TiVoPlex
By John Seal
September 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 09/19/06
1am Encore Mystery
Night of the Following Day (1968 GB): This oddball thriller hasn't been seen on the tube for many years, earning it the leadoff position in this week's column. Marlon Brando, Richard Boone, Rita Moreno, and Jess Hahn star as a gang of kidnappers looking to make a boodle via the abduction of a rich society girl (The Innocents' Pamela Franklin). Internecine squabbling soon overwhelms the fractious group, with leader Hahn trying hard to hold things together whilst Moreno tries to score horse and Boone attempts to keep his sadomasochistic tendencies in check. Meanwhile, Brando wears his trademark enigmatic Cheshire cat grin, here sharing camera time with an unconscionable blonde hair-do. Inevitably, the ransom pickup goes awry, and what looked like easy pickings turns out to be anything but. Shot on location in Paris, Night of the Following Day benefits from an excellent Stanley Myers score, but neither that nor Brando's presence could save it from tanking at the box office.
7:30am The Movie Channel
The Eye 2 (2004 THA): The Pang Brothers' first entry in the Eye cycle was a reasonably entertaining horror effort and was a big success on both the theatrical and home video fronts. Hence this barely adequate sequel, which features none of the first film's characters and simply plows the same ground with a new cast. Shu Qi stars as Joey, a pregnant young woman whose failed suicide attempt leaves her with the ability to see dead people. A local shaman tells her the spirits are benign, but as more and more ghosts appear, Joey becomes convinced they intend to harm her unborn child. Will these ethereal abortionists get their hands on her fetus, or will Operation Rescue call Ghostbusters? Larded with some extremely gruesome sequences, including one involving a stomach pump, The Eye 2 is far from a classic, but it is does make its American television debut this morning. Also airs at 11:30am.
2:45pm Turner Classic Movies
Prestige (1932 USA): This wacky imperialist fantasy features Ann Harding as Therese, the fiancée of an army officer assigned to a remote Chinese penal colony. Therese can't stand being away from her man, and egged on by her father hops aboard the slow boat to French Indochina, where she meets friend of the family Captain Baudoin (Adolphe Menjou). With the support of Baudoin, she sets off into the heart of darkness, traversing the steaming jungles of Vietnam and crossing into China, where dissipated boyfriend Andre (Melvyn Douglas) maintains control of the colony with the help of his loyal sidekick, Nham (Clarence Muse, in a performance that defies description). Andre is stricken with ennui and barely able to control his sullen native troops, and Therese tries to engineer a transfer for him, but in the film's exciting dénouement, he reasserts his manhood and learns to appreciate the importance of the White Man's Burden. Ridiculous and offensive in equal measure, Prestige is never less than entertaining, and features excellent cinematography by Lucien Andriot. It's followed at 4pm by Depression confessional The Crash, which stars George Brent and wonderful Ruth Chatterton as a couple who lose it all when the stock market melts down.
8:30pm Turner Classic Movies
Ashes and Diamonds (1958 POL): One of the first post-war Polish films to get widespread exposure in the West, Ashes and Diamonds was the third entry in director Andrzej Wajda's "wartime" trilogy (the first two were 1955's little-seen A Generation and 1957's Kanal). Set during the waning days of the war, the film focuses on resistance fighter Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski), whose latest mission - to assassinate a local Communist mucky muck - goes horribly wrong and results instead in the death of two passing laborers. Hunkered down in a small hotel where the Party is holding an organizational pow-wow, Maciek and his partner in crime Andrzej (Adam Pawlikowski) are ordered to stay on task, but find that killing is no longer quite as easy as it once was. The film made a star out of Cybulski in his native land, where he was hailed as "the Polish James Dean", and went on to receive great acclaim at the Venice Film Festival, where it scooped the FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) Prize.
Wednesday 09/20/06
7pm Starz! In Black
Layer Cake (2004 GB): A middling British gangster flick, Layer Cake makes its wide-screen American television debut this evening. That's one of the two reasons to watch it; the other is the presence of Daniel Craig, one of the best young actors working today and the man who threatens to return the character of James Bond to his brutal roots. Craig plays a coke-peddling middleman in Londontown, and as always, is completely riveting in what is otherwise a pretty run-of-the-mill, paint-by-numbers crime drama. Layer Cake's appearance on Starz! in Black underlines the increasingly catholic (some might say conservative) programming bent of the channel, which doesn't show as many of the African films they once relied on in favor of bigger-budgeted studio fare which happens to feature one or two prominent actors of pigment. In this case, the word "prominent" is inapplicable, but the film does feature a witty performance by West Indian-born thespian George Harris, soon to become a more familiar face to American audiences thanks to an appearance in the forthcoming Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Thursday 09/2106
8:15am Turner Classic Movies
Killer McCoy (1947 USA): Mickey Rooney plays the title character, a working-class pugilist who's spent years on the Chitlin' Circuit and now wants a shot at the belt. To get that shot, he has to get through friend and fellow fighter Johnny (blacklisted Mickey Knox), but tragedy intervenes and the out-of-practice Johnny sustains a fatal blow to the head. Shattered by the tragedy, the man now dubbed Killer by the media puts away his gloves, until less-than-forthright trainer Jim Caighn (smoothie Brian Donlevy) convinces him to step between the ropes for another shot at glory. Will the Mickster kill another man in the ring, or will the Love of a Good Woman (Ann Blythe) heal all wounds and lead to redemption? No prizes for guessing the correct answer, but Killer McCoy is a pretty decent boxing flick, with Rooney surprisingly effective and Donlevy suitably oily.
1:20pm Encore Dramatic Stories
The Saddest Music in the World (2003 CAN): Moth, meet flame. Yes, I'm the moth, and the flame is the work of Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin, whose efforts I rarely if ever enjoy, but somehow manage to end up on my hard drive anyway. My contention is that Maddin is the art-house equivalent of cinema's Doctor Evil, Quentin Tarantino: able with a camera, but unable to do anything better than create attractive but hollow homages to better films by better directors. So here I go again, giving a tip of the hat to this feature about a beer magnate (Isabella Rosselini) offering a $25,000 prize to the man or woman who can compose "the saddest music in the world". Who will win: Styx or Kansas? Like all Maddin films, it's the premise that sells, but the execution will doubtless disappoint...again.
6pm Starz! Edge
Flightplan (2005 USA): Here's this week's "Big Budget Studio Feature Making Its Wide-screen Debut on a Premium Channel". In brief, Jodie Foster good, rest of movie - especially screenplay - pretty bad. Hey, nothing like a wide-screen thriller set within the claustrophobic confines of a jet liner! Also airs 9/22 at 1:05am, and for extra added fun on Starz! Edge this evening, stay tuned at 10pm for Prison-A-Go-Go!, a 2003 wannabe-midnight movie starring the ubiquitous and always delightful Mary Woronov as a character named Dyanne (as in Thorne) She-Bitch Slutface. Really.
Friday 09/22/06
12:15pm Sundance
Rick (2003 USA): This indie character study doesn't go very far - or perhaps it doesn't go far enough - but it does feature a fine performance by Bill Pullman as the title character, a conceited middle manager who mistreats staff and potential hires with equal aplomb, when he's not sucking up to the Big Boss (Aaron Stanford). After interviewee Michelle (Sandra Oh) gets short shrift from him during their introductory chinwag, she finds herself serving Rick drinks at her night job, and finds him still subjecting her to unconscionably rude and abusive language. She places a curse upon him - whether supernatural or not is not made clear - and Rick's life starts to take on some unwanted complexity. Daniel Handler's misanthropic screenplay skewers some well-established sacred cows and takes few if any prisoners, and though the payoff is not quite as satisfying as one would hope, watching Pullman exude unrelenting evil for 90 minutes is fascinating. Highly recommended to adventurous film fans.
Saturday 09/23/06
5am Turner Classic Movies
The Naked City (1948 USA): Half-noir and half-police procedural, and with a pinch of neo-realism to taste, The Naked City is all good. Directed by Jules Dassin, who would further refine the genre in 1950 with his masterful London-set thriller, Night and the City, The Naked City is The Big Apple itself, New York. Within its confines teeming millions are protected by police officers such as Don Muldoon and Jimmy Halloran (Barry Fitzgerald and Don Taylor, respectively), here depicted investigating the Upper East Side murder of model Jean Dexter. This is no run-of-the-mill detective film, though; DoP William Daniels' work deservedly took home the Best Cinematography award at the Academy Awards, and his location shooting reintroduced movie cameras - and not just the second unit - to the five boroughs after a decades-long absence. With the cast rubbing shoulders with the locals and the camera going places it had never been before - such as Bellevue Hospital - this remarkable film has a much darker, sharper edge than your typical policier.
Sunday 09/24/06
7pm Flix
Diva (1981 FRA): If you like mysteries, you'll probably enjoy this glossy Jean-Jacques Beineix feature. If you also love opera, you'll be in seventh heaven. (If, on the other hand, you're like me and can't STAND opera, you'll be less enthused.) American singer Wilhelmina Fernandez stars as Cynthia, a renowned operatic artist who's the apple of postman Jules' (Frederic Andrei) eye. The enraptured Jules spends his spare time watching and listening to Cynthia, and he also enjoys taping her performances with that amazing new piece of technology, the handheld cassette recorder. Little does he know that criminals want to get their hands on the tape and press up a bootleg record - no, I didn't know there were opera bootlegs, either - and the film rapidly spirals into a breathtaking exercise in cinema suspense, complete with a lengthy and impressively lensed motorcycle chase. Like a New Wave Jacques Demy film, Diva is both colorful and musical, but thankfully, the music eventually takes a back seat to the story, which will keep you engaged from start to finish.
9:15pm Turner Classic Movies
Lady of the Night (1925 USA): This rare MGM production makes its world television premiere this evening as part of TCM's weekly Silent Sunday Night feature. It's a "women's picture" starring beautiful Norma Shearer in two roles: as socialite Florence and dancehall girl Molly. The two women live in entirely different worlds, until they both fall for a handsome inventor named David (Malcolm Macgregor). Directed by Monta Bell, with whom Shearer was an item at the time of production, Lady of the Night is a visual feast with an incisive screenplay by Adela Rogers St. John, and be sure to look for Joan Crawford as Norma's over-the-shoulder double!
Monday 09/25/06
9;15pm Starz! Edge
Fluffy Cumsalot, Porn Star (2003 USA): Or, how the actors of the "adult film industry" get their professional names. Seriously. It's a documentary. No, really; it is. Promise.
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