TiVoPlex
By John Seal
April 11, 2005
From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or underappreciated; they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times Pacific.
Tuesday 04/12/05
3:00 PM Cinemax
Gray Matter (2004 USA): The latest effort from director Joe Berlinger found the filmmaker travelling to Vienna, where he witnessed the belated burial of the brains of hundreds of childhood victims of Nazi medical experimentation. Using this macabre funeral as a jumping off point, Gray Matter broadly investigates Austrian collaboration with Hitler’s regime and specifically looks at the alleged crimes of Heinrich Gross, a doctor involved in experiments at the Spiegelgrund laboratories. Gross, who doesn’t appear onscreen and will neither accept nor deny responsibility for the children’s deaths, is 90 and living in comfortable retirement in Austria. Also airs at 6:00 PM.
5:00 PM Encore Westerns
Shalako (1968 GB-BRD): Try as I might, I can only think of three British westerns: 1959’s The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (which is really a comedy), 1971’s Lee Van Cleef vehicle Captain Apache, and this star-studded affair about a tracker (Sean Connery) trying to save a party of hoity-toity European tourists from a tribe of rampaging redskins. Directed by blacklisted émigré Edward Dmytryk, Shalako is based on a Louis L’Amour novel and is a fairly run of the mill oater with some decidedly old-fashioned ideas about Native Americans. Nonetheless, the cast is worth the price of admission: Brigitte Bardot plays the eye candy that captures Connery’s attention, Jack Hawkins is a fusty Englishman, and Peter Van Eyck, Honor Blackman, Woody Strode, and comedian Eric Sykes pop up in supporting roles. Unfortunately being aired in pan and scan, this is primarily of interest for fans of Connery and Bardot, who haven’t appeared together since. Also airs 4/18 at 8:05 PM.
Wednesday 04/13/05
10:05 AM Flix
Scorpio (1973 USA): This shot in France thriller stars Burt Lancaster as Gerald Cross, a CIA operative anxious to hang up his dark glasses and retire. Unfortunately, he knows too many secrets, and the spooks back in Langley send an assassin code-named Scorpio (Alain Delon) to take care of business. The two are soon engaged in an exciting game of cat and mouse, with the wily old timer staying one-step ahead of his one-time protégée, who learned everything he knows from his target. Directed by action specialist Michael Winner, Scorpio is an overly complex but reasonably exciting spy saga with a muscular Jerry Fielding soundtrack and some familiar faces, such as Gayle Hunnicutt, Celeste Yarnall, and Vladek Sheybal, buried at the bottom of the cast list.
7:45 PM Encore Love Stories
The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981 GBA): Anyone who’s ever read a John Fowles’ novels knows of the hall-of-mirrors level of complexity within: these are dense works of fiction which do not lend themselves easily to film adaptations. Considering the disaster that was the big screen version of Fowles’ The Magus (1968), it has to be considered a minor miracle that director Karel Reisz was able to concoct a coherent film story from The French Lieutenant’s Woman, though no doubt it helped to have screenwriter-playwright Harold Pinter on the case, as well as A-list star Meryl Streep and the up and coming Jeremy Irons in the cast. It’s a multilayered tale of forbidden love, and takes place, Hours-style, in both Victorian and contemporary England, with Streep and Irons playing two pairs of lovers engaged in not quite adulterous but not exactly kosher flings. Shot on location in the rather seedy seaside resort of Lyme Regis, The French Lieutenant’s Woman was superbly lensed by Hammer horror vet Freddie Francis (who also shot The Straight Story and The Elephant Man for David Lynch) and also features Peter Vaughan, Leo McKern, and David Warner.
Thursday 04/14/05
6:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
Clear All Wires (1933 USA): Now almost forgotten, Lee Tracy was a popular leading man of the thirties who never quite managed to reach the heights attained by Gable, Robinson, and Cagney. Tracy specialized in high-energy roles, frequently playing wise guy reporters, politicians, and tricksters of all varieties. Today most of his films are footnotes at best, but six of them get rare airings on TCM this morning, starting out with Clear All Wires, a tale of a less than objective news-hawk who manufactures stories and then gives himself the scoop. On assignment in Moscow, he gets into hot water with the KGB, and finds that his fast-talking ways may not save him from a firing squad. The cast also includes James Gleason, Una Merkel, Mischa Auer, and Akim Tamiroff. It’s followed by Turn Back the Clock (1933, with Tracy as a tobacconist and Mae Clarke as his wife) at 7:30 AM, Wanted: Jane Turner (1936, with Tracy as a postal inspector and Gloria Stuart as his colleague and love interest) at 9:00 AM, Criminal Lawyer (1937, with Tracy as a D.A. trying to put mob boss Eduardo Ciannelli behind bars) at 10:15 AM, Fixer Dugan (1939, with Tracy as a circus manager) at 11:30 AM, and the inferior newsroom potboiler Millionaires In Prison (1940) at 12:45 PM.
9:30 PM Fox Movie Channel
John and Mary (1969 USA): This is an adult film. No, not an "adult" film, but a film that deals honestly with adult issues and adult relationships. Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow star as a couple who meet over drinks, have sex later that night, and then ponder exactly what it is they’ve done. Generally considered a dull exercise in navel-gazing, John and Mary is actually a fascinating look at the Woodstock-era peak of the Sexual Revolution, with the rapidly shifting sands of public and private morality captured brilliantly by director Peter Yates, whose previous production, Bullitt (1968), is about as dissimilar a film as you could imagine. Written for the screen by Rumpole of the Bailey creator John Mortimer (!), the film also features a slinky Quincy Jones score. Unavailable on home video, John and Mary appears this evening in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio.
Friday 04/15/05
3:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
Two Weeks to Live (1943 USA): If you didn’t get your fill of cornpone comics Lum and Abner when TCM aired the duo’s So This Is Washington last month, here’s another of their low octane, homey comedies. This time the hapless hicks get suckered into investing in a railroad on its last legs, with disastrous results for the pocketbooks of their fellow Pine Ridge residents. The film also involves a mooted trip to Mars, a haunted house, a Jekyll and Hyde transformation, and a medical misdiagnosis that leads to Abner (Norris Goff) trying to pay off their debts by indulging in some death defying stunts. And for those who enjoyed watching Charlie Gemora in his ape-suit in last week’s Gildersleeve’s Ghost, Gemora—and his moth-eaten suit—are in this film, too!
7:00 PM Fox Movie Channel
Barton Fink (1991 USA): Coen Brothers’ fans seem to run hot or cold on this one, but it’s definitely amongst my Coen favorites. It’s a claustrophobic look at an earnest young man (John Turturro) who comes to Hollywood to write screenplays, only to find out that his artistic integrity doesn’t jibe well with big studio politics. There’s a marvelous subplot revolving around a travelling salesman with a big secret (Coen regular John Goodman) and a thinly disguised tribute to novelist William Faulkner, who had some similarly unfortunate real-life experiences in Tinsel Town. As usual, cinematographer Roger Deakins’ work is exemplary, and the film’s art direction and set decoration are superb, with Fink’s hotel room oozing drafty 1930s ambience. Barton Fink gets the widescreen treatment this evening on Fox.
Saturday 04/16/05
9:00 AM Encore
Goldfinger (1964 GB): By now you know the routine: there’s a ‘new’ widescreen Bond flick airing each Saturday morning on Encore. This time it’s Goldfinger, considered amongst the best of the series—though personally I give From Russia With Love the edge. Nonetheless, one can’t ignore the iconic power of this feature, which introduced the world to Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman), Oddjob (Harold Sakata), the titular villain (Gert Frobe), and, of course, Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton), who gets herself dipped into a piping hot cauldron of molten gold. The rumor that Eaton then expired because her pores were blocked remains untrue. Also airs at Noon.
9:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Woman on the Beach (1947 USA): Director Jean Renoir only made a handful of films in the United States, and after this one wrapped, big studio constraints sent him back to Europe, where he resumed his legendary career with 1951’s languid The River. Reputedly cut to pieces by RKO prior to release, The Woman on the Beach features Robert Ryan as a restless war vet stationed on the California coast, where he meets a mysterious woman (Joan Bennett) with a crippled husband (Charles Bickford). Sounds like we’ve heading into The Postman Always Rings Twice territory, but this being Renoir, things aren’t quite that straightforward. This is a very rare opportunity to see this obscurity, which has never been on home video and rarely airs on television.
Sunday 04/17/05
2:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
Bon Voyage (1944 GB): Some weeks are like this: half my recommendations are culled from the TCM schedule because there’s so little of interest on the other two hundred channels. Whilst most other cable programmers remain asleep at the wheel, the good folks at TCM constantly raise the bar and offer mouth-watering rarities such as this one, an Alfred Hitchcock short subject shot in Britain to support the war effort. Designed as a tribute to the French resistance, Bon Voyage ended up spending half a century under wraps when it apparently displeased the Free French government. It features John Blythe as an RAF officer being debriefed after being shot down over the French countryside, and was written by Angus MacPhail, who later penned Spellbound and The Wrong Man for Hitch.
1 :00 PM Sundance
MacArthur Park (2001 USA): You’d think the world would have had its fill of films about the debilitating effects of drug addiction, and you’d probably be right. But save some room at the table for this neat little drama written and directed by actor Billy Wirth. Set in and around Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park, the film episodically relates the stories of half a dozen crack-heads, including that of Cody, a former jazz musician trying to reconnect with his middle-class family. Cody is played with tremendous gravitas by one of the most underappreciated African-American actors of the day, Thomas Jefferson Byrd, who first came to my attention with his eye-opening performance as the go along to get along Honeycutt in Spike Lee’s masterful Bamboozled (2000). He’s trying to get by but is also looking for a way off the streets—and, by extension, out of his addiction—and when a rich white actor (David Faustino) drops by the park to score some dope, he thinks he might have found the right route. The intelligent script, written by Wirth with three collaborators, offers empathy but no excuses, and the presence amongst the cast of Julie Delpy, Lori Petty, and Balthazar Getty no doubt helped secure the funding necessary to complete this above average indie.
9 :00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Captain Salvation (1927 USA): Silent Sunday Night has a very nice and very rare treat on tap for us this evening. It’s a long forgotten melodrama from Chris Hillman’s favorite director, Old John Robertson, and features Lars Hanson as a seminarian determined to rescue a loose woman (Pauline Stark) from a life of vice. The Swedish born Hanson specialized in religious roles, and had portrayed Reverend Dimmesdale in Victor Sjostrom’s superb 1926 version of The Scarlet Letter.
Monday 04/18/05
12:25 Flix
Touched (1983 USA): It’s not much good, but it’s not available on home video and it’s getting a widescreen airing, so Touched gets the Tivoplex seal of approval, or the Seal seal of approval if you prefer. Well, approval is probably too strong a word to use, but I can’t resist including the lamest of letterboxed obscurities, so here it is—a romantic drama directed by John Flynn, also responsible for helming one of my favorite crazed Vietnam-vet movies, Rolling Thunder (1977), and starring an unlikely romantic lead in the form of Airplane!’s Robert Hays. Ned Beatty co-stars, so you know its quality.
6:00 PM Sundance
The Staircase, Parts 5 & 6 (2003 FRA): Sundance’s airing of this multipart documentary, recommended in last week’s column, continues with two new chapters this evening.
Print this column
