TiVoPlex
By John Seal
January 23, 2007
From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or underappreciated; they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times Pacific.
Tuesday 01/23/07
4:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
The Guilty Generation (1931 USA): Boris Karloff fans will want to make time for The Guilty Generation, a very rarely seen Columbia melodrama about ‘John Smith', an architect and fully assimilated Italian-American (Robert Young) whose gangster father Tony Ricca (Karloff) is engaged in a Prohibition-era turf war with the father of John's amour Maria (Constance Cummings). Maria's been educated in a French convent, but can't shake off the disrepute she's inherited from Dad (Leo Carrillo). The young lovers are determined to make a go of their relationship - but will the long-running dispute between the two families allow them to set up house together, or is blood truly thicker than firewater? Karloff's role is actually a rather small one, and his precise diction at odds with the unvarnished roughness of his character, but fans of ‘The Uncanny One' will definitely want to acquaint themselves with this film. Monster buffs should also note the behind camera presence of director Rowland V. Lee, who worked with Karloff again in 1939 on both Son of Frankenstein and Tower of London. The Guilty Generation is followed at 5:45 AM by another Karloff gangster pic, The Criminal Code (1931), this one directed by Howard Hawks.
10:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
Meet Boston Blackie (1941 USA): In retrospect, it's hard to understand why Chester Morris never became a full fledged star. A talented actor with chiselled if slightly unusual good looks that served him well in ‘almost A-list' vehicles such as 1939's Five Came Back, Morris became typecast thanks to his greatest success: the Boston Blackie series, which kept him employed through a dozen bottom of the bill mysteries as well as a radio show for most of the 1940s. Meet Boston Blackie was the first in the popular series, with Morris cast as a wisecracking PI (and reformed safecracker) always one step ahead of the police. The action comes fast and furious, commencing with murder aboard an ocean liner followed by a trip to a Coney Island freak-show, and the dialogue is suitably hardboiled. Blackie even gets to meet the pinhead star of Tod Browning's Freaks, the unforgettable Schlitze, who puts in an uncredited appearance here as carnival attraction Princess Betsy. It's followed at 11:45 AM by Confessions of Boston Blackie (1941), helmed by Edward Dmytryk and entangling Blackie in art forgeries and more murder, at 1:00 PM by Alias Boston Blackie (1942), wherein our hero tracks down an escaped convict, and at 2:15 PM by Boston Blackie Goes Hollywood (1942), in which Blackie is framed for the theft of the world famous Monterey Diamond.
6:30 PM Sundance
Dear Wendy (2005 DEN): This Thomas Vinterberg (Festen) feature flew in and out of American art-houses in about a week last year after a flurry of less than commendatory reviews. I remember being impressed by its trailer, but didn't manage to get to my local Landmark before the film was hastily returned to US distributor Wellspring. Vilified by Ebert and others as a facile examination of American gun culture and teen life, Dear Wendy features Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot) as the leader of a rural gang called The Dandies, who fancy themselves pacifists who also pack heat. Written by Lars Von Trier, directed by the supremely talented Vinterberg, and shot by the great Anthony Dod Mantle, Dear Wendy is back on the radar - bad reviews be damned!
Wednesday 01/24/07
6:30 PM Encore Wam!
Meatballs 4 (1992 USA): I rarely recommend anything on the Wam! Channel, which, according to its PR blurb, is ‘a cool place for teens to see movies and entertainment just for them'. Color me surprised, then, to see the channel airing this R rated sequel to 1979's Ivan Reitman comedy Meatballs. The first Meatballs was fairly innocuous stuff, but by 1986's Meatballs III: Summer Job, the sex quotient was trumping the sophomoric humor, and the trend continued with number 4, which was actually originally intended as a stand-alone feature entitled Happy Campers. Long story short: star Jack Nance aside, the movie stinks, no matter what you call it - but now I can cash that big payola check Wam! sent me. Hey, it's a super cool place to hang out, dudes!
7:00 PM Starz In Black
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005 GB): Airing on Starz In Black due to the presence of erstwhile hip-hopper Mos Def in the cast, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a huge smash at the box-office, rendering it questionable for inclusion in the Tivoplex. It's here because it's making its widescreen television debut this evening, and because Bill Nighy is one of the funniest men on the planet. As for Mos Def, he should mos' definitely stick to dramatic roles in future.
11:30 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Big Carnival (1951 USA): Remember the episode of The Simpsons where Bart pretends to be little Timmy O'Toole, stuck at the bottom of a well? Billy Wilder's The Big Carnival (also known as Ace in the Hole) was a source of inspiration for that episode, which also drew on the real life adventures of the legendary Baby Jessica, who tumbled down a Midland, Texas well back in 1986. The film stars Kirk Douglas as Chuck Tatum, an unscrupulous reporter who lucks into a big story - Man Trapped In Collapsed Mine - and does his best to parlay the tragedy into a national attraction and a bigger by-line for himself. Working in cahoots with an equally ambitious local sheriff (Ray Teal), Tatum manages to keep the victim (Richard Benedict) down under long enough to whip up the kind of sensationalistic fervor that well-educated modern day reporters would never succumb to - unless, of course, it was a missing white woman in the mineshaft, or perhaps a cancer stricken child's puppy. Derided at the time for its unbridled cynicism, The Big Carnival looks pretty tame compared to some of the journalistic shenanigans we're now exposed to every day.
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