TiVoPlex
By John Seal
March 15, 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 03/15/05
7am Black Starz!
Love, Sex, and Eating the Bones (2003 CAN): Pardon the pun, but this biting Canadian comedy features one of the more unusual premises of recent years. Hill Harper plays Michael, a young man who has trouble consummating his relationship with his girlfriend (Marlyne Afflack) because of his addiction to pornography. In fantasy sequences reminiscent of Tom Ewell’s drunken tête-à-têtes with Julie London in The Girl Can’t Help It, Michael even dreams about his favorite, erm, “actress” (Marieka Weathered) parading around his bedroom in her frillies. No, this isn’t a right-wing plea for abstinence, nor is it a simple-minded sex comedy - it’s actually a thoughtful, if slightly raunchy, look at love in the 21st century. Love, Sex and Eating the Bones shared the Best Film award at last year’s American Black Film Festival with Woman Thou Art Loosed and also scooped the Audience Award and Best Feature prize at Los Angeles’ Pan-African Film Festival. Also airs at 3:15pm and on 3/19 at 9:45am.
8:15pm Turner Classic Movies
Pretty in Pink (1986 USA): The ultimate ‘80s film returns to television in wide-screen this evening. Former It Girl Molly Ringwald plays a lass from the bad part of town who dresses in thrift store retro, works in a record shop, and has Harry Dean Stanton for a dad. Unsurprisingly, she falls for one of the rich kids at school (Andrew McCarthy), once again setting in motion a filmic faux-class struggle with Molly’s working-class roots offending her One True Love’s moneyed friends. John Hughes’ script adheres to most of the tried-and-true Hollywood formulas, but his deft screenplay provides insight into teenage life and manages to keep you interested in the predictable proceedings. Ringwald’s career crested with this film, which also features able support from Annie Potts, Jon Cryer, and James Spader, as well as a small role for Gina Gershon, a decade before her defining role as Cristal Connors in Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls. Capturing that tacky decade in all its pastel glory, Pretty in Pink features a memorable soundtrack of Big ‘80s hits, including the title track by the Psychedelic Furs, the incredibly annoying If You Leave by Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, and other songs from INXS, New Order, Suzanne Vega, and Morrissey.
Wednesday 03/16/05
9am Turner Classic Movies
The Great Mr. Nobody (1941 USA): A trio of impossibly obscure bottom-of-the-bill comedies (none of which I’ve ever seen) are featured this morning on TCM. The Great Mr. Nobody stars Eddie Albert (who, by the way, turns 97 this April) as a newspaper ad man who dreams of sailing around the world but lucks into a big story instead. The film also features Joan Leslie (also still with us - I smell sequel!), John Litel, Alan Hale, Raymond Bailey, and (in only her third screen appearance) Alexis Smith. It’s followed at 10:30am by Look Who’s Laughing (1941), an Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy comedy featuring the world’s least-convincing ventriloquist, fellow radio stars Fibber McGee and Molly, and a young Lucille Ball; and at noon by Here We Go Again (1942), a sequel of sorts to Look Who’s Laughing. If you enjoy watching dummies whose lips move less than those of the man providing their voice, you’ll be in heaven.
4:45am IFC
Running Time (1997 USA): Bruce Campbell fans, rejoice: Running Time is coming to television. Shot in black-and-white, this caper flick features Campbell as the brains behind a prison laundry heist (yes, prison laundry heist) that goes wrong thanks to some bad luck and the ineptitude of his partner-in-crime (Jeremy Roberts). Director Josh Becker’s attempt to film his story in real time and in a single unedited shot isn’t entirely successful, but Bruce is great and at 70 minutes the film is a brisk and entertaining diversion. Running Time’s brash score was provided by Joseph LoDuca, best known for his collaborative work with Campbell and Sam Raimi on the Evil Dead series. Also airs at 4pm.
6:30am Sundance
Tokyo Girls (2000 CAN): This documentary takes a look at the phenomenon of Western women who relocate to the Far East for lucrative careers in the hospitality industry. Focusing on four Canadians who made the trip, this National Film Board of Canada production turns stereotypes upside down; these ladies are considered more exotic than the standard-issue geisha, and are favorites of the rich businessmen who populate Tokyo nightspots. Though no hanky-panky is involved, a good hostess can earn up to $1,000 a night just by serving drinks, stroking egos, and laughing at bad jokes. Nice work if you can get it. Also airs at 3:30pm and 3/19 at 5am.
Thursday 03/17/05
10:30am Encore Love Stories
A Song for Martin (2001 SWE-DEN): A remarkable and moving feature from director Bille August (Pelle the Conqueror), A Song for Martin stars real-life couple Sven Wollter and Viveka Seldahl as a pair of musicians who fall in love, marry, and then see their relationship torn asunder by Wollter’s rapidly developing case of Alzheimer's. The film is unrelenting in its approach, avoiding the mawkish sentimentality of mainstream cinema, and the death of Seldahl in the immediate wake of the film’s release only adds another tinge of sadness to this superb and devastating feature (Seldahl was ill with cancer throughout the film shoot, and died within months of its completion). I’m not a huge fan of August, but this is by far the best work I’ve seen from this erratic filmmaker, and comes strongly recommended.
6pm Sundance
Betty (1992 FRA): The beautiful Marie Trintignant stars as the title character, a drunken waif rescued from the gutter by a rich widow (Stephane Audrane) in this somewhat atypical Claude Chabrol production. Chabrol’s métier is, of course, the glossy Hitchcockian mystery, though he started his cinema career as part of the Nouvelle Vague of the late 1950s, essaying tales of treacherous relationships in films like such as Le Beau Serge and Les Bonnes Femmes. His best-known films, however, remain puzzle pieces such as Just Before Nightfall, Blood Relatives, and the tantalizingly off-kilter Merci Pour le Chocolat. Betty falls somewhere between the two stools, with the mystery (what is Betty’s past?) subsumed by the relationship between the two lead characters. Based on a novel written by Chabrol’s drinking buddy Georges Simenon, Betty provides more clues than it does answers, and will satisfy those who like their bars smoky, their women enigmatic, and their mysteries unfathomable.
Friday 03/18/05
5pm Encore Westerns
A Man Called Sledge (1971 ITA): James Garner’s one and only spaghetti western, A Man Called Sledge is an average Euro-oater with terrific photography by Luigi Kuveiller and a first-rate cast of American actors taking a Spanish vacation. Garner plays a villain with a price on his head who, along with Dennis Weaver, Claude Akins and some Italian actors you’ve never heard of, plots to break into a well-guarded prison and steal a cache of gold from the Feds. They successfully pull off the heist, but the gang starts to come apart as they make their desert getaway. Filled with action, fine acting by the American leads, and some of the most bizarre music you’ve ever heard (the song Other Men’s Gold is unusual to say the least, even for a spaghetti western), A Man Called Sledge is never less than entertaining. Pity Encore isn’t airing it wide-screen.
11pm Turner Classic Movies
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1932 GER): Mabuse was the cinema’s first criminal genius, created by novelist Norbert Jacques and brought to the screen by scenarist Thea Von Harbou and director Fritz Lang in the popular 1922 feature Dr. Mabuse the Gambler. The second film in the series, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, moves Lang’s nefarious master criminal (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) out of the Weimar era and into the cell of a mental hospital, where he continues to plot world domination and complex criminality. He also manages to make friends and influence people, slowly winning over his doctor (Oscar Beregi) to the side of evil. Filled with thrilling set pieces, impressive special effects, and Klein-Rogge’s riveting performance as the mesmerizing and Hitlerian Mabuse, Testament’s only drawbacks are the crude sound and awkward inter-titles that reflect the technical complexities of the early sound era. After completing the film (which was banned by Joseph Goebbels after the Nazi ascent to power), Lang relocated to the United States, where he crafted a solid career in Hollywood.
Saturday 03/19/05
9am Encore
For Your Eyes Only (1981 GB): January 1st, 2005, a date that will live forever in the hearts of American James Bond fans. It was on that date that the Bond films ended their interminable run on commercial channels TBS and TNT, and returned to premium cable for the first time in many years (We are, of course, ignoring the ubiquitous presence of the one non-MGM feature in the canon, the mediocre Never Say Never Again). Since the turn of the New Year, Bond films have been prominently featured in Encore’s schedule, but this broadcast of For Your Eyes Only marks the first time I’ve felt compelled to offer a recommendation. Yes, it’s the first of the series to get an uninterrupted, wide-screen airing since…well, since forever, I suspect. You know the routine: Roger Moore, gadgets, girls, General Gogol, Q, and a stunning opening sequence - this time on skis - in its correct aspect ratio. Also airs at noon.
5pm HBO
…Sometimes in April (2005 FRA-USA-RWA): This week’s speculative pick is an HBO original production about the Rwandan genocide. Coming on the heels of the somewhat overrated Hotel Rwanda, …Sometimes in April is, reportedly, a more realistic depiction of the horrific events of 1994, and blessedly only features one annoying and out -of-place Western actor (Debra Winger). Haitian-born director Raoul Peck saw his earlier film, Lumumba, ensanguinated by its American distributor, so let’s hope he’s a little luckier this time. The film has already been shown at the Berlin Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Golden Bear, but this is its premiere in the United States. Also airs at 8pm, on 3/20 at 12:35am and 3:35am, and on 3/21 at 7pm and 10pm.
10:35pm IFC
A Bay of Blood (1971 ITA): Better known in America as Twitch of the Death Nerve, this Mario Bava thriller makes a rare US television appearance this evening. This heady collection of gruesome and colorful murders set the standard for the slasher genre and further developed the briefly popular giallo style that Bava helped create with 1964’s Blood and Black Lace. Amongst the cast of this supremely enjoyable and patently offensive feature are former Bond girl Claudine Auger, The Name of the Rose’s Leopoldo Trieste, and Eurotrash veteran Luigi Pistilli. Whilst there are no guarantees that IFC will be offering a wide-screen print, A Bay of Blood is essential viewing in any format for horror fans. Also airs 3/20 at 4:30am.
Sunday 03/20/05
9pm Turner Classic Movies
Ben Hur (1926 USA): One of the great epics of the late silent era, Fred Niblo’s Ben Hur features Ramon Novarro as the title character, a Jewish slave sent to the galleys by Messala (Francis X. Bushman), his former friend and current Roman master. A multi-million dollar production in its day (on a scale with contemporary features such as Lord of the Rings and Star Wars), Ben Hur had previously been a best-selling novel, a popular stage play, and a rather pathetic 1907 two-reeler featuring, of all people, William S. Hart. Shot on location in Italy over the course of a full year, Ben Hur remains the ne plus ultra of Biblical epics, but is much more than just a spectacular chariot race. TCM is, of course, bringing us the full-length version restored by film historian Kevin Brownlow.
Monday 03/21/05
6pm Sundance
Disbelief (2004 CAN): The second Canadian documentary featured this week, Disbelief would, coupled with HBO’s Terror in Moscow, make a good second feature on a Chechnya-themed double-bill. The film takes a look at the destruction of a Moscow apartment building in 1999, an attack that was credited by the Russian government to Chechnyan terrorists, and by the conspiracy-inclined to Vladimir Putin, at the time trolling for votes. Leningrad-born director Andrei Nekrasov is unable to provide the definitive answer to the mystery of who actually destroyed the building and killed 300 Russian citizens, but he clearly has an opinion, and it doesn’t cast Pooty-Poot in a very good light.
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