TiVoPlex
By John Seal
September 13, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Tuesday 9/14/10
10:05 AM Showtime Extreme
The Long Duel (1967 GB): Showtime Extreme really seems to be in the mood for late ‘60s epics at the moment. Here’s another one that, sadly, probably won’t be getting a widescreen airing, but will be worth a look anyway for star spotters and admirers of sweeping vistas. Directed by Ken Annakin, The Long Duel stars a beturbaned Yul Brynner as Sultan, an unambitiously named tribal leader getting up to all sorts of trouble on the North West Frontier. The rebellious Sultan liberates some of his brethren from prison, which gets the attention of Stafford (Harry Andrews), a district superintendent determined to keep the brown man down. He assigns officer Freddy Young (Trevor Howard) the task of bringing Sultan to heel, but Young comes down with a case of White Man’s Guilt Syndrome and decides Sultan actually has a pretty good point about perfidious Albion. Co-starring Andrew Keir, Charlotte Rampling, Laurance Naismith, and Edward Fox, The Long Duel is a typically bloated and not terribly imaginative period piece, but Howard and Andrews are always fun to watch.
5:15 PM Showtime Extreme
Severance (2006 GB): Office Space meets Deliverance with dashes of Saw and Shaun of the Dead in this amusing British horror comedy written and directed by Christopher Smith. Set somewhere in Eastern Europe, the film stars Tim McInnerny as Richard, sales team manager at Palisade, an arms company developing a (supposedly) non-lethal land mine. Richard takes his team on retreat to points east of Transylvania, but the locals are none too happy to see them and soon the blood and guts are flowing. Amongst the stock characters on the trip are obseqious bootlicker Harris (Toby Stephens), sexy workaholic Maggie (Laura Harris), and hopeless pothead Steve (Danny Dyer), but you’re not tuning in for character development - you’re tuning in for viscera and gutbusting laughter. Severance delivers both.
Wednesday 9/15/10
5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Al Capone (1959 USA): An evening of gangster biopics kicks of with this widescreen salute to the king of the Chicago underworld. Rod Steiger is perfectly cast as the high-living Capone, who moved to the Windy City in 1923 for a job guarding bootlegger Johnny Torrio (Nehemiah Persoff) but eventually worked his way to the top of the syndicate before taxes and venereal disease undid him. Renowned for its historical accuracy - a rarity when it comes to these things - Al Capone co-stars Martin Balsam as a crusading reporter, Fay Spain as the great man’s moll, and James Gregory as a copper hot on Capone’s trail. It’s followed at 7:00 PM by 1960’s The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond, featuring Ray Danton as the titular New York hood; at 9:00 PM by 1961’s King of the Roaring Twenties: The Story of Arnold Rothstein, starring David Janssen as You-Know-Who (no, silly, not Voldemort); and at 11:00 PM by 1975’s Lepke, making its widescreen television debut and headlined by Tony Curtis and Anjanette Comer.
8:00 PM Sundance
The Waiting Room (2006 GB): It may not be Brief Encounter, but The Waiting Room is as close as British cinema has come to successfully reusing the ingredients that made that film such a success half a century ago. Ann-Marie Duff and Ralf Little star as Anna and Stephen, strangers who meet on a rail platform in suburban London and make goo-goo eyes at each other whilst trying to decide whether or not to take the plunge, whilst Frank Finlay and Phyllida Law co-star as a pair of older and wiser pensioners. The Waiting Room is, at heart, a chick flick you might scope on Lifetime, but it’s a good one with an intelligent script and excellent cast. Also airs at 1:15 AM.
Thursday 9/16/10
3:55 AM HBO Signature
Airport 1975 (1975 USA): I’ve been waiting years for TCM to air an Airport marathon, but it just doesn’t seem to be in the cards. As the wait continues, then, I’ll have to make do with this airing of the embarrassingly awful Airport 1975, the first sequel to 1970’s blockbuster and a box office smasheroo in its own right. This is the one in which a small private plane crashes into the side of a 747 and gets stuck whilst Charlton Heston rides (well, choppers) to the rescue. The concept is beyond ridiculous, but who’s complaining - it’s not every film that features Karen Black, Gloria Swanson, Dana Andrews, Roy Thinnes, Linda Blair, Sid Caesar, Myrna Loy, Jerry Stiller, Norman Fell, Beverly Garland, Eric Estrada, Larry Storch, Sharon Gless, and Helen Reddy! Of course, Airport 1975 also features George Kennedy, who seems to be in at least half the movies produced in the 1970s - but we won’t hold that against it.
5:00 PM Fox Movie Channel
Quintet (1979 USA): If memory serves, I wrote about this cerebral science-fiction flick back in the early days of the TiVoPlex. I’m not sure, therefore, if Quintet is making its widescreen debut this evening, but I am certain it hasn’t been seen on the small screen in its correct aspect ratio for some time. It makes a perfect double-bill partner with Airport 1975, though: Quintet tells an inscrutable tale of atomic survivors (including Paul Newman, Fernando Rey, Bibi Andersson, and Vittorio Gassman) playing a strange board game in the midst of nuclear winter. Is it the worst film Robert Altman ever made? It’s a close contest between this and Brewster McCloud… but I think so.
Friday 9/17/10
9:00 PM IFC
F/X (1986 USA): If you’ve been watching movies on cable and/or satellite as long as I have, you’ve probably already seen both F/X and it’s sequel, F/X 2. Both films have been in the heaviest rotation imaginable on multiple channels, and have been aired at least once a month (and usually more) for years. Now F/X finally makes its letterboxed television debut, and might actually be worth watching again! Aussie Bryan Brown headlines as movie special effects man Rollie, who’s been hired by the Feds to stage the "murder" of De Franco (Jerry Orbach), a con being inducted into a witness protection program. But things aren’t as simple as the FBI would like Rollie to believe, and he starts to suspect that De Franco is really dead - and that he might be next. If familiarity has bred contempt for F/X, it’s time to rediscover this clever and thoroughly entertaining film, which co-stars Brian Dennehy, Cliff de Young, and a young Angela Bassett.
Saturday 9/18/10
7:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
Crazy Over Horses (1951 USA): No, the Bowery Boys aren’t joining the cavalry this time - they’re taking on the bookies reaming the rubes at the local race track. Naturally, Sach gets to don riding gear and moonlight as a jockey to help bring the crooked gamblers to justice. Believe it or not, this is Bowery Boys film number 24 - only the half way point in the series!
7:00 PM Fox Movie Channel
The Van (1977 USA): As a wise man once said, “and we’ll make love in my Chevy Van, and that’s alright by me”. Ah yes, the 1970s were the Golden Age of the Van, when teenagers and immature men of all ages enjoyed nothing as much as pimping their rides with the latest eight-track technology, waterbeds, and custom paint jobs, usually ones featuring American Eagles or sunsets. Hollywood could not overlook this cultural phenomenon, of course, and The Van was duly pumped out by the sausage factory at Fox. Filmed in beautiful Moorpark, California, the film features Stuart Goetz (probably no relation to Bernhard) as a wimpy college kid who decides he’ll get all the ladies’ attention if he starts coming to school in a tricked out Dodge. The Van makes its widescreen television debut this evening, but remember - if this van’s a rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’.
9:30 PM Turner Classic Movies
Man About Town (1947 FRA): Here’s a rare Rene Clair comedy I’ve never seen before. After making millions in Hollywood during the 1930s, Maurice Chevalier returned to his native France after the Second World War and appeared in a handful of films - including this one - before returing to the US in the late 1950s. He plays a film producer who falls in love with a much younger woman - thank ‘eaven for leetel girls indeed, you dirty old man. Interesting footnote: apparently American prints of this French-language film feature no sub-titles - the dialogue is repeated by Chevalier in his adopted Anglais.
Sunday 9/19/10
1:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Las Mujeres de mi General (1951 MEX): As much as I dislike writing about films I haven’t actually seen yet - especially back-to-back! - sometimes the greater good demands I make this sacrifice. TCM continues its celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution with another Ismael Rodriguez-helmed flagwaver, this time starring Mexican heartthrob Pedro Infante as an army general who’s popular with the ladies. I don’t think he owns a Chevy Van, though, so he can’t be that popular.
Monday 9/20/10
3:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Secret Beyond the Door (1948 USA): Unavailable on DVD and rarely seen on television - even in the good old days of the Million Dollar Movie - Secret Beyond the Door is one of director Fritz Lang’s least known American features, and though not in the same league as Metropolis, M, or even Scarlet Street still well worth watching. It’s another of those "why won’t my husband let me into that locked room?" mysteries akin to Rebecca and Cry Wolf, this time starring Joan Bennett as the woman being driven round the bend by some rather surreal dreams and a secretive hubby (Michael Redgrave) who won’t let her into his special man-cave. Nothing to see here, sister…other than evidence that he might have been involved in some questionable behavior with other women! Co-starring Anne Revere as Redgrave’s suspiciously masculine sister, Secret Beyond the Door is followed at 5:00 PM by 1951’s The Prowler, another excellent little seen thriller, this time directed by Joseph Losey and starring Van Heflin as an adulterous police officer.