New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

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

Tuesday 11/21/06

2:05 AM Encore Mystery
The Harder They Fall (1956 USA): Humphrey Bogart went down fighting in this, his final feature before his untimely demise from throat cancer. Bogie stars as Eddie Willis, a gone to seed sportswriter who gets a fresh lease on life when he's offered the opportunity to manage Argentinian prizefighter Toro Moreno (pro wrestler Mike Lane) on behalf of promoter Nick Benko (Rod Steiger). After a series of successful bouts, Moreno finds himself rising swiftly through the ranks of heavyweight contenders—but Willis discovers late in the game that the fights are being fixed by Benko, who needs his boy to take a fall during the championship bout. Will Eddie stifle his disgust, and go along with the plan? Or will he retain a shred of dignity, and let Moreno duke it out honestly? The fifties were a great era for boxing flicks, and The Harder They Fall is probably the best of the lot thanks to Bogie's simmering performance, Philip Yordan's unrestrained screenplay, and Mark Robson's taut direction. It's also great fun to see former real life heavyweight champ Jersey Joe Walcott in a critical role as Moreno's corner man.

5:00 AM IFC
Keep the River On Your Right (2000 USA): What do you do when you're a successful painter and amateur anthropologist living in New York City? If you answer to the name of Tobias Schneebaum, the subject of this unusual documentary, you journey to Papua New Guinea and Peru, settle down with a "primitive" local tribe, and partake of a little long pig when good table manners demand it. Schneebaum wrote a book about his adventures in 1969, and 30 years later, filmmakers David Shapiro and Laurie Gwen Shapiro somehow convinced the aged adventurer to return to the Outback, capturing the crotchety but loveable old-timer as he reacquainted himself with old friends and lovers. Schneebaum was much more than a tourist: he plunged wholeheartedly into the lives of those he visited, adopting their cultures lock, stock and barrel, and his memories - as well as those of his long-unseen friends - make this film a unique sociological document. Also airs at 1:00 PM.

Wednesday 11/22/06

2:45 AM IFC
Alexander Nevsky (1938 USSR): One of the first foreign language films I ever saw, Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky—along with other classics such as The Seventh Seal and Rules of the Game—aired frequently throughout the 1970s on PBS, back when PBS was the only place you could see ‘art' films. A magnificent spectacle, it tells the historic tale of the title character, a Russian prince who battled the Teutonic Knights to a standstill on an icy lake near the city of Novgorod in 1242. 699 years later, the Germans tried again—and failed again. Rightly renowned for its magnificent action sequence atop chilly Lake Peipus—which takes up a huge portion of the film's running time—Alexander Nevsky's Prokofiev-composed score also left an indelible mark on me, and along with Ralph Vaughn Williams Antarctica remains one of the few pieces of ‘classical' music I truly enjoy. The fact that both works were inspired by cinema is surely nothing more than happy coincidence. Also airs at 11:40 AM.

Continued:       1       2       3