TiVoPlex
By John Seal
August 8, 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 08/09/05
2am Cinemax
Sweet Sixteen (2002 GB): Regular readers know I have a soft spot for Marxist director Ken Loach. His films are always political, but rarely polemical, as this recent feature, Sweet Sixteen, proves. Set in the impoverished slums of Glasgow, Scotland, the film stars Martin Compston as a young man trying to save his falsely-convicted mother from the clutches of her nasty drug-dealing boyfriend and her equally unpleasant father upon her release from prison. Unfortunately but understandably saddled with subtitles to help the uninitiated cope with the cast's extremely thick Scots accents, this is a wonderful slice-of-life drama written by Paul Laverty and lensed by Barry Ackroyd, both frequent Loach collaborators. Also airs at 5am.
3am Turner Classic Movies
Way for a Sailor (1930 USA): One of the supposedly dreadful assignments given to actor John Gilbert by wicked old Louis B. Mayer in retribution for some unspoken transgression that still remains a mystery, Way for a Sailor is, in reality, no worse than scores of other early talkies from the period and is further evidence that the slanderous rumors about Gilbert's speaking voice simply weren't true. In this feature, he plays Jack, a seaman who falls for London girl Joan (Leila Hyams), whom he nicknames Eskimo. After lying to Joan about his future aspirations and tricking her into marrying him, Jack goes out drinking and returns to an empty house. Men! Of course, this wouldn't be a film about the lusty life of the sea without a sturdy pal for Jack to brawl with, and here he has one of the best in the form of Wallace Beery. Also on hand are Polly Moran and, in one of his first screen appearances, Ray Milland. If you've ever considered marrying a sailor, you may want to take in this cautionary tale.
1:30pm Sundance
Original Child Bomb (2004 USA): I haven't seen this documentary, but I'm a sucker for a provocative title, so here it is. Taking its name from a poem by the mystic monk Thomas Merton, the film looks at how present-day Americans perceive the threat and reality of nuclear war. The film, which will no doubt be thoroughly depressing, blends contemporary interviews with photographs, animation, and, of course, plenty of mushroom-cloud stock footage. Also airs 8/14 at 12:30pm.
Thursday 08/11/05
12:25pm Showtime
Smooth Talk (1985 USA): I generally can't stand watching Laura Dern - there's something about her mouth that really bothers me - but Smooth Talk, a decent, well-written coming-of-age drama getting the wide-screen treatment on Showtime this afternoon, still gets the thumbs up from me. Dern plays Connie, a gangly teen whose physical maturity is belied by her emotional childishness and sexual inexperience. It's the summer before her sophomore year in high school, and when she isn't squabbling with her parents (Mary Kay Place and Levon Helm) she's hanging out at the mall annoying shoppers and flirting with boys. When she hooks up with oily young Arnold (Treat Williams), things take the proverbial turn for the worse, and the film - based on a story by Joyce Carol Oates - ends on a quiet but extremely downbeat note. One of the early successes at Sundance (then known as the US Film Festival), Smooth Talk - director Joyce Chopra's first feature-length film - won the fest's Grand Jury Prize.
5pm Sundance
Crackers (1984 USA): One of a handful of American films helmed by the erratic but occasionally brilliant Louis Malle, Crackers is probably the least successful of the bunch, but is also the hardest to see, making it a perfect TiVoPlex candidate. It's a remake of the classic caper flick Big Deal on Madonna Street, and features Sean Penn, Wallace Shawn, and Donald Sutherland as three criminals casing a San Francisco pawn shop in anticipation of owner Jack Warden's birthday trip to see Mom. When Warden returns early to find the gang in flagrante delicto, things take a surprising turn and a large piece of salmon unwittingly becomes part of the action. Crackers looks great, thanks to cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs' evocative lensing of the city's Mission District, but Jeffrey Alan Fiskin's screenplay leaves much to be desired and the dated ‘80s score will have you reaching for the earplugs. In addition to the fine lead actors, the film also has room for cameos by such local luminaries as Professor Irwin Corey and Dick Bright, whose Little Roger and the Goosebumps single, Stairway to Gilligan's Island, remains one of the greatest rock parodies of all time. Also airs 8/12 at 1:15am.
6:35pm Encore Westerns
Roy Colt and Winchester Jack (1970 ITA): Even with the recent renewed interest in the work of Italian auteur Mario Bava, this is about the last of his films I thought I'd see on American television. Bava was a fantasist supreme, equally comfortable directing Gothic horror masterpieces (Black Sunday, I Vampiri), gialli (Blood and Black Lace, Hatchet For a Honeymoon), or colorful fumetti (Danger Diabolik). What he isn't associated with - for good reason - is the spaghetti Western genre, and one look at Roy Colt and Winchester Jack will explain why. Featuring Hollywood exports Brett Halsey and Charles Southwood as a pair of ne'er-do-wells fighting over a treasure map, the film is ostensibly a comedy, but its sophomoric jokes probably won't tickle your funny bone much more than they did mine, and the story is an unimaginative amalgam of elements from better features such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Roy Colt and Winchester Jack does look nice - though I suspect Encore will be airing a pan-and-scan print - and Piero Umiliani's score is first-rate, so there are a few acorns here for film fans to dig up.
Friday 08/12/05
9pm Encore
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975 GB-USA): Returning to cable in conjunction with Encore's excellent Midnight Movies documentary, Rocky Horror is a film about which I have always felt rather ambivalent. For me, it's a film of two distinct themes: the first, and most satisfying, is a tribute to the classic Universal horror films of the 1930s, whilst the second is a libertarian, let-it-all-hang out appeal for personal freedom. These parts roughly approximate the first and second halves of the film: whenever I watch Rocky Horror, I'm always pleasantly surprised by the first half - which features the best songs, too - and left vaguely uneasy by the second, where restraint is thrown to the wind in a parade of beefcake and fishnet stockings. The film came out when glam rock was waning and punk was waxing, and though frequently considered part of the latter movement by middle-American teens, really belongs to the former, which may explain my antipathy towards it. After all, I was a punk in the late 1970s, and gosh, we were AGAINST all that love, peace, and sex stuff the hippies promoted! Hate and war, right on! In my know-it-all teenage foolishness I also mistook the film's audience participation for a fascist rally, which is REALLY misinterpreting things. Though I still don't think Rocky Horror is all that great, I've matured enough to recognize its cultural significance and importance, and when those big red lips first appear to the strains of Science-Fiction Double Feature, it still sends chills up and down my spine. Also airs 8/13 at midnight and on Encore Mystery (!) 8/14 at 10:50pm.
Saturday 08/13/05
5am Fox Movie Channel
The Innocents (1961 GB): Jack Clayton's superb adaptation of Henry James' Turn of the Screw returns to Fox this morning. Deborah Kerr gives the performance of her career as a nanny who comes to care for two lonely children who, in the absence of their parents, have developed some decidedly strange habits. With apparitions stalking the manor grounds, Kerr's hold on reality starts to give way, much as Catherine Deneuve's would in 1965's Repulsion. If you enjoyed Alejandro Amenábar's The Others, you'll love this truly scary ghost story. And when people talk about the good old days, when filmmakers could scare the pants off their audience without resorting to violence and blood, this is quite possibly the film they're thinking about.
2;00pm Showtime 2
The Stepford Wives (2004 USA): And speaking of films with Nicole Kidman, its time for me to help myself to a nice big plate full of crow. When this remake hit theaters last year I was predictably dismissive and, of course, refused to shell out to see it. After all, it was a REMAKE, and the film it was based on wasn't even all that special to begin with, so why bother? Well, I finally caught up with this a week or two ago when it premiered on Showtime, and to my great surprise it's a thoroughly enjoyable little bonbon that strips the earnest absurdities from the first film's screenplay and steers the story in a much more satirical (and rather camp) direction. Though by no means a great film, 2004's Stepford Wives is a popcorn movie par excellence, and features amusing and full-flavored performances by Bette Midler, Christopher Walken, and Matthew Broderick. Go in with low expectations, and you'll come away moderately happy. Plus Showtime is airing it letterboxed! Also airs 8/14 at 2:05am.
Monday 08/15/05
7:25pm Sundance
Return to Kandahar (2003 CAN): Okay, do you have your post-modernist glasses on? Then let's begin. In 2001, the great Iranian director Mohsen Makhkmalbhaf made Kandahar, a film about a woman's search for her sister in Taliban-era Afghanistan. The lead actress in that film was Nelofer Pazira, a Kabul native and resident of Canada since 1989 who - in real life - had received desperate letters from a childhood friend describing the strictures of living in a country ruled by a fundamentalist regime. Cut to two years later: Pazira returns to Afghanistan to search for the same friend who inspired the first film, thus making this probably the first non-fiction sequel to a fictional feature in cinema history. The result is a fascinating detective story that casts much needed light on the status of women in that unluckiest of countries, even after its supposed liberation.
9pm Fox Movie Channel
Chain Reaction (1996 USA): Dude, I am totally stoked that this Keanu Reeves action flick is heading our way! Sweeeet! Check this: Keanu plays a really cool and very edumacated Chicago undergrad working on a super-secret energy project that, like, bad guys want to steal and stuff! How rad is that?! And like, Keanu and his good bud (Rachel Weisz) are being chased by people who want to kill them! Whoa! Add in Morgan Freeman, Brian Cox, and Fred Ward, and you've got a movie that will rock your world! Oh, and it's being aired wide-screen, so that makes it look all arty and stuff! Cool!
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