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Saturday 06/06/09

6:00 AM Fox Movie Channel
Sniper's Ridge (1961 USA): It's a big week in the TiVoPlex for Fox Movie Channel! Here's another rarely seen Fox production, this one a Korean War drama that deserves a better fate than to be completely forgotten. Jack Ging and former East Side Kid Stanley Clements star as Sharack and Pumphrey, a couple of dog soldiers hoping to survive the last days of the conflict. With an armistice due to take effect in two days, the GIs are looking forward to peace — but the Red Chinese hordes to their north intend to maximize their territory by launching a last minute attack. The film offers more than the standard wartime platitudes, however, and actually explores such contentious subjects as shell shock and conscientious objection, rendering Sniper's Ridge the thinking man's second feature. Unfortunately, it's airing in pan and scan.

9:00 AM Fox Movie Channel
A Nice Little Bank That Should Be Robbed (1958 USA): Mickey Rooney and Tom Ewell star as Gus and Max, a pair of hapless would-be bank robbers in this mild Henry Levin-helmed comedy. Gus and Max plan to use their ill-gotten gains to purchase a racehorse, which will, they hope, then make them a fortune on the track. Guess what? Things don't turn out quite as expected. A Nice Little Bank That Should Be Robbed is a nice little movie that should be funnier, but Ewell is always a delight to watch — even in pan and scan.

7:00 PM HBO
Tropic Thunder (2008 USA): 2008's best comedy makes its small screen debut tonight. Get ready to swallow the gravy! Also airs at 10:00 PM.

Sunday 06/07/09

1:15 PM Sundance
Derek (2008 GB): Derek Jarman was the transgressive bad boy of British film during the bleak 1980s, creating a unique blend of highly stylized gay cinema that didn't sell many tickets but took the art form into bold new directions. This documentary is a loving tribute to Jarman, who died of AIDS in 1994 at the age of 52, and features plenty of clips and archival footage collected by multi-media artist Isaac Julien, as well as narration from the great Tilda Swinton, who worked with the director on his magisterial tribute to Renaissance queer art, Caravaggio. It's a short, sharp salute to a director whose legacy of short and feature length films still holds unexplored riches for adventurous cineastes.

6:05 PM IFC
The Devil's Rejects (2005 USA): It's not much better than Rob Zombie's earlier House of 1,000 Corpses, but if you appreciate Sid Haig as much as I do, you'll still want to check out The Devil's Rejects. In this outing, Captain Spaulding (Haig) and company hit the road, bringing mayhem and mass murder to the furthest reaches of rural Texas. It's by no means great, but it is kinda fun to play spot the psychotronic guest star, including Ken Foree, Mary Woronov, P. J. Soles, Michael Berryman, and Tom Towles. It's also making its widescreen television debut this evening.

Monday 06/08/09

1:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
Cabin in the Cotton (1932 USA): An oft-overlooked entry in the Michael Curtiz filmography, Cabin in the Cotton offers a fascinating glimpse of Depression-era farming life. Richard Barthelmess stars as Marvin Blake, a sharecropper's son who falls in love with Madge (Bette Davis), the daughter of wicked plantation owner Lane Norwood (Berton Churchill). Marvin soon learns that her love comes with a price tag: if he's to win Madge's heart, he must first bend to the will of her father, and assist him in royally screwing his tenant farmers. Though not on a par with Jean Renoir's 1945 peasant epic The Southerner, Cabin in the Cotton is still an intriguing social document of agrarian hard times, and was also the film that made Davis a star.

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