By John Seal
May 19 - May 26, 2003
From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or under-appreciated - they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times PDT.
Monday 05/12/03
1:45 AM Turner Classic Movies
Chances (1931 USA): This ancient Warners' drama was directed by consummate pro Allen Dwan and stars Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Anthony Bushell as British blood brothers in arms on leave during World War I, each pitching woo to the lovely Rose Hobart. The story is nothing new - in fact, it's pretty old - but Chances is expertly packaged with fine cinematography by Ernest Haller and features a good screenplay by Lon Chaney/Tod Browning regular Waldemar Young.
9:00 AM Sundance
Friendly Persuasion: Iranian Cinema After the Revolution (2000 USA): If you're not sure whether or not to dip your toes into the vast sea of Iranian film, watch this documentary. Interviews with masters such as Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhbalbhaf, not to mention a host of other folks I'm not familiar with, mark this as the definitive look at the world of movie making in a society torn between a desperate desire to modernize and a government determined to remain rooted in the past. Also airs at 4:15 PM.
1:35 PM Fox Movies
Steamboat 'Round the Bend (1935 USA): Few American comedians achieved the popularity of Will Rogers, and few have since been forgotten quite so thoroughly. The folksy, down home charm of Oklahoman Rogers was tailor made for Depression-era cinemagoers, and he appeared in over 50 films before his tragic death in a 1935 plane crash in Alaska. This was his final performance, and it's vintage Rogers, with the ex-cowpuncher and vaudevillian playing a carny sailing the Mississippi in an effort to rescue his gallows-bound nephew. It's fair to warn viewers that there's a typically unenlightened appearance by African-American "funnyman" Stepin Fetchit, but there are also appearances by the wonderful Eugene Pallette and tough guy Raymond Hatton. Directed by John Ford in between his Academy Award winning The Informer (1935 USA) and the underappreciated Prisoner of Shark Island (1936 USA), this is an opportunity for younger viewers - say, anyone under 70 - to gain a new appreciation of a man once tipped to be the next governor of Oklahoma. Also airs 5/20 at 3:35 AM.
6:00 PM More Max
Haathon Ki Lakeeren (1986 IND): Here's this week's speculative foreign film oddity, an Indian film about a young boy (Sanjeev Kumar) being raised by a foster mother (Priya Rajvansh). If your synapses have been overloaded by this weekend's Matrix: Reloaded special effects jiggery pokery, here's the perfect antidote. Released briefly in the United States as Lines of the Palm, Haathon Ki Lakeeren was directed by the late Lahore born Chenan Anand. And if that isn't enough to make you watch, I'm afraid I have little else to offer.
6:00 PM Sundance
Mountain Men and Holy Wars (2002 USA): For the half dozen of you wondering about the causes of the current war in Chechnya, this hour-long documentary tries to provide some answers. You'll learn all about a 19th Century Islamic freedom fighter/terrorist (take your choice) named Imam Shamil, whose name is still summoned by those fighting the Russian Army in this troubled Caucasus region. It's followed at 7:00 PM by Afghan Stories (2002 USA), another short by Mountain Men filmmaker Taran Davies. The film serves as a reminder of the diversity of life in Afghanistan, here personified by a Taliban torture victim, a family attempting to emigrate to Canada, and two quite different faces of devout Islamism, one professing violence, the other peace.
Tuesday 05/20/03
7:30 PM Turner Classic Movies
Shanghai Express (1932 USA): The beautiful Marlene Dietrich rarely looked better than in this striking Josef Von Sternberg drama about lovers (Dietrich and Clive Brook) torn apart and then reunited after a five year separation. It's an admittedly slight story told brilliantly, with superb camera work by Lee Garmes and an uncredited James Wong Howe and a magnificent supporting cast, including Anna May Wong, Warner Oland, Eugene Pallette, and Gustav Von Seyffertitz. Essential viewing for fans of 1930s cinema.
6:00 PM Sundance
Blackboards (2000 IRA): Samira Makhmalbhaf's second film after debuting with The Apple (1998 IRA), Blackboards was co-written by Ms. Makhmalbhaf and her father, the revolutionary filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbhaf. This isn't quite as remarkable as her debut, but for a 20-year-old director, it's pretty impressive stuff nonetheless. Two itinerant schoolteachers, Said Mohamadi and Behnaz Jafari, ply their educational trade in the remote Kurdish regions of southwestern Iran with portable blackboards strapped to their backs. Beautifully shot by Ebrahim Gafori (A Time For Drunken Horses), this is another reminder of the artistic ferment brewing within the fundamentalist pressure cooker of 21st Century Iran. Incidentally, Samira's uncle, Mezssam, made a documentary about this film entitled How Samira Made the Blackboards. I haven't seen it, but am duly impressed that one family has spawned three filmmakers. Also airs 5/24 at 10:00 AM and 9:35 PM.
Wednesday 05/21/03
3:20 PM Encore Action
Surviving the Game (1994 USA): Yeesh. Slim pickings indeed today, so I'm going off on a slightly different tangent and recommending this absurd remake of that old chestnut, The Most Dangerous Game (1932 USA). Instead of a handsome Joel McCrea, we have a dreadlocked Ice T (gratefully not dressed as a kangaroo) being pursued by a gang of bored rich hunters out for kicks, played by Gary Busey, Charles Dutton, John C. McGinley, F. Murray Abraham, and Rutger Hauer. Believe me, when these admittedly fine actors (Hauer is particularly good) get together in a scene - almost ANY scene - you'll feel like you're attending a Snidely Whiplash convention, as each of them tries to out villain the others. It's violent, filled with profanity, and thoroughly entertaining, in a mindless and very American way.
7:45 PM Sundance
Samia (2000 FRA): Ah, that's more like it - a nice little French film to cleanse the serious cineaste's palate. A mood piece and character study on the plight of the immigrant, the title character is a young Algerian girl who relocates with her family to Marseilles in the south of France. Played with insouciance by teenage Lynda Benahouda, Samia confronts the racism of the French natives on the one hand and the inflexible religiousness of her brother, the intractable Mohamed Chaouch, on the other. Also airs 5/24 at 11:30 AM.
Thursday 05/22/03
4:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
Westward Passage (1932 USA): This creaky RKO drama isn't all that great, but it's noteworthy for its cast, an enticing potpourri of actors including a 25-year-old Laurence Olivier, trying to make a go of it in Hollywood (he soon returned to the London stage), Zasu Pitts, Irving Pichel, Edgar Kennedy , and a very young Bonita Granville. Olivier plays an obsessed writer who divorces his wife (Ann Harding) in order to shed his responsibilities, only to hook up with her again whilst on a European vacation. Unfortunately, she's remarried, and things get dicey between her old hubby Olivier, determined to win her back, and new hubby (Pichel).
6:00 PM HBO
The Kid Stays In the Picture (2002 USA): Robert Evans' love song to himself is an enjoyable if not terribly enlightening look at the enfant terrible of Hollywood, a man who started his career by playing producer Irving Thalberg in the biopic Man of A Thousand Faces (1957 USA) and ended up mimicking the role in real life by producing many of Paramount's best films of the 1970s. Evans got the Thalberg role because Thalberg's widow, Norma Shearer, insisted on it, inadvertently launching his career. The man has led a charmed life, and this film is the icing on a cake he arguably doesn't deserve, but his mark on American filmmaking can't be denied. Also airs at 9:00 PM, 5/23 at 2:20 AM and 5:20 AM, and on HBO 2 5/25 at 8:00 AM and 11:00 AM.
8:35 PM IFC
Funny Games (1997 AUT): The tale of two handsome young men (Arno Frisch and Frank Giering) who torture a family of three to death, Funny Games is anything but amusing. One can envision Peter and Paul (or Beavis and Butthead, as they call each other throughout the film) in black SS uniforms, one with a riding crop in his hand whilst the other drops a canister of Zyklon B through the ceiling. The acting is superb throughout, and the film's setup for a sequel is a neat tip of the hat to the slasher genre. Compelling but hard to watch, Funny Games is loved and loathed in equal measure by those who see it and is guaranteed to disturb all but the most jaded viewers.
Friday 05/23/03
3:00 AM More Max
Blowup (1966 GB): It's not being aired widescreen, but I can't ignore one of my favorite movies of all time in ANY format, so even if this were airing via a truncated 8MM sell through print from Blackhawk Films I'd be recommending it. Blowup is one of the great puzzle pieces of cinema, a film you probably won't understand even after multiple viewings (assuming there is something to understand), but succeeds nonetheless as a unique piece of psychedelic existentialism. David Hemmings stars as Thomas, a hip young photographer whose camera never sleeps, ultimately leading him to a tantalizing and unsolvable mystery in the local park. Directed with an unerring eye for detail by Michaelangelo Antonioni, this was the film maker's last work until 1970, when his bizarre failure Zabriskie Point ended with a literal blowup of consumer detritus. Featuring a brief appearance by The Yardbirds - minus Eric Clapton, plus Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck - and featuring a groovy score by Herbie Hancock, Blowup is irresistibly confounding.
Saturday 05/24/03
7:00 AM Fox Movies
Tribes (1970 USA): Once upon a time there was a young actor with an angelic face and a modicum of ability who seemed bound for stardom. (No, I'm not talking about Tom Green.) Sadly, Jan-Michael Vincent squandered his good looks (and his merely average acting talents) on a life of substance abuse and straight-to-video junk. Here's the TV movie that won him widespread attention, a Vietnam-era drama about a Marine Corps D.I. (Darren McGavin) disgusted with the crop of draftees he's supposed to train, one of whom is a particularly recalcitrant societal dropout (Vincent). Directed by the still-hyperactive Joseph Sargent (Colossus: the Forbin Project (1970 USA), amongst many others) and written sharply by Tracy "son of Keenan" Wynn (The Longest Yard), Tribes also features a bit part by the supremely geeky Bud Cort.
12:15 PM Flix
Fantastic Planet (1974 CZH-FRA): It was the mid 1970s. I was a prepubescent twelve year old in need of movie kicks. I was interested in science fiction and Fantastic Planet, marketed as a science fiction cartoon, was showing at the local Bijou. I roped my mother into going to see it. (Can you imagine a time when a film like this played in Middle America? It really happened!) She still hasn't forgiven me.
Over 25 years later, the film re-appeared on cable for the first time in ages, and as fate would have it my parents were on one of their infrequent visits from England the very day it was on. What could be more perfect than the opportunity to bond with Mum after all these years over a film she had hated and I had been totally puzzled by? Well, quite a bit actually, as she STILL hated it and I decided that it really was a rather pretentious piece of old codswallop (as my Granddad used to say). Nonetheless, fans of anime, Czech film, or adult animation in general will probably enjoy this odd fable of life, death, and rebirth on an alien planet strangely similar to our own. It's being shown widescreen and its electronic music score, courtesy of Serge Gainsbourg collaborator Alain Gorageur, is actually pretty decent.
Sunday 05/25/03
1:00 AM Encore Love Stories
Born Yesterday (1950 USA): This delightful screwball comedy stars Judy Holliday as the rough-edged gal pal of a tycoon (Broderick Crawford) who hires William Holden to give the little lady lessons in refinement. Based on a play by Garson Kanin, Born Yesterday is a superb example of George Cukor's eye for romantic comedy and a sad reminder of Holliday's talent, snuffed out by breast cancer at the age of 43.
9:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Big Parade (1925 USA): One of the greatest American silent films, The Big Parade is King Vidor's anti-war masterpiece, and a film long overdue on DVD. Starring John Gilbert as the idle rich son of an industrialist, the film follows him to France where he falls in love with a local woman (Renee Adoree) and becomes friends with his working class comrades-in-arms, including the always great Karl Dane and Tom O'Brien. Clocking in at an epic length 141 minutes, this is an unforgettable and moving piece of art that all serious film fans should see.
