TiVoPlex
TiVoPlex
By John Seal
June 4, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Tuesday 6/5/12
3:00 AM Fox Movie Channel
The Eyes of Annie Jones (1964 GB): No, this isn’t a prequel to Faye Dunaway’s Eyes of Laura Mars, but a super obscure thriller about a teenage girl with extrasensory perception. Annie Jones (British television regular Francesca Annis) also walks and talks in her sleep...and eventually stumbles across a murder case whilst on the narcoleptic prowl one night! Shot in Britain by Bowery Boys director Reginald le Borg, the film co-stars Yank Richard Conte as the man young Annie falls in love with - as well as Joyce Carey as her dear old Aunt Helen - and makes its widescreen American television debut this morning.
Wednesday 6/6/12
4:45 AM Fox Movie Channel
The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder (1974 USA): Timothy Bottoms (looking like a hirsute draft-dodging George W. Bush) stars as the title character in this mildly amusing Arthur Hiller-helmed comedy. Bottoms plays a Vietnam vet suffering from "psychiatric impairment" who falls for a nurse (Barbara Hershey, then billed as "Barbara Seagull") and attempts to move to Canada and live off the land with his new lady. Better than living under a highway overpass, I guess. The film also features an engaging cameo by octogenarian director George Marshall, but whether or not you enjoy it will probably depend on how lightly (or how seriously) you take the topic of mental illness.
11:45 AM Encore Dramatic Stories
A Time for Drunken Horses (2000 IRA): Oh, Iran. How I loved your cinema back in the day. Now with conservative clerics cementing their hold on power and imprisoning directors like Jafar Panahi, it’s getting harder and harder to make films in the Islamic Republic. Consider Time for Drunken Horses director Bahman Ghobadi, who hasn’t made a film in his homeland since 2009 and now prefers working overseas. It’s a startling and disturbing change since the 1990s, when Iranian cinema was at its height and films like this one - about a wintry, race-against-time passage through the mountains of Kurdistan - were the rule and not the exception. A Time for Drunken Horses cleaned up on the festival circuit (including winning two prizes at Cannes) and is a beautiful, contemplative, and deeply intelligent piece of work. Check it out - and hope that Iranian censorship rules start to loosen up again soon.
8:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
An American Romance (1944 USA): Featuring one of the most anodyne, bland titles imaginable, An American Romance is neither a Nelson Eddy/Jeanette MacDonald musical nor a tragic Hollywood weepie. It’s actually a paean to the Horatio Alger mythos starring Brian Donlevy as Stefan Dangos, a Czech immigrant who comes to America with next to nothing and pulls himself up by the bootstraps to become a leading industrialist. It’s a pretty bizarre feature - for starters, Donlevy is sorely miscast - but was directed by the great King Vidor, who tells the tale on an epic scale. It’s no forgotten classic, but any Vidor film has its moments, and An American Romance is no exception - especially if you’re keen on assembly line sequences.
Thursday 6/7/12
12:45 AM Sundance
The Joy of Singing (2008 FRA): It’s a little lightweight, but this French comedy is - despite its deeply bourgeois roots - reasonably enjoyable. Set in Paris, the story revolves around members of a singing class who find themselves mixed up with nuclear secrets on a USB key belonging to a fellow student’s late husband. The class suddenly becomes unusually popular, as French, Israeli, and Russian secret agents all enroll to try and track down the flash drive and its priceless information. That’s all well and good, but there’s a bit too much singing here to allow me to offer the film an, ahem, full-throated endorsement. If, however, your idea of a good time involves watching people belt out Amazing Grace, you’ll probably love it.
7:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
Simba (1955 GB): Kenya’s Mau Mau rebellion of the early ‘50s provides the dramatic backdrop for this watchable adaptation of an Anthony Parry novel. Directed by Brian Desmond Hurst (Scrooge, Playboy of the Western World), the film stars Dirk Bogarde as Alan Howard, a young Englishman whose East African vacay is spoiled by the murder of his farmer brother at the hands of nationalist rebels. Alan decides to take over the business and marries old flame Mary (Virginia McKenna), but his burning hatred for Africans soon causes him to make some bad decisions. Co-starring Bermuda-born Earl Cameron as a Kenyan doctor and Donald Sinden as an English one, Simba offers mild criticism of British imperialism but generally plays it safe politically. Kenya, of course, would gain its independence in 1963.
1:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Storm Over Jamaica (1958 GB): Traveling to the other side of the British Empire during the days when the sun was struggling to stay above the horizon, Storm Over Jamaica (aka Passionate Summer) stars the willowy Virginia McKenna as an airline stewardess stationed on the titular Caribbean island. She’s being wooed by newly arrived school teacher Douglas Lockwood (real-life McKenna paramour Bill Travers), but the sparks smolder rather than fly. The second of a dozen films the couple made together, Storm Over Jamaica is nothing special but hasn’t been seen on American television in years.
Saturday 6/9/12
4:20 AM Sundance
The Pool (2007 USA): Documentarian Chris Smith took a temporary trip into fictional territory with this unusual shot in India comedy-drama. Set in the former Portuguese enclave of Goa, The Pool stars Venkatesh Chavan and Jhangir Badshah as Venkatesh and Jhangir, two Indian adolescents who work in a hotel whilst selling second-hand plastic bags on the side. The two become obsessed with a nearby mansion with its own (apparently unused) pool, and Venkatesh manages to insinuate his way into the lives of the occupants. After being hired by householder Nana (Nana Patekar) to do odd jobs, he falls for his new employer's attractive daughter (Ayesha Mohan) and learns how to halve a coconut, amongst other valuable lessons. Shot in a semi-documentary neo-realist style, The Pool is based on a short story set in Iowa, but transitions well to its South Asian setting. It's a surprisingly assured fiction effort from the director of American Movie and The Yes Men.
9:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
Dick Tracy (1937 USA): The jut-jawed private eye engages in a Battle In the Clouds and enjoys a Stratosphere Adventure in Chapters 8, 9, and 10 of this Republic serial.
5:00 PM Showtime 2
No Look Pass (2011 USA): I don’t know much about this film, other than it’s a documentary about a Burmese lesbian basketball player at Harvard. I know, I know...that sounds like the stereotypical "politically correct" nightmare for right-wing troglodytes, but apparently it’s all true.
Sunday 6/10/12
11:15 AM Sundance
Fermat’s Room (2007 ESP): There's considerable fun - if an only partly satisfying payoff - in this fine Spanish suspenser from writer-directors Luis Piedrahita and Rodrigo Sopena. It's an old-fashioned locked room thriller about a group of mathematicians invited to a dinner party - only to find out that their host is serving naught but revenge. The first half of the film is particularly engaging, as the characters try to figure out why they've been targeted whilst also racing against time to solve complex math problems that may (or may not) save their lives. It's been described as Saw without the gore, which seems an apt description to me.
Monday 6/11/12
12:30 AM Showtime 2
A Lonely Place to Die (2011 GB): The Scottish Highlands are the spectacular setting for this above average thriller about the dangers of hiking. Melissa George headlines as Alison, a young woman out climbing rocks and scaling cliffs in the mountains of Ross-shire with a group of friends. All’s going swimmingly until they hear a wee small voice and discover a young girl buried alive. Rescuing the child, who speaks no English, our gallant adventurers determine to take her to safety - but the folks who put her in the box are eager to stop them. A Lonely Place to Die wisely avoids the caricatured characters you usually get in these sorts of films: they’re not your standard assortment of knuckleheads, horn dogs, and bimbos, just regular folks enjoying a day out. All in all, it’s one of the more satisfying - and intelligent - thrillers of recent vintage.
6:20 AM Fox Movie Channel
The Sweet Ride (1968 USA): Seems like I’ve been waiting a long, long time for this pseudo-biker flick to air in its original aspect ratio. Well, I’m still waiting...this is yet another pan and scan screening, albeit the first one on Fox in quite a few years. Jacqueline Bisset stars as Vickie Cartwright, a secluded movie star whose tete-a-tete with a motorcycle gang allows for Michael Sarrazin and Tony Franciosa to engage them in fisticuffs. Also along for the ride (so to speak) are Bob Denver (channeling the spirit of Maynard G. Krebs), Warren Stevens, Pat Buttram, Arthur Franz and (in uncredited cameos) Seymour Cassel, rock group Moby Grape, and laconic singer-songwriter-all around musical genius Lee Hazlewood! Icing on the cake is provided by Dusty Springfield, who belts out the film’s not terribly memorable theme tune.