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5:00 PM Showtime
Nowhere Boy (2009 GB): Mixed feelings on this one. As The World’s Biggest Beatle Fan, it’s hard not to watch this film and not pick, pick, pick at all the minor discrepancies and moan, moan, moan about how that guy in the background doesn’t really look like Mal Evans and how John didn’t comb his hair that way until 1961. On the other hand, Nowhere Boy is an above average rock biopic: well-acted (especially by Aaron Johnson as John Lennon) and brimming with great music and period detail. It probably works best for those who aren’t hardcore Fabs admirers. Airs again at 8:00 PM.

7:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Bitter Rice (1949 ITA): I haven’t seen this neo-realist classic in 30 plus years and my memories of it are faint at best, but it’s clearly worth watching for its cast alone. Nominated for a "Best Writing" Academy Award, Bitter Rice relates the agricultural misadventures of Walter (Vittorio Gassman) and Francesca (Doris Dowling, a Yank thesp slumming in Italy), two petty criminals on the run from the cops after a jewel heist. The duo makes their escape by blending in with a trainload of migrant workers heading north to harvest rice, and consequently befriend crop-picking sex bomb Silvana (Silvana Mangano, producer Dino de Laurentiis’ spouse for almost forty years) and embittered Army vet Marco (Raf Vallone). That’s as much as I can remember, but I hope you’ll agree that any film featuring Gassman, Mangano, and Vallone deserves your consideration.

Sunday 10/16/11

Midnight Fox Movie Channel
Damnation Alley (1977 USA): I can’t think of this early entry in the Bleak Future genre without thinking of the Hawkwind song it inspired: “Thank you Doctor Strangelove for going doolally, leaving me the heritage of Damnation Alley!” I’m not even a very big Hawkwind fan, but I do enjoy their 1978 LP Quark, Strangeness, and Charm, which (in addition to Damnation Alley) includes such classic tracks as Hassan I Sahba and The Forge of Vulcan - and I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the motorik brilliance of their pioneering 1971 proto-punk elpee In Search of Space.

As for Damnation Alley, the film, it’s an entertaining road movie about a group of nuclear war survivors trying their darnedest to travel from Las Vegas to Albany, New York. Well, that would be my first thought, too, should somebody push the button: get to Albany! The film stars Jan-Michael Vincent, George Peppard, Paul Winfield, and Jackie Earle Haley, fresh off his Kelly Leak role in the first two Bad News Bears features. And by the way, Fox - when can we expect you to air this in its correct aspect ratio?

11:30 PM HBO Signature
George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011 USA): It’s clearly Beatle Week in the TiVoPlex, and though I haven’t yet seen Martin Scorsese’s mammoth salute to the quiet one, I’m pumped. If you miss it tonight its airing throughout the month, in whole or in part, on various HBO-related channels. Check your local listings.

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