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Thursday 11/06/08

7:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
Boy of the Streets (1938 USA): Adorable/incredibly annoying youngster Jackie Cooper stars in this long forgotten Monogram drama about a street tough trying to muscle his way into big city politics. He plays Chuck Brennan, the son of a shiftless ward boss who isn't the big man his son believes him to be. Chuck also has a thing for Norah (Maureen O'Connor), daughter of a tubercular neighbor, and is determined to use his old man's supposed clout to make life easier for her. The film is enlivened by Marjorie Main as old mother Brennan, but like almost all Monogram productions, its low budget is painfully evident, rendering this of primary interest to fans of its two leads.

1:30 PM Turner Classic Movies
First a Girl (1935 GB): This gender-bending musical comedy from Gaumont-British stars Jessie Matthews as Elizabeth, a seamstress with aspirations to tread the music hall boards. Her first casting call doesn't go well, but when she meets female impersonator Victor (Matthews' husband Sonnie Hale), things suddenly perk up on the theatrical front. Victor's mooted to get a particularly juicy role, but when he develops laryngitis, switches places with Elizabeth, who assumes the part of a man playing a woman. First a Girl was a remake of a 1933 German film entitled Viktor und Viktoria, which in turn would later be remade as a big budget Hollywood feature by Blake Edwards, and the three films surely would make for a great triple bill on TCM sometime. Hint, hint, Robert Osborne! It's followed at 3:15 PM by I Thank You (1941), an amusing if threadbare comedy featuring British superstar Arthur Askey as a would-be stage producer trying to secure funds for his latest really big show.

6:00 PM IFC
Edmond (2005 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, 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, Edmond is yet another reminder that Macy is one of America's greatest living character actors.

Friday 11/07/08

11:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Trip (1967 USA): Roger Corman's salute to psychedelic drugs makes its TCM debut tonight. Peter Fonda stars as a square TV director trying to understand what it's all about, man. Luckily for him, groovy guru Bruce Dern is on hand to offer him some LSD therapy, and Fonda is plunged into a series of increasingly disturbing fantasy sequences. Though The Trip is, at heart, an exploitation film, Corman famously dosed himself with acid as part of his preparation for the production, and it features one of the greatest musical scores of all time courtesy The Electric Flag. Just remember, kids - it's a Lovely Sort of Death! The Trip is followed on 11/08 at 12:30 AM by Psych-Out (1968), an equally entertaining, if less mind-expanding, look at San Francisco flower power runaways. Dern, Susan Strasberg, Jack Nicholson, and Dean Stockwell all feature, as does the music of the legendary Seeds and the not quite legendary Strawberry Alarm Clock.

Saturday 11/08/08

5:00 PM HBO
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007 USA)
versus
7:00 PM Cinemax
Juno (2007 USA): I'm trying something a little different with this entry. Here we have two films, both of which were critical and popular hits last year, each making their American television debuts this evening on different channels. One is a musical, a genre I generally dislike, but one that also features one of my favorite actors (Johnny Depp) and some marvelously gruesome slaughterhouse set pieces. The other is a teen comedy, a genre I also generally dislike, featuring an award winning screenplay from a former sex worker (Diablo Cody). Neither film is airing in their original aspect ratios, a disadvantage that works more against Sweeney Todd than Juno. Which shall I recommend? Okay, enough phony suspense - although I really don't care for the Stephen Sondheim songbook, Sweeney Todd wins hands down. I found Cody's screenplay impossibly arch and completely unbelievable and Ellen Page's one-note performance tiresome after the first ten minutes. In fact, I HATED Juno, especially the bits featuring Jason Bateman, an actor I usually LIKE. Sorry for stringing you along, and this brings the first (and probably last) TiVoPlex smackdown to an end. Maybe we'll have a cage match next week...

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