TiVoPlex
By John Seal
May 3, 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 05/03/05
Midnight IFC
Salaam Bombay! (1988 IND): India’s huge annual film output rarely gets much recognition in Western circles, especially when the product falls outside the parameters of the Bollywood musical epic. Happily, though, this affecting drama got a surprising amount of attention in late ‘80s US art-houses, where it racked up an impressive take totaling over $2 million. The first feature directed by Mira Nair (Vanity Fair), it’s a truly remarkable film based in part on the research Nair conducted whilst producing four television documentaries about Indian street life, and it features a brilliant and ingenuous performance by a youngster named Shafiq Syed as an orphan surviving on guts and guile in the back alleys of Bombay (now Mumbai). This deeply engrossing and frequently moving neo-realist exposé won the Golden Camera at Cannes and was nominated the following year for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, where it lost to Lasse Hallstrom’s Pelle the Conqueror.
9:30am Fox Movie Channel
Ambassador Bill (1931 USA): Though he got his start during the silent film era, Will Rogers quickly became one of the early superstars of talking pictures, his folksy down-home drawl and whimsical manner a palliative for a middle America deeply mired in the Great Depression. This pleasant and rarely-seen Fox comedy features him as an ambassador sent to a foreign country seething with intrigue, where Rogers’ finds himself protecting nine-year-old heir to the throne Prince Paul (Tad Alexander) from the machinations of evil Prince de Polikoff (Gustav Von Seyffertitz). Also on hand are Ray Milland and Marguerite Churchill and silent comic Ben Turpin in a small role as a butcher.
Wednesday 05/04/05
11:20am Encore Westerns
The Nebraskan (1955 USA): If you like a good 3-D movie, well, look elsewhere, especially if you object to watching these things “flat”. If, on the other hand, you are, as I am, entranced by the silly camera stunts and lame trickery these films employed in their desperate attempt to keep America away from the boob tube, you’ll want to take the time to catch The Nebraskan. It features one of the least-colorful leading men of all time, Phil Carey, as a scout trying to establish peace between the white and Indian inhabitants of the newly-created state of Nebraska. It’s a strictly run-of-the-mill oater, but does co-star Lee Van Cleef, Jay Silverheels, and Dennis Weaver, alongside the usual 3-D assortment of flaming arrows and oncoming tomahawks.
11:45am Flix
The Organization (1971 USA): This solid crime drama gets a rare wide-screen television airing this morning. It’s the second sequel to In the Heat of the Night, and features Sidney Poitier reprising his role as police detective Virgil Tibbs. Still stationed in San Francisco, Tibbs becomes involved with a slightly unsavory group of locals who, in an effort to clean up the streets, have stolen a large shipment of heroin from the Mob. By allowing Tibbs to collaborate with these extralegal proto-Guardian Angels, the film subverts the liberal civil rights message of In the Heat of the Night, replacing it with the right-wing vigilante position soon to be espoused in popular films such as Walking Tall, Death Wish, and Dirty Harry. Politics and its somewhat convoluted plot aside, The Organization is easy viewing for action fans and was certainly an improvement over the previous year’s series entry, the ridiculously titled They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! You’ll also see a plethora of familiar faces amongst the supporting cast, including Ron (Superfly) O’Neal, Allen Garfield, Max Gail, Raul Julia, Sheree North, and Ross Hagen.
Thursday 05/05/05
2:15pm More Max
The Power of Good (2002 CZE-SLO): Save room for one more Holocaust documentary. This one focuses on nonagenarian Briton Nicholas Winton, a reluctant hero who rescued hundreds of children from the death camps and never bothered to tell anyone. His wife discovered his secret whilst cleaning the attic one day, and the rest is history: Winton has gone on to be knighted and is, of course, the subject of this film. A stockbroker in the run-up to the war, Winton was on holiday in Prague in early 1939 and was disturbed at the sight of tent cities filled with refugees from the Sudetenland, the portion of Czechoslovakia seized by Germany in 1938. Working on the hush hush, he jumped through bureaucratic hoops and filled out paperwork that arranged for the safe transport of 654 Jewish children to Britain (and 15 to Sweden) in the months before Hitler invaded Poland. The Power of Good, produced for Czech and Slovakian television, won the Best Documentary International Emmy in 2002.
5pm Turner Classic Movies
Los Olvidados (1950 MEX): Chased from his native land by the fascist Franco regime, Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel spent a brief American sojourn working at the Museum of Modern Art in New York before relocating to Mexico. Taking full advantage of Mexico’s well-established studio system and deep talent pool, which yielded a frequent collaborator in the form of cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, he re-launched his film career, blending the unique surrealist vision developed in Un Chien Andalou and L’Age D’Or with neo-realism and traditional narrative cinema to create a style of film never before seen. Buñuel eventually returned to Europe, but he never made another film in his native land, opting instead to work in France and Italy. It’s a great pity that many of the best films of Buñuel remain unavailable on DVD and aren’t exactly easy to find on good old-fashioned videotape, either. Thankfully, TCM has an entire evening of the great director’s finest south-of-the-border productions on tap tonight, leading off with Los Olvidados, the first great fruit of his Mexican period and one of the most beautiful motion pictures you’ll ever see. Set in the slums of Mexico City, it’s the story of a gang of youths who prey on the weak and crippled denizens of the barrio. Words cannot adequately do Los Olvidados justice: I’ll just say that seeing this film as a teenager opened my eyes to the possibilities of cinema as an art form. The best news of all is that Koch Lorber have recently struck a new print of this classic, hinting that perhaps a digital upgrade will follow in the near future. It’s followed at 6:45pm by Nazarin (1959), about a priest struggling with his conscience; at 8:30pm by Viridiana (1961), which covers some of the same ground, though with a nun replacing the priest; at 10:15pm by the scathing anti-clerical masterpiece Exterminating Angel (1962); and at midnight by Buñuel’s last truly great film, Simon of the Desert (1965), which features Silvia Pinal as the screen’s sexiest Devil (and that includes Liz Hurley). There are many great works in the Buñuel filmography, but if you’ve never seen any of his work, this is as good an introduction as any. Now if only TCM could dig up a print of his marvelous 1953 fable, El - This Strange Passion - then life would be perfect. “Thank God, I’m an atheist.” - Luis Buñuel
Friday 05/06/05
6:35pm Sundance
The Lawless Heart (2001 GB): It’s been described as a British Rashomon, and that’s a pretty apt characterization of this above-average drama. The Lawless Heart features the intersecting perspectives of three characters (played by Tom Hollander, Bill Nighy, and Dougie Henshall) whose lives have been affected in different ways by a now-deceased Essex restaurateur (David Coffey). Rightly recognized as one of the best (and best written) British films of recent years, The Lawless Heart is a talky character study laden with intelligent and witty dialogue and fine performances, especially from the wonderful Nighy.
Saturday 05/07/05
9am Encore
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969 GB): The film that saw the unfairly pilloried George Lazenby take the place of the rightly revered Sean Connery, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service also has the misfortune of featuring the worst song ever to grace a Bond film, Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown? Luckily it also features the incomparable Louis Armstrong’s rendition of We Have All the Time in the World, as well as Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas as Blofeld, and the standard supporting cast, including Lois Maxwell, Bernard Lee, and Desmond Llewelyn. As per the routine, Encore is airing this underrated thriller in wide-screen this Saturday, and it also airs at noon.
6pm Sundance
Coffee and Cigarettes (2004 USA): It’s little more than a collection of skits featuring famous friends of the filmmaker, but Coffee and Cigarettes is vintage Jim Jarmusch. Shot in rich black-and-white, it’s a flawed but worthy successor to Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai, which marked a return to form for the shock-haired director. A few of these segments don’t work: Meg and Jack White display a complete lack of on-camera charisma, and Roberto Benigni’s shtick is rapidly wearing thin. But the film picks up steam mid-way with a gut-busting face-off between Hollywood star Alfred Molina and a desperate Alan Partridge...er, Steve Coogan, a mordant exchange between Bill Murray and rappers RZA and GZA, and a slightly surreal but enchanting chat twixt Bill Rice and Taylor Mead. You’ll be hard-pressed to finish watching this film without breaking into a satisfied grin. Also airs 5/8 at 5am.
Monday 05/09/05
1:45am Turner Classic Movies
The Woman Racket (1930 USA): I haven’t seen this pre-Code crime drama, but there’s no way I can overlook a film titled The Woman Racket. It features a pair of silent stars, Tom Moore and Blanche Sweet, who failed to make the transition to talkies; indeed, Sweet’s career ended within a year of completing this film. Watch and perhaps find out why.
Noon Starz! in Black
Tasuma (2004 BRK-FRA): Stern-faced Mamadou Zerbo plays Sogo, a 67-year-old war veteran who spent ten years, two months, and three days fighting France's colonial wars in Algeria and Indochina. He's spent the last two years trying to claim the veteran's pension that's rightfully his, but Kafkaesque red tape gets in the way and the money never seems to arrive. When Sogo finally loses his patience, a trip to the local pokey is in order...but the women of his home village have other ideas. This is a simple, heartwarming story of one man's struggle for justice. Tasuma is able to completely eschew full-frontal social and political commentary whilst telling a straightforward and personal tale that speaks volumes about the treatment of the forgotten and discarded implements of imperial wars. There are other subtle (and not so subtle) progressive politics at work here, with Sogo repeatedly speaking out against arranged marriages, and Arab shopkeeper Khalil (Besani Raoul Khalil in a splendid performance) presented as a multidimensional character with his heart ultimately in the right place.
7pm Turner Classic Movies
Pale Rider (1985 USA): Clint Eastwood’s behind-the-camera talents really began to blossom with this Western about a mysterious stranger (Eastwood) protecting the inhabitants of a bleak mining camp from a greedy local landowner. Its story stays well within the mytho-poetic limits of the spaghetti Westerns that launched Eastwood’s star, and there’s a great performance by Carrie Snodgrass as the wife of down-at-heel miner Michael Moriarty. Pale Rider airs in wide-screen on TCM this evening.
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