TiVoPlex
By John Seal
October 25, 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 10/26/04
12:30am Sundance
The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979 BRD): This late-period Fassbinder film stars the director’s favorite actress, Hanna Schygulla, as the wife of a missing-in-action Wehrmacht soldier (Klaus Loewitch) during the last days of World War II and the immediate post-War period. Schygulla is superb as the brassy woman who engages in a fling with an African-American soldier before insinuating herself into a position of power in a major corporation and building a new life amidst the ruins. This is Fassbinder’s most accessible film, at least from the perspective of Joe Popcorn, and was a massive commercial and critical success in West Germany, where people were still coming to terms with their country’s Nazi past 30 years after the fact. Schygulla won the Silver Bear as Best Actress at the 1979 Berlin International Film Festival, and the film was also nominated for the Best Foreign Film Golden Globe in 1980. Also airs 10/31 at 11pm.
8:50am Encore Westerns
Dirty Little Billy (1972 USA): This revisionist western has been airing frequently of late on various Encore channels, but I only recently took the time to watch it again. Though far from perfect, it’s still a worthwhile (though fictional) look at the defining moments in the life of young William “Billy the Kid” Bonney, played to mumbling, Method-acting perfection by Michael J. Pollard. Written and directed by Stan Dragoti (Mr. Mom), the film appears to have been shot through a lens caked with dust and mud, as just about everything appears dirty green, brown, and/or thoroughly filthy. Of particular note are the early sequences, as the Bonney family arrive in their new Wild West home after leaving New York, and the performance of Richard Evans as Goldie, a gunfighter who takes young Billy on as his apprentice. Shot on location in New Mexico, this is surely the only film you’ll see that features a Dick Van Patten cameo as a brothel patron, and there are small but recognizable roles for Severn Darden, Nick Nolte, and Gary Busey. This was also the last film produced by Jack Warner, who surely wasn’t all that comfortable with some of the R-rated content. Also airs at 5pm.
Wednesday 10/27/04
1pm Fox Movie Channel
The Great Profile (1940 USA): In a bittersweet casting decision - or an outrageous example of kismet - aging alcoholic John Barrymore was chosen to play fictional thespian Evans Garrick in The Great Profile, a theatrical drama about a fading stage idol. Garrick (probably named in honor of the great 18th century stage actor David Garrick, who, as far as we know, didn’t have a substance abuse problem) is a self-destructive alky whose career, mirroring that of Barrymore’s, is on the skids. In the film he’s saved from himself by the love of a good woman (17-year-old Anne Baxter, in only her second screen appearance) but real life took a darker turn for Barrymore, whose death in 1942 resulted from pneumonia exacerbated by cirrhosis of the liver. This is the best of the great actor’s last half-dozen features and co-stars TiVoPlex faves Lionel Atwill and Marc Lawrence. Also airs 10/28 at 3am.
8:50pm Black Starz!
Another Planet (1999 CAN): This excellent culture clash comedy-drama stars Sandy Daley as a Canadian of Jamaican extract who yearns to return to her African roots, but somehow ends up helping to irrigate a pig farm in Quebec instead of boarding a plane to Mali. Daley is very good and thoroughly believable, but the unsung star of the cast is Daniel Levesque, who plays the stubborn - some might say pig-headed - and clueless farmer who puts Daley to work. Also of note is Tiemoko Simaga as the chauvinistic Malian exchange student whose “old world” ways don’t sit well with Daley, and Marcia Brown in a fairly thankless role as Daley’s mother. The end of the film is a bit abrupt, but for the most part, this is a delightfully off-kilter character study.
8:15pm IFC
American History X (1998 USA): I was the last one on the block to recognize it, but American History X really is excellent, and Ed Norton - an actor I normally can’t stand - is as good as advertised. He plays Derek Vinyard, a super smart Angeleno who also happens to be a white supremacist with a massive swastika tattooed on his chest. When Derek kills a black petty criminal one evening and ends up doing time in the big house, close quarters and real life intrude on his rose-tinted visions of Aryan supremacy, leading him to radically revise his opinions. Directed by Tony Kaye, who disavowed the final cut of the film and asked to be credited as Humpty Dumpty, American History X also features a fine performance by Edward Furlong as Vinyard’s adoring and impressionable younger brother and a truly marvelous turn by Beverly D’Angelo as the troublesome twosome’s ailing mother. I don’t know what Kaye objected too - perhaps the unhappy ending struck him as too Hollywood - but overall, this is a triumph, and is especially effective during the black-and-white flashback sequences. Look for a nearly unrecognizable Stacy Keach as the ideological mentor fostering the Venice Beach neo-Nazi movement.
Thursday 10/28/04
6:35am Showtime 2
Ready When You Are, Mr. McGill (2001 GB): This minor but enjoyable made-for-TV film stars the marvelous Tom Courtenay as the title character, an amateur actor thrust into a position of (apparent) importance on the set of a run-of-the-mill small-screen police drama. Though the film is hardly ambitious, Courtenay brings absolute conviction to his role as an actor determined to make the most of his single spoken line. Unfortunately, he has to contend with the project’s anxious and impatient director, played by the reliably excellent Bill Nighy. If you’ve ever watched a film or video shoot, you’ll appreciate this reasonably accurate portrayal of the mind-numbing boredom and easily frayed nerves apparent on the average movie set.
Friday 10/29/04
12:30am Turner Classic Movies
Trial (1955 USA): Trial is an intelligently written look at the explosive political issues of the 1950s - race and Communism - seen through the eyes of a lawyer (Glenn Ford) defending an Hispanic youngster on a murder charge. Though the film is hindered by its overly virulent anti-Communist screenplay, it does try and deal with the intersection of race and justice in what was probably a very liberal approach circa 1955. Featuring the always excellent Juano Hernandez as the trial judge, this is also probably the first major studio film made with an African-American actor cast as an authority figure, underlining screenwriter Don Mankiewicz’s left-of-center credentials. The film does take a whack at McCarthy (here "disguised" as Congressman Battle) and also is openly critical of racists and nationalists. Even with the Redbaiting - some of which is probably accurate - Trial is a very well made and brave film with one of Ford's best performances at its heart.
Saturday 10/30/04
5am Turner Classic Movies
The Shanghai Gesture (1941 USA): This over-egged melodrama stars Gene Tierney as the pawn of a manipulative casino owner (Ona Munson), who’s trying to fend off the unwanted advances of a real estate mogul (Walter Huston, excellent as always). Though parts of the film’s complex plot will leave your head spinning, this Josef Von Sternberg feature looks marvelous courtesy cinematographer Paul Ivano, who also shot Von Sternberg’s 1929 classic, Queen Kelly. An interesting if only partly successful spin on the noir genre, The Shanghai Gesture also features familiar faces Victor Mature, Maria Ouspenskaya, Eric Blore, and Mike Mazurki.
12:30pm HBO Signature
The Execution of Wanda Jean (2002 USA): It may be news to many Americans, but capital punishment in the United States is still dealt out on a somewhat arbitrary basis. If you’re poor, black or Hispanic, from a Southern or border state, and are convicted of murder, the odds of a date with Ol’ Sparky are not the same as they would be if you were rich, middle-class, white, from the Mid-West or Northeast, and convicted of murder. In the case of Wanda Jean Allen, not only did she fit into the former category, she was also a lesbian and borderline learning-impaired. As a result, her inept lawyer’s bad work contributed to her death by electrocution at the hand of Oklahoma’s prison authorities. Chronicling the period commencing at Ms. Allen’s clemency hearing and concluding with her execution, this film points out some of the deep flaws in the American system of legal murder.
5pm IFC
Dario Argento: An Eye for Horror
A triple bill of Argento features is prefaced by this solid if not terribly enlightening documentary about the oddball Italian director, the man who gave the world Asia Argento. After serving an apprenticeship with Italian auteur Sergio Leone, Argento burst onto the international scene with his very influential 1969 giallo, the befuddling Bird With the Crystal Plumage, and hasn’t stopped working since. His most famous film, Suspiria (1977), airs immediately following the documentary at 6pm, and remains Argento’s best remembered production. Set in a bucolic European dancing school, the film features an amazing array of shocking murder scenes as well as an astonishing soundtrack by prog-rockers Goblin, whose pounding score leaps aggressively out of the screen and will have you lunging for the volume button on your remote control. It’s followed at 7:45pm by the comparatively calm Inferno (1980), a New York City-shot supernatural thriller about a cursed apartment house, and at 9:45pm by Argento’s best all-around production, the serial killer thriller Deep Red (1978). Suspiria re-airs at 11:30pm and Inferno on 10/31 at 1:10am.
Sunday 10/31/04
6pm Sundance
Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary (2002 CAN): This week’s speculative pick comes from one of my least-favorite directors. No, not Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino, Alan Rudolph, or Hal Hartley, but Canadian Guy Maddin, whose features ape the visual styles of 1920s and 1930s cinema whilst overlooking the most important ingredients of all: coherent storylines and interesting characters. Nonetheless, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the television debut of this extremely odd blend of ballet and horror. Starring the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Wei-Qiang Zhang as Count Dracula, this is reportedly one of the most faithful screen adaptation’s of Bram Stoker’s famous novel. Considering Maddin’s stubborn insistence on style over substance, that’s probably a good thing.
10:30pm IFC
Mario Bava: Maestro of the Macabre (2000 USA): All Hallow’s Eve concludes on a bright note with this interesting look at the great Mario Bava, an Italian filmmaker best known for atmospheric thrillers such as Black Sunday (1960) and Blood and Black Lace (1964). A wide range of contemporary film talent, including Tim Burton, John Carpenter, and Joe Dante, offer their thoughts on Mario, the son of pioneer cinematographer Eugenio Bava, who shot the memorable early pepla Cabiria in 1919. Additional interviews with some of those who worked with Bava, including actor John Saxon and producer Alfredo Leone, are included, and Bava expert and Video Watchdog publisher Tim Lucas - whose forthcoming book, All the Colors of the Dark, promises to be the definitive work on the subject - fills out the picture of this unique and still underappreciated filmmaker.
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