TiVoPlex
By John Seal
September 27, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Tuesday 9/28/10
11:15 AM HBO
The Fence (2010 USA): An HBO original documentary about the barrier constructed along the Mexican-American border to keep undesirables out of our green and pleasant land, The Fence is the latest from Emmy-award winning director Rory Kennedy (Ghosts of Abu Ghraib). Shifting the focus from traditional liberal concerns such as environmental degradation and migrant deaths to those more typically associated with deficit hawks, the film ponders the wisdom of spending $3,000,000,000 on a boondoggle that doesn’t even begin to accomplish its purported task. Tune in to see your tax dollars at work! Also airs at 2:15 PM.
10:00 PM Sundance
Strangers (2007 ISR): Liron Levo and Lubna Azabal play star-crossed lovers in this thoughtful drama from Israeli filmmakers Guy Nattiv and Erez Tadmor. Levo plays Eyal, a kibbutznik who meets Palestinian exile Rana (Paradise Now’s Azabal, who won the Most Promising Actress award at the Jerusalem Film Festival for this performance) during the 2006 World Cup in Berlin. The couple fall in love after being forced to share quarters but soon find their relationship under strain when Rana returns to Paris and the Israeli Army invades southern Lebanon. Strangers accomplishes the near impossible: it works as both character-driven romancer and as pointed political polemic. Goal!
Wednesday 9/29/10
5:00 PM HBO2
War Don Don (2010 USA): This outstanding documentary takes a look at the civil war that tore apart the west African republic of Sierra Leone during the 1990s and the war crimes trials that followed in its wake. Taking place in a courtroom built with American and British money and funded by the international community, the trials were never going to be easy sledding for the defendants - including Issa Sesay, military leader of the Revolutionary United Front and the film’s primary focus - but War Don Don takes great pains to treat them fairly whilst posing important questions. Can such trials ever truly be fair, or are "truth and reconciliation" panels, such as those utilized in Rwanda and South Africa, a more efficacious solution to the problem? And do military commanders bear the same (or greater) responsibility than the men who give them their orders? War Don Don (“the war is over”) airs again at 8:00 PM.
5:45 PM Sundance
Alexander the Last (2009 USA): In the mood for a little mumblecore? Here’s Alexander the Last, a better-than-average example of the style featuring Jess Weixler as the title character, a twenty-something who gets more than she bargained for after getting cast in an amateur theatrical production. Alone at home whilst musician hubby Elliot (Justin Rice) is on the road, she develops an unhealthy interest in co-star Jamie (Barlow Jacobs) - little knowing that sister Hellen (Amy Seimetz) also has an eye on him. Co-starring the wonderful Jane Adams as the play’s director, and produced with the assistance of wunderkind Noah Baumbach, Alexander the Last is never going to be Armond White’s idea of a good time, but it really is a well-made little film that would make John Cassavetes proud.
Thursday 9/30/10
2:15 PM Showtime 3
Jassy (1948 GB): I have really, really serious doubts about this one: Showtime 3 is not a channel known for airing obscure old films. That said, this is the title that appears in the program guide, so just in case it’s right we’ll give it a mention. Jassy is a lush (well, lush considering it wasn’t produced by MGM) British frock flick starring lovely Margaret Lockwood as a 19th century servant girl of gypsy origins who marries Helmar (Basil Sydney), the man responsible for the death of her father. When Helmar, in turn, passes on suddenly, Jassy is understandably suspected of orchestrating his death in order to inherit his estate. Compensation for this stunningly unoriginal plot is offered by the film’s excellent cast (also including Dennis Price, Ernest Thesiger, Dermot Walsh, and John Laurie) and Geoffrey Unsworth’s impressive Technicolor cinematography.
Friday 10/1/10
5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Horror of Dracula (1958 GB): Welcome to Rocktober! Remember when your local AOR radio station would herald the arrival of this supposedly special month? I never really understood what set it apart from all the other months, because Rocktober seemed to consist of the same old crap they’d previously been playing in Rocktember: Uriah Heep, Molly Hatchet, Kansas, Nick Gilder, you know the routine. So let’s start over - welcome to Shocktober, when cable and satellite channels decide they have an obligation to up the gore ante in a vain effort to scare the pants off jaded viewers such as myself. First out of the gate is TCM’s four-pack of Hammer horrors, three of them featuring tall, dark, and gruesome Christopher Lee. The evening begins with Horror of Dracula, still one of the best vampire movies ever made and the film that made Lee a star. Directed by Terence Fisher, it offers a full color reappraisal of the Dracula legend as imagined by screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, and cemented the synergistic onscreen relationship between Lee and Peter Cushing, who remains the definitive Van Helsing 50 years on. It’s followed at 6:30 PM by 1960’s The Brides of Dracula, an excellent sorta-sequel with a homoerotic subtext in which Cushing returns as Van Helsing, whilst David Peel essays the role of blood-sucking Baron Meinster; at 8:00 PM by 1966’s Dracula Prince of Darkness, in which Lee returns to wreak havoc in Central Europe (otherwise known as Bray Studios); and at 9:45 PM by 1969’s memorably titled Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, in which…well, you can probably guess what happens.
Saturday 10/2/10
1:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
Daughters of Satan (1972 PHI): Fans of Tom Selleck, don’t miss this one! Everyone else, run away! Daughters of Satan stars the mustachioed one as James Robertson, an art collector in the Philippines who purchases a grotesque witch-burning painting that reminds him of wife Chris (Barra Grant). Love you too, sweetheart. When Chris starts acting all possessed and stuff, James divines that her body is now controlled by the spirit of one of the subjects depicted in his painting…and that, y’know, his life might be in danger. Where’s Higgins when you need him? Directed by television regular Hollingsworth Morse (H. R. Pufnstuf, McHale’s Navy), Daughters of Satan co-stars familiar Filipino heavy Vic Diaz.
7:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
Here Come the Marines (1952 USA): Just when you thought it was safe to re-enlist, the Bowery Boys take a trip to the Halls of Montezuma. Conscripted into service, Sach immediately manages to get himself promoted to Sergeant, after which he, Slip, and the gang get involved in the usual guff about unsolved murders and illegal gambling. A few good men, eh? I guess the Corps were a lot less picky in those days.
Sunday 10/3/10
5:00 AM Sundance
Disengagement (2007 GER-ISR): If you liked Liron Levo in Strangers (see above), you’ll probably want to check out this similarly themed Amos Gitai-helmed drama. This time he plays Uli, an Israeli policeman traveling to Avignon, France, seat of his recently deceased father’s ancestral digs. Once there he meets half-sister Ana (Juliette Binoche), who has just learned from Dad’s lawyer (Jeanne Moreau) that her estranged child is living in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. So it’s off to Gaza to reunite the family…right when Uli’s job requires him to assist with the eviction of the camp’s inhabitants. Awkward.
2:20 PM IFC
Blood Simple (1984 USA): The Coen Brothers made a strong impression with Blood Simple, an outstanding neo-noir with a nasty sting in its tail that also happened to be their first film. Dan Hedaya stars as Marty, a saloon owner who knows wife Abby (Frances McDormand) is cheating on him with bartender Ray (John Getz). Marty hires detective Visser (M. Emmet Walsh) to kill them both, but hasn’t counted on the private dick’s awesome backstabbing skills, and the plot soon begins to twist, turn, and take off in unexpected, violent, and grimly humorous directions. For anyone who’s ever enjoyed a novel by James Cain or Jim Thompson (or at least enjoyed a film based on a novel by James Cain or Jim Thompson), Blood Simple is manna from heaven.
Monday 10/4/10
4:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
Smiley (1957 GB): The life of a happy-go-lucky 10-year-old boy is the focus of this quirky children’s film written and directed by Anthony Kimmins. Set in the Australian outback, the film features Colin Petersen (later the Bee Gees’ drummer during their late '60s purple patch) as the title character, a cheeky lad trying to save up for a new bike. With an assist from his neighbors, Smiley begins to fill his piggy bank - but drug-running and gambling threaten to undo his efforts. Filmed in widescreen Technicolor and co-starring Ralph Richardson, Chips Rafferty, and Charles Tingwell, Smiley was shot on location in New South Wales, and was popular enough to spawn a sequel, Smiley Gets a Gun. Oh, those wacky Australians.
6:30 AM HBO Signature
Timecrimes (2007 ESP): Ready to make your brain melt? Check out this fascinating but extremely convoluted time travel tale from Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo. Karra Elejalde plays Hector, whose curiosity undoes him after he espies what appears to be the body of a dead woman. Upon investigating, he’s attacked by a masked man wielding scissors…and things only get stranger from there, as Hector begins a loopy adventure through time and space that will see him replicated, Xerox-like, several times over. It’s an excellent film, but be warned: if you don’t pay attention you’re going to get lost very quickly.
5:00 PM Sundance
Sea Point Days (2008 SAF): Cape Town is South Africa’s most segregated city. There is, however, one place in the metropolis where everyone congregates: the Sea Point Promenade and Municipal Swimming Pools. This, naturally, is the focal point of this artsy documentary, which generally eschews talking heads in favor of the old maxim that a (motion) picture is worth a thousand words. It’s a gentler, kinder, but nonetheless still pointed documentary, the polar opposite of a Michael Moore or Robert Greenwald film, but no less effective.