TiVoPlex
By John Seal
August 27, 2012
Saturday 9/1/12
2:00 AM Showtime 2
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010 HK-CHI): Directed by legendary HK filmmaker Tsui Hark, this engaging and impressively mounted period piece stars Andy Lau (Fulltime Killer, The Warriors) as the title character, a disgraced detective given a new professional lease on life by heir to the Chinese throne Wu (Carina Lau, no relation) when her accession is threatened by two cases of spontaneous combustion and a construction project gone horribly wrong. Set in 640 AD, Hark’s film is a throwback to the kitchen sink films of an earlier Hong Kong movie era, when fantasy and reality could be equal partners and mystery, comedy, and political sub-plots could blend together in one heady cinematic mix. Though a little draggy (119 minutes), Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame still offers plenty of fun and lots of surprises.
Sunday 9/2/12
5:00 AM Encore Dramatic Stories
Goodbye Lenin! (2003 GER): This is a film with a gimmick, but a good one: an East German woman (Katrin Sass) with a deep and abiding faith in Communist ideology awakes from a coma in a newly-united Germany. The Cold War is over, the Berlin Wall has fallen...and her doctor urges her son Alex (Daniel Bruhl) to help her avoid any unnecessary stress, as this would probably kill her. Taking his new responsibilities with utmost seriousness, Alex tries to maintain a façade of normalcy, plying his mother with East German treats, bringing in young boys to sing patriotic songs, and - in the film's most hilarious moments - creating his own news broadcasts on videotape to allow his mother to bask in the glory of the Honecker regime's continued successes. As his mother's recovery continues apace, however, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the illusion, and the film takes a bittersweet turn by the final reel. This is a lovely little picture that belongs to Sass, a superb actress who bears a passing resemblance to Julianne Moore. It's a shame Encore isn't airing this letterboxed, but the film doesn't lose a lot in pan-and-scan (witness the titular scene of an airborne Lenin statue) and it IS subtitled, so give it a look, even if you don't care much for foreign-language films.
5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Hands of a Stranger (1962 USA): A TCM day of dismembered hands is highlighted - or, more accurately, lowlighted - by this no budget rendering of the classic Maurice Renard tale, The Hands of Orlac. Produced by Allied Artists (previously poverty row studio Monogram), Hands of a Stranger stars James Stapleton as Vernon Paris, a renowned concert pianist who loses the tools of his trade after a nasty accident. Enter brilliant surgeon Gil Harding (Paul Lukather), who has an extra pair of hands sitting in the freezer, which he duly attaches to Vernon. The result, of course, ain’t good: those mitts were once the property of - here’s the twist - a murder victim (not a psychopathic killer, as in previous versions of the tale). Not that it makes any difference - they still don’t do what they’re supposed to do! Hands of a Stranger features the last film appearance of Irish "Sheena, Queen of the Jungle" McCalla and the second big screen appearance of the young Sally Kellerman.
Monday 9/3/12
11:15 AM Turner Classic Movies
My Life to Live (1962 FRA): It’s not quite as well known as many of his films, but this Jean-Luc Godard flick is amongst the great auteur’s finest. The film stars bobbed Anna Karina as Nana Kleinfrankenheim (!), a beautiful young Parisian who finds herself being sucked slowly but inexorably into a life of prostitution on the rude rues of the City of Light. Magnificently filmed by Raoul Coutard, superbly if sparsely scored by Michel Legrand, and anchored by Karina’s sublime performance, this is a truly wonderful feature.
Continued:
1
2
3
|
|
|
|
Print this column
