TiVoPlex
By John Seal
April 18, 2006
From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or underappreciated; they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times Pacific.
Tuesday 04/18/06
2am HBO
Yesterday (2004 SAF): This is the film that should, in my opinion, have taken home the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film in 2005. It's the story of Yesterday, a South African woman (Leleti Khumalo) betrayed by the libido of her gold-miner husband, whose penchant for unprotected sex with local prostitutes exposes him to the AIDS virus. When he becomes too ill to work, he returns home to his wife, now also stricken with HIV and trying to care for their daughter, Beauty, whilst coping with her disapproving and scared neighbors. This is a powerful, deeply affecting, and beautifully acted tragedy, with Khumalo pitch perfect as a woman determined to secure her daughter's future before the sands in her hourglass finally run out. The film ends on a predictably bittersweet but uplifting note, and you're advised to keep a hanky handy. Also airs at 5am.
8pm The Movie Channel
Cross of Iron (1977 GB-BRD): Long almost impossible to see, Sam Peckinpah's epic Eastern Front bloodbath finally returns to television this evening, apparently uncut and in wide-screen as well. Based on one of author Willi Heinrich's extremely grim and realistic war novels, the film stars a miscast but excellent James Coburn as its protagonist, foot soldier Sergeant Steiner. Set during Germany's prolonged retreat from the gates of Moscow, the story revolves around the day-to-day struggle to survive on the front lines and Steiner's contentious relationship with his commanding officer (Maximilian Schell), a Prussian aristocrat looking to spruce up his resumé with some glorious battle reports. Thankfully for action fans, the office politics take a definite backseat to the Yugoslav-shot action sequences, which are lengthy and extremely well-mounted by DoP John Coquillon. Also on hand are James Mason and David Warner as Wehrmacht officers, and there's a fine, if out-of-character, score from veteran composer Peter Thomas. There are few more powerful war films, and Cross of Iron ranks as one of Peckinpah's best efforts. Also airs at 11pm and 4/23 at 8:25pm and 11:25pm.
Wednesday 04/19/06
3:30pm Turner Classic Movies
Get Yourself a College Girl (1964 USA): Story-wise, this tale of teen love and lust barely registers, but fans of ‘60s music will definitely want to give it a look. The film stars Mary Ann Mobley as a college student with a penchant for penning catchy pop songs, but her curmudgeonly and disapproving dean forces her to utilize a front to disguise her blossoming career. When her cover's inadvertently blown by handsome music publisher Gary (Chad Everett), suspension follows, and it's up to Gary to put things to rights and simultaneously win the hand of the woman he secretly loves. Produced at the feverish peak of Beatlemania, Get Yourself a College Girl couldn't afford the Mop Tops, settling instead for appearances by The Animals, The Standells, The Dave Clark Five, and, erm, Freddie Bell and the Bellboys. Despite some terrible lip-synching, the music still rocks, and the color cinematography looks good in wide-screen.
9pm Sundance
Blonde Dolly (1987 HOL): Sexy Hilde Van Mieghem - who, if I recall correctly, is actually a brunette - stars as the titular Dolly, a prostitute with a taste for fine art in this oddity from the Low Countries. When Dolly and her museum director boyfriend (Spetters' Peter Tuinman) are victimized by an unscrupulous dealer, she sets out on a dangerous trek into the Underworld, intent on getting revenge and a refund, if possible. Loosely based on an infamous and still-unsolved 1959 Dutch murder case, Blonde Dolly makes its American television premiere this evening. Also airs 4/23 at 1:15am.
11pm Turner Classic Movies
Raffles (1930 USA) : This delightful, if creaky, crime drama features dapper Ronald Colman as Raffles, an aristocrat who enjoys dabbling in jewel thievery for sport. A cinema staple since 1905, the "amateur cracksman" created by novelist E. W. Hornung made the transition to talkies in this Sam Goldwyn production. The rakish Raffles enjoys beautiful women almost as much as he does breaking-and-entering, and when love arrives in the shapely form of Kay Francis, he decides it's time to retire, but in true Hollywood fashion gets talked into One Last Job by his crooked partner Bunny (Bramwell Fletcher). Magnificently lensed by Gregg Toland, this delightful bon-bon also features art direction by the great William Cameron Menzies.
Thursday 04/20/06
1:15am Flix
Around the World in 80 Ways (1986 AUS): If you can overlook its wretched title, this is an enjoyable and predictably loopy Antipodean comedy about an Aussie family that decide to treat their hospital-bound father to a trip around the world, without ever actually leaving suburban Sydney. Allan Penney plays addled Dad Roly, whose wife has put him in the Twilight Home for the Elderly whilst she circumnavigates the world with the next-door neighbor. His good-hearted, if rather mercenary, offspring are portrayed by stage actor Philip Quast and Kelly Dingwall, who adopt a variety of disguises whilst trying to convince their father that he's spending time in Hawaii, Las Vegas, and Tokyo. Unavailable on home video, the gaspingly funny Around the World in 80 Ways appears for the first time on American television this morning in wide-screen format.
7pm Flix
Grievous Bodily Harm (1988 AUS): Yet another Down Under obscurity rescued by the ever-adventurous Flix Channel, Grievous Bodily Harm stars Colin Friels as Tom Stewart, an ace reporter on the heels of a mysterious serial killer. Logically, I don't suppose there's really any other kind of serial killer, because if they weren't shrouded in mystery, they would have been captured in fairly short order, and specifically, THIS killer isn't a mystery at all, as the audience is let in on the secret from the get-go. The culprit is Morris Martin (John Waters, the Australian one, not the Baltimore one), an obsessed teacher with an eye for blonde prostitutes (but little interest in fine art) who has been deeply affected and left unhinged by the death of his wife. Also along for the fun is Bruno Lawrence as the archetypically tough-as-nails copper racing Stewart to solve the case, and former Hammer pretty-boy Shane Briant. Ably, if unimaginatively, directed by Mark Joffe, Grievous Bodily Harm is a standard-issue police procedural buoyed by a fine cast and some good Sydney location work.
9pm IFC
Piranha: The Spawning (1981 USA-ITA): This sequel-in-name-only to Joe Dante's 1978 fish fry was the first directorial effort of a guy named James Cameron, who was fired by the producer after a week and didn't resurface until 1984 with a little thing called The Terminator. The rest, as they say, is fishtory. As for The Spawning, it's also an embarrassing data point on Lance Henriksen's resumé, as the ever-busy genre star appears as a small town sheriff in, er, Jamaica, where flying carnivorous fish developed by our friendly United States Navy are inadvertently on the loose and chowing down on the tourists. The first Piranha had its tongue in its cheek, but this one replaces the tongue with razor-sharp teeth that rip and tear at oodles of soft human flesh. Featuring lots of gore and no laughs at all, Piranha: The Spawning is essential viewing for fans of bad cinema and Cameron detractors, who can only dream of what the killer fish could have done to a waterlogged Leonardo DiCaprio.
Friday 04/21/06
12:40am The Movie Channel
Beauty of the Underworld (1958 JAP): A bit of a mixed bag here: while I'm delighted to note the American television debut of this Seijun Suzuki Yakuza epic, I'm disappointed to note that TMC seems to be airing a pan-and-scan print. As anyone even casually acquainted with Japanese cinema knows, this is not going to represent the vision of the filmmaker particularly well. Beautifully shot in black-and-white, Beauty of the Underworld is a simple but riveting tale of diamond thieves trying to recover their stash after serving some time in the big house. Pixieish Mari Shiraki makes for a great lead as the sister of one of the villains, who comes to a rather unfortunate end, and there are some great set pieces in a mannequin factory and a boiler room. If you have access to the wide-screen HVE DVD, you're set, but if for some reason you're still living la vida video, be sure to set the timer for this satisfying and noirish suspenser. Also airs at 3:40am.
7pm Sundance
Primo Amore (2004 ITA): This twisted love story from director Matteo Garrone is far from being a stereotypical Mediterranean-set sex-and-sun romp. Middle-aged Vitaliano Trevisan stars as Vittorio, a goldsmith whose penchant for thin women compels him to urge his already rail-thin (and much younger) gal pal Sonia (Michela Cescon) to engage in some ill-advised dieting. As she sheds the pounds, the two retreat further into the safety of a consensual masochistic relationship in a remote country manor house, where the increasingly unhinged Vittorio enforces a strict regimen of calorie-counting whilst suspiciously checking the calibration of the bathroom scales. This weighty subject matter may leave viewers inclined towards lighter material heavy-lidded, but pound-for-pound it can't be beat. Primo Amore won the Golden Bear at 2004's Berlin International Film Festival. Buono appetito!
Saturday 04/22/06
4pm HBO
Too Hot Not to Handle (2006 USA): For those Neanderthals still in denial about the reality of global warming, this HBO original documentary - premiering appropriately enough on Earth Day 2006 - probably won't help them interpret the pictographs on the cave wall. For the rest of us, it looks to be another depressing reminder of the way we have mistreated and abused the planet. It's not all bad news, though, as the film also highlights the many positive steps being taken around the world in a last-ditch effort to put a halt to our heaping helping of horrendous heat. It probably won't be as good as that old-time PSA with faux Native American Iron Eyes Cody shedding glycerin tears, but it'll have to do. Also airs at 7pm and 4/23 on HBO 2 at 4:30am and 7pm.
5pm Sundance
Darwin's Nightmare (2005 GB): More ecological horrors are on tap in this grim documentary about the unintended consequences of globalization. Focusing on the Nile perch, a non-native species introduced as an over-fishing afterthought into the waters of Africa's Lake Victoria back in the 1950s, the film explores the subsequent economic and ecological damage wrought by the invasive cichlids. The perch are now the nexus of Tanzania's massive fishing industry, with their fillets air-shipped to European supermarkets whilst the locals subsist on the yucky bits - heads and the like - and are exposed to horrendous working and living conditions. The film makes the devastating point that, whilst the "bad old days" of empire may be over, an economic holocaust is still underway, with the elites of Africa and the First World the only winners. Also airs 4/24 at 10:30am and 6pm.
Sunday 04/23/06
9pm Sundance
Phone (2002 ROK): Sundance continues its month-long salute to Asian horror cinema with this South Korean thriller about the cell phone from Hell. No, it doesn't lose its signal at higher elevations or emit tumor-inducing radiation, but it does harbor malicious spirits with evil intentions. In point of fact, it's not so much the phone itself as the phone NUMBER, - recently acquired from Seoul Bell by reporter Ji-Won (Ji-Won Ha) - that's cursed. Those who have previously owned her new number have inexplicably and violently shuffled off this mortal coil, and the inquisitive and thoroughly terrified Ji-Won is determined to find out why. It's not the most imaginative of plot devices, but there are creepy moments and clever Dei ex machinis aplenty, and most horror fans will be more than satisfied.
9:30pm Turner Classic Movies
The Parson's Widow (1920 DEN): This bizarre Carl Theodor Dreyer feature has been virtually impossible to see for years, but was recently issued on shiny silver disc by the good folks at Kino on Video. If you're not sure you want to invest in that item, though, you can audition the film this evening. The film stars Einar Röd as an aspiring young theologian trying to angle his way into a parsonage so that he can finally wed his beloved, whose father has old-fashioned ideas about young men and their ability to support a family. He gets the job, but with it comes a terrible and unexpected responsibility: the hand of the previous three parsons' octogenarian widow (Hildur Carlburg). Röd weds her, but invites his true love (Greta Almroth) to live under the same roof whilst masquerading as his sister. This comedy of errors doesn't sound like a typical Dreyer film, but its imagery bears his unmistakable mark.
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