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Saturday 01/10/09

3:00 AM MGM HD
Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971 USA): Because if there's one thing you DON'T want to miss in HD, it's an Al Adamson film. Like all Adamson productions, Dracula vs. Frankenstein is a mind-boggling, logic-defying example of shoestring filmmaking, and stars the immortal Zandor Vorkov as Count Dracula, here working in cahoots with Doctor Durray (J. Carrol Naish) to resurrect the Frankenstein Monster (seven-foot tall Adamson regular John Bloom). The plan involves knocking off and recycling the annoying young people who hang around the local carnival, and employing goon Groton (Lon Chaney Jr. in his final appearance) in order to do so. Co-starring Anthony Eisley, Angelo Rossitto, Russ Tamblyn, and Mrs. Al Adamson (Regina Carrol), this is one of the all time greats of psychotronic cinema — which, of course, means that it's terrible, in HD or otherwise.

9:05 PM Encore Action
Green Street Hooligans (2005 GB): The best football (or, if you prefer, soccer) picture since Fever Pitch (the Colin Firth one), Green Street Hooligans features former Frodo Elijah Woods as Matt Buckner, an American student who moves to London and falls in with a group of thuggish Milwall supporters. Introduced to the louts thanks to his sister's husband, Buckner's refined Ivy League exterior is soon shucked off as he discovers a taste for aggro and ends up parading the terraces in search of a ruck with those damned West Ham supporters. (True story: I once had to spell "West Ham United" for a West Ham fan who was trying to find the team's Web site at an internet café near Victoria Station.) Little wonder that Milwall's terrace chant is "No One Likes Us, No One Likes Us, No One Likes Us, We Don't Care," as a predilection for starting fights is not likely to ingratiate yourself with the visitor's supporters. Or hobbits.

10:00 PM MGM HD
Between the Lines (1977 USA): If Network had been about the world of print journalism in the 1970s, it would have been this underrated and depressingly prescient Joan Micklin Silver film about the demise of a feisty Boston newspaper. TiVoPlex favorite John Heard stars as Harry Lucas, chief muckraker for the Back Bay Mainline, a paper founded in the late '60s as an alternative to the mainstream press. The Mainline's success has now become the cause of its own demise, as tycoon Roy Walsh (Lane Smith) is angling to purchase it and many of the staff, including rock crit Max Arloft (Jeff Goldblum), are all too eager to cash in and sell out. Written by journo Fred Barron, this serio-comic slice of life also features Michael J. Pollard and remains bafflingly unavailable on American home video.

Sunday 01/11/09

6:15 AM Sundance
Blame It on Fidel (2006 ITA-FRA): Poor old Fidel, always taking the blame and never getting any respect. Fifty years into the revolution, however, he's outlived the Berlin Wall and is about to embark on driving his 12th consecutive American President nuts, which is always a good thing in my book. He gets another figurative finger in his eye from this well-made drama helmed by Julie Gavras, which tells the story of a middle-class Parisian family caught up in the political ferment of the early 1970s. Radicalised by their experiences in Franco's Spain, father Fernando (Steffano Accorsi) and mother Marie (Julie Depardieu, daughter of Gerard) have moved to a working class banlieue and are feverishly working in support of left-wing Chilean exiles. All this comes as an unpleasant culture shock for nine-year old daughter Anna (Nina Kervel-Bey), a Red Diaper Baby who would just as soon trade in her nappy in favor of a pretty designer frock. She finds the changes in her lifestyle not at all to her liking — and blames You Know Who for her ill fortune. Just possibly a reflection of its director's own childhood (she's the offspring of radical filmmaker/genius Costa-Gavras), Blame It on Fidel will ring true for anyone of a certain age who grew up in Berkeley, Cambridge, Notting Hill, or, indeed, the Left Bank.

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