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Thursday 7/25/13

9:40 PM Encore Love Stories
Bolero (1984 USA): This bodacious piece of baloney stars ‘80s sex goddess Bo Derek as a young woman experiencing erotic stirrings as she travels across the globe in search of the ideal lover. Written and directed by Bo’s then husband John Derek and co-starring George Kennedy (keep your clothes on, George), Bolero is the sort of soft porn epic that once aired with frequency on Skinemax but now isn’t seen quite as often. The film not only won six Golden Raspberry awards (including Worst Actress, Worst Director, and Worst New Star – Olivia D’Abo!), it went on to be named the Worst Picture of the Decade by the Razzies - an impressive accomplishment in a decade overflowing with really, really dreadful films. If you’re in the mood for something so bad it’s terrible, or just like looking at Bo Derek in the buff, you won’t want to miss this.

Friday 7/26/13

1:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
The Explosive Generation (1961 USA): Daring for its time, The Explosive Generation rails against parental hypocrisy when the taboo subject of sexuality arises in our public schools. Social studies teacher Peter Gifford (William Shatner, in one of his best performances) inadvertently begins a discussion of the birds and the bees in his high school classroom, realizing that his students have legitimate questions that mom and pop are too uncomfortable to answer. When he has the kids fill out questionnaires regarding the dos and don’ts of teenage courtship, angry parents rise in rebellion and try to get Shatner fired by principal Edward Platt, a go-along-to-get-along guy who soon caves in to the pressure. Of course, Shatner’s beloved students soon come to the rescue, leading the school in the kind of civil disobedience tactics which would soon become de rigueur on campuses around America. Gently pushing the envelope whilst carefully tiptoeing around some of the stickier questions, The Explosive Generation is a mild-mannered but prescient precursor of the generational conflicts about to burst wide open.

4:40 AM HBO Signature
Position Among the Stars (2011 GER): The third film in director Leonard Retel Helmrich’s trilogy recording the lives and times of an average Indonesian family, Position Among the Stars returns to HBO Signature this evening. Helmrich’s subjects are the Shamsuddins, a tight-knit family just getting by in the slums of Jakarta, and the film follows their efforts to assist niece Tari to achieve her dream of a higher education - including, if need be, pawning the family home to help pay for it. Think of Position Among the Stars as a really, really good South Asian version of PBS’s An American Family.

5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Day For Night (1973 FRA): The title of this Truffaut film deeply intrigued me when I was 11 or 12 years old. What could it possibly mean? How could day and night ever be substituted one for the other? It wasn’t until quite a few years later that the title’s cinematic meaning (a reference to scenes shot in daylight to save money, then artificially darkened to masquerade as the wee, wee hours of the morning) finally sank in. Yeah, I was a slow kid. As for Day For Night (the film), it features Truffaut as a filmmaker struggling against near insurmountable odds to complete his latest picture, Meet Pamela, during a fraught shoot in Nice. An anthology of sorts, the film includes half a dozen small scale stories within its overarching framework, with the big themes – love, death, and birth – well represented. Is this, as Roger Ebert and others have contended, the best film ever made about filmmaking? Well, The Player certainly offers some strong competition, but on balance Day For Night is an impressive candidate for the title. If you’ve never seen it, make time this evening – but be sure to turn on all the lights and pretend you’re watching at high noon.

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