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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 1/15/13

5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
The League of Gentlemen (1960 GB): Caper films rarely come better than this Basil Dearden-helmed thriller about a group of military men determined to pull off a bank heist. The great Jack Hawkins headlines as Hyde, a British Army officer who’s lost his billet due to budget cuts and is in need of funds to maintain his comfortable lifestyle. Joining forces with six other disgruntled ex-servicemen, Hyde plans a military-like operation to empty the vaults of a City bank - but the plan, of course, does not go quite as expected. Included in the plot are Mycroft (cashiered for "public indecency," portrayed by Roger Livesey), Lexy (supplier of secret information to the Soviets, portrayed by Richard Attenborough), and Stevens (he’s gay!, portrayed by Kieron Moore). Featuring a BAFTA-nominated screenplay by Bryan Forbes (who also appears as Porthill, a co-conspirator blackballed for murdering Cypriot "terrorists"), The League of Gentlemen co-stars Patrick Wymark, Oliver Reed, Nanette Newman, Norman Bird, and Nigel Green.

Wednesday 1/16/13

11:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
The Detective (1954 GB): It’s Alec Guinness day on TCM, and to celebrate we get a couple of the droll, dolorous actor’s more obscure efforts. First up is an adaptation of G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories (indeed, the film was released in the UK as Father Brown) featuring Guinness as a dog-collared gumshoe on the trail of an art thief. It’s lightweight stuff but perfectly suited to Guinness, who’s ably supported by Bernard Lee, Cecil Parker, Joan Greenwood, Sid James, and a young Peter Finch. The Detective is followed at 12:45 PM by The Prisoner (1955), a less amusing but still worthwhile drama in which Sir Alec portrays an Eastern European clergyman whose disagreements with the authorities land him in a heap of trouble. Clearly based on the true life travails of Hungary’s Cardinal Mindszenty, who was in jail at the time, The Prisoner proved too controversial to screen at Cannes but was awarded the Best Foreign Film gong by America’s National Board of Review.

5:00 PM Encore Suspense
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978 USA): How often does a remake truly match up to the original film? Only, apparently, when it involves Jack Finney’s tale of extraterrestrial pod people, a novel that has now been filmed four times (I’ve yet to see 2007’s The Invasion, however, so maybe that version sucks). It probably helped to have W. D. Richter (Big Trouble In Little China, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai) on hand to adapt Finney’s novel and update it for the navel-gazing ‘70s, but astute casting (notably Jeff Goldblum and Leonard Nimoy), respectful nods to the original (including cameos by Kevin McCarthy and Don Siegel), and superb location work in San Francisco also factor into the film’s success. Perhaps it’s just the idea that intelligent and malicious plants may be out there waiting to prey upon mankind, but all three versions of this story I’ve seen - including Abel Ferrara’s less successful 1993 take starring Forrest Whitaker - give me the willies.

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