What do these musicians have in common with LA avant-punkers The Minutemen? They're artists I admire more for their attitude toward music than for the actual music they recorded, which is too obtuse, tuneless, po-faced, or stupid for me. (I'll let you, dear reader, determine which adjective applies to which performer.) The Minutemen got together in San Pedro, California in the early ‘80s, and immediately eschewed the Luddite limitations of Orange County hardcore in favor of the art-punk of Southland bands such as Human Hands and BPeople and the brittle Brit-funk-punk of Gang of Four. We Jam Econo is a straightforward and very personal rockumentary tracing the band's history from their humble beginnings to the death of guitarist D. Boon in a 1985 auto accident. Featuring copious archival footage as well as interviews with luminaries such as Richard Hell, Thurston Moore, and Colin Newman, We Jam Econo is a heartfelt tribute to a band who still remain influential today.