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Saturday 01/24/09

2:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
Hollywood Without Makeup (1963 USA): Did you enjoy Hollywood My Home Town when it played on TCM a few months back? If so, prepare yourself for a second dose of Ken Murray-style nostalgia, wherein our avuncular host unveils another assortment of home movie footage of Golden Age Hollywood. The format is simple: Ken shows a clip of a famous actor or actress, relates an amusing anecdote about same, and then moves on the next clip. You'll be left with a warm, fuzzy glow, even if you haven't been drinking anything stronger than hot cocoa.

7:15 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Man Between (1953 USA): James Mason stars as a sinister blackmailer in this Cold War thriller from director Carol Reed. Mason plays Ivo Kern, a Berliner with some damning information about Bettina (Alraune's Hildegarde Knef), the German wife of Briton Martin Mallison (Geoffrey Toone). The secret: she's actually married to Kern, himself the victim of a blackmail attempt and a co-conspirator in a smuggling racket involving East German refugees. Understandably but unfavorably compared to Reed's Vienna-set thriller The Third Man, The Man Between is an above average feature when considered on its own merits, featuring excellent location photography by Desmond Dickinson and a distinctive John Addison score.

Sunday 01/25/09

7:00 PM Sundance
Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) (2007 BRA): If City of Men didn't sate your appetite for knowledge about economic inequality in Brazil, here's a documentary to fill in the gaps. Director Jason Kohn examines the strange relationship between rich and poor in the Amazon basin, where the rich and corrupt few exploit the economically vulnerable masses whilst the poor rely on kidnapping and ransoms to balance the scales of justice. If you've ever wondered what frogs have to do with money laundering, this is the film for you: likewise, if you enjoy onscreen ear lobe removals, don't miss it under any circumstances. On a more mundane note, Manda Bala won two awards at Sundance 2007, including the Grand Jury Prize.

Monday 01/26/09

5:15 AM IFC
Closely Watched Trains (1965 CZE): This wry black comedy, produced in Czechoslovakia in the run-up to 1968's Prague Spring, stars Vaclav Neckar as a lovelorn and suicide-prone railway worker during World War II. When he's unable to consummate his relationship with an attractive conductress, he turns for advice to a friendly doctor (director Jiri Menzel), who provides him with some confidence-building pointers that enable him to successfully woo a resistance fighter and blow up a German ammunition train to boot. Obscuring its political opinions with a coating of anti-Nazi commentary (much in the way Iranian cinema has relied on stories of childhood to take not-so-subtle digs at the mullahcracy), Closely Watched Trains was a belated hit with American art-house-goers and took home the Best Foreign Film Academy Award in 1968. Also airs at 11:45 PM.

7:00 PM Sundance
Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten (2007 GB): Or as I prefer to call him, Saint Joe. The punk rock man of the people, already beatified in 2004's Let's Rock Again!, gets another dollop of hero worship in this Julien Temple rockumentary. How could one man be so good, and do so much good for all the peoples of the world? Tune in to see the truth behind the snark behind the snarling man with the mohawk.

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