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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 11/20/07

1:20 AM The Movie Channel
The Inheritors (1998 OST-GER): Set during the 1930s, this pastoral political allegory takes place on an Austrian farm, where a group of ten workers have unexpectedly inherited the wealth of Hillinger, a landowning plutocrat. Hillinger was a swine in life who raped female staff and terrorized male laborers, but his will is surprisingly generous towards his workers, granting them control of his land and livestock. Alas, the peasants are not up to the task, and their proto-collective comes apart at the seams after they find themselves completely at sea and at odds with the neighboring oligarchs. Shot in the subdued tones of an 18th century landscape, The Inheritors is a well-developed character study with elements of black comedy and Marxist polemic thrown in for good measure. Also airs at 4:20 AM.

5:10 AM More Max
John and Jane Toll Free (2006 IND): If you've ever felt uncomfortable receiving South Asia-based customer support from your favorite airline or ISP, John and Jane Toll Free is about to make you feel a whole lot worse. Shot in Mumbai by director Ashim Ahluwalia, this documentary takes a look at this unfortunate business practice, wherein Indian call center employees surrender their cultural and racial identity in order to satisfy the bottom lines of their American and European corporate masters. Ahluwalia focuses on six such wage slaves, who have been dipped in American pop culture, assigned new Anglocentric names, and deposited on the graveyard shift when most US based customers will be calling. It's utterly depressing stuff, but remember - your call is very important to them.

12:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Great Gildersleeve (1942 USA): A huge radio hit in the 1940s (and arguably the first ‘spin-off' in American cultural history), The Great Gildersleeve got the second-feature treatment from RKO in a series of four extremely entertaining films, all of which air in chronological order today. The titular Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve was depicted brilliantly by Harold Peary, who created the character on the Fibber McGee and Molly Show and parlayed it into a lifetime gig that later took in product endorsements as well as radio and film. He's a bloviating windbag deeply impressed with himself, and widely regarded by friends and neighbors in the small town of Summerfield as, well, a bloviating, egocentric windbag. The films are all worth watching, though for my money the best is 1943's Gildersleeve on Broadway, which airs today at 2:30 PM. In this episode, our hero goes to the big city in an effort to convince wealthy Mrs. Chandler (Billie Burke, marvelous as always) not to close down her late husband's wholesaling business, which Summerfield's pharmacist Peavey relies upon for stock. Mrs. Chandler is an eccentric millionairess with an even more eccentric brother (Hobart Cavanaugh) who has a William Tell complex, and the task will not be an easy one! It's also the most transgressive film in the series, as the fey Peavey (Richard LeGrand) gets to dance with Gildersleeve in a hotel nightclub and also dons womens' clothing for the final reel. Watch for Leonid Kinskey in a delightful cameo as a window washing, would-be Lothario who learns some valuable lessons from Throckmorton. It's preceded at 1:15 PM by Gildersleeve's Bad Day, in which Gildy does his civic duty by serving on a jury; and succeeded at 3:45 PM by Gildersleeve's Ghost, wherein Throckmorton encounters a mad scientist, an invisible gorilla, and some spirits from his family tree.

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