TiVoPlex
By John Seal
December 13, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Tuesday 12/14/10
10:15 AM Turner Classic Movies
Baby, the Rain Must Fall (1965 USA): Steve McQueen plays a parolee with a talent for tunesmithery in this suitably dour version of Horton Foote’s play. Adapted by Foote for the screen, Baby the Rain Must Fall features McQueen as Henry Thomas, now out of jail and back home singing the blues in a small Texas town. Wicked stepmother Mrs. Ewing (Josephine Hutchinson) wants him to return to the pen because he won’t get himself an edumacation; estranged wife Georgette (Lee Remick) just wants to see him straighten up and fly right. Henry’s ultimate fate is never really in doubt and nary a glint of hope is in sight, rendering this one of the bleaker major studio productions of the ‘60s. Though stretched, McQueen isn’t bad, but Remick is better — and be sure to check out Glen Campbell as a member of Henry’s backing band!
8:15 PM Turner Classic Movies
A Matter of Time (1976 ITA-USA): Vincente Minnelli got to direct his daughter Liza in this bizarre and fantastical drama, which plays better as train wreck than timeless classic. Liza with a Z plays Nina, a plain jane Roman chambermaid who befriends hotel guest Countess Sanziani (Ingrid Bergman). The Countess transforms Nina into a ravishing beauty, Liza sings some songs, and Charles Boyer shows up to rekindle old movie memories with Bergman. It’s completely befuddling, strangely watchable, and co-stars Bergman’s daughter, Isabella Rossellini, as a nun. Yep. Nun.
Wednesday 12/15/10
3:15 AM The Movie Channel
Ed and His Dead Mother (1993 USA): This is the sort of film you wish you could have witnessed the pitch for. “Um, yeah, JB, we have this great concept for a movie: let’s get Steve Buscemi — don’t worry, he’s gonna be a star — to play a guy who loves his deceased mom so much he makes a deal with a traveling salesman to bring her back to life! But she eats bugs and people to stay reanimated and Steve decides he needs Ned Beatty to help him put her back in the grave! You like?” As an added bonus, if you look up this film on IMDb, you’ll see that someone has attached a picture of an Edward R. Murrow documentary to its image file. Also airs at 6:15 AM.
9:00 AM Starz
Walt and el Grupo (2008 USA): Early in 1941, the notoriously anti-labor Walt Disney suffered a terrible indignity: his animators went on strike. Rather than hire scabs to replace them, Walt, wife Lillian, and more than a dozen Disney employees packed their bags and embarked on a State Department-sponsored trip to South America, where they and Mickey Mouse were supposed to blunt the advances of Nazi German diplomacy — and maybe pick up some new creative ideas, too. Directed by Theodore Thomas, son of one of Walt’s fellow travelers, Walt and el Grupo tells the story of what happened during their sojourn in the southern hemisphere, and features amazing footage shot during the trip. If you ever wanted to watch Walt Disney dance the samba or don a sombrero, or if you’re simply a Magic Kingdom junkie, this is essential viewing. Also airs at noon.
Thursday 12/16/10
3:30 AM Flix
Great Expectations (1974 GB): It can’t hold a candle to David Lean’s classic 1946 version, but this made-for-television adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novel is quite good in its own right. Produced by Lew Grade’s ITC, the film features Michael York as Pip, the young man in a hurry rescued from perdition by convict Magwitch (James Mason) and dotty old Miss Havisham (Margaret Leighton). It’s a wonderful story told more than adequately by director Joseph Hardy, and features an impressive supporting cast, including Rachel Roberts, Robert Morley, Sarah Miles, Anthony Quayle, and Peter Bull. Also airs 12/18 at 3:00 AM.
3:35 AM Showtime Extreme
March or Die (1977 GB): Gene Hackman is none too convincing as a Foreign Legionnaire in this old-fashioned action flick written and directed by Dick Richards. Hackman is Major William Foster, a World War I veteran hoping to forget past troubles in the deserts of colonial French Africa, where he’s assigned the task of assisting archaeologist Francois Marneau (Max von Sydow) in his scientific endeavors. This was the film of which Hackman famously said that “the audience marched out of the theater and died”, but it’s not quite that bad: even at his worst, Gene is an interesting actor to watch, and any film in which Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm) plays a Berber Arab can’t be all bad, right?
5:00 PM IFC
Bullet (1997 USA): Mickey Rourke and Tupac Shakur play gangsters competing over drug turf in this never boring character study from director Julien Temple (The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, The Filth and the Fury). Rourke (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Bruce Rubenstein) is the title character, a hardened con who returns home to his middle-class Brooklyn neighborhood after serving time for a crime he didn’t commit. Back on the streets with younger bro Ruby (Adrien Brody), Bullet gets back in the swing of things and immediately starts messing with heroin and hustlas, including Tank (Shakur), an old pal turned rival. Released direct-to-video back in the day, Bullet is another showcase for Rourke, who completely overshadows Tupac, whilst the film provides early evidence of Brody’s considerable potential. Also airs 12/17 at 12:45 AM.
Friday 12/17/10
4:30 AM Fox Movie Channel
The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947 USA): I’m currently reading Frederica Sagor Maas’ autobiography — also entitled The Shocking Miss Pilgrim — so though I’ve never seen this film, I feel I would be remiss were I not to mention it. Sagor Maas’ story is a remarkable one: born in New York City of Russian immigrant parents in 1900, she dropped out of Columbia University in the early 1920s and became story editor for Universal Studios. Maas later moved west, where she began a career writing screenplays at MGM before hitting the glass ceiling and falling foul of studio politics and the blacklist. The Shocking Miss Pilgrim was her final screen credit (she shared it with husband Ernest), but the story wasn’t over...40 years later, she met film historian Kevin Brownlow, who convinced her to put pen to paper and tell her tale. She began writing in 1988 and her book was published 11 years later, when she was 99 years of age. And the best part? Amazingly, she is still alive today at the age of 110! I have no idea if The Shocking Miss Pilgrim is much of a film, but the book is one of the best kiss and tells you’ll ever read, and an invaluable first-person account of the early days of Tinsel Town.
11:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Black Christmas (1975 CAN): TCM continues its outre salute to the holiday season with this cult classic, remade to surprisingly not too terrible effect in 2006. Helmed by Canadian director Bob Clark (A Christmas Story, Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things), the film kick-started the slasher genre (yeah, I know, thanks a lot), and stars Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder as sorority sisters being stalked by a mysterious killer determined to ruin the most wonderful time of the year. The film is genuinely creepy, very well acted, and will have you jumping out of your snuggie. It’s followed at 12:30 AM by 1964’s legendary Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, in which Pia Zadora plays an intergalactic tot who breaks bread with Kris Kringle.
Saturday 12/18/10
5:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
Zebra in the Kitchen (1965 USA): Television’s Dennis the Menace, Jay North, headlines this fairly wretched kiddie movie, which will, nonetheless, bring back happy memories for those of a certain age. Jay plays youngster Chris Carlyle, a precocious lad who decides in best PETA fashion to let all the animals loose from the local zoo. When the titular equid and his animal chums begin to take over the town, however, mom and dad are unimpressed by their son’s radical activism, and hilarious complications — well, hilarious to those under ten — ensue. Helmed by animal movie specialist Ivan Tors, this is rumored to be St. Louis Cardinals’ manager Tony La Russa’s favorite film.
7:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
High Society (1955 USA): If you tune in this morning in anticipation of seeing Grace Kelly and Bing Crosby moon and croon, you’re going to be disappointed. That High Society came out a year after this one, which is Bowery Boys series entry number 37. The formula was really stale by now (no, really, I mean it this time!), with Allied Artists recycling the "Sach inherits a fortune" plot seen only three years prior in Loose in London. Hilariously, screenwriters Ed Bernds and Elwood Ulmann found their story nominated for an Academy Award by AMPAS voters...who got this film confused with the other one I just mentioned! The nomination was later revoked, spoiling what promised to be a potentially memorable Oscar moment.
10:00 PM IFC
Lord of War (2005 USA): With both Nic Cage and Viktor Bout back in the news — the former for his viral YouTube montage of screen rants, the latter for being extradited to the United States on charges of selling arms to bad people — now seems like the perfect time for Lord of War to make its widescreen television debut. Cage plays the fictionalized Yuri Orlov, a Ukrainian ne’er-do-well who will sell arms to anyone with a pulse and a checkbook. Y’know, kinda like the American government. Business is, naturally, good, and Yuri is living high on the hog in Manhattan — but when Interpol takes an interest in his activities and dispatches agent Valentine (Ethan Hawke) to put him out of business, things get difficult. Written and directed by Andrew Niccol (The Truman Show, Gattaca), Lord of War provides Cage another opportunity to devour the screen, and he doesn’t disappoint.
Sunday 12/19/10
5:00 PM HBO
Good Hair (2008 USA): Chris Rock’s amiable but pointed documentary about black women’s hair — and the hair care products that help make it possible — makes its television debut this evening. Good Hair manages the difficult act of avoiding both poker-faced political correctness and unwitting endorsement of the use of straighteners and "relaxers" that, inadvertently or otherwise, help African-American women adjust their hair to match "cultural norms." Wryly amusing and intelligently presented, Good Hair also airs at 8:00 PM.
Monday 12/20/10
4:30 PM More Max
Stephen King’s Thinner (1996 USA): Is he? I hadn’t noticed. Perhaps he’s lost fat but added muscle. As for the movie, it stars Robert John Burke as a lawyer with a gypsy curse on his head: to wit, that he will waste away to nothing, regardless of whether he carbo-loads or not. It’s an entertaining, slightly better than average King adaptation, enlivened by the presence of Joe Mantegna and Kari Wuhrer.
7:05 PM Flix
Lifeguard (1976 USA): Sam Elliott, only 32 but already brandishing an impressive mustache, stars in this excellent character study directed by Daniel Petrie. Elliott plays Rick, a typical Southern California surfer dude stuck in perpetual childhood. Rick is in his early 30s but still works as a lifeguard on Southland beaches. When he meets an old chum (now a high-flying car salesman) and an old flame (now a divorced single mom) Rick realizes it’s time to make a decision about the direction his life will take. Should he trade in his speedo for a three-piece suit and flog Porsches, or should he keep doing what makes him happiest? Co-starring Anne Archer as love interest Cathy, Lifeguard airs tonight in widescreen.