TiVoPlex
By John Seal
July 26, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Tuesday 07/28/09
3:45 AM Turner Classic Movies
On With the Show! (1929 USA): I'm generally neutral regarding the comedy stylings of Joe E. Brown. His gurning is, on occasion, intolerable, but he's absolutely brilliant in Some Like It Hot. TCM has a robust roster of ten fairly familiar Brown vehicles on tap today, but along with the usual suspects comes this lesser known early Warners' talkie. Joe stars as Joe Beaton, comic performer in a musical revue about to be capsized by debt. Boss Jerry (Sam Hardy) is readying to ring down the curtain for the final time, but a last minute loan from employee Dad (Thomas Jefferson) means the show will go on. Further troubles arise, however, when the box office receipts are stolen and the star turn (Betty Compson) refuses to take the stage. It's good, breezy, predictable fun - and it'll be interesting to see if TCM airs On With the Show! in its original two-strip Technicolor.
Wednesday 07/29/09
10:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Fashions of 1934 (1934 USA): A superb cast is the main reason to watch this frothy musical comedy from director William Dieterle. William Powell takes the male lead as Sherwood Nash, a confidence trickster who makes a living manufacturing cheap knock-offs of top Paris fashions. Sidekick and female lead Lynn (Bette Davis) is the spy who infiltrates the shows to take surreptitious snapshots of the clothes, but a new innovation - the security camera - captures her in the act and puts Nash on the spot. Given lemons, Nash decides to make lemonade, and he, Lynn, and comic third wheel Snap (reliable Frank McHugh) decide to turn their notoriety into a successful business. Co-starring Hugh Herbert and Verree Teasdale, Fashions of 1934 also features fabulous choreography by Busby Berkeley featuring a multitude of ostrich feathers.
11:30 PM Turner Classic Movies
Good Companions (1933 GB): For those who enjoyed First a Girl, a Jessie Matthews cross-dressing musical that aired on TCM a few months ago, here's another rarely seen Matthews feature. This time she plays singing sensation Susie Dean, member of a traveling troupe of performers who also include failed music teacher Inigo Jollifant (John Gielgud), mill worker Jess Oakroyd (Edmund Gwenn), and independently wealthy spinster Elizabeth Trant (Mary Glynne). The four "Good Companions" are struggling to make the most of their sorry Depression-era situation, and finally hit some luck when rain-sodden tourists trying to keep dry happen across their show. Based on a novel and play by J.B. Priestley, the film was an "A" list effort from Gaumont-British, and though it can't compare to the best Hollywood musicals of the era, remains a pleasingly quaint artefact of the times. It was also the first film shown as part of a Royal Command Performance. Also in the cast: future Hollywood character actors George Zucco and Dennis Hoey and an absurdly young Jack Hawkins.
Friday 07/31/09
8:55 PM Showtime Extreme
Farewell, My Lovely (1975 USA): This above average Raymond Chandler adaptation returns in widescreen tonight. Robert Mitchum stars as private dick Philip Marlowe, a hardboiled womanizer who walks the mean streets of World War II-era Los Angeles in search of mysteries to solve and bottles of rye whiskey to empty. In this outing, Marlowe is hired by plug ugly Moose Malloy (former pugilist Jack O'Halloran) to find his lady love, who's disappeared whilst Moose spent seven years in the Big House. If you're at all familiar with Chandler in general or this story in particular, you know that there's nothing straightforward after that, and as with its 1944 predecessor (Edward Dmytryk's Murder My Sweet) it's easy to get lost in the details. My suggestion: sit back and relax, soak up the impressive period ambiance conjured up by art director Angelo Graham, and enjoy another quality Mitchum performance. A superior supporting cast, including John Ireland, Charlotte Rampling, Anthony Zerbe, Sylvia Miles, Harry Dean Stanton, Joe Spinell, noir writer Jim Thompson, and Sly Stallone provide added value.
9:00 PM Sundance
A Skin too Few: The Days of Nick Drake (2002 HOL): All but ignored during his lifetime, English folk-rock singer Nick Drake began to transform into a legend during the '90s and is now considered one of the foremost practitioners of the style and an iconic source of inspiration for 21st century wyrd folkies. This brief (48 minute) Dutch documentary summarizes Drake's life and examines his brief three album output, and while it does what it does in fine fashion, it could really have been at least half an hour longer. Nonetheless, for anyone who's ever enjoyed (if that's the right word) one of Drake's poignant, frequently heartbreaking songs (my favorite is At the Chime of a City Clock), this is essential viewing.
Saturday 08/01/09
2:00 AM Starz Comedy
Baghead (2008 USA): It's not universally admired, but I kinda dig this indie horror movie spoof. Written and directed by the Duplass Brothers (also responsible for satellite and cable staple The Puffy Chair), Baghead tells the tale of four friends who have retired to a remote cabin in order to complete their screenplay: the story of four friends who have retired to a remote cabin, where they are stalked by a man with a paper sack on his head. Yes, it's the old movie within a meta-movie plot, but there's something about it that appeals to my sense of the absurd. Must be the bag.
6:35 PM IFC
Edmond (2006 USA): Here's another opportunity for William H. Macy to portray an eccentric everyman, and once again he delivers the goods. This time he plays Edmond Burke (snicker), a businessman who finds his life turned inside out and upside down after he stops by to get the word from a storefront fortune-teller. When the seer informs him that he's "not where he belongs," Edmond cashes in his chips, gives up his marriage as a lost cause, and goes on a quest to find, er, the place where he DOES belong, I suppose. Based on a one-act play by David Mamet, Edmond steers dangerously close to Falling Down crypto-fascist territory, but Mamet wisely uses the story to point the finger back at the audience and avoids the visceral white power subtext of Joel Schumacher's repulsive film. Ably directed by horror specialist (and, believe it or not, long time Mamet collaborator) Stuart Gordon, this is an interesting and well-acted, if not particularly lovable, little film.
Sunday 08/02/09
7:00 AM IFC
Don (2006 IND): This week's IFC Bollywood treat features matinee idol Shahrukh Khan as Vijay, an ordinary Mumbai Joe corralled into the job of masquerading as a Mafioso by the local police. After the real "Don" is captured by the fuzz, police detective Desilva (Boman Irani) assigns lookalike Vijay to take his place on the streets in order to infiltrate and destroy the drug smuggling empire of main man Singhania (Rajesh Khattar). A remake of a popular 1978 policier which I haven't seen, Don also features the great Om Puri as one of Desilva's fellow officers.
7:30 PM Fox Movie Channel
Barton Fink (1991 USA): Coen Brothers' fans seem to run hot or cold on this one, but it's definitely amongst my Coen favorites. It's a claustrophobic look at an earnest young man (John Turturro) who comes to Hollywood to write screenplays, only to find out that his artistic integrity doesn't jibe well with big studio politics. There's a marvelous subplot revolving around a traveling salesman with a big secret (Coen regular John Goodman) and a thinly disguised tribute to novelist William Faulkner, who had some similarly unfortunate real-life experiences in Tinsel Town. As usual, cinematographer Roger Deakins' work is exemplary, and the film's art direction and set decoration are superb, with Fink's hotel room oozing drafty 1930s ambience. Barton Fink gets the widescreen treatment this evening on Fox.
10:30 PM Flix
Bikini Shop (1986 USA): I've never seen this T & A comedy, but any (non-porno) film entitled "Bikini Shop" is going to get at least a brief mention in the TiVoPlex. Bruce Greenwood (most recently seen as a grizzled Star Fleet veteran in 2009's Star Trek) plays a guy who inherits the tit-ular business from his mother. Will business ba-zoom now that a younger man is in charge? Or will he decide to say ta-ta to the whole thing? Tune in and try it on for size.
11:30 PM Turner Classic Movies
Secret Mission (1942 GB): James Mason stars as a Frenchman in this silly World War II time-killer written by future Bond director Terence Young. Mason plays Raoul, a French soldier on a mission with three Brits - including super spy Peter Garnett (Hugh Williams) - to occupied Normandy. The assignment: scope out the German defenses, presumably in anticipation of an Allied invasion from across the English Channel. How on Earth was D-Day kept a secret when second features were being made about it two years prior to the actual event? This very minor quota quickie also features Walter Gotell, Herbert Lom (write a book, Herbert!), and Stewart Granger. It's followed at 1:15 AM on 8/3 by 1943's They Met in the Dark, a superior Mason vehicle about a Royal Navy officer compelled to redeem his good name after being played for a sucker by a Nazi operative (Patricia Medina).
Monday 08/03/09
3:40 AM Encore Action
Von Richtofen and Brown (1971 USA): The penultimate directorial effort of Roger Corman, Von Richtofen and Brown is an uncharacteristically stuffy drama about the flying exploits of the aforementioned Great War aerialists. John Phillip Law plays the glamorous German ace, whilst Don Stroud portrays comparatively bland Canadian fighter pilot Roy Brown, and the cast also includes Barry Primus as Hermann Goering! Though well-shot and featuring some impressive aerial photography, Von Richtofen and Brown isn't terribly exciting, but hasn't been seen much of late on the small screen. Or the big one, for that matter.
7:30 PM Sundance
Crossing the Line (2006 GB): In 1962, an American soldier stationed in South Korea crossed over the demilitarized zone and defected to the communist North. That man was James Dresnok, and he opens up for British filmmaker Daniel Gordon in this utterly compelling documentary about one of the few westerners to willingly reside in the Democratic People's Republic. This is Gordon's third film about North Korea - he also directed the equally fascinating World Cup doc, The Game of Their Lives - and we should be most grateful that Kim Jong-Il's government has, bizarrely, granted him such unprecedented access to the Hermit Kingdom.