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From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or underappreciated; they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times Pacific.

Tuesday 09/12/06

1pm Sundance
Face (2002 USA): I'm usually not a great fan of relationship dramas, but Face is an exception, and definitely amongst the recent best of that frequently overwrought genre. A feature-length expansion of writer/director Bertha Bay-Sa Pan's award-winning 1997 short subject of the same name, Face stars the luminously beautiful Ling Bai as Kim, a woman overwhelmed and sent into exile by family pressure. Though engaged to wed nerdy Asian boy Daniel (Will Yun Lee), Kim is carrying on with long-haired troublemaker Willie (Ken Leung). After getting knocked up by her bad-boy beau, Kim is forced to save face in a loveless marriage, with the arrival of new baby Genie destined to further complicate matters. Unable to cope with the responsibility of raising her child, Kim leaves Genie with Grandma (the marvelous Kieu Chinh) and takes off for California and points east for a successful business career. Fast-forward 18 years, and Kim has returned to New York for her daughter's (sassy Kristy Wu) high school graduation. Is reconciliation at hand, or will old wounds - not to mention Genie's interracial relationship with DJ Michael (Treach) - continue to tear the family apart? Beautifully filmed by John Inwood and sensitively written by Pan, Face is a very satisfying showcase for all involved, and shouldn't be missed, even by those unnamed parties who can't stand Kramer vs. Kramer. Also airs at 9:30pm.

Wednesday 09/13/06

2:20am Encore Dramatic Stories
The Fire Next Time (1993 USA): When this made-for-TV miniseries (unrelated to James Baldwin's Civil-Rights era book of the same name) first aired in 1993, it could be (and was) dismissed as hyperbolic and hysterical science fiction. Now...well, let's just say its oracular assessment of our climactic and ecologic future seems to be a wee bit more accurate than originally thought. Star Craig T. Nelson - an actor most film fans would recognize even without knowing his name - plays Drew Morgan, a crusty Gulf Coast shrimper who must relocate his family north after extreme weather renders their Louisiana home uninhabitable. Traveling from refugee camp to refugee camp, the Morgans - including paterfamilias Richard Farnsworth, loyal wife Bonnie Bedelia, and impressionable daughter Ashley Jones - end up in New York, where they're forced to make a deal with the devil: Drew's old business partner (Jürgen Prochnow). Though much of the (overlong) film revolves around soap opera melodramatics, The Fire Next Time scores points for prescience if not for brevity, and Nelson is great. Also airs at 11:35am.

7pm Sundance
K (1997 FRA): Not to be confused with the Korean slasher flick H, K is a very intriguing French policier from Algiers-born director Alexandre Arcady. Fellow Algerian expatriate Patrick Bruel stars as Sam Bellamy, a police officer who witnesses a murder committed by old friend Joseph Katz (the redoubtable Pinkas Braun), a Holocaust survivor with a long memory and an understandably large chip on his shoulder. Thinking his friend has killed an old SS tormentor, Sam lets the crime go uninvestigated, but soon finds out that the victim was involved in much more than minding a concentration camp. This very complex thriller demands that attention be paid, but its serpentine twists offer ample rewards for hardcore mystery buffs. Also airs 9/18 at 10:45pm.

Thursday 09/14/06

5am Fox Movie Channel
Gang War (1958 USA): This rarely-seen Fox period piece gets an even-rarer wide-screen airing this morning. Starring Charles Bronson as a high school teacher who witnesses a heinous killing and vows revenge, Gang War doesn't seem like an obvious candidate for 2.35:1 Regalscope, but Fox was shooting almost everything in wide-screen in those days, so here it is. Aspirations of grandeur aside, it's a B picture all the way, with Bronson by far the biggest name in the cast (and in 1958, that wasn't very big) and Whit Bissell and Kent Taylor providing adequate support. The film has been compared to Bronson's breakthrough hit Death Wish, but it's a decidedly more benign affair than that amoral feature, hewing close to the crime-does-not-pay-but-neither-does-vigilantism path you would expect from a ‘50s crime drama. Based on a novel by Ovid Demaris and shot in atmospheric black-and-white, Gang War also features a good selection of Southland landmarks in the background, including the ever-popular Capitol Records tower.

9:15pm Encore Love Stories
Saraband (2003 SWE): I haven't seen it, and I probably won't be watching it, but you should be aware of the American television premiere of this Ingmar Bergman drama. The mooted last feature of the 85-year-old Bergman, who has since written a further screenplay, Saraband stars two of his favorite thespians, Liv Ullman and Erland Josephson, as a long-divorced couple reunited late one summer. As much as I admire Bergman's early work, I can't keep my eyelids open for most of his post-Persona output, but if you are a fan of the disconsolate Swede, you won't want to miss this.

Friday 09/15/06

All day TCM
various short subjects: TCM has often aired short subjects as filler to pad out their schedule or provide context for a highlighted feature film. More often than not, however, these shorts have been the channel's neglected stepchild, poorly promoted and relegated to the wee hours of the morning when few are watching. Today, they're in the spotlight as part of TCM's Shorts Circuit package, and there's a lot to recommend for those with unlimited hard drives and a long attention span. Amongst the many highlights: at 7am, Buster Keaton's long-forgotten musicals Streamlined Swing and Hollywood Handicap (both 1938), which feature The Original Sing Band, a vaudeville outfit with an unusual talent for mimicking musical instruments; at 7:30am George Stevens' 1930 directorial debut, Ladies Last, part of Hal Roach's "Boy Friends" comedy series (it's immediately followed by the next four entries in the series, Blood and Thunder, High Gear, Air Tight, and Call a Cop, all also directed by Stevens); at 12:20pm by Alice In Movieland (1940), Jean Negulesco's musical tribute to small-town girls who make good in Hollywood (plus, at 12:40pm, his 1941 salute to the marvels of television, Those Good Old Days); at 1:45pm by Jacques Tourneur's beautiful 1936 gem The Jonker Diamond (followed immediately by Tourneur's even rarer short, Harnessed Rhythm, and his 1937 tribute to Chinese culture, The Rainbow Pass); at 3pm by Fred Zinnemann's American debut, the surprisingly open-minded Story of Dr. Carver (you know, the peanut man); and at 4pm by Don Siegel's directorial debut, the Christmas fable Star in the Night (with J. Carrol Naish). At 5pm the theme changes from studio shorts from renowned directors to recent examples of the art form commissioned by TCM, with Peter Gilbert's elegiac There is No Place Like Home leading the charge. It's followed at 5:10pm by Griffin Dunne's advertising mockumentary Your Product Here, at 5:20pm by E. Elias Merhige's Din of Celestial Birds, and at 5:30pm by Mario van Peeble's family portrait Baadasssss Grandkids!. Six PM brings a pair of early David Lynch shorts, The Grandmother (1970) and The Alphabet (1967), followed at 6:45pm by three early Martin Scorsese efforts: 1963's What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?, 1964's It's Not Just You Murray, and the pièce de résistance, 1967's gut-wrenching Vietnam War commentary, The Big Shave. At 9pm, Ridley Scott's first effort, Boy and Bicycle (1965) gets its American television premiere (little brother Tony Scott is the star, and Tony's own first film, One of the Missing, follows at 9:30pm); and Jane Campion's disciplinary dissertation Peel pops up at 10pm. Francoise Truffaut's Les Mistons arrives at 11pm, and at midnight, four fascinating Roman Polanski efforts - including 1961's legendary The Fat and the Lean - bring things to a conclusion. I've only really skimmed the surface of all the goodies on tap today, and would recommend that those of you who can record the entire 24-hour block.

Sunday 09/17/06

6:30am IFC
Slasher (2001 USA): Animal House helmer John Landis took time off from his usual big-budget features to make this enjoyable, if strangely depressing, documentary look at the life of a traveling used car salesman, Michael Bennett. When you're buying a car from Bennett, you've reached the bottom of the barrel, because his specialty is moving lemons other auto lots have given up on. Bennett is an amazing character: he looks like John Waters, sounds like he gargles with gravel, and cannot keep still or keep his mouth shut for more than a millisecond. No one's ever going to mistake Landis for the Maysles Brothers, but Slasher is surprisingly effective, with its colorful subject and tasty selection of Memphis soul music providing ample entertainment value. Also airs at 2:45pm.

9pm Turner Classic Movies
Sunrise (1927 USA): Oddly, I've never previously recommended this great silent film featuring George O'Brien and Janet Gaynor as an archetypical Man and Wife, their marriage torn asunder by a predatory Woman From the City (Margaret Livingston). Time to rectify that oversight, then. Helmed by the great German director F.W. Murnau, whose 1922 horror classic Nosferatu is surely better known to American audiences than this, Sunrise was the last of the great silent pictures, though it does include a crude music and effects soundtrack. The story is a simple though vital allegory, and the visual artistry is quite stunning, with Karl Struss' dazzling, dreamlike cinematography a constant source of wonder and admiration. Within months, the advent of talking pictures would set the art form of cinema back a good 20 years, but with Sunrise, Murnau reached a peak that remains unsurpassed...even by you, Guy Maddin.

Monday 09/18/06

1:05pm Showtime Extreme
Charge of the Light Brigade (1968 GB): It's not terribly good - at least, my 20-year-old memories of it aren't good ones - but Tony Richardson's Charge of the Light Brigade finally gets a wide-screen airing after months of appearing on Flix in pan-and-scan. Based on the disastrous Crimean War battle immortalized in verse by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, this Vietnam-era film was at best a pointed comment on political blundering and military stupidity, and at worst an opportunity to see a first-rate cast, including Vanessa Redgrave, Trevor Howard, David Hemmings, John Gielgud, Harry Andrews, Corin Redgrave, and last week's whipping boy, poor old Roger Mutton. I'm quite looking forward to revisiting this film in its correct aspect ratio, however, and it does have an excellent reputation for period detail and historical accuracy, so perhaps I'm in for a pleasant surprise.

6pm HBO
Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater (2006 USA): This HBO original documentary about Arizona's favorite son makes its debut this evening. I haven't had a chance to pre-screen it, but it should be interesting stuff. Though demonized by the infamous "flower" commercial aired by the Democratic Party in the run up to the ‘64 election, the conservative senator wasn't a complete loony; in fact, many of his opinions would be considered "liberal" today, though they hewed closely to classic conservative/libertarian philosophy. Goldwater was also refreshingly honest, a trait missing from approximately 90 of the current occupants of the self-proclaimed "world's greatest deliberative body". Also airs at 9pm.

6pm Sundance
10th District Court (2004 FRA): For those who got a kick out of the fly-on-the-wall perspective of Divorce Iranian Style (recommended in this column a few years back), here's another documentary featuring several days in the life of a judge, in this case a Parisian named Michèle Bernard-Requin. It's straightforward but interesting stuff, culled from 200 hours of footage featuring a wide variety of defendants in the docket, from small-time dope peddlers to drunk drivers and unhinged people nicked for wielding guns, knives, and other weapons. The film offers an intriguing look at racial and class strata in contemporary France, with middle-class defendants lecturing the judge about the law and working-class folks taking the rap with stoic cynicism. Highly recommended.