From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or underappreciated, they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times PDT.
7:15am The Movie Channel
Gregory’s Girl (1981 GB): Bill Forsyth’s delightful romantic comedy stars John Gordon Sinclair as Gregory, a rather gormless Scottish teenager in the throes of first love. He’s the goalie of the school football team, but when Dorothy (Dee Hepburn) takes his spot on the roster after a magnificent tryout, he’s immediately smitten with her. Anyone who has ever experienced the highs and lows of teen love with enjoy this family-friendly film filled with pithy dialogue and gorgeous location photography of Cumbernauld, Scotland. Forsyth went on to make the popular Local Hero (1982 GB) with Burt Lancaster, the ice cream comedy Comfort and Joy (1984 GB) with the estimable Bill Paterson (the government minister in the original Traffik mini-series), and even produced a sequel (Gregory’s Two Girls) in 1999, but this is his best all-around film, with apologies to his earlier crime comedy That Sinking Feeling (1980 GB). Also airs at 10:15am, 2:45pm, 5:45pm, and 7/23 at 2:30am and 5:30am.
1:30pm Turner Classic Movies
The Secret Fury (1950 USA): This RKO noir thriller stars Robert Ryan and Claudette Colbert as would-be newlyweds whose wedding is contested by a stranger claiming that the bride-to-be is already married. When Colbert suffers a nervous breakdown, it’s up to prospective hubby Ryan to fathom out the mystery and discover the truth. Somewhat reminiscent of the William Powell mystery Crossroads (1942 USA), The Secret Fury is ably directed by Mel Ferrer, co-stars the always-worth-watching Paul Kelly and Vivian Vance, and features an uncredited (and unrelated) Jose Ferrer in a small role.
7am Sundance
War and Peace (2001 IND): After a little old West escapism, here’s a nice cold shower of realism for you. With a two-and-a-half hour running time, this documentary about the escalating nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan echoes the general lengthiness of Indian film whilst also paying tribute to Tolstoy’s massive novel of the same name. With more and more flashpoints developing worldwide and an American president who prefers starting fires to putting them out, this is a deeply disturbing look at one of the most dangerous and long-standing disputes of the 20th - and now 21st - century. Also airs 7/27 at 4am.
8pm Sundance
Paradox Lake (2002 USA): This unusual and occasionally disturbing look at the treatment of autistic children and teenagers will raise far more questions than it answers for most viewers. The film, whilst wholly fictional, stars a cast of autistic children and real-life counselors and is set at a summer camp where simple day-to-day tasks assume an almost overpowering level of complexity. Polish director Przemyslaw Reut coaxed good performances from his “star”, Matt Wolf, a USC film grad, but the heavy lifting is done by the autistic children, especially Jessica Fuchs as the young woman who develops a mysterious relationship with Wolf via her collection of toy animals. The film, regardless of its very low budget, is quite ambitious, and ends on an ambiguous, though hopeful, note. Also airs 7/24 at 8:30am.
11pm Sundance
The Hunt (1997 GB): If you want to see the spoiled and wealthy of the English countryside hoist by their own petard, here's your film. Dutch director Niek Koppen was given unprecedented access to the operators of the Ludlow Hunt, one of scores of legal blood sports organizations in Britain. By withholding all narrative judgment, Koppen lets the hunters speak for themselves. Their bizarre belief that they are somehow protecting the countryside by engaging in their ritual killing game will soon convince you that they are out of touch and ultimately heading to their own personal knacker's yard. Their disgusting disloyalty to their hunting dogs - who get put down the instant they can no longer sniff out a fox or keep up with the pack - is the final proof that these people care little about animals, life, or anything other than dressing up for a day of eco-terrorism and drinking. A damning but fair documentary, The Hunt should be avoided by squeamish viewers. Also airs 7/28 at 8:15pm.
3am Encore True Stories
That’s Black Entertainment: Westerns (2002 USA): I haven’t seen this, but it’s apparently a compilation of clips from the four “colored ” westerns crooner Herb Jeffries made in the late 1930s. If you’ve missed these films (which have occasionally surfaced on TCM, usually during Black History Month), this looks like the next best thing. Sadly, it doesn’t appear to feature any new interview material with the maverick 91-year-old leading man, who was at one time married to burly-q queen Tempest Storm.
10am Sundance
Traffik (1989 GB): The miniseries that spawned the inferior Steven Soderbergh remake, Traffik is, quite simply, one of the best television dramas of all time. Produced for Britain’s Channel 4, the series was closely mimicked by Soderbergh’s film, with three intertwining tales about a German engineer accused of drug smuggling, a British government official with a drug-addled daughter, and a Pakistani farmer trying to make ends meet. There the similarities end, however, as Steven Gaghan’s overwrought and childish screenplay can’t hold a candle to Simon Moore’s script. The casting of the American version is also problematic, especially when contrasted with the original: the ever-annoying Michael Douglas is no Bill Paterson, and Catherine Zeta-Jones is simply out of her league compared to Scots actress Lindsay Duncan, who essays the role of the drug smuggler’s wife with equal measures of dignity, aplomb, and desperation. This six-part series is airing in its entirety today, but even considering its six-hour length, seems shorter than the clumsy big-screen version. Can you tell I didn’t enjoy Traffic (2000 USA)? And I call myself a Soderbergh fan!
9pm Turner Classic Movies
The First Auto (1927 USA): It’s appearing on TCM’s Silent Sunday Night, but the story behind The First Auto is a bit more complex than that of most other silent-era comedies. Four months before Warner Bros released the partly-talking, all-singing Al Jolson vehicle The Jazz Singer, they released this Barney Oldfield comedy about the generation gap between the horse-reliant oldsters of the turn of the century and the auto-mad youth of the Roaring ‘20s. If you watch and listen to the film carefully, you’ll hear the actor Russell Simpson utter a single word, “Bob”. It doesn’t quite qualify as the first word spoken on-screen - sound and cinema had been the subject of experimentation since the mid-teens - but it was the thin end of the microphone wedge as far as the major studios were concerned. As a film, it’s no classic, though it features a decent cast (a young William Demarest and The Hunchback of Notre Dame’s Patsy Ruth Miller), but as an object of historical interest, it’s priceless.
1:30am Turner Classic Movies
The Great American Pastime (1956 USA): I don’t know what to expect from this one, but the cast is incentive enough to give it a look. Tom Ewell (The Girl Can’t Help It) stars as a Little League coach whose romantic life is complicated by Ann Miller, the widowed mother of one of his charges. Also on hand is Anne Francis (Forbidden Planet) as Ewell’s daughter, Disney regular Dean Jones, and Raymond Bailey. The film was written by Nicholas Benchley, the son of raconteur Robert Benchley and the father of lowbrow author Peter Benchley.