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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 04/13/10

6:00 PM Sundance
World According to Monsanto (2008 FRA): This just in: big multi-national corporations are not good for animals, children, or other living things. Today's case in point: Monsanto, the world's leading exponent of agricultural biotechnology and genetically engineered seed, otherwise known as Frankenfood. What, no Booberry? This documentary adopts the take no prisoners approach toward Monsanto, ripping the company for everything from PCBs and Dioxin to the awful Bovine Growth Hormone, which promotes unfeasibly large udders (in cows) and clinical mastitis (in humans—or perhaps it's the other way around). You'll never look at your milk--or your corn, or your beef, or just about anything else you put into your body--quite the same way again. Also airs 4/18 at 8:00 AM.

10:00 PM Flix
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003 USA): It's little more than a collection of skits featuring famous friends of the filmmaker, but Coffee and Cigarettes is vintage Jim Jarmusch. Shot in rich black-and-white, it's a flawed but worthy successor to Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai, which marked a return to form for the shock-haired director. A few of these segments don't work: Meg and Jack White display a complete lack of on-camera charisma, and Roberto Benigni's shtick is rapidly wearing thin. But the film picks up steam mid-way with a gut-busting face-off between Hollywood star Alfred Molina and a desperate Alan Partridge...er, Steve Coogan, a mordant exchange between Bill Murray and rappers RZA and GZA, and a slightly surreal but enchanting chat twixt Bill Rice and Taylor Mead. You'll be hard-pressed to finish watching this film without breaking into a satisfied grin. Also airs 4/18 at 1:45 PM.

Wednesday 04/14/10

3:00 AM Fox Movie Channel
Swamp Water (1941 USA): Jean Renoir's first American film, Swamp Water is the work of a master director struggling to adapt to a new and unfamiliar language. Partly shot on location in Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, the film features Dana Andrews as Ben Regan, a fur trapper searching for his lost pooch in the aforementioned wilderness. Instead of Fido, however, Ben meets fugitive from justice Tom Keefer (Walter Brennan), a convicted murderer who convinces his new friend to keep his whereabouts a secret—even from mousy daughter Julie (tousle-haired Anne Baxter). The melodramatics are far from convincing, but Brennan is excellent, as is Walter Huston as Ben's intriguingly named father Thursday, and the supporting cast—including John Carradine, Ward Bond, Guinn ‘Big Boy' Williams, and Eugene Pallette—non-pareil.

5:00 PM HBO2
Making the Crooked Straight (2008 CAN): I generally avoid short subjects in the TiVoPlex, but I'll make an exception for this excellent, life-affirming 30-minute documentary. Making the Crooked Straight examines the good works of Dr. Rick Hodes, a Johns Hopkins grad who's spent the last twenty years working in Ethiopia. Inspired by the tenets of Orthodox Judaism, Dr. Rick specializes in treating tuberculosis of the spine, a particularly nasty variant of the disease which leaves its victims hunch-backed and suffocating beneath their own weight. In addition to paying for numerous life-saving surgeries, Hodes has also fostered seventeen children. Sounds like one of the good guys to me. Also airs at 8:00 PM.

Thursday 04/15/10

12:30 AM Encore
Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985 USA): Though she doesn't appear in it (and her version of the title song isn't featured on the film's soundtrack), Cyndi Lauper's infectious 1984 pop hit was the inspiration for this goofy grrrl-power comedy. Sarah Jessica Parker stars as Janey, daughter of Colonel Glenn (Ed Lauter), a stick up his ass military man who doesn't approve of young folks getting their groove on. Janey, however, is determined to put in an appearance on television's most popular hoofing hour, Dance T.V., and is encouraged to break Daddy's rules by wicked best friend Lynne (Helen Hunt). If Breakin' and Flashdance still float your boat, you'll definitely want to mark time with Girls Just Want to Have Fun. Also airs at 3:30 AM.

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