TiVoPlex
By John Seal
April 2, 2012
4:40 AM HBO2
Love Crimes of Kabul (2011 GB): Produced with the assistance of HBO, this is the latest sterling effort from Iranian-born filmmaker Tanaz Eshaghian, whose previous film, Be Like Others, was an eye-opening and genuinely shocking look at the lives of gay Iranian men forced to undergo sex change operations in order to circumvent their homeland’s onerous morality laws. Eshaghian’s new film is also an examination of the treatment of sexual outlaws in Central Asia, taking place in Afghanistan, a country where women are imprisoned for running away from home or having premarital "relations" with their boyfriends and fiancés. This, of course, is also the same country that the United States and NATO have spent hundreds of billions of dollars "defending" from a fundamentalist sect known as the Taliban. This war has been propagandized, in part, as a war for womens rights, but Eshaghian’s film makes crystal clear precisely how many rights those billions of dollars have purchased so far. If you ever wondered whether women could be imprisoned for the crime of "intending to have sex," Love Crimes of Kabul provides the answer - and, guess what, our tax dollars are helping pay for their prosecution. Also airs at 7:40 AM.
9:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
The New Adventures of Tarzan (1935 USA): This has to be a first of some sort - how many times has a film on TCM not appeared in an edition of the TiVoPlex until this late in the week? I have no idea, but I’d guess that over the last ten years the answer is probably fewer than three. Anyway, TCM is on the case now, and in fact will be taking this week’s column down the home stretch. As for Tarzan’s new adventures - well, they haven’t exactly been new for a good 75 years and probably weren’t all that new even in 1935, when this feature version of a 12-chapter serial produced independently by Edgar Rice Burroughs was shot in the jungles of Guatemala. While that’s all well and good and lends the film greater verisimilitude than your average backlot vine-swinger, the film suffers due to post-production dubbing, which robs star Bruce Bennett (aka Herman Brix) of his own voice and replaces it with someone English. I wish TCM would air the serial, but frankly, it’s probably awful, and we should probably be grateful for small (and shorter) mercies.
11:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Happy Thieves (1961 USA): Rex Harrison and Rita Hayworth headline this rarely seen widescreen caper flick. They play Jimmy Bourne and Eve Lewis, a pair of professional art thieves who misplace some of their loot and are tasked to replace it with a Goya nicked from one of the world’s most closely guarded art museums. Unfortunately, The Happy Thieves is blandly directed by comedy specialist George Marshall, who neither creates tension nor coaxes romantic sparks between his leads, leaving the film of primary interest for its fine supporting cast (including Alida Valli, Gregoire Aslan, Britt Ekland, and Dr. No himself, Joseph Wiseman).
Monday 4/9/12
12:15 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Man Who Lived Twice (1936 USA): Ralph Bellamy plays a criminal suffering from amnesia in this enjoyable Columbia second feature. Bellamy is Slick Rawley, a baddie who undergoes plastic surgery in order to throw the coppers off his trail. After successfully undergoing the operation, however, Slick forgets his shady past, decides to take the Hippocratic Oath, and dedicates the rest of his life to healing the sick. But of course, life is not so simple, and when summoned to a prison to treat an inmate, the skeletons in his closet are discovered by con Gloves Baker (Ward Bond), who plans to take full advantage of this extremely interesting information. Co-starring Marian Marsh as Slick’s love interest and Willard Robertson as the policeman who’s been hot on his trail for the better part of a decade, The Man Who Lived Twice also benefits from some fine James Van Trees cinematography.
Continued:
1
2
3
|
|
|
|
Print this column
