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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 1/19/10

1:50 AM Cinemax
Dim Sum Funeral (2008 USA): If there's dim sum available at your next funeral, won't you please invite me? In the meantime, I'll have to make do with the celluloid variety featured in this decent if predictable ensemble drama from Chinese-American director Anna Chi. The film examines a quartet of estranged siblings reunited by the death of their mother, word of which has been conveyed to them by her gweilo housekeeper (Talia Shire). There's realtor Victoria (Francoise Yip), who's had a child out of wedlock with a black man; plastic surgeon Alexander (Russell Wong), who's cheating on his beauty queen wife; divorced journalist Elizabeth (Julia Nickson-Soul), and (shock! horror!) lesbian film star Mei Mei (Steph Song) - and the four of them can only agree on one thing: Mom was a bit of a bitch, but we'd better give her the best darn send-off ever! You've seen it all before, but the cast - especially Bai Ling, who delivers the goods as Mei Mei's kohl-eyed girlfriend Deedee - are uniformly fine. Also airs at 4:50 PM.

8:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
A Time to Sing (1968 USA): To everything there is a season...and in 1968, after The Byrds had already made their transition to country-rock, country-western artist and apprentice hell-raiser Hank Williams Jr.'s season done showed up. Finally stepping out of the massive shadow cast by his daddy, Hank Junior got the big screen treatment courtesy MGM, then suffering diminishing returns from Elvis movies and increasingly desperate to cash in on contemporary pop culture. This being hidebound MGM, however, they opted for the most conservative element of pop music and made a really boring movie starring the son of the most important country artist of the mid-20th century. That's Sam Katzman Entertainment! As for Junior, he plays Grady Dodd, whose aspirations to entertain millions are being stymied by stick-in-the-mud Uncle Kermit (Ed Begley the Elder), who thinks tobacco farming is much superior to honky tonkin' when it comes to career options. There's also love interest, of course, in the predictable form of Shelley Fabares, and even future black action regular D'urville Martin gets a look-in. The real enticement for music fans, however, is the presence of gospel singer Clara Ward - though how she ended up in the film is beyond me. Directed by Arthur Dreifuss (The Love-Ins, Riot on Sunset Strip), A Time to Sing makes its widescreen television debut this morning.

Wednesday 1/20/10

7:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Mission to Moscow (1943 USA): One of the films later accused of being too nice to our (then) Soviet allies, Mission to Moscow stars Walter Huston as Ambassador Joseph Davies, whose autobiography supplied the basis for Howard Koch's screenplay. Directed by Michael Curtiz, the film is too long and is, indeed, quite generous in its assessment of Stalin and his pals - understandable indiscretions in 1943 that later came to the attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee and led to the blacklist, which counted Koch amongst its victims. As a film, Mission to Moscow is pretty boring - even for me, there's a limit to the effectiveness of endless speechifying by Huston - and now is little more than a curate's egg. As social document and propaganda, however, it's priceless.

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