Box Office Prophets: TiVoPlex for the week of February 24

TiVoPlex

By John Seal

February 24 - March 1, 2004

Sorry I'm not home right now I'm walking into spiderwebs so leave a message and I'll call you back.

From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or underappreciated; they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times PDT.

Tuesday 02/24/04

3:10am HBO Signature
The President’s Lady (1953 USA): I’m no expert on the life and times of Andrew Jackson, seventh President of the United States, so I can’t really comment on the historical veracity of this film. But who better to portray a man nicknamed Old Hickory than Old Granite Jaw himself, Charlton Heston? Of course, every presidential biopic needs a female lead - especially, I suppose, one entitled The President’s Lady - and as luck would have it, this film has one of the best in Susan Hayward. It adds up to an entertaining if superficial feature that earned two Academy Award nominations for Costume Design and Art Direction, and the film’s unavailability on video or DVD makes it all the more enticing for film obsessives.

9:35pm Showtime 3
Psych-Out (1968 USA): It’s no more realistic than most Haight Ashbury hippie epics of the period, but Psych-Out remains a firm fan favorite thanks to a great cast and some terrific music. Susan Strasberg stars as a young woman who journeys to Babylon by the Bay to find her runaway brother (Bruce Dern), only to fall in with the same bad crowd he’s taken up with. Dern’s tripped-out Seeker is a scarily anticipatory cross between Jesus and Charles Manson, and the rest of his crew - including fictional rockers Mumblin’ Jim - are equally addled. Amongst the flower children Strasberg meets are Jack Nicholson, biker movie star Adam Roarke, Dean Stockwell, and, as the token black hippie, Max Julien. Further down the cast list you’ll find Garry Marshall (yes, THAT Garry Marshall) as a plainclothes cop and future directors Henry Jaglom, Bob Kelljan, and John Cardos. Add in all-too-brief appearances by The Strawberry Alarm Clock and one of the greatest rock bands of all time, The Seeds, and you’ll be flashing back to those groovy days when body paint, bad acid, and granny glasses ended the Vietnam War and led the way to a world free of poverty, war, and racism. Yay! Also airs 2/25 at 12:05am.

Wednesday 02/25/04

11:05am Sundance
A Place Called Chiapas (1998 CAN): This excellent, if now somewhat out-of-date, documentary explores the mini-revolution that took place in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas in 1994. Led by the balaclava-helmeted Subcomandante Marcos, a media savvy leader with a penchant for pipe smoking, the Zapatista National Liberation Front seized control of several towns and ranches, redistributing land to poor campesinos. Talks with the central government in Mexico City yielded little in the way of concessions, and revanchism was soon the order of the day, with the Orwellian-sounding Peace and Justice paramilitary organization leading the charge with support from the Mexican army. Whilst this film concentrates on the enigma of Marcos and the EZLN, it doesn’t ignore the opposition, and features interviews with Peace and Justice spokesmen and displaced ranchers anxious to regain their former property. Since the film was made, Chiapas has settled into an uneasy state of truce, with President Vicente Fox’s government holding a handful of political prisoners and making occasional military forays into the region, and the EZLN mobilizing its forces as necessary to counter the troop convoys and reaffirm Zapatista control of hamlets and villages. The struggle for Mexico’s poorest state is a long way from ending, but this film serves as an excellent introduction to the conflict.

8pm IFC
The Thin Blue Line (1988 USA): Believe it or not, I’ve never seen Errol Morris’ renowned film about the murder of a Texas police officer. So here’s my chance to make up for this grievous oversight, and please my fellow BOP staffers at the same time, some of whom have been asking me to mention Thin Blue Line this week. It won a boatload of awards at a wide range of film festivals, so I’m sure it’s good. Now please put the gun down, untie the ropes, and let me out the basement, David.

Thursday 02/26/04

1:15am Cinemax
Spider (2002 CAN-GB): Is it David Cronenberg’s best film yet? Quite possibly. The gaunt Canuck director made a series of terrific and terrifying films in the 1970s (notably 1975’s They Came From Within and 1977’s Rabid) and then moved on to big studio productions of wildly varying efficacy, including the gooey Fly remake (1986), the squishy Naked Lunch in 1991 and the sublime M. Butterfly in 1993. 1996’s disastrously bad Crash moved Cronenberg back into indie territory, however, and whilst his follow-up feature eXistenZ (1999) was a minor though enjoyable sweetmeat, it took a trip to Britain and a copy of Patrick McGrath’s novel to fully reassert his cinematic primacy. Spider successfully blends the familiar Cronenberg concerns (the veracity of the body, the nature of reality) with - dare I say it? - a surprising warmth. Bear in mind, this being a film from the man who impugned both motherhood and pregnancy in 1980’s The Brood, that warmth is a relative term, and Spider is no Robin Williams hug-fest. Nonetheless, the film contains characters of emotional depth that connect with an audience and who serve as more than unfeeling ciphers for Cronenberg’s themes and theories, a trait that has lessened the effectiveness of older films like Videodrome (1981) and Dead Ringers (1988). The title character, a mentally unstable man released back into the community, is, of course, the primary focus of this film, and he’s played with extreme subtlety by Ralph Fiennes, a stagy actor I have always had mixed feelings about. His deceptively one-dimensional character probably sank any chances Fiennes had of winning recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but his performance here is possibly his Fienne-est to date. Equally good are Miranda Richardson in a triple (!) role, Lynn Redgrave as Spider’s unpleasant landlady, and good old Baron Munchausen himself, John Neville, as a fellow ward of the state. As you may have guessed by now, I love this film, and it’s making its US television premiere this morning. Don’t miss it. Also airs at 4:15am.

Friday 02/27/04

3am Turner Classic Movies
The Broadway Melody (1929 USA): No, I don’t care much for musicals, but this is an interesting one. The first in a series of very popular and similarly-titled films (including Melodys of 1936, 1938, and 1940), The Broadway Melody established the template of two small-town girls trying to make it big by pounding the boards of the Big Apple. The duo are played by long-time silent star Bessie Love (the telephone operator in 1971’s Sunday Bloody Sunday!) and the then new-to-the-scene Anita Page, still working today at the age of 93 in video quickies like The Crawling Brain and Witchcraft XI: Sisters in Blood! There’s a bit of a love triangle involving co-star Charles King, plenty of hoofing, and even a glimpse of Carla Laemmle (also still alive at 94!) in an oyster outfit during a production number. James Gleason and William Demarest make uncredited appearances that sharp-eyed viewers should watch for - though perhaps more surprisingly, Gleason warrants a co-writer credit for the screenplay - and the songs are by Yankee Doodle Dandy scribe George M. Cohan. So doff your straw boater and your seersucker suit, grab some illegal hooch, and settle down for an early morning of all-singing, all-talking, and all-dancing entertainment!

10:45am Black Starz!
Rockers (1978 JAM): The second-best reggae film ever (1972’s incomparable The Harder They Come will long remain the champion), Rockers also takes place in the Trenchtown ghetto of Kingston, where young Horsemouth (Leroy Wallace), an aspiring drummer, sells records from the back of his motorbike, only to have his wheels stolen one day. Somewhat reminiscent of the Chinese film Beijing Bicycle (1999), the film follows Horsemouth’s efforts to regain his transportation, with the action set to a stunning selection of Jamaican music. Reggae had just passed its creative peak in 1978 but the rot had yet to fully set in, and the contributions of Gregory Isaacs, Jacob Miller, Burning Spear, and others are more than adequate. Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer also make cameo appearances. Also airs at 9:35pm.

Saturday 02/28/04

Midnight Turner Classic Movies
The Last Emperor (1987 FRA-ITA-GB): I’m not much of a Bernado Bertolucci fan, but I still recommend you make time for this one. Of course, you’ll need to make a LOT of time for it, though this is not the extended 219 minute version released in Japan. No, we must settle for the American release version, clocking in at a mere two-and-a-half hours. It’s a rather ponderous look at Chinese history, but the cast - which includes Victor Wong and Dennis Dun from John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China, as well as token honky Peter O’Toole, decorative Joan Chen, and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa - is uniformly excellent. The film cleaned up at the 1988 Academy Awards (no, I don’t remember that ceremony, either), taking home nine gold statues, including one for cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, whose admittedly gorgeous compositions can only be appreciated via the wide-screen print being aired by TCM this evening.

Sunday 02/29/04

7pm Turner Classic Movies
Divorce Italian Style (1961 ITA): It’s Best Foreign Language Film night on TCM, and whilst the other offerings this evening (Rules of the Game, Mother India) have been aired recently on the channel, this one has proven harder to see over the last few years. It’s a rarely-seen bedroom farce about a wealthy Sicilian nobleman (Marcello Mastroianni, nominated for Best Actor by the Academy) who falls for his Lolita-esque young cousin, 15 year old Stefania Sandrelli. Unable to obtain a divorce in strictly Catholic Italy, he devises a plot to make his wife (peplum queen Daniele Rocca) fall in love with another man, thus providing Mastroianni with a pretext for manslaughter that, he hopes, will get him off with a light sentence and smooth the way for a new marriage. One caveat: TCM appears to be airing a pan-and-scan print, and while that’s not a critical problem for a comedy composed in 1:1.85, I’m also concerned that this may be a dubbed version. Regardless, it’s definitely worth a look.

Monday 03/01/04

5pm Turner Classic Movies
Dodsworth (1936 USA): Sinclair Lewis’ second-greatest novel (Babbitt comes first, in my opinion) was ably adapted for the screen by Sidney Howard, who had previously turned the popular 1929 tome into a stage play. The great Walter Huston plays the title character, a retired executive whose second honeymoon ends up destroying his marriage with his youth-obsessed wife, the always-fine Ruth Chatterton. Glossily produced by Samuel Goldwyn and expertly directed by William Wyler, the film also features David Niven, Maria Ouspenskaya (whose brief screen cameo earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Acress), Mary Astor, and, in his film debut, John Payne. A remarkably mature film for its time - especially considering the Hays Code and the Breen Office were by now in full effect - Dodsworth helps brings TCM’s annual 31 Days of Oscar festival to a fitting conclusion.

6pm Sundance
The Spirit of Annie Mae (2002 CAN): Annie Mae Pictou Aquash was a Native American activist who was assassinated in 1975. Whilst many suspect the involvement of the FBI and/or a rogue member of the radical American Indian Movement in the murder, this film doesn’t attempt to solve the mystery of her death, but prefers to focus on the work she accomplished in her 30 brief years of life in her native Canada and on the res in South Dakota. A tireless fighter for the rights of indigenous peoples, Aquash’s memory burns brighter thanks to this excellent documentary, which won the Best Documentary prize at the Great Plains Film Festival.