TiVoPlex
By John Seal
February 22, 2005
From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or underappreciated; they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times Pacific.
Tuesday 02/22/05
5:15am Turner Classic Movies
49th Parallel (1941 GB): Filmed on behalf of the British government, Michael Powell’s 49th Parallel was designed partly as pure entertainment, and partly to help nudge the United States into the Second World War. Real-life events soon rendered the latter purpose moot, but the film went on to be Britain’s number-one box office hit of 1941 and was also well received in the States, where frequent Powell collaborator Emeric Pressburger’s screenplay took home the prize for Best Original Story at the 1943 Academy Awards. Whilst consistent with the logic and intent of the filmmakers, 49th Parallel’s protagonists are, oddly enough, a German submarine crew (Eric Portman, Niall McGinniss, and others) trying to flee to Canada’s neutral neighbor to the south after their vessel is sunk in Hudson Bay. The all-star cast, who accepted minimal fees on behalf of the war effort, includes Laurence Olivier as a French-Canadian trapper with an OUTRAGEOUS accent, Anton Walbrook, Raymond Massey, Glynis Johns, and Leslie Howard. 49th Parallel was also the product of one of the most talented British filmmaking crews of the period, including, in addition to Powell and Pressburger, cinematographer Freddie Young and (serving as editor) a young David Lean. TCM is airing the complete British cut of this important film, the title of which refers to the curvilinear border that separates North America’s two largest nations.
6pm Sundance
Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself (2002 DEN-GB): This dark drama about a suicidal Scotsman is far from perfect, but features some strong performances that warrant attention. Jamie Sives plays the title character, a suicidal young man whose feelings of guilt surrounding the death of his mother lead him to repeatedly attempt to kill himself. Sives is decent, but the best work in the film is provided by Adrian Rawlins as Wilbur’s older brother Harbour and the always-wonderful Shirley Henderson as Alice, the woman who can’t quite decide which of the two brothers she’s most fond of. At times, Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself veers uncomfortably from farce to tragedy and back again, but the leads are superb throughout, as is eight-year-old Lisa McKinlay as Henderson’s wise-beyond-her-years daughter. Also airs on 2/27 at 9:05pm.
Wednesday 02/23/05
6pm Showtime 2
Sucker Free City (2004 USA): I know, you’ve seen it all before: the one about the gang banger trying to escape the ghetto confines of his youth, the good kid who lives with his grandma but projects the aura of macho invincibility deemed necessary to survive in the ‘hood. You’ve also seen the one about the white wannabe who sells cocaine to his co-workers at his downtown office, and the one about the Chinatown punk trying to ingratiate himself with the local godfather. But you probably haven’t seen them all in the same film, until now. Directed by Spike Lee, Sucker Free City is set in San Francisco (which, less than coincidentally, shares its initials with the film’s title) and was designed as the pilot for a Showtime series. Though the three story arcs are, separately, familiar journeys along well-trodden narrative paths, Lee and San Francisco-born screenwriter Alex Tse do a superb job of blending them and keeping us interested in the proceedings. The cast is also uniformly fine, most notably Anthony Mackie as Keith, the street hustler with a heart of burnished gold and Ben Crowley as angry young white man Nick. Veteran character actors John Savage and James Hong also score points as, respectively, Nick’s left-wing father and the Chinatown kingpin whose young charge Lincoln (Ken Leung) keeps screwing up. The proposed series was ultimately nixed by the network, and it’s a shame we won’t get to see more of these characters, but the pilot stands up well on its own. Also airs 2/27 at 8pm and on Showtime 3 2/25 at 5pm and 2/28 at 7pm.
7:15am Cinemax
The Kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt (2003 USA): Ingrid Betancourt was a Colombian senator and presidential candidate who bravely conducted face-to-face negotations with FARC, the left-wing guerrilla army that controls much of rural Colombia, in an effort to end their use of hostage-taking as a fundraising tool. In an unfortunate tip of the hat to life’s little ironies, the guerrillas took her prisoner within days of their well-publicized meeting. Filmmakers Victoria Bruce and Karin Hayes had been planning to make a film about Betancourt’s quest for the presidency, but found their energies diverted into this new project about the fate of their unlucky subject. The resulting film gives the viewer a good look at a presidential campaign eclipsed by a crime, but tends to put its subject on a pedestal, leaving its audience with far too many unanswered questions. Colombia's 40-year-old civil war is mentioned in passing, and there are some brief attempts to put FARC in context, but too much of the film is spent with Ms. Betancourt's family and friends, who can do little more than express their understandable grief. It would have been far more interesting to focus on the political games going on in Colombia, viewed through the prism of the kidnappings. The film also leaves unspoken the clearly privileged background of Ingrid, surely a factor of some importance in this poverty-stricken nation's troubles. Overall, this is a fairly interesting film about a fairly interesting person, but falls short of greatness. Betancourt remained on the 2002 presidential ballot whilst in captivity and garnered over 50,000 votes for her oddly-named Oxygen Green Party but remains in the hands of FARC, who last confirmed that she was alive in an August 2003 video released to the media and included here as a powerful coda to the film. Also airs at 10:15am.
9:05pm Fox Movie Channel
Stripper (1985 USA): It was either this or the marvelously-titled Genie in a String Bikini over on Skinemax this evening. I’m opting for Stripper, because softcore is forever, whilst obscure documentaries seldom pass this way again. This film, directed by Pumping Iron’s producer Jerome Gary, takes a look at a striptease competition held in (where else?) Las Vegas, and focuses on half-a-dozen contestants. Though burdened by some blatantly staged scenes, Stripper also includes revealing interviews with its subjects, including wise old-timer Janette Boyd and up-and-coming youngster Kim Holcomb. Somehow this film earned a nomination for Best Documentary at Sundance, then went on to a long shelf-life in video stores and on, erm, Cinemax, though it’s been a long time since it was last seen on the aptly-named boob tube.
Thursday 02/24/05
12:05pm Starz!
Shaolin Soccer (2002 HK): I was tempted to make a joke about Starz! pulling this from their schedule at the last minute in order to re-cut it for broadcast in 2006, but at this point, let’s just point out that whatever print they ARE utilizing, it isn’t the original almost-two-hour version. Stephen Chow’s hugely entertaining football fantasy about Shaolin monks who take up the beautiful game and blend it with their martial arts skills went on to become the highest-grossing film of all time in Hong Kong. After two years on the shelf, the film received a less-than-perfunctory release in American art houses. Watch its US television debut tonight, and if you like it, go out and rent or buy the DVD, which, in addition to the cut airing this evening, also includes the vastly superior original. Also airs at 3:05pm and 2/28 at 6:30am and 9:30am.
Friday 02/25/05
10pm Turner Classic Movies
Midnight Cowboy (1969 USA): I first recommended this film way back in Aught Two, and posed the following question: would TCM cut anything from John Schlesinger’s notorious film, the first movie to garner the dreaded X rating from the MPAA? That question is still relevant, though less so today, as TCM has shown an increasing and admirable willingness to air unexpurgated prints. Jon Voight, impossibly youthful, plays wide-eyed Joe Buck, the Texas cowpoke trying to escape his past by relocating to the Big Apple, where he takes up a career as a male prostitute and befriends scumbag Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman). The film is their sometimes implausible, always fascinating, and ultimately heartbreaking tale, and features peerless acting, stunning location work, and that amazing Fred Neil song, Everybody’s Talkin’, as interpreted by Harry Nilsson.
11:50pm Showtime Extreme
The Red Siren (2002 FRA): This week’s speculative pick is an action movie from France starring Lars Von Trier regular Jean-Marc Barr and the oddly compelling Asia Argento. Argento plays a police officer on the trail of a missing child (Alexandra Negrao) who’s being squired by Barr, here playing a retired mercenary haunted by the memories of his violent past. This critically-slammed feature was directed by some chap with the annoyingly hip pseudonym “Olivier Megaton”, but is airing in its correct 2.35:1 aspect ratio, so at least it’ll look good.
Sunday 02/27/05
1:50am HBO Signature
Cleopatra Jones (1973 USA): There’s statuesque, and then there’s Tamara Dobson. At 6’ 2”, Dobson gained recognition from the Guinness people as the tallest leading lady in film history. She had her brief moment in the sun when Warner cast her as private eye Cleopatra Jones in a short series of thrillers about a Bond-style government agent (Dobson) busting the chops of dope dealers around the world. Sadly, Dobson is little more than a gimmick, as her acting is atrocious, but the film does feature a sterling supporting cast, including Bernie Casey, Brenda Sykes, Esther Rolle, Shelley Winters (as one of the aforementioned drug dealers, no less!), and Mr. Soooouuuul Train himself, Don Cornelius.
5pm Turner Classic Movies
Kapo (1959 ITA): If you missed TCM’s first airing of this film in January, here’s another opportunity. Only the survivors of the Holocaust can tell us what the concentration camp experience was really like, but Kapo is probably as close as cinema can get to recreating the numbing horrors of the camps, and that includes Schindler's List. Susan Strasberg is superb as Edith, the Jewish teenager who is saved by chance and then becomes a collaborator in order to survive. The film's greatest strength is its ability to make us comprehend the forces that compelled inmates to become kapos - the Nazi equivalent of prison trustees - and almost (but not quite) makes us sympathize with them. Snatched from the jaws of the gas chamber only to have the power of life and death thrust upon them, the kapos did what they had to do in order to survive, and who amongst us would not take that same chance if thrust into the heart of Nazi darkness? This incredibly powerful film is filled with astonishing imagery, none more so than the scene of Edith/Nicole watching helplessly as her parents are forced to jog to their demise amidst a crowd of children and elderly inmates, people who are inessential to the Reich's war machine. This important film, long forgotten in the United States, will hopefully get the DVD treatment in the near future.
6:50pm Encore Mystery
Halloween 2 (1981 USA): Halloween movies are a dime a dozen, and ubiquitous on premium cable channels. Strangely, though, Halloween 2 has long been absent from the airwaves, and returns to the small screen this evening for the first time in close to a decade. For the record, I’ve never been a fan of the series, and didn’t even care much for John Carpenter’s 1978 progenitor. This first sequel at least had the courtesy to bring back the original’s Jamie Lee Curtis, Charles Cyphers, and Donald Pleasence, so it’s a bit better than most of the interchangeable slashers that followed in its wake. But that’s not saying much.
Monday 02/28/05
2:10pm Sundance
Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story (2002 USA): Only in America could a man steal a tank and drive it blithely through city streets. That’s exactly what happened in Claremont, California, in 1995, and this film takes a look at Shawn Nelson, the man behind the wheel. Do tanks have steering wheels? Sorry if I’m using the wrong terminology. Nelson, an unemployed plumber hopped up on bennies, ended up dead when jumpy and presumably outgunned police took him down after a slower-than-usual chase through city streets. Cul De Sac is an unusual look at a blue-collar San Diego community whose high unemployment rate and strong ties to the military/industrial complex inexorably led to this bizarre confrontation, which is certainly more interesting than what you see on your average episode of Cops.
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