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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 11/25/08

11:20 PM Starz in Black
Someone is Killing Tate (2008 USA): A small scale indie that briefly played on the festival circuit this summer, Someone is Killing Tate makes its television debut this evening on Starz in Black. Directed by USC Film School grad and Oakland native Leon Lozano, it's the story of Tate Bradley, a 25-year old African-American who survives a suicide attempt and then tries to figure out what drove him to desperation in the first place. The truth is revealed gradually as friends and family members drop by to offer their support to Tate, who begins to realize he's not alone in bearing responsibility for the extreme measures he's taken. Lozano has the potential to be one of the most important African-American filmmakers of his generation, and his freshman feature effort (which has already won an impressive array of awards) well deserves the wider exposure it's about to get on national television. You can also examine the film's well-accoutred trophy case at its Myspace page (http://www.myspace.com/somethingiskillingtate).

Wednesday 11/26/08

2:45 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Loved One (1965 USA): I'm a huge admirer of novelist Evelyn Waugh, and one of my favorite Waugh stories is The Loved One, his acerbic dissection of the funeral industry. I'm not as big a fan of director Tony Richardson, a filmmaker often in thrall to the overly florid performance, but in this case even he couldn't entirely ruin the source material. Robert Morse, briefly a star thanks to his Tony-award winning turn in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, stars as British poet Dennis Barlow, newly arrived in Los Angeles on holiday but pressed into service to arrange for the burial of his recently deceased uncle (John Gielgud). He meets buttery funeral director Rev. Glenworthy (Jonathan Winters), falls for grief counsellor Aimee Thanatogenous (Anjanette Comer), cross's swords with embalmer and closet-case Mr. Joyboy (Rod Steiger), and finds himself sucked into the business via a job at a pet cemetery. It's all undeniably wacky if overly arch, and though it's a delight to watch the cast at work (including co-stars Dana Andrews, Liberace, Tab Hunter, and James Coburn), Richardson's film can't begin to equal Waugh's prose achievement. It's not bad as a satire on consumerism, but it's terrible as a literary adaptation.

5:00 PM Encore Westerns
Johnny Guitar (1954 USA): Nicholas Ray's highly-stylized Western about a woman barkeep in the Old West plays a bit like a 19th-century Mildred Pierce, but maybe that's because Joan Crawford is the woman in question. This film has become infamous on the postmodernist circuit for its lesbian "subtext," which arguably is there, but not to the extent some might hope. Top acting kudos go to Mercedes McCambridge (why didn't she work more?) as Emma Small, the town bluenose determined to get rid of the den of iniquity owned and operated by Ms. Crawford. Lushly shot in Trucolor (there's a process we all miss), Johnny Guitar has acquired a camp reputation it doesn't really deserve. Either way you view it, it's pretty good.

7:00 PM Sundance
The Killing of John Lennon (2007 GB): I missed The Killing of John Lennon during its cinema run, and judging from its pathetic box office take, you did, too. (In fact, it did so poorly that it likely won't turn a profit even AFTER taking ancillary income into account.) The film generally received scathing reviews and was described by critics as ‘fatuous', ‘exploitative', and ‘baffling', amongst other generous words of praise. Being a huge Beatles fan, however, I can't help but be drawn to director Andrew Piddington's Mark Chapman biopic, no matter how distasteful the subject matter. If you're another Fab Four or Lennon obsessive, chances are you'll probably also want to take a sideways glance.

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