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Friday 10/23/09

7:30 AM IFC
Paranoid Park (2007 USA): Time to plead ignorance — somewhere in between filming Last Days and Milk, Gus Van Sant cooked up this paean to skateboarding and manslaughter. To be honest, I hadn't even heard of Paranoid Park until I saw the title in IFC's program guide, but being a Van Sant joint, it's bound to be... well, probably something rather slow, I would imagine, but something also featuring naked teenage boys who mumble a lot. And ride skateboards. Also airs at 12:05 PM and 10/24 at 2:45 AM.

3:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Law and the Lady (1951 USA): A past her prime Greer Garson stars in this slight MGM comedy about a household servant falsely accused of stealing some valuable jewelry. Greer plays maid Jane Hoskins, employed by Lady Sybil Minden (Phyllis Stanley) and suspected of nicking some diamond earrings from Her Hoity-Toityness. Jane isn't responsible, though — the guilty party is actually Lady Sybil's younger brother Nigel (Michael Wilding), who's cheesed off about losing his rightful share of the family fortune. When Nigel learns that Jane's been given the sack, he treats her to dinner, lets her wear the purloined rocks, and convinces her to go in with him on a whirlwind, world-wide con job which takes them from back-lot London to back-lot California circa the turn of the 20th Century. Garson is badly miscast as a sweet and foolish young thing, but the presence of Rhys Williams and Marjorie Main in meaty supporting roles nudge the film into worth watching territory. Incidentally, I just learned that some people don't like Marjorie Main. What's up with that?

Saturday 10/24/09

6:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
Dick Tracy (1937 USA): The series' concluding chapter, Brothers United, airs this morning. I've been more than pleasantly surprised by Dick Tracy: clearly a superior chapter-play effort, it relies less on stock footage than most of its peers and includes impressive location shots of the San Francisco Bay area, decent special effects, and of course Ralph Byrd in the title role. No other actor ever came close to matching Byrd's physical resemblance to the granite-jawed comic book dick — I'm looking at you in particular, Warren Beatty.

5:00 PM HBO
Milk (2008 USA): Milk — it does a body politic good! The aforementioned Gus Van Sant returned to the cinema mainstream (well, relatively speaking) with this first-rate feature about Harvey Milk, the groundbreaking gay San Francisco-by-way-of-New-York politician. Sean Penn delivers a remarkable Academy Award-winning performance as Milk, and he's ably supported by Josh Brolin as Twinkie-killer Dan White and Emile Hirsch as activist Cleve Jones. Even your homophobic relatives might enjoy this film — especially considering the major competition tonight is over on Starz, where the execrable Paul Blart: Mall Cop is making its television debut at roughly the same time. Yeah, next to Kevin James, that rainbow flag is gonna start looking pretty good to Uncle Cletus and Aunt Brandine. Also airs at 8:00 PM.

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