TiVoPlex

By John Seal

December 30, 2003 - January 5, 2004

Euthanasia: The Musical.

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

Tuesday 12/30/03

3am Turner Classic Movies
Matrimonial Bed (1930 USA): Four years later this title would have been too risqué for the Hays Office, but in 1930, it was still possible to imply that married folks - yes, even newlyweds - might actually sleep together on occasion. This Michael Curtiz-directed comedy is less of a pre-Code delight than you might hope for, though, being more a comedy of manners about a long-thought-dead husband (Frank Fay) who turns up as an amnesiac hairdresser (!) on widow Lilyan Tashman’s doorstep one day. It’s all very Oscar Wilde-ish, and mostly worth watching for James Gleason, who’s terrific as always as Tashman’s second husband, who’s not terribly thrilled by the prospect of bigamy.

5am Sundance
Frescoes (2002 RUS): For a dose of uplift after an extremely depressing year highlighted by an unnecessary war, have a look at Frescoes, a documentary about the indomitable human spirit in the impoverished former Soviet republic of Armenia. The film focuses on the goings-on in a small village devastated by a major earthquake in 1988 and wracked by political and social upheaval in the wake of the dissolution of the USSR shortly thereafter, with particular emphasis on the local graveyard and its habitués. Loaded with startling beauty and little epiphanies that impressed the crowds at this year’s Sundance festival, this is a lyrical minor classic of non-fiction cinema.

Wednesday 12/31/03

10am Sundance
Julie Walking Home (2001 GER-POL-CAN-USA): After the deeply moving art-house hit Europa Europa in 1990 and the more mainstream children’s classic The Secret Garden two years later, Polish director Agnieszka Holland dropped out of the consciousness of most Western filmgoers. This odd family drama didn’t exactly put her back atop the box office, but it does feature future Lord of the Rings co-star Miranda Otto as a desperate mother who takes her cancer-stricken child to Poland for treatment at the hands of a faith healer. It’s not perfect - the film veers uncomfortably into new age territory from time to time - but at its core lie a collection of superb performances, with Otto ably supported by the brilliant Lothaire Bluteau (Jesus of Montreal) and William Fichtner. Julie Walking Home isn’t for everyone, but if you enjoy contemplative and thoughtful filmmaking or thought Lorenzo’s Oil was the bee’s knees, you might want to make time for it.

9pm Turner Classic Movies
Airplane! (1980 USA): Remember the good old days, when New Year’s Eve meant TNT would show half-a-dozen dubbed Hercules movies back-to-back? Those days are long gone, but thankfully TCM is dusting off the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker comedy classic Airplane! for another wide-screen airing tonight. Almost as full of laughs as your average Mark Forest or Gordon Mitchell muscleman epic, you should already know and love the film that launched a thousand water-cooler quips (amongst them the immortal and timely line, “Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?”). If you’ve seen it before, enjoy it again tonight. If you haven’t, you’re in for a gut-busting treat, headlined by an all-star cast of B list actors, including Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Robert Stack, Barbara Billingsley, Ethel Merman, and (of course) Leslie Nielsen.

Thursday 01/01/04

12:30am Turner Classic Movies
My Favorite Year (1982 USA): Before Peter O’Toole accepted his honorary Academy Award at last year’s Oscar ceremony, the gaunt Irishman had been previously nominated as Best Actor on seven different occasions, most recently in 1983 for this warm-hearted but slightly wicked comedy about a gone-to-seed matinee idol (O’Toole) rescued from career disaster by a worshipful young screenwriter (stage actor Mark Linn-Baker). Directed by comedian Richard Benjamin and written by one-off scribe Dennis Palumbo, the film does a decent job of capturing the ambience of early television, and features terrific support work from Joseph Bologna, Bill Macy, Cameron Mitchell, and many other familiar faces. Look for ‘30s star and future Titanic actress Gloria Stuart in a small role.

2:35am Encore
Interiors (1978 USA): Long the hardest to see of Woody Allen’s films - and the film that marked his transition from straight comedy to something a little weightier - Interiors returns to cable this evening. Notable for the onscreen absence of the Manhattan funny man, the film stars Mary Beth Hurt, Kristin Griffith, and Allen regular Diane Keaton as sisters trying to hold together an increasingly dysfunctional family whilst coping with their own troublesome sibling relationships. It ain’t much fun - most folks liken it to an Ingmar Bergman pic - but there are plenty of memorable moments, and co-stars Geraldine Page and Maureen Stapleton are particularly good. And yes, THAT Joel Schumacher was the costume designer for this film. Also airs at 5:35am.

1pm Turner Classic Movies
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974 GB): The first Sinbad film I saw on the big screen (and the first film I ever owned on laserdisc!), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad remains a firm favorite in the Seal household. Starring John Phillip Law as the seafaring adventurer, the film remains the high-watermark of Ray Harryhausen’s special-effects career, including as it does the multi-armed Kali, a centaur, a Cyclops, and a variety of other mythical creatures. There’s also a knockout Miklos Rozsa score and, for the boys in the audience, Caroline Munro, about whom little else needs to be said. Presumably TCM will be airing the marvelous DVD print currently in circulation, which puts my sorry old laserdisc to shame.

Friday 01/02/04

7am Fox Movie Channel
Cult Culture: The Poseidon Adventure (2003 USA): If you thought Trekkies were a little odd, wait till you meet the folks who believe The Poseidon Adventure was a true story. This original Fox documentary (premiering this week) details the small cult of obsessives for whom the granddaddy of aquatic disaster pics serves as holy writ. Meet the man who has recreated the Poseidon’s ballroom in his garage! See the Broadway-style musical adaptation! Witness folks making their own Poseidon tribute film! Entertainment is guaranteed, unless of course you’re one of those normal types who gets their blood tested for midichlorians on a regular basis.

10am Encore Action
Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (1978 HK): This early Jackie Chan feature is a slight cut above your average paint-by-numbers kung-fu flick, with the destined-for-superstardom Chan consigned to suffer through a fairly stodgy diet of martial-arts maneuvers. On display this time is the snake style, as thwacko Jacko gets promoted from school custodian to martial-arts master by headmaster Siu Tien Yuen, who’s pretty handy with his fists, too. If you’re a fan of the genre you definitely don’t want to miss this, but don’t expect to see Jackie riding a bicycle up a wall or recreating the boulder scene from Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances.

Saturday 01/03/04

3am Turner Classic Movies
Larceny, Inc. (1942 USA): Last time this aired, my program guide got it confused with an obscure Universal crime drama, Larceny (1948 USA). I recommended that film, but ended up, of course, watching this one, a gangster comedy I’d never seen before. To my delight, it turned out to be one of the finest ‘40s comedies I’ve ever seen. Edward G. Robinson stars as a bank robber who buys a luggage store as a front whilst he and his gang (dimwitted Broderick Crawford and jumpy Edward Brophy) dig into the bank vault next door. Robinson’s also trying to convince gal pal Jane Wyman that he’s on the straight and narrow and really IS interested in an exciting and honest future in the luggage business. Unfortunately, he does such a good job selling her this unlikely scenario that the local merchants elect him as their leader when the city decides to make disruptive improvements on their street! Add in an early appearance by Anthony Quinn as a vengeful fellow ex-con and a small (but unforgettable) appearance by Jackie Gleason as a lunch-counter attendant, and you’ve got one of the funniest films you’ll ever see. Highest recommendation, though I’d still like to see Larceny!

9:30pm Sundance
Scarfies (1999 NZ): This week’s speculative pick is really here for only one reason: an appearance by legendary Kiwi rock band The Clean! Yes, David Kilgour and Co. are featured in this story of college kids who stumble upon a basement full of marijuana and decide to be drug dealers for a day. Of course, things get complicated when the rightful owner of the wacky tobaccy shows up to find the fruits of his labor missing. Star Willa O’Neill later appeared in the strange antipodean fable, The Price of Milk.

Sunday 01/04/04

1:30pm Flix
The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968 USA): Directed by William Friedkin (The French Connection) and co-written by Person for the American Way Norman Lear, this is a bitter comedy about the days of burlesque and Prohibition. Britt Ekland (still Mrs. Peter Sellers at this point in her life) stars as an Amish girl in the big city, using her biblical dance routine to get by in a Manhattan speakeasy. The supporting cast is an eclectic mix of British actors (Denholm Elliott, Norman Wisdom, and - as Ekland’s father - the inestimable Harry Andrews) and familiar Americans (Elliott Gould, Jason Robards, Forrest Tucker, Rudy Vallee, and Bert Lahr). All things Jazz Age were in vogue again during the late ‘60s - how else to explain the popularity of Tiny Tim and Ian Whitcomb? - and The Night They Raided Minsky’s remains one of the better big-screen renderings of the period.

6:30pm Encore True Stories
The Port of Last Resort (1999 OST): As the recently aired Struma (2001 CAN) proves, there are still plenty of fascinating and previously untold stories of the Holocaust to be told. Here’s an Austrian documentary about the little-known Jewish exodus to Shanghai in the years leading up to World War II. With its reputation (and legal status) as an open city, Shanghai became the home of a 20,000-strong contingent of European Jews in exile, a community that stayed intact until Maoist forces destroyed the Jewish cemetery and erased all physical memories of the diaspora. This remarkable film includes interviews with survivors as well as incredibly rare footage from the period.

9pm Turner Classic Movies
The Love Light (1921 USA): Silent Sunday night features a double-bill of Mary Pickford classics this evening. The Love Light is another brilliant Frances Marion concoction, packed with melodrama, romance, lynching, and war, all set around an Italian lighthouse tended by Pickford, here playing an adult for a change. With Pickford producing and starring and Marion writing and directing, this is truly a women’s picture, but with tremendous appeal for anyone interested in silent cinema in general. It’s followed at 10:30pm by the somewhat harder-to-see Coquette (1929 USA), primarily of interest today as Pickford’s sound debut. The film is pretty creaky stuff, typical of the stage adaptations of the day, but does feature some interesting set design by William Cameron Menzies. An inessential item, though fascinating, Coquette may have indirectly led Pickford to the wise decision to retire from screen acting within a few years of the advent of sound. Her Southern accent in this film is particularly dreadful, and certainly wouldn’t have impressed her vast army of fans, who had long imagined young Mary sounding quite different than she does here.

Monday 01/05/04

12:30am Flix
Gothic (1986 GB): A week or two back I recommended Ken Russell’s over-the-top horror-comedy Lair of the White Worm (1988 GB). I’m a little less keen on this, the film that immediately preceded Lair on Russell’s resumé, but Flix is offering a letterboxed print this evening, deeming it worthy of a mention. A much more typical Russell film than Lair, Gothic stars Natasha Richardson as Mary Shelley, Gabriel Byrne as Lord Byron, and Julian Sands as Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as the marvelous Timothy Spall as the dope-dealing Doctor Polidori. On a dark and stormy night in the 19th century British countryside, the group engage in an orgy of drug-induced sexual depravity that ultimately results in the fictive creation of the Frankenstein monster. Full of the usual outrageous stuff that Russell is known for, the film will disgust most viewers but has some merit thanks to the game cast and Mike Southon’s atmospheric photography.

6pm IFC
The Kids Are Alright (1979 GB): It’s been many, many years since this rockumentary about The Who has aired uninterrupted on TV, though it used to show up on TNT and TBS from time to time. This is simply one of the best rock films you’ll ever see, and if you’re a fan of The Who, beyond essential viewing. Chock-a-block with concert and television footage from throughout the band’s career, The Kids Are Alright will also serve as a suitable introduction for folks who may not understand the appeal of the greatest band ever to come from Shepherd’s Bush.