TiVoPlex
By John Seal
August 15, 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 08/16/05
4pm Cinemax
Born into Brothels (2004 IND-USA): As promised a fortnight ago, here is 2005's Best Feature Documentary...at least according to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It's not the sort of documentary I usually find all that appealing, but it does provide the emotional uplift that Academy voters favor, and ultimately it's hard to argue with the result. Filmed on the mean streets of Mumbai, Born into Brothels was intended to be about prostitution, but soon evolved into a film about the children of the city's red-light district. Though there is the whiff of cultural imperialism about this feature - the great white filmmakers come to save their little brown brothers - it is ultimately a very simple and moving tale of the human condition, and the economic and bureaucratic barriers assembled to impede its improvement. Also airs at 7pm and 8/19 on MoreMax at 11am. ltx
Wednesday 08/1705
3:15am Encore Dramatic Stories
A Song for Martin (2001 NOR): A remarkable and moving feature from director Bille August (Pelle the Conqueror), A Song for Martin stars real-life couple Sven Wollter and Viveka Seldahl as a pair of musicians who fall in love, marry, and then see their relationship torn asunder by Wollter's rapidly-developing case of Alzheimer's. The film is unrelenting in its approach, avoiding the mawkish sentimentality of mainstream cinema, and the death of Seldahl in the immediate wake of the film's release only adds another tinge of sadness to this superb and devastating feature (Seldahl was ill with cancer throughout the film shoot, and died within months of its completion). I'm not a huge fan of August, but this is by far the best work I've seen from this erratic filmmaker, and comes strongly recommended.
8:30am Fox Movie Channel
The Day Mars Invaded Earth (1963 USA): Here's a film that, in a very strange way, I feel personally connected to. It's a thoroughly ordinary and incredibly cheap science-fiction movie that arrived late in the alien invasion cycle, and features genre faves Kent Taylor and Marie Windsor as a married couple haunted by mysterious doppelgangers who happen to be, erm, invaders from Mars. Hey, no need for expensive special effects or fancy make-up when your leads can also double as the bad guys, right? Anyway, here's my connection: the film's wardrober was a man named John Intlekofer, whose son, Dick, happened to teach a high school film class that I happened to take, thus encouraging me to watch more movies, make my own (still haven't got around to that part), and write this column. This was actually Intlekofer's second career; his first was in baseball, where he played professionally for the Chicago White Sox and managed some minor-league teams. Does this mean YOU need to watch this The Day Mars Invaded Earth? No, but it does mean I'll be watching it for the umpteenth time. Hey, that class was one of the few fond memories I have of high school.
Thursday 08/18/05
10pm Showtime
Love, Sex and Eating the Bones (2001 CAN): Pardon the pun, but this biting Canadian comedy features one of the more unusual premises of recent years. Hill Harper plays Michael, a young man who has trouble consummating his relationship with his girlfriend (Marlyne Afflack) because of his addiction to pornography. In fantasy sequences reminiscent of Tom Ewell's drunken tête-à-têtes with Julie London in The Girl Can't Help It, Michael even dreams about his favorite, erm, "actress" (Marieka Weathered) parading around his bedroom in her frillies. No, this isn't a right-wing plea for abstinence, nor is it a simple-minded sex comedy; it's actually a thoughtful, if slightly raunchy, look at love in the 21st century. Love, Sex and Eating the Bones shared the Best Film award at last year's American Black Film Festival with Woman Thou Art Loosed and also scooped the Audience Award and Best Feature prize at Los Angeles' Pan-African Film Festival. Also airs 8/19 at 1am.
Friday 08/19/05
6:25am Sundance
The Last Just Man (2002 CAN): It's easy to get carried away with superlatives when writing film commentary, especially in a column like this one, where I'm constantly trying to find nice things to say. So please consider that fact when you read the next sentence. The Last Just Man is, in my opinion, one of the greatest and most important documentaries ever made. General Romeo Dellaire was the Canadian commander of the UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda in the early 1990s, and in a series of interviews, he details the bureaucratic inertia and political backbiting that hamstrung his efforts to forestall the genocide perpetrated by that country's Hutu majority against the Tutsi minority, a slaughter that killed close to a million people in the breathtaking span of a hundred days. This film takes the viewer as deep into the heart of darkness as it is possible to go and will bring tears to your eyes. For more information about the Rwandan catastrophe, read Dellaire's superb Shake Hands With the Devil, now available in good bookstores throughout the United States and Canada.
7pm Fox Movie Channel
The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980 RSA): One of the biggest indie hits of all time, and surely the most successful South African film ever made, The Gods Must Be Crazy is a cargo cult comedy that connected big time with audiences in Europe, Japan, and the United States. It features N!Xau as a Kalahari tribesman whose introduction to Western civilization via a Coke bottle turns sour when his people start fighting for possession of the new-found "technology". If you can watch this purely as a comic fable of lost innocence, you'll probably enjoy it, but if you end up factoring in the social and political contexts that contributed to the film's production and success - and what a great advertisement it was for the South African tourist board! - you may have qualms. I remember it running for six months or more at the local Elmwood Theater in Berkeley, and am still struck by the irony of a film made by white Afrikaners being such a huge success in America's capital of anti-apartheid activism.
8pm IFC
Natural-Born Killers (1994 USA): Hate Oliver Stone. Hate, hate, hate. He's a pig-headed buffoon with an ego the size of Texas. I know that I'm investing too much negative energy in this, but I really can't stand the man. And here is a Stone film so full of stuff and so full of itself that it will take your breath away, even taking into consideration the excesses of his two prior films, The Doors and JFK. This supposedly searing critique of American media has it all: sex, violence, Woody Harrelson, more violence, MTV-style editing, loud music, a bit more violence, Juliette Lewis...and it all adds up to a great deal of sound and fury signifying nothing. Yes, Ollie, the media does cater to the lowest common denominator! Americans do love their guns and breasts! AND WE DIDN'T NEED YOUR FILM TO TELL US THIS! So why am I giving Natural-Born Killers a plug? Well, besides the usual excuse (it's airing wide-screen!), it must be said that if there's one thing Natural-Born Killers doesn't lack, its brio. The fact that it's as empty of substantial content as Quentin Tarantino's cerebral cortex is of minor concern; Stone is a visual master who won't let truth, logic, or good taste get in his way, and Natural-Born Killers is probably the most watchable bad film since Showgirls. Also airs at 11pm.
Saturday 08/20/05
7pm IFC
Slumber Party Massacre (1982 USA): IFC is airing something called Slashback this month, and this post-feminist serial killer flick is one of the offerings. Written by Rita Mae Brown, surely the scribe least likely to pen a slasher flick, this is a surprisingly straightforward genre entry that peddles to all the T & A conventions and doesn't provide much in the way of feminist commentary from either Brown or director Amy Holden Jones. Then again, perhaps Slumber Party Massacre makes the ultimate feminist statement: that women are just as capable of producing misogynistic trash as men are. It's followed at 8:30pm by The Boogens (1981), a much more interesting feature with big rubber monsters that look like mutated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which upon reflection is a bit of an oxymoron. It's not a slasher film at all, but still hasn't seen the DVD light and will be of great interest to horror buffs. Both films re-air at 10:15pm and 11:45pm.
Monday 08/22/05
3:50am Showtime 2
The Garbage-Pail Kids Movie (1986 USA): This week's column seems to be especially laden with cinematic effluvia, but when life gives you lemons, guess what you do? That's right; you watch them, especially when they're making their wide-screen American television debuts. Washed-up cabaret singer Anthony Newley's career finally went over the cliff with this appalling film about the eponymous cartoon/trading-card characters, overgrown Cabbage Patch Kids with such delightful names as Valerie Vomit, Foul Phil, and Windy Winston. After watching, step slowly from the sofa, as you may step on your lower jaw if you're not careful.
4am Turner Classic Movies
Across to Singapore (1928 USA): Life in the TiVoPlex returns to something approximating normal with this silent feature about star-crossed lovers in the Far East. Joan Crawford and Ramon Novarro play Joel and Priscilla, friends since childhood whose love for each other is spoiled when Joel's brother Mark (Ernest Torrence) decides to claim Priscilla for his own. Separated at sea by a mean-spirited first mate (James Mason - not the English one), the brothers reconcile, tragedy ensues, and true love is restored to its proper place by the final fadeout. Beautifully shot by John F. Seitz, Across to Singapore also benefits from the presence of the beautiful Anna Mae Wong in a small role.
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