TiVoPlex
By John Seal
June 27, 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 06/28/05
Midnight IFC
At Close Range (1986 USA): Hopefully airing wide-screen as part of IFC's inappropriately-named Pulp Indies series (Bladerunner - indie? Naked Lunch - pulp?), At Close Range returns to premium cable this evening. It's a riveting drama featuring Christopher Walken and Sean Penn as a father-and-son crime family, and signaled Penn's arrival as a genuine star. Brother Chris Penn is also on hand, and there's a terrific supporting cast, highlighted by David Strathairn, Candy Clark, and the über-creepy Crispin Glover in one of his most memorable performances. Somehow the presence of the then-Mrs. Penn's "Live to Tell" on the soundtrack doesn't detract too much from the film's grim scenario, which involves young Sean's initiation into a street gang at odds with daddy Walken's tractor-theft ring. Really.
8:45am HBO
The Girl in the Café (2005 GB-USA): Produced by the new president of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Hilary Bevan Jones, The Girl in the Café is making its world television premiere concurrently on BBC 1 and HBO. Obviously, I haven't seen it, but consider the following: it stars the magnificent Bill Nighy (Shaun of the Dead, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), sweet Kelly MacDonald (Trainspotting, Gosford Park), and the great, recently-stricken stage actor Corin Redgrave; was written by Richard Curtis (Notting Hill, Bridget Jones' Diary); and was directed by David Yates, whose next assignment is a little picture entitled Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The story involves a civil servant (Nighy) involved in a May-December romance with a mysterious young woman (MacDonald). Don't expect an insightful piece of art, but The Girl in the Café's estimable pedigree promises quality entertainment. Also airs at 11:45am, 5pm, 8pm, and on HBO 2 6/30 at 9:30am, 12:30pm, 5pm, and 8pm.
5pm Turner Classic Movies
It Came From Outer Space (1953 USA): One of the first (and still one of the best) alien invasion flicks, Jack Arnold's It Came From Outer Space boldly suggested that perhaps our neighbors from beyond aren't really all that bad, after all. In fact, in this film, it's the stupid humans who start shooting first after a spaceship crash-lands in the California desert. Starring Richard Carlson as an astronomer investigating the mysterious vessel, the film's doppelgänger theme anticipated that of 1956's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, though with less emphasis placed on the questionably nefarious intentions of our visitors from beyond. Directed by Jack Arnold and shot in 3D, It Came From Outer Space kick-started Universal's cycle of 1950s science-fiction features and features comedian and Dick Van Dyke Show co-star Morey Amsterdam in a bit part as a soldier.
Wednesday 06/29/05
9am Fox Movie Channel
Sons and Lovers (1960 GB): It's not exactly a great date movie, but this adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's rather stodgy Oedipal novel is top quality stuff that garnered seven Academy Award nominations and one win for Freddie Francis' superb black-and-white cinematography. It's the story of a mining family with a rebellious son (the miscast Dean Stockwell) who gives up the pick and shovel in favor of the artist's paintbrush and abandons his domineering mother (Wendy Hiller) for free love with a suffragette (Mary Ure). Also amongst the impressive cast is Trevor Howard (as the family patriarch), octogenarian Ernest Thesiger, and Donald Pleasence. Still considered fairly scandalous stuff in 1960, Sons and Lovers was adapted for the screen by the great T.E.B. Clarke and was directed by Jack Cardiff. Unavailable on home video, it airs in wide screen on Fox this morning.
Thursday 06/30/05
1:45am Turner Classic Movies
The Manster (1959 JAP-USA): Once seen and never forgotten, The Manster is one of the most memorable horror pictures of the ‘50s and sent many impressionable youngsters scurrying to their beds in abject terror. It's the story of an American reporter (British-born Peter Dyneley, the voice of Jeff Tracy) whose assignment to interview a reclusive Japanese scientist (Mothra's Tetsu Nakamura) finds him unwittingly injected with an experimental serum. The result: a hideous half-man/half-monster that has to be seen to be believed. Without giving too much away, let's just say it provided the inspiration for the split personality of Bruce Robinson's How to Get Ahead in Advertising. Pure, unadulterated fun, The Manster should not be ingested by anyone under the age of eight, unless you want to spend the night comforting your children.
Friday 07/01/05
6:30pm Starz! In Black
Buffalo Soldiers (2001 GB-GER): I'm not quite sure Black Starz! In Black looked much beyond the title of this black comedy before they scheduled it, as Buffalo Soldiers has nothing to do with the famous African-American cavalry units of the post-Civil War era, and everything to do with corruption in the modern American army. That contentious subject matter was enough to get this film shelved for two years in the wake of September 11th, and frankly, it's a surprise it got released at all. When distributor Good Machine did finally ease this one into theaters, they tried to market it as a wacky comedy, which it isn't. Starring Joaquin Phoenix as a crafty supply specialist based in Stuttgart, West Germany, during the waning days of the Cold War, the story revolves around his scheme to cook up a vast supply of heroin - using Army supplies and equipment - for sale through the local criminal underground. Phoenix has his commanding officer (Ed Harris, in a fine performance) wrapped around his little finger, enabling him to easily requisition the things he needs to produce the smack. He doesn't reckon with the local contingency of military police, however, who soon stumble on the plot and demand a cut of the proceeds. Needless to say, this is not respectful to those in uniform and was deemed too unpatriotic for Americans to see in late 2001. It's still unpatriotic (and a British/German co-production anyway), but remains a very fine film that doesn't fit comfortably into any genre, though at times it's certainly reminiscent of productions such as M*A*S*H, Catch-22, and The Ninth Configuration. Highly recommended. Also airs on Encore Mystery 7/3 at 5pm and 7/4 at 12:15am.
11pm Turner Classic Movies
Closely Watched Trains (1965 CZE): This wry black comedy, produced in Czechoslovakia in the run to 1968's Prague Spring, stars Vaclav Neckar as a lovelorn and suicide-prone railway worker during World War II. When he's unable to consummate his relationship with an attractive conductress, he turns for advice to a friendly doctor (director Jiri Menzel), who provides him with some confidence-building pointers that enable him to successfully woo a resistance fighter and blow up a German ammunition train to boot. Obscuring its political opinions with a coating of anti-Nazi commentary (much in the way Iranian cinema has relied on stories of childhood to take not-so-subtle digs at the mullahcracy), Closely Watched Trains was a belated hit with American art-house-goers and took home the Best Foreign Film Academy Award in 1968.
Saturday 07/02/05
1pm Fox Movie Channel
Diplomatic Immunity (1952 USA): This obscure Henry Hathaway thriller features Tyrone Power as a State Department courier involved with Army Intelligence as they battle Commie spies determined to facilitate a Soviet invasion of recalcitrant Yugoslavia. Filmed on location in the Adriatic city of Trieste, Diplomatic Immunity co-stars Patricia Neal and Karl Malden, and features a fairly exciting Hitchcockian denouement in a Roman amphitheater. It's not as good as Hathaway's House on 92nd Street, but it's reasonably entertaining and an intriguing example of the short-lived docu-drama genre of the late ‘40s and very early ‘50s.
5pm Sundance
It's All About Love (2003 A Whole Bunch o'Countries): Claire Danes and Joaquin Phoenix are John and Elena, an unhappy married couple in this faux science-fiction film about the bleak future of New York City circa 2020. The climate has shifted, leaving the Big Apple icebound in July. Phoenix and Danes are planning on a divorce, but then they don't, instead fleeing the snowed-in city, where ice dancing is the hippest thing happening and Danes' character is considered one of the finest practitioners of the art. Written and directed by Dogme veteran Thomas Vinterberg, with a helping hand from the puckish Mogens Rukov, It's All About Love was reportedly howled off the screen at Sundance 2003 and drove a distracted Danes to tears when she first viewed the finished product. The artistic presence of enfant terrible Lars Von Trier hovers over this wacky love story, however, and that - and the sterling work from cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, as well as a guest appearance by Sean Penn - make this one a must-see for film fans made of sterner stuff.
Sunday 07/03/05
3:20pm Encore Action
The Prisoner (1990 HK): This surprisingly grim Jackie Chan vehicle features, in addition to Jackie, a veritable who's who of Hong Kong cinema, including Sammo Hung, Tony Leung, and Andy Lau. Actually, Chan isn't really the star of the film at all; that honor belongs to Leung, who plays a police officer working undercover in a maximum security lock-up in an effort to solve the mystery of some misplaced fingerprints. Whilst behind bars he meets Chan (imprisoned for an accidental death that looked like murder), Lau (the vengeful brother of Chan's victim), and Hung. Also on hand is martial arts veteran Jimmy Wang Yu (Master of the Flying Guillotine) as an inmate ringleader. The film takes a surreal turn when Leung ends up in front of a firing squad and the corrupt prison warden (Ke Cheung-Hsiang) is revealed to be a criminal mastermind. This is the 96-minute "international" version of this film, which runs to almost two hours in its uncut format, but you'll have to shell out for a Taiwanese DVD to see that, so for now, just be happy that The Prisoner is making its American television debut this afternoon.
9:45pm Turner Classic Movies
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928 DEN): Best ten lists come and go, but one thing's a certainty: this film resides comfortably on my own list of all-time greats, and it's not going anywhere any time soon. Decidedly not for all tastes, this is nonetheless the only Joan of Arc film worth your time, starring the astonishing Maria Falconetti in the title role. Superlatives can't really do this film justice, but be assured that it is one of the most beautiful and moving films ever made, magnificently shot by future Hollywood director Rudolph Mate and directed with simple brilliance by Carl Theodor Dreyer. Miss it at your own risk.
Monday 07/04/05
8:05am Starz! Edge
The King of Masks (1996 CHI-HK): An elderly street performer looking for an heir buys an eight-year-old child and names him Doggie in this odd but touching Chinese drama from director Tian-Ming Wu. Unfortunately, Doggie turns out to be an unwanted girl, and The King of Masks (Zhu Xu) must decide whether
he can pass on the proverbial family jewels to this female urchin or send her back to a hand-to-mouth existence on the streets. When Doggie brings home a little boy for the King to adopt, things seem to be taking a turn for the better, but the lad comes with strings attached. This fan favorite cleaned up at festivals around the world and is the rare foreign-language film capable of engaging English-only adults and children alike.
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