TiVoPlex
TiVoPlex for Tuesday, December 11 through Monday, December 17, 2007
By John Seal
December 11, 2007
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Tuesday 12/11/07
7:45am Turner Classic Movies
The Young Stranger (1957 USA): James "Book 'em Dano" MacArthur stars as a teenage troublemaker in this effective "generation gap" drama from 26-year-old director John Frankenheimer. MacArthur plays Hal Ditmar, who gets in trouble with cinema manager Grubbs (Whit Bissell) when he's caught - gasp - putting his feet on the theatre seats! A fracas ensues, and it's up to kindly police officer Shipley (the great James Gregory) to intercede and save the youngster from a life of upholstery-damaging crime. Based on a story Frankenheimer had originally written for television, The Young Stranger won't make you forget Rebel Without a Cause, but it just might encourage you to tell that lousy punk in front of you at the multiplex to turn off his darn cell phone. Yeah, and pull up your pants, too!
8:30am Showtime 2
Rikers High (2005 USA): See, this is where things lead when you don't respect the furniture at your local bijou. Rikers High is a depressing but fascinating documentary about teenage boys incarcerated at New York City's legendary Riker's Island jail, a massive establishment with an inmate population of 15,000-plus. Many of the inmates aren't old enough to vote, let alone drink, and the jail has its own high school to help them complete their education and hopefully beat the daunting recidivism odds. Following three newly-matriculated grads as they try to make it in the cold, cruel world both within and beyond the jailhouse walls, Rikers High pays grim tribute to the challenges facing working-class youths in the Five Boroughs.
6:35pm Sundance
Strange Culture (2007 USA): If you aren't already paranoid enough about the toll taken on our civil liberties over the last decade, you will be after watching this chilling doc about artist Steve Kurtz. Kurtz, a professor at the University of Buffalo, New York, specializes in works on genetically-modified organisms, and his house was awash in Petri dishes, lab equipment, and other ephemera necessary to the creation of his pieces. When his wife was taken ill one evening and an ambulance summoned, the paramedics took one look at his "bio-art" and gave the FBI a call. Arrested on bio-terrorism charges, Kurtz was eventually acquitted, but indicted on several trumped-up counts of mail and wire fraud. A terrifying vision of what the Patriot Act has wrought, Strange Culture is an act in progress: Kurtz is yet to go to trial, and faces a 20-year sentence for failing to fill out a US Postal Service form correctly. Also airs 12/13 at 4:35pm.
10:45pm Turner Classic Movies
When Willie Comes Marching Home (1950 USA): An obscure and out-of-character comedy from legendary director John Ford, When Willie Comes Marching Home makes its TCM debut this evening. Dan Dailey stars as Bill Kluggs, a backwoods West Virginian first in line to volunteer for service during World War II. Sent to boot camp, Willie finds himself assigned to gunnery instruction, and gets posted to an unglamorous training gig at a nearby Army Air Force base. Embarrassed and chagrined at landing a cushy job on the home front, our hero, determined to make a name for himself in front-line combat, finagles his way aboard a bomber bound on a secret mission. Based on the experiences of storywriter Sy Gomberg, When Willie Comes Marching Home was not a favorite of Ford's, but has stood the test of time and deserves rediscovery. The film co-stars William Demarest as Willie's father, and TiVoPlex fave Whit Bissell puts in an uncredited appearance as a fellow aviator.
Wednesday 12/12/07
5:30pm Sundance
Mary, Queen of Scots (1971 GB): Frock flicks are bad enough, but when you graft the trope onto another bêtes noire of the cinema - the biopic - the potential threat ratchets up to Code Red levels. Luckily, Mary, Queen of Scots manages to thread the needle thanks to outstanding performances from Glenda Jackson (as Queen Elizabeth I) and Vanessa Redgrave (as the titular Catholic monarch), and avoids being the dull, dry fancy-dress historical recreation we all fear. There are secret passages, palace intrigue, and sexual peccadilloes for all, plus a first-rate supporting cast, including Patrick McGoohan, Ian Holm, Trevor Howard, and Timothy Dalton. Mary, Queen of Scots earned five Academy Award nominations, and is making its American wide-screen television debut this evening.
11pm Fox Movie Channel
Luna (1979 ITA-USA): Included in this week's column less for its quality than for its obscurity, Luna is a long- (and some might argue justifiably) forgotten Bernardo Bertolucci flick about the European adventures of American opera star Caterina (Jill Clayburgh) and her drug-addicted son Joe (Matthew Barry). Caterina has been the stereotypical bad parent, spending all her spare hours treading the boards whilst her son roams wild and free through the backstreets of Rome, where he has acquired a taste for heroin. Determined to get the monkey off her son's back, Caterina devotes herself to him full-time, but takes things a wee bit too far in the motherly love department when she uses sex to wean Joe off his horse high. The film is way overlong at 142 minutes, burdened by a glutinous surfeit of opera, and the sex scenes make for uncomfortable viewing, but it's also very rare and unavailable on home video, and considering it's the only film to feature the combined talents of Fred Gwynne and Roberto Benigni in its cast allowances must be made.
Thursday 12/13/07
4:15pm IFC
Wild Tigers I Have Known (2005 USA): Ah, the sexual awakenings of adolescence, one of the most reliable themes for artsy-fartsy filmmakers the world over. Here's the one about the 13-year-old lad coming to terms with his homosexuality whilst trying to control the crush he has on his best chum. Our hormonally-challenged youngster is portrayed by Malcolm Stumpf, his older pal by Patrick White, and his mother by Fairuza Balk. Fairuza Balk is playing moms now? I must be getting REALLY old. Shot in and around Santa Cruz, California, Wild Tigers I Have Known mines similar territory to Michael Cuesta's Twelve and Holding, and like Cuesta's film tends to over-egg the pudding at times. But narrative absurdities aside, it's a fine-looking film that hints at better to come from young auteur Cam White. Also airs 12/14 at 6:15am and 11:15am.
6pm Starz! Edge
Curse of the Golden Flower (2006 CHI): This impressive looking fable of ancient China has been airing in pan-and-scan over the last few weeks, but appears in its essential original aspect ratio for the first time today. Directed by the increasingly populist Yimou Zhang, the film features a very tightly-corseted Gong Li as the adulterous Empress Phoenix of the Tang Dynasty. Her Majesty is beset by illnesses and is being treated by a doctor (Ni Dahong) employed by the Emperor himself (Chow Yun Fat), who is well aware of his wife's extracurricular bedroom activities and is also trying to maneuver favored son Prince Wan into pole position in the line of succession. There are machinations and double-crosses aplenty, and ulterior motives and hidden agendas are the order of the day, but most viewers will be satiated by the gorgeous set direction, well-mounted action sequences, and Ms. Li's divinely arranged cleavage. Also airs 12/14 at 1:45am.
Friday 12/14/07
8am Turner Classic Movies
Carnival Boat (1932 USA): I've been on a bit of a Ginger Rogers kick ever since the excellent Tender Comrade aired last month, so I'm excited to report that two of her earliest efforts get rare airings on TCM this morning. First up is Carnival Boat, in which Ginger plays Honey, a riverboat singer whose love affair with lumberjack Buck Gannon (an already-past-his-prime Bill Boyd) is causing problems quayside with his father Jim (Hobart Bosworth). Jim's got an important contract lined up that will brook no distractions, and he forbids Buck to spend any more time pitching waterway woo to Honey, but will Buck get the message, or will he remain waterlogged by love? There's an exciting and well-staged dénouement involving a log jam and some dynamite, and Rogers is in top form. Carnival Boat is followed at 9:45am by 1933's Rafter Romance, which features Ginger as a working girl whose unusual living arrangements lead to unexpected love with her absent roommate (Norman Foster).
2pm Sundance
L'Avventura (1960 ITA): A triple bill of Michelangelo Antonioni's best kicks off this afternoon with L'Avventura, the director's existentialist salute to bourgeois ennui. Set on a remote Mediterranean island, the film relates the stories of a group of wealthy Italians searching for Anna (Lea Massari), a friend who has gone missing after taking her morning swim. Amongst the search party are Anna's lover Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti) and gal pal Claudia (stunning Monica Vitti), but L'Avventura is less about the search than it is about the empty emotional husks of those partaking in it. As enigmatic a puzzle box as the director's later triumph Blow-Up (1966), L'Avventura provides little in the way of narrative arc but plenty in the way of food for thought...as long as you have the patience to plod through two hours and 24 minutes of unresolved ambiguities. An adventure it surely ain't. It's followed at 4:30pm by what I believe is the wide-screen television premiere of 1975's The Passenger, featuring Jack Nicholson as a reporter on the trail of an elusive story in North Africa; and at 7pm by L'Eclisse, in which Monica Vitti and Alain Delon engage in an empty love affair amidst the ruins of an Italy driven mad by greed and materialism. None of these films pass muster as easy or enjoyable viewing experiences (thanks to Nicholson, The Passenger probably comes closest), but make important and prescient statements about the direction taken by Western societies in the post-war years. Anyone with an interest in cinema as art needs to see all three.
11pm Turner Classic Movies
Suburbia (1984 USA): Penelope Spheeris' 1981 documentary The Decline of Western Civilization was one of the first films to introduce punk rock to mainstream audiences. Three years later, Spheeris examined the movement from a fictional perspective in Suburbia, the story of alienated teen Evan Johnson (Bill Coyne) and his adventures with the only family that will accept him: his fellow Southern California punk outcasts The Rejected, here played primarily by real-life street punks. Though the acting is wildly inconsistent, the heart of the film still beats true, and Suburbia remains the best fictional depiction of the punk subculture produced during the Reagan era. Sadly, it's airing in pan-and-scan tonight, but screen composition has never been Spheeris' strong suit, so it probably won't affect your enjoyment of the film.
Saturday 12/15/07
12:45am Turner Classic Movies
The Legend of Billie Jean (1985 USA): TCM had originally scheduled Derek Jarman's Jubilee (1978) in this time slot, but something's changed and we get this long-forgotten action flick in its stead. As much as I would have loved to acknowledge what would have been Jubilee's American television premiere, it's widely available on DVD as part of The Criterion Collection, so I can't admit to too much disappointment at its being replaced by a film that's been unavailable on home video for donkeys' years. The Legend of Billie Jean stars Helen Slater, fresh off her portrayal of Supergirl in the 1984 film of the same name, as Billie Jean Davy, a Corpus Christi, Texas teen who hits the road with her brother Binx (unrelated Christian Slater in his first big-screen role) after the two find themselves on the wrong side of the law after an unfortunate incident with a gun. Along for the ride are pals Ophelia (Martha Gehman) and Putter (a pre-Lisa Simpson Yeardley Smith), and the fearsome foursome are soon winning big-time respect from teens nationwide whilst driving their parents round the bend. It's sorta like Vanishing Point, only with worse hair, or Thelma and Louise with a guy.
Sunday 12/16/07
2:30am Cinemax
The Lodger (1944 USA): It's no more accurate than any of the dozens of other Jack the Ripper flicks churned out over the years, but The Lodger doesn't pretend to be more than it is: a solidly-made B feature. Director John Brahm manages to achieve a suitably murky atmosphere whilst featuring arguably the finest cinematic Jack in the shape of Laird Cregar, who also worked with Brahm on the equally memorable Hangover Square the following year. Expertly shot on the Fox backlot, this film doesn't aspire to be historically correct, like the dreadful From Hell (2001), instead concentrating on the mythic angles of the eternally fascinating Ripper story.
6:30am Sundance
Zero Degrees of Separation (2005 CAN): The life of a Palestinian in Israel can't be any easy one. Now imagine being a gay Palestinian in Israel. Now imagine being a gay or lesbian Palestinian in Israel in a long-term relationship with an Israeli Jew. That's the set-up for this eye-opening documentary, which examines the ethnic, religious, political, and sexual fault lines running beneath the Jewish State. Written and directed by Israeli filmmaker Elle Flanders, Zero Degrees of Separation is an angry film that doesn't hide its sympathy for the Palestinian cause, so ardent Zionists will want to give this one a miss.