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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 04/29/08

3:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Have I the Right to Kill (1964 FRA): Titled more poetically L'Insoumis (The Disobedient) in its native France, this incredibly rare Alain Delon thriller makes its American television debut this afternoon. Delon plays Thomas, a demobbed soldier working for the OAS, the shadowy terrorist organization that supplanted governmental authority in the restive French colony of Algeria during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Thomas has been hired to kidnap a left-wing lawyer (Lea Massari), but when he falls in love with her and lets her escape, his OAS masters are none too pleased and the chase is on. Superbly shot in black and white by Claude Renoir and featuring a typically fine Georges Delerue score, Have I the Right the Kill is the one film you really don't want to miss this week - and if you haven't already purchased Lionsgate's recently released DVD set, The Alain Delon Collection, know that it's an essential (and affordably priced) addition to any good home video library.

4:00 PM Cinemax
Nanking (2007 USA): The Rape of Nanking (as it is indelicately but accurately known) is examined in this horrifying documentary, co-produced by HBO but debuting on Cinemax. The events, which foreshadowed World War II, saw the Imperial Japanese Army loot and pillage their way through the streets of this ancient city for four months, leaving several hundred thousand dead in their wake. Nanking exhumes these horrors through interviews with elderly Chinese and Japanese survivors and through source materials tastefully interpreted by actors such as Stephen Dorff, Mariel Hemingway, and Jurgen Prochnow, who read excerpts from the dairies and letters of members of the city's European and American colony. The foreigners - including, ironically, a dedicated Nazi - established a safe zone for Nanking's native inhabitants, thousands of whom were saved from the slaughter. Featuring amazing contemporary footage of both the newsreel and home movie variety, Nanking won prizes at Sundance, Heartland, and the Hong Kong International Film Festival. It airs again at 7:00 PM and 4/30 on More Max at 7:30 AM.

6:35 PM Sundance
All in This Tea (2007 USA): Documentarian Les Blank has always been drawn to the oddly mundane aspects of life - witness his previous films about Werner Herzog (who also appears herein), spicy food, and gap-toothed women - so it should come as little surprise that his most recent film examines the production and sale of tea. His film is about an enthusiast named David Lee Hoffman, who travels throughout China looking for the perfect blend of brewed leaves with which to tickle his taste buds. Fascinated with old-fashioned production techniques as complex as those employed by the most fastidious vintner, Hoffman's passion is to save tea drinkers from the mass-produced, pesticide-drenched slop they've grown used to ingesting over the years. Whether you're a daily drinker or indulge more modestly, All in This Tea will have you brewing up in no time, though you may no longer be willing to settle for Lipton's finest. Also airs 5/4 at 12:35 PM.

Wednesday 04/30/08>

7:00 PM Sundance
The Yacoubian Building (2006 EGY): We don't get many Egyptian films round these parts - in fact, I think the only one I've ever seen was Youssef Chahine's contribution to the international omnibus feature 11'09"01. The Yacoubian Building is an epic-length (almost three hour) drama about the clash between the secular and the sacred in modern-day Egypt, as personified by the residents of a Cairo apartment house. Based on a novel by Alaa al Aswani and directed by freshman filmmaker Marwan Hamed, The Yacoubian Building has been favorably compared to Marco Giordana's Best of Youth, marking it a must-see in the TiVoPlex.

10:45 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Ghost Train (1941 GB): Hello playmates! American fans of British comedian Arthur Askey - and I know there have to be a handful of you out there - will be delighted to see this comedy thriller make a rare appearance on TCM this evening. The Liverpool-born Askey plays Tommy Gander, a vaudevillian stranded at remote Fal Vale rail station one evening after pulling the emergency cord in order to rescue his hat. Tommy isn't alone, though, and other inconvenienced passengers include love interest Jackie (Carol Lynne), alcoholic doctor Sterling (Morland Graham), and poker-faced spinster Miss Bourne (Kathleen Harrison), as well as stationmaster Hodges, who regales his guests with tales of a haunted train that brings death whenever it passes through Fal Vale. As the hour approaches midnight and the chill sets in, The Ghost Train soon claims its first victim - but our Tommy is naturally suspicious of all things supernatural and won't stop until he gets to the bottom of things. Based on a play by Dad's Army's Arthur Ridley, the story had been adapted for film on five previous occasions as a thriller but was transformed into a comedy in order to suit Askey's talents and the wartime circumstances, and the result is enjoyably daft. In even better news, it's followed at 12:15 AM by Band Waggon, an even more obscure Askey vehicle from 1940 involving German spies, a haunted castle, and a new-fangled contraption known as television.

Thursday 05/01/08

2:45 AM Starz Edge
Too Tough to Die: A Tribute to Johnny Ramone (2006 USA): This bittersweet salute to the curmudgeonly punk guitar god - who never met three chords he couldn't string together into a 90-second song - was partly shot during a star-studded 2004 concert held in his honor. Three days later Ramone was dead from prostate cancer, but his legacy lives on in this film, which features tributes from contemporaries such as Debbie Harry and Tommy Ramone as well as performances from those whom he influenced, including the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Eddie Vedder. If you've ever danced the Cretin Hop or the Blitzkrieg Bop, you'll love Too Tough to Die - even if you couldn't stand Johnny's right-wing politics.

Friday 05/02/08

6:00 AM Fox Movie Channel
The Power and the Glory (1933 USA): Critic Pauline Kael once compared this long forgotten Fox production to Citizen Kane, and while The Power and the Glory does share a narrative arc and some plot points with Kane, it's not on a par with Orson Welles' bold cinematic statement. Nonetheless, it's a fascinating film, and stars a very young Spencer Tracy as Tom Garner, whose rags to riches story is recounted in the wake of his death. Garner starts out in life as a humble track walker, and rises though the ranks to become a rail tycoon - but once ensconced on his corporate throne, he loses touch with both wife (Colleen Moore) and son (Phillip Trent), proving once again that money can't buy you love, especially in the midst of the Great Depression. In addition to a solid performance from Tracy, the film is notable for Preston Sturges' atypically serious screenplay - his first - and great cinematography by James Wong Howe.

11:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Blacula (1972 USA): It's been a cable staple for a long time, but this might be the first time Blacula has aired back to back with its inferior but fun sequel, 1973's Scream Blacula Scream, which follows on 5/3 at 12:45 AM. Both films are appearing in their original aspect ratio, and star Shakespearean actor William Marshall - better known to post-boomers as The King of Cartoons on Pee-Wee's Playhouse - as African prince Mamuwalde, who finds himself none too pleased when his grave is disturbed and his coffin shipped to modern day Los Angeles by a pair of swishy interior decorators. Once in the City of Angels, Mamuwalde must feed, and whilst attending the funeral of his first victims (how polite!) notices Tina (Vonetta McGee), who bears a startling resemblance to his 19th century wife Luva (Vonetta McGee). Can their century-old romance be rekindled - or will Tina's concerned sister Michelle (Denise Nicholas) drive a stake through the heart of their relationship? Marshall is magnificent and plays his role with the utmost conviction (as does McGee with hers), and is ably supported by Thalmus Rasulala as police coroner Gordon Thomas, as well as a hook-handed Elisha Cook Jr. The sequel plods through similar territory (this time it's only Mamuwalde's bones that get sold) but adds Pam Grier to the mix as a sassy voodoo expert.

Saturday 05/03/08

6:00 PM Showtime
Rocky Balboa (2006 USA): Call me a hopeless romantic (or even a complete idiot), but I loved this latest (and last?) chapter of the Rocky saga. It's never going to be considered great cinema, but Sly Stallone wisely returned to the first film's character-driven roots for Rocky Balboa, in which our restaurateur hero decides to take one last swing in the ring for old time's sake. It's a melodramatic trip down memory lane with brother-in-law Paulie (lumpy beyond belief Burt Young), trainer Duke (Tony Burton), and memories of the now-dead Adrian. Unless you have a lump of coal for a heart you'll be feeling a little verklempt by the final reel. Rocky Balboa makes its television debut tonight in widescreen, and airs again at 9:00 PM and throughout the month.

9:00 PM Sundance
The Idiots (1998 DEN): Forget Sarah Marshall - The Idiots had more and better male members ten years ago! This misunderstood and wildly underappreciated Lars von Trier film is up there with Riget and Zentropa in the director's canon and far superior to his critical hit Breaking the Waves. Critics focussed on its perceived cruelty towards the mentally handicapped, but The Idiots is actually a very thoughtful film about revolution, healing and society's attitude towards the 'retarded'. Like all von Trier productions, it's also willfully unpleasant to watch, but is a brave and moving film that will have you dabbing your eyes by the end. (I must be going through male menopause or something, 'cause everything seems to make me cry this week.) Now, about those penises: whoever decided that American filmgoers could not be exposed to the sight of male genitalia needs to lose their job. The absurdity of being exposed to full frontal female nudity - while being protected by big black floating boxes whenever a schlong shows up on screen - is an outrage. Did someone REALLY think this film would break through at the box office if these appendages were obscured? Were they truly concerned that Joe Six Pack was going to take the wife and kids to that new movie by that famed Danish director that's such a big hit with the arthouse crowd? The mind boggles.

Sunday 05/04/08

3:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
Sabotage (1936 GB): One of my five favorite Hitchcock films (for the record, the others are Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train, and Frenzy), Sabotage is a British-lensed tale of terrorism set in the heart of modern day London. Oscar Homolka stars as Carl Verloc, a cinema owner with anarchist tendencies who wants to destroy as much of the Big Smoke as he possibly can. His wife (Sylvia Sidney) suspects he's up to no good, as does Ted (John Loder), a detective assigned to spy on Verloc whilst masquerading as a greengrocer. Villainous Carl is using his wife's younger brother (Desmond Tester) as a bomb courier - but when the lad is delayed in his rounds one day, the wrong target is destroyed. Sabotage came in for criticism in 1936 for its unrelenting representation of banal malevolence, but the years since have confirmed the accuracy of its depiction of the dark recesses of the human soul. Of all of Hitch's British films, this is the one that's aged the best.

10:35 PM Flix
Hollywood Knights (1980 USA): Your tolerance for this film will depend on your feelings about Animal House and Porky's. If those are two of your favorites, you will love this lowbrow sophomoric comedy about a gang of gearheads fighting to save their beloved drive-in diner from the wrecker's ball on Halloween night 1965. If not, you will find Hollywood Knights another data point measuring the slow but inexorable decline of Western Civilization. Personally, I'm a Revenge of the Nerds kinda guy, and it's a little hard to believe this was directed by Floyd Mutrux, whose Dusty and Sweets McGee remains one of the unsung classics of American cinema.

Monday 05/05/08

12:00 PM Sundance
Project Grizzly (1996 CAN): If only Timothy Treadwell, the subject of Werner Herzog's amazing doc Grizzly Man, had seen this film. Project Grizzly takes a look at Canadian Troy Hurtubise, who, like Treadwell, wanted to get as close to grizzly bears as he possibly could. Unlike Treadwell, Hurtubise wasn't inclined to believe that giving the bears cutesy names would make them your BFF, so he decided to select the next best option: developing a suit of armor strong enough to protect him from the cavernous jaws of Yogi and Friends. Hey Boo Boo, check out this metal pic-a-nic basket!