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Saturday 5/14/11

9:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
Tarzan Triumphs (1943 USA): Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) takes on nasty Nazis in this decent series entry, which also marked the point at which the franchise moved from posh MGM to grubby RKO. Jane is now living in London, so the T-Man has a new companion in the distaff form of Zandra (Frances Gifford), a jungle princess who warns him of the looming threat posed by the Third Reich. Boy (Johnny Sheffield) and Cheetah are still around, though, and it’s pretty clear that Zandra and Tarzan’s relationship is a platonic one - besides, they’re too busy fighting Germans to get distracted by base animal desires.

Sunday 5/15/11

8:45 AM Starz E
Sugar Town (1999 GB-USA): Directed by Border Radio’s Allison Anders and Kurt Voss, Sugar Town is an ensemble piece about those who rock and roll all night and party every day - and those who aspire to do so. Amongst those with dreams of stardom are Gwen (Jade Gordon), a young woman hired by a Hollywood production designer (Ally Sheedy) to help keep house. The vigilant Gwen, always on the lookout for career opportunities, proceeds to steal her employer’s boyfriend, who happens to have music biz connections. Meanwhile, an aging movie star (Rosanna Arquette) discovers her boyfriend (Duran Duran’s John Taylor) has a child from a previous relationship - a little hellion named Nirvana who is anything but! Sugar Town favors grit over gloss and co-stars John Doe (X), Martin Kemp (Spandau Ballet), Michael Des Barres (Detective), and - in her first screen appearance - Bijou Phillips as an autograph seeking groupie.

11:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Generation (1955 POL): Polish director Andrzej Wajda’s (Ashes and Diamonds) tribute to his homeland’s wartime underground makes its TCM (and perhaps American) television debut this evening. Tadeusz Lomnicki headlines as Stach, a young Pole who, along with his friends, commits minor, unfocused acts of resistance during the Nazi occupation. After being versed in dialectical materialism by a Marxist shop steward (Janusz Paluszkiewicz), Stach decides it’s time to agitate, educate, and organize. Unfortunately, he also finds that the partisans and his Communist Party mentors are united both by hatred for the Germans and suspicion of each other. Wajda does as good a job as can be expected balancing the "party line" requirements of Communist dogma with the more personal, ideology free aspects of his story - and watch out for Roman Polanski, who pops up as one of Stach’s rabble rousing buddies.

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