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Sunday 11/21/10

7:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
Our Miss Brooks (1956 USA): I’ve had a crush on Eve Arden since forever. There was something incredibly cool about her sharp diction and haughty, well-heeled demeanor that sent this cat into wayoutsville, man. Never a big star, Arden popped up in supporting roles in lots of comedies and even some dramas (she’s great in Mildred Pierce) but is best remembered for her 130-episode stint on the popular CBS television series Our Miss Brooks in the early 1950s. The series ended in 1956 but immediately made the transition to the big screen in this independently produced feature, which (in contemporary Tinseltown-speak) tried to "reboot the franchise" by depicting Miss Brooks during her first day at Madison High. If you can overlook that slightly bizarre development, there’s plenty here to enjoy in addition to the The Lady Eve, including Gale Gordon as Principal Conklin and Richard Crenna and Nick Adams as students.

9:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
She’s Working Her Way Through College (1952 USA): I'm not much of a fan of Hollywood musicals (especially the bloated 50s variety - you can keep Kiss Me Kate, thank you very much) but there is something about She’s Working Her Way Through College that sets it apart from the pack. The script is sharply written and the songs reasonably good, but the capper are the production numbers: watching Gene Nelson bound around a gymnasium is a genuinely thrilling experience. And if you think this is merely another one of co-star Ronald Reagan's bad films, think again: with its candy cane Technicolor, snappy dialogue, and big productions, it's almost a pre-rock The Girl Can't Help It - and that can only be a good thing!

3:35 PM Sundance
I’m Gonna Explode (2008 MEX): Better you than the penguin atop your television set, I guess. I’m Gonna Explode is a Mexican coming-of-age drama starring Juan Pablo de Santiago and Maria Deschamps as Roman and Maru, young lovers who stage a fake kidnapping, camp out on a roof, steal a car and a gun, and get extremely drunk. You know, the stuff teenagers always get up to. The film is at times maddeningly disjointed and hard to follow, but the leads are well cast as the story’s directionless, love-lorn losers, and it’s all beautifully lensed by cinematographer Tobias Datum (How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer, Amreeka).

9:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Viking (1928 USA): There aren’t very many of them, but the few feature-length Technicolor silents I’ve seen - such as Chester Franklin’s Toll of the Sea (1922) and this Roy William Neill production - are impressive indeed. In The Viking, Donald Crisp plays Leif Ericsson, a hearty Norwegian who sets sail to discover the lands beyond Greenland. In addition to plenty of two-strip Technicolor spectacle, there’s a love quadrilateral involving Leif, beauteous Helga (Pauline Starke), fellow barbarian Egil (Harry Lewis Woods), and English slave Alwin (LeRoy Mason); religious troubles with Christian Leif’s pagan father Eric the Red (Anders Randolph); and problems as the longboat approaches the limits of the known world (the crew are concerned it will fall off the edge). Though produced under the MGM banner, The Viking was actually financed by the Technicolor Company, then eager to display the beauty and depth of their process. Mission accomplished!

Monday 11/22/10

5:00 PM Sundance
The Shock Doctrine (2009 GB): Director Michael Winterbottom is cinema’s renaissance man. Dramas, comedies, noirs, documentaries - he seems to revel in trying his hand in as many different genres as possible. The Shock Doctrine is his first non-fiction effort, and not surprisingly, it’s really good. Based on muckraker Naomi Klein’s best-seller of the same name, the film examines the horrendous impact neo-liberal capitalism has had on the planet over the last half-century, and presents a dizzying array of information in a succinct 82 minutes. Luckily, Klein and narrator Kieran O’Brien are on hand to help you make sense of it all. Also airs at 10:30 PM.

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