TiVoPlex
By John Seal
July 4, 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 07/05/05
10am Sundance
Hamburger America (2004 USA): For those who like their hamburger with a little more than two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun, here's a fun little documentary about the ubiquitous and unhealthy (but oh-so-delicious) All-American sandwich. This film, however, goes beyond the fast-food staples and explores the many regional variations across the good ol' US of A. How about sampling the Gooberburger, featuring peanut butter on its ground beef? Or the deep-fried burgers of Memphis, which soak in 90-year-old grease before arriving at your table? Sadly, there's no room here for historical oddities such as the Hamburger Sundae, an ice cream-and-ground beef speciality once served up by San Francisco's famous (and much missed) Hippo (My wife once ate one on a dare 20 years ago and still hasn't fully recovered.) This film's guaranteed to leave you feeling hungry, unless you're a vegetarian, in which case you'll be running to the bathroom to retch. Also airs 7/10 at 9:30am.
5pm Turner Classic Movies
Watch the Skies (2005 USA): This new TCM original documentary premieres this evening. Focusing on the history of the science-fiction film from the silent era to the present day, it's the latest production from critic Richard Schickel and features plenty of clips from films by Melies, Lucas, Wise, and others, as well as interviews with Lucas, Spielberg, and Ridley Scott. It airs again at 7:30pm, and is followed at 10:15pm by a rebroadcast of one of my favorite guilty pleasures, 1957's The Invisible Boy, featuring a recycled, post-Forbidden Planet Robbie the Robot squaring off against an evil super-computer intent on ruling the Earth. It's a technophobe's delight that features Richard Eyer (Baronni the Genie in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad) as Robbie's pint-size 10-year-old confidante.
Wednesday 07/06/05
10:30am Sundance
Bush's Brain (2004 USA): Recently back in the news with his latest deep thoughts on the state of the political opposition, Bush political operative/chief of staff/attack dog Karl Rove gets the full-scale documentary treatment in this scary but entertaining feature. Rove got his start as a Nixon-era College Republican, and after perfecting the art of the political dirty trick found himself working in Texas, where he eventually hooked up with his current boss. This film is a damning indictment of Rove's 30-plus year career of hit pieces, calumny, and outright lies, and will leave most viewers even more jaded about politics than they had been already.
11:35pm Starz!
Zatoichi (2003 JAP): When Shintaro Katsu hung up the samurai sword and retired from film work after 1989's Zatoichi (the 26th film in the series), the itinerant blind swordsman also took his leave for the following decade. It took the efforts of cinema bad boy "Beat" Takeshi Kitano to revive the character, who resurfaced in this unsurprising but effective tale of revenge. Played this time by director Kitano, Zatoichi once again encounters those less fortunate than himself - in this case, two sisters orphaned by a warlord - and proceeds to slice and dice his way through a veritable army of henchmen and hangers-on in an effort to right the wrongs done to his new friends. It's not a sequel, nor does it particularly expand on Zatoichi's medieval universe, but it's a worthy addition to the canon of this most unusual action hero's exploits. Also airs 7/7 at 2:35am.
Thursday 07/07/05
5pm Flix
Belle de Jour (1967 FRA): It's not my favorite Luis Buñuel film, but hey, IT IS Buñuel, so you should give it a look. Catherine Deneuve stars as Severine, the sexually unsatisfied wife of a handsome doctor (Jean Sorel). She's a bit on the kinky side, you see, and she spends her copious free time moonlighting at a brothel, where she meets a foul-mouthed street urchin (Pierre Clementi) whose rough manner and boorish behavior win her over. True bliss, unsurprisingly, does not lie just around the corner for our lovebirds, however, and the film ends on an enigmatic note, as Severine wearily acknowledges both her betrayal of her husband and the impetuous and obsessive behavior compelling her to bed down with other men. Though not, in my opinion, prime Buñuel, Belle de Jour still bears the unmistakable thematic and stylistic marks of the Spanish-born surrealist, who enjoyed prodding the sexual and religious hang-ups of the bourgeoisie so much that he later made a film called, wryly, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.
Friday 07/08/05
1am Showtime
Traces of Red (1992 USA): The winner in the sweepstakes for most unexpected wide-screen feature of the week is this dreadful erotic thriller starring Jim Belushi. Yes, you read that correctly; erotic and Jim Belushi, together in the same sentence. How can you NOT want to at least cast a furtive glance at a film that offers such promise? Belushi plays a Florida detective on the trail of a serial killer who's knocking off our hero's lady friends and leaving taunting notes to rub salt in the wounds. The film also has the gall to try and channel the spirit of Sunset Boulevard (1950) and - shock, horror! - fails miserably, but fans of The Sopranos will note with pleasure the presence of Lorraine Bracco in the cast, and who wouldn't want to see Jim Belushi do the nasty in his correct aspect ratio? Also airs at 4am.
12:45pm Sundance
Diamonds and Rust (2001 NAM-ISR): This superb documentary takes place aboard a diamond dredger anchored off the coast of Namibia. The dredger is owned and operated by the De Beers Corporation, the world's largest diamond processing company. The crew is diverse and fractious: the engineers South African, the captain and cook Cuban, the security officer Israeli, and the deckhands Namibian. The South Africans are well-educated and white (and one of them is bluntly racist), the Cubans are low-key and friendly, the Israeli is a major-league asshole whom everyone hates, and the Namibians are generally treated like dirt. Though there's clearly social stratification aboard the Spirit of Namibia, a leaky rust bucket that barely stays afloat, everyone is clearly under the heel of De Beers, who constantly postpone vacations or medical leave. For 73 minutes you'll see life on board the good ship Free Trade, where workers from around the world produce vast wealth for their corporate masters whilst earning peanuts themselves (the Namibians earn around $150 a month). An astonishing indictment of capitalism that succeeds at every level and completely avoids polemic, Diamonds and Rust also airs 7/11 at 12:15pm.
9:30pm Sundance
The Tesseract (2003 JAP-THA-GB): I know what you're thinking: what the heck is a tesseract? Well, I looked it up in my handy dandy online dictionary, and it turns out to be "the four-dimensional analogue of a cube", which really doesn't live up to expectations, does it? I mean, when one sees ‘tesseract' on the printed page, one tends to associate it with big-budget words like ‘Necronomicon' or ‘Christophany'. Alas no; it means cube, but this film really doesn't bear any similarities to Vincenzo Natali's geometric thriller of that name from 1997. Featuring not-my-favorite actor Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, it's actually the latest effort from hyper-stylistic director Oxide Pang, whose earlier films The Eye and Bangkok Dangerous certainly marked him as a promising new talent. The Tesseract is based on a book by Alex Garland and examines some of the same "Brits go East on a bender" themes as his earlier novel The Beach. Rhys-Meyers plays a drug dealer waiting for his man, Saskia Reeves is a filmmaker with a social conscience working on a documentary, and Alexander Rendel is the busybody bellboy at their hotel. The film ends up being a rather empty exercise in gunplay with a dollop of existential angst to give it artistic heft, but Pang does have a good eye, and this - his first English-language feature - shows continued, if balky, improvement in his work. If only the same could be said about Rhys-Meyers, who really should stick to the small screen or the local dinner-theater circuit. Also airs on 7/9 at noon.
Saturday 07/09/05
7pm IFC
Punk: Attitude (2005 GB): The newest film from Renaissance man Don Letts traces the development of punk rock, with archival footage (of bands as disparate as Television, The Damned, and Minor Threat) and interviews with luminaries such as Jello "I've Got a Bigger Mouth Than Quentin Tarantino" Biafra, Legs McNeil, and Henry Rollins, as well as lesser-known quantities such as Handsome Dick Manitoba of the Dictators. The film debuted at New York's Tribeca Film Festival in April, and garnered mostly positive reviews. Speaking as a former spiky top, I'll be eagerly awaiting its small screen debut this evening. Also airs at 10pm.
Sunday 07/10/05
4:20am Encore Action
Hide in Plain Sight (1980 USA): So far the only film to be directed by actor James Caan, Hide in Plain Sight returns to television this morning after a lengthy absence. Caan stars as a blue-collar worker whose ex-wife gets sucked into the Witness Protection Program when her new husband - a small-time hood - rats on the Mafia. Unfortunately for Caan, she takes his children with her, and the film's narrative revolves around his efforts to track down his offspring. Hide in Plain Sight is rather crudely told and lacks subtlety - which may explain why Caan has since stayed in front of the cameras - but its heart is in the right place. Look for Danny Aiello in a small role as a Mafioso.
5pm Showtime
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004 USA): Michael Moore's anti-Bush polemic was my favorite film of 2004, displaying slow but steady maturation in the skills of the grizzled muckraker from Flint. There's not much I can say about Fahrenheit 9/11 that hasn't already been said by better writers than I; the film deftly balances its clips of a disengaged and clueless chief executive with gut-wrenching war footage and, of course, the astonishing and extended interview footage of war mom Lila Lipscomb. Moore wisely kept himself off-screen for much of the film, and toned down his antics substantially for this effort, though he still manages to have some fun with an ice cream van. It'll either have you in tears or hurling your TV tray at the screen, but this is the rare film of which you can truly say "you'll never forget it". Also airs at 8pm and 7/11 on Showtime 2 at 5pm.
10:30pm Fox Movie Channel
Cover Me Babe (1970 USA): Robert Forster stars in this post-Medium Cool anti-establishment drama about a film student coming to terms with the real-life implications of his vérité-style short subjects. Forster is not at his best here, and the film is only moderately diverting, but the interesting supporting cast includes future Eastwood lover Sondra Locke, Method acting teacher Jeff Corey, Regis Toomey, Sam Waterston, and future director Floyd Mutrux.
Monday 07/11/05
6pm IFC
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2004 USA): I haven't complained much recently about IFC's Web site, so here's an opportunity to make up for lost time: why don't they indicate whether or not programming will be aired in wide screen? It's strictly luck of the draw with IFC, so we'll spin the roulette wheel and hope we come up lucky with this delightfully off-kilter biopic about the supposed secret life of Gong Show host Chuck Barris. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind failed to make Sam Rockwell a star, but he's extremely good as the hyperactive Barris, Julia Roberts is NOT annoying, and even if this ends up being a pan-and-scan print, you'll still enjoy it. Also airs at 10pm.
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