TiVoPlex

By John Seal

September 2-8, 2003

Coffee, tea or me?

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

A brief note: This week’s TiVoPlex marks the one-year anniversary of this column. I’d like to send a big thank you to the good folks at BOP for allowing me to indulge myself whilst eating their bandwidth, and even bigger thanks to those of you who have sent kind comments about TiVoPlex over the last 12 months. With your kind permission, I hope to carry on for a long time to come. And now, on with the show:

Tuesday 09/02/03

1:20am More Max
Son of the Bride (2001 ESP-ARG): I’m not real big on romantic comedies in any language, but this Spanish-Argentinean co-production (which I have yet to see) sounds pretty good. Starring Ricardo Darin (Nueve Reinas) as a 42-year-old restaurateur with an unhappy wife, an unhappy mother, and a domineering father, Son of the Bride’s story reunites Darin’s character with a childhood friend whilst recuperating in hospital from a heart attack. Sounds awfully heartwarming, I know, but the film won a boatload of Argentinean film awards and was even nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2002 Academy Awards.

9:30am HBO
American Standoff (2001 USA): In the mood for a good old-fashioned tale of two-fisted labor negotiating? This HBO original documentary follows a pair of battles: the one between the Teamsters and non-union freight hauler Overnite Transportation, and the one between the ever-so-slightly skunky James P. Hoffa and the embattled Teamster administration of the late 20th Century. Harlan County USA it ain’t, but it’s worth a look for union members, blue-collar workers, and fans of non-fiction cinema.

9pm More Max
Secretary (2002 USA): This one was on my to-do list throughout 2002, but it didn’t get done until now, when it’s scheduled to make its television premiere. Probably not for all tastes, Secretary stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as a slightly disturbed young woman hired to be the personal assistant of lawyer James Spader. The two of them proceed to engage in a sado-masochistic sexual relationship, perhaps not a million miles away from the one detailed in Michael Hanecke’s The Piano Teacher (2001 FRA-OST). A solid if unspectacular indie cast, including Stephen McHattie, Jeremy Davies, and Lesley Ann Warren, support them. And I’m going to resist the temptation to make bad puns about taking dictation.

Wednesday 09/03/03

5:10am Encore Action
Abandon Ship (1957 GB): This gritty ocean-bound drama will remind film fans of Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944 USA), but is less an experiment in Sartrean existentialism and more an investigation of the application of the theories of Thomas Hobbes. Tyrone Power stars as the captain of a luxury liner that sinks mid-voyage. He ends up in a lifeboat with several dozen other survivors, some injured, some water-bound with life jackets, some essential to the long-term survival of the group, and some simply annoying and unhelpful. Powers is faced with a difficult situation: Does he dump the lame and halt in an effort to save everyone else, or does he simply let nature take its course and hope for the best? I won’t give away any of the resultant plot developments, but Power has a top-flight supporting cast looking damp and forlorn alongside him, including Lloyd Nolan, Mai Zetterling, Gordon Jackson, Finlay Currie, and, in a particularly memorable role as an unctuous retired Army major, Clive Morton. Basically a one-set film, Abandon Ship doesn’t opt for the easy way out and remains a powerful and disturbingly realistic film, and was magnificently shot by Wilkie Collins, who at times almost makes you feel the spray in your face.

6pm Sundance
Veronika Voss (1982 BRD): Here’s the good news: The Sundance Channel is gracing us with a Rainer Werner Fassbinder film festival during the month of September. Here’s the bad: It consists of only four of the prolific director’s prodigious output, ignoring some of his most essential work. So we don’t get An American Soldier (1970 BRD), Beware of a Holy Whore (1971 BRD), or my personal favorite, The Third Generation (1979 BRD). Still, we mustn’t complain; more than 13 moons have passed since any of his output has appeared over American airwaves. The festival kicks off with his penultimate effort, Veronika Voss, a black-and-white period piece starring Rosel Zech (Aimee and Jaguar) as the title character, a film actress at Germany’s renowned UFA Studios whose post-World War II decline is fueled by drug addiction and a doctor who isn’t overly familiar with the Hippocratic Oath. It’s a solid piece of work, and is a decent introduction to Fassbinder’s oeuvre. Watch for the director’s cameo appearance as a cinema patron.

Thursday 09/04/03

9am Fox Movies
Vanishing Point (1971 USA): Richard Sarafian’s hyperkinetic chase film makes a rare wide-screen appearance today on Fox, serving as a reminder that this is a film desperately in need of a DVD reissue. In a film I like to think of as Bennies and the Vet, Barry Newman plays a hopped up Vietnam veteran speeding across America in a souped-up Dodge Challenger. He’s ably supported from afar by blind DJ Cleavon Little, who provides play-by-play commentary as Newman eludes numerous state police departments in his attempt to get from Colorado to San Francisco in 15 hours. It’s sheer excitement from the get-go, brilliantly lensed by John Alonzo, and features a pumping soundtrack from Jimmy Bowen. Look for John Amos (Good Times) in a small role as Cleavon’s on-air engineer. Also airs at 11pm.

Friday 09/05/03

3:05am Sundance
Procedure 769: Witness to an Execution (1995 HOL): Add another entry into the anti-death penalty cinema logbook. Procedure 769 doesn’t overtly state its opposition to capital punishment, but like most films that detail the intricate machinery of state-sanctioned murder, it inexorably raises the moral and ethical conundrums that trouble opponents of the ultimate sanction. Shot during the run-up to the execution of convicted killer Robert Alton Harris in 1992 - the first man sent to the gas chamber in California since 1967 - the film includes interviews with Harris’ brother and relatives of his victims. It all adds up to riveting but unpleasant viewing.

4:15am Black Starz!
Don’t Play Us Cheap (1973 USA): This one comes with my highest recommendation. It’s Melvin Van Peebles’ follow-up to the wildly-overrated Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song (1971 USA), and while it shares some of that film’s anarchic amateur-hour qualities, it’s a far better film overall. Esther Rolle (another alumna of television’s Good Times) stars with a cast of unknowns (indeed, the woeful IMDb entry for this film lacks all but three names) in a folk tale about the devil - resplendent, naturally, in 1970s’ pimp attire - dropping in on a neighborhood house party and causing trouble. This is an essential experience for adventuresome cineastes. It’s followed at 6am by a rare broadcast of Van Peeble’s brief broadside at Hollywood’s treatment of African-American filmmakers, Classified X (1998 FRA-USA).

11:15pm Turner Classic Movies
Earth (1930 USSR): Alexander Dovzhenko’s Marxist agrarian classic is no thrill ride, but serious film buffs will definitely want to make time for it. One of the greatest and most powerful films of the Stalinist era, Earth details the day-to-day struggle of Ukrainian peasants on the newly established collective farms. Like most Soviet films of the period, it’s gorgeously shot (in this case by Danill Demutsky) and brilliantly edited by Dovzhenko himself. It’s a feast for the eyes, the heart, and the mind, regardless of the unpleasant political realities lurking in the background, including the bloody years just around the corner.

Saturday 09/06/03

1am Turner Classic Movies
The River (1951 IND-USA-FRA): I’ve never seen Jean Renoir’s film about expatriate family life in post-colonial India, so I can’t offer my usual pithy (or pissy) comments about it. With Renoir’s name attached to it, though, it’s another must-see for fans of art-house fare, especially considering it was shot by nephew Claude Renoir (lenser extraordinaire on a wide range of films, including Barbarella (1968 FRA) and 1977’s Bond entry The Spy Who Loved Me). Real-life husband-and-wife team Nora Swinburne and Esmond Knight star as the mater and pater of the expats, with their coming-of-age daughters played by Adrienne Corri (a future scream queen for Hammer Studios), Patricia Walter (the daughter of comedy star Bert Wheeler in her only film appearance), and Indian-born Radha. Future auteur Satyajit Ray worked as an assistant director on this film, but was still several years away from Pather Panchali and worldwide fame.

8am Sci Fi
Destroy All Monsters (1968 JAP): It takes something pretty special to catch my eye when it comes to stations with commercial interruptions, and a wide-screen broadcast of possibly my favorite giant-monster movie of all time definitely fits that description. The film lives up to its title, featuring an all-star monster bash in downtown Tokyo. Godzilla headlines, of course, but there’s also room for Rodan, Angillas, Ghidorah, Mothra, Manda, Barugon, and others. If watching men in rubber suits step on miniature models of large cities is your bag, you will never see a better film.

Sunday 09/07/03

9am Turner Classic Movies
If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969 USA): Here’s one that sets off the nostalgia alarm bells. Aired constantly on prime-time network television during the 1970s, this remains an entertaining if not terribly clever comedy about the travels and travails of a group of American tourists in Europe. Leading the group is the always-affable Ian McShane, and tour members include ‘60s sex-symbol Suzanne Pleshette, Mildred Natwick, and Norman Fell. Directed by the underappreciated Mel Stuart (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971 USA), Wattstax (1973 USA)), this is a delightful trip down memory lane for folks who grew up watching too much television during the Age of Aquarius, and is being aired wide-screen.

9pm Turner Classic Movies
The Sea Hawk (1924 USA): If old-fashioned derring-do is your cup of tea, you could do little better than this silent epic directed and independently produced by Frank Lloyd. The star of the film is Milton Sills, a since-forgotten star whose fame foundered on the rocky shores of talking pictures, resulting in a fatal heart attack in 1930. Sills looks good, though he’s no Errol Flynn (who took the analogous role in the 1940 remake), but for modern audiences, the most recognizable face is that of Wallace Beery, here essaying one of the roguish roles that were his bread-and-butter during the 1920s and ‘30s. The action scenes are particularly memorable, taking advantage of silent Hollywood’s attention to detail and scale, with some truly stunning reproductions of 18th-century galleons.

Monday 09/08/03

5:30am Turner Classic Movies
Magic Boy (1959 JAP): You may suspect that I’m a paid shill for the good folks at TCM, but it’s merely the strength, depth, and imagination of their schedule that causes me to list three Turner broadcasts in a row, as I have done here. Simply put, the more eclectic the programming, the more attention I’m going to give it, and no one can throw a cinematic curve ball quite like TCM. To prove that thesis, here’s a very early example of Japanese animation, a story of a young boy searching for magic, meeting a wizard, and battling witches. You’ll likely never get a chance to see this again (unless you live in Japan or the long-anticipated Anime Channel ever actually comes to fruition), so set some time aside for this one.

10am Sundance
Stealing the Fire (2002 USA): No one denies that Iraq at one time possessed the ability to develop nuclear power and nuclear weapons, but the Western world’s complicity in that country’s efforts to develop a deterrent to Israel’s nuclear stockpile has long been shrouded in secrecy or simply ignored by corporate media. Here’s the full story of how Saddam Hussein acquired his radioactive goodies, and no, it wasn’t from North Korea or Libya.

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