TiVoPlex
By John Seal
August 30, 2004
From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or underappreciated; they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times Pacific.
Tuesday 08/31/04
4:15 AM Flix
Black Girl (1972 USA): Black Girl, originally a play by Texas-born writer J. E. Franklin, was adapted for the screen by Franklin and directed by the great Ossie Davis. The result is a stagy but effective extended-family drama, with three sisters (Gloria Edwards, Loretta Greene, and Peggy Pettit) plotting against the successful adopted fourth daughter (Leslie Uggams). Brock Peters is top-billed as the father of the girls, but his performance is little more than a glorified cameo, and it's up to the women to carry the show. Most effective are Greene, as the pregnant middle daughter, Louise Stubbs as the mother, and Claudia McNeill as the grandmother and matriarch of the family, M’Dear. Less effective is Uggams, whose droopy-eyed look simply doesn't evince much sympathy, and Edwards, who is over-the-top at times as the eldest and meanest sibling. There's a brief non-speaking appearance by Mrs. Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and a sterling performance by an uncredited gentlemen who plays Mr. Herbert, a boarder who has shacked up with M’Dear. This film is all about the characters, and there are some meaty scenes, especially when Uggams returns home from college unannounced. Black Girl was clearly a labor of love, and all things considered, is a simple but solid effort, quite moving at times and generally effective.
7:00 PM IFC
Chop Socky: Cinema Hong Kong (2004 HK): What's not to like about this incredible hour long documentary about the genesis of the Hong Kong martial arts film? Filled with great interviews (Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Cheng Pei Pei, Jet Li, John Woo, David Chiang, and others), amazing archival footage from the '20s and '40s, a black and white TV interview with Bruce Lee, and an astounding array of mind-boggling letterboxed and subtitled clips from the golden age of martial arts cinema, Chop Socky is one of the best film documentaries you're likely to see. As an extra added bonus, this made in Hong Kong film eschews the obligatory interview sequence with annoying motormouth Quentin Tarantino, who has to settle for two brief clips from Kill Bill Volume 2. The inclusion of these clips is a minor quibble and shouldn't put you off. This film keeps the focus where it belongs--the Chinese speaking creators of this remarkable genre. It’s followed at 8:00 PM by a widescreen broadcast of Jackie Chan’s 1983 pirate opus, Project A, which is unfortunately also a dubbed print. Still, it’s tremendous fun, and all the better when viewed in its correct aspect ratio.
Wednesday 09/01/04
7:35 AM Black Starz
Malunde (2001 SAF-GER): Ian Roberts and Kagiso Mtetwa play an odd couple in this South African buddy movie about a street urchin (Mtetwa) and an ex-Apartheid era soldier (Roberts) who meet and end up needing each other on the mean streets of Johannesburg. Though the story is somewhat predictable and occasionally melodramatic, the leads offer superb and nuanced performances, and the film looks great thanks to DP Jurgen Jurges. Oddly, Black Starz seems to be airing a pan and scan print—they usually show African films in widescreen—but that shouldn’t stop you from taking a look at this very enjoyable drama.
5:00 PM Fox Movie Channel
The Day the Fish Came Out (1967 GRE-GB): Here’s a film so jaw-droppingly bad you’ll feel compelled to watch to the end. Tom Courtenay and Colin Blakely appear as RAF officers whose plane, laden with a pair of undetonated atomic bombs, crashes near a remote Greek island. Washed up on the island in their underwear, the pair are forced to masquerade as tourists whilst government agent Sam Wanamaker poses as a hotel tycoon during his search for the lost payload. Spurred on by Wanamaker’s apparent interest in their newfound holiday paradise, the island is soon overwhelmed by tourists—who belatedly realize things are amiss when thousands of dead fish start washing up on the beach. Loaded with the strangely stilted and arch dialogue that burdens so many would-be comedies of the period, The Day the Fish Came Out does, at least, feature a score by the great Mikis Theodorakis, but is a disaster in every other respect. Nonetheless it’s a rarity that hasn’t been seen on TV in many years, and will be of great interest to fans of truly bad film.
Thursday 09/02/04
4:15 AM Turner Classic Movies
The Wet Parade (1932 USA): This superior pre-Code MGM drama stars Robert Young as a crusader against liquor during the Prohibition era. Young’s father, here played tartly by Walter Huston, is in the thrall to the demon rum, and Young is determined to smash the bootleggers who are ruining the patriarch’s health. The film actually is relatively even-handed about the issue—Prohibition was, after all, only a year from repeal—and is loaded with quality performances from the likes of Myrna Loy, Milburn Stone, Neil Hamilton, and Jimmy Durante. Based on an Upton Sinclair novel, The Wet Parade was directed by Gone With the Wind and Wizard of Oz helmer Victor Fleming.
1:10 PM Encore Mystery
The Bank (2001 AUS): A few months ago, I gave a tempered recommendation for Guy Pearce’s The Hard Word, a caper film about a gang of cons trying to pull off "one last job". We’ve got another Antipodean crime drama today, but this time I’m much more enthusiastic. The Bank features Anthony LaPaglia (Lantana, Sweet and Lowdown) and David Wenham (Faramir from the final two Lord of the Rings films) as, respectively, a corrupt banker and a mathematician who cook up a unique scheme to play the stock market and make themselves filthy stinking rich. It’s an intelligent thriller that garnered an impressive nine nominations at the 2001 Australian Film Institute Awards, and the film took home the award for Best Screenplay. Sadly, the film didn’t impress the folks at the Socialist Equality Party (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/nov2001/bank-n16.shtml), but I think it’s a decent film nonetheless. Also airs 9/3 at 8:40 AM.
Friday 09/03/04
9:00 PM Sundance
Gerry (2002 USA): Fellow Box Office Prophet Walid Habboub recommended this existential Gus Van Sant film a few weeks ago, and I’m here now to second that recommendation. If you don’t like the idea of watching Matt Damon and Casey Affleck wander through the desert for an hour and a half, don’t watch Gerry, but if you fancy a beautifully filmed longueur about two half wits sniping at each other and waiting to die, this is your film. Damon and Affleck are excellent as the clueless wanderers, and Gerry is Van Sant’s best film in years, and far superior to last year’s puzzler Elephant. It’s also one of those films you can watch and enjoy with the sound off.
Saturday 09/04/04
5:00 PM IFC
Dead Ringers (1988 CAN): I never used to be a fan of David Cronenberg’s chilly and suitably clinical examination of the lives of a pair of brilliant twins (both played by Jeremy Irons) who run Toronto’s top gynecological practice, but I watched it again last week and came away impressed. Perhaps I’ve matured, or perhaps the film has mellowed in the face of the relentless downward spiral of Hollywood effluvia (I’m still thinking about Dreamcatcher here), but I now rank it amongst the Canadian director’s five best works. IFC is airing the film widescreen, and Peter Suschitzky’s cinematography is unsurprisingly gorgeous, well-framed, and brilliantly lit, with blues and reds predominating through this creepy tale of one brother’s (but which one’s?) descent into drug addiction and madness. Irons is superb as the twins, offering distinct performances for each, and Genevieve Bujold is at the top of her game as actress Claire Niveau, a victim of the brothers’ penchant for trickery and deception. Remarkable to look at, intelligently written, and deeply provocative, Dead Ringers also features the meanest looking set of medical equipment ever made—apparently, custom built for the film. Worth watching for Iron’s drug-addled telling of the Chang and Eng story alone. Also airs 9/5 at 3:00 AM.
Sunday 09/05/04
9:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928 DEN): TCM kicks of their tribute to the great Danish director Carl Dreyer with a rebroadcast of his best known film. Best ten lists come and go, but one thing’s a certainty: this film resides comfortably on my own list of all time greats, and it’s not going anywhere any time soon. Decidedly not for all tastes, this is nonetheless the only Joan of Arc film worth your time, starring the astonishing Maria Falconetti in the title role. Superlatives can’t really do this film justice, but be assured that it is one of the most beautiful and moving films ever made, magnificently shot by future Hollywood director Rudolph Mate and directed with simple brilliance by Dreyer. It’s preceded at 7:00 PM by the television premiere of 1995’s outstanding documentary, Carl Theodor Dreyer: Min Metier, a superb tribute laden with clips, interviews, and archival footage of the director’s meetings with fellow auteurs Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut. And stay tuned throughout September for an astonishing array of Dreyer films on TCM!
Monday 09/06/04
Noon Sundance
In Rwanda We Say... The Family That Does Not Speak Dies (2004 USA): Less than a decade has passed since the Rwandan genocide of 1994, but this is at least the third documentary on the subject in that relatively brief time span. It took decades for the world to come to terms with the Holocaust of World War II, with scores of documentaries produced in the wake of Marcel Ophuls’ masterful 1969 opus The Sorrow and the Pity, the first major film to directly confront the human face of Nazi evil. Directed by Anne Aghion, whose earlier Gacaca: Living Together Again In Rwanda? detailed the efforts of Rwandans to tell truth and achieve reconciliation, this new film explores the aftermath of the Gacaca council, focussing on convicted war criminals' efforts to blend back into the society they almost destroyed.
7:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Lord of the Flies (1963 GB): It took a stage director (former RSC man Peter Brook) to bring the great William Golding novel to the screen successfully. If you've already been subjected to the comparatively awful 1990 remake, you need to make amends and see the original version. If you haven't had that pleasure, you won't want to subject yourself to it after seeing Brook's film. Starring a cast of mostly amateur schoolboys, Lord of the Flies is carried by their honest and artifice-free performances. Contrasting the beauty of nature with the ugliness of a social order imposed by unnatural forces, this is an unforgettable film.
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