Set Your DVR!: October 6 - October 12, 2008

Hayden Childs — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Hi, Screengrab readers! For my first post, I thought I’d kick off a series in which I suggest various movies worth recording off of cable TV in the upcoming week. See, I know that since you read the Screengrab, you have a fairly solid grasp on the movies and movie history, but there’s always some that slip through the cracks. The movies I’ll mention here will give you a chance to catch up on those that you might have overlooked. If I miss something, please post it in the comments!

Here’s the skinny: I’m assuming, of course, that you’ve gone to the trouble of getting a DVR (or have a VCR you know how to set, at the very least) to go along with the cable you pay for month after month, but you don’t always keep an eye on upcoming movies. Since you’re reading the Screengrab, I’m not going to recommend movies that everyone recommends, such as Singin’ In The Rain (which, incidentally, I record just about every time it’s on, because I always have time to watch one of the dance numbers). I’m not going to be too esoteric, either. I’ll use an in-law test: I’ll stick with movies that I doubt my mother-in-law has seen, and that way will try to catch some of the great movies that are more likely to slip through the cracks. One more thing: no premium channels, mainly because I can’t afford them.

Mon, Oct. 6:
Nothing here. Good thing, too, since I’m not posting this until Tuesday Morning

Tues, Oct. 7:
9:00 am: Ace In The Hole on TCM. I don’t think this is a very good movie. But plenty of reviewers disagree with me, so I’m going to mention it. Actually, by the time this goes live, it'll probably be too late.

8:00 pm: Don’t Look Back on VH1CL (repeating at 11:30 pm). Maybe you’ve seen this, and maybe not. But it’s one of the great rock documentaries and, if you watch it, you’ll enjoy I’m Not There that much more.

Wed, Oct. 8:
11:45 pm: The Gay Divorcee on TCM. I mentioned I like dancing, right? This is Fred and Ginger at their best.

Th, Oct. 9:
1:45 am: Top Hat on TCM. I take those last comments back. This one is Fred and Ginger at their best.

7:00 pm: Four Jacques Tati films (Jour de Fete, Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, Mon Oncle, and Play Time) on TCM. Ah, the whimsy! Can you stand it? Honestly, I’ve only seen the last of these, and I wasn’t much taken with it at the time. But attitudes change. I intend to record ‘em all.

Fri, Oct. 10:
12:15 am: Play Time on TCM. Already mentioned this.

2:30 am: The General on TCM. Yeah, yeah, I know. Everyone should have seen this by now. But not everyone has, so I hereby recommend that you record and watch it if you fall into that camp.

3:45 am: The Navigator on TCM. Same deal as above.

5:00 am: Macbeth on TCM. This is Orson Welles’ 1948 version where everyone affects a crappy Scottish accent, even the actual Scots in the film. Welles’ accent in particular is so horrid and depressing that it may cause you to think less of Citizen Kane. However! This is one of those movies that has enough greatness and interest elsewhere - in this case, in the visual language of the film and the minor plot changes - that it’s worth a viewing despite its deficiencies.

7:00 am: Gerry on IFC. I love the hell out of Van Sant’s death trilogy (is that a spoiler? I’m not sure). Some viewers find them long and pointless, but I think all three have a transcendent beauty to them that gives meaning to the pointless death in each and begs the question: what’s the point of anyone’s death? In this one, two guys get lost in the desert. There’s a ten-minute tracking shot near the end where they walk from the dark into the morning sun without changing their positions to each other that I think is one of the prettiest scenes in all cinema. It’s almost Abstract Expressionism. Don’t watch it if you don’t like Rothko, but if you do, snap this one up.

8:00 pm: Dick on Oxygen (again at 10:00 pm). This movie looked stupid and fluffy in the previews, and I didn’t watch it until a friend forced it on me. It’s hilarious. Best as the second half of a double feature with All The President’s Men.

Sat, Oct. 11:
6:30 am: Journey Into Fear on TCM. Entertaining little spy thriller with Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten.

7:00 am: Samurai 2 on IFC. The second part of the epic trilogy. Even if you haven’t seen the first part, the plot is fairly self-explanatory and thoroughly enjoyable.

10:15 am: Primer on IFC (repeat at 3:00 pm). Smart, smart no-budget sci-fi thriller. I had to watch it a couple of times (and finally consult a website) to untangle the central mystery, but that’s part of the fun.

11:00 am: After The Thin Man on TCM. The second Thin Man movie. That’s all I need to say, right?

3:00 pm: The Haunting on TCM. This is the 1963 Robert Wise movie, not the awful remake. I recommended it to a friend last Halloween, and she told me it was the worst movie she’d ever seen. I think she’s very, very wrong. It still creeps me the hell out.

Sun, Oct. 12:
5:00 am: 24 hours of Paul Newman movies (The Rack, Until They Sail, Torn Curtain, Exodus, Sweet Bird Of Youth, Hud, Somebody Up There Likes Me, Cool Hand Luke, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Rachel, Rachel, and The Outrage) on TCM. Have you seen all of these? I haven’t. Go on, catch up on the guy’s work.

7:00 am: Cleo From 5 to 7 on IFC. Many classics of the French New Wave spend so much time and effort trying to unlock the mysterious, riddle-like conundrum of the enigmatic, baffling desires of oh-so-fickle womanhood that no one will forget they were made by men. This one was actually made by a women, and you can tell.

6:45 pm: Last Days on IFC (showing again Monday at 3:35 am). The third in Van Sant’s death trilogy. I suspect it plays much better if you don’t really care about Kurt Cobain. I don’t, and I loved it.

7:00 pm: Dave Chappelle’s Block Party on MTV2 (repeat on Monday at 5:00 pm). Aw yeah! Somehow Michel Gondry and Dave Chappelle combined forces to make a concert film that is good-natured, loose-limbed, and funny in ways that most concert films could not even conceive.

Mon, Oct. 13:
In case I’m late getting the next installment up on Monday, I just want to mention the following:

11:00 am: George Washington on IFC (repeat at 4:15 pm). Slow and thoughtful take on African-American youths in a go-nowhere Southern town directed by the guy who made Pineapple Express. Obvious influences: Terrence Malick and Charles Burnett.

2:00 pm: Vanishing Point on FMC. The lesser of the two great existential car movies of 1971 (Two-Lane Blacktop is the other). This one’s still a pop culture point-of-reference, especially for Tarantino movies. Definitely worth a viewing.

Mike D'Angelo at Sundance: Part 9

Peter Smith — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:05:00 GMT

Mike D'Angelo reports from the Sundance Film Festival:

As the festival winds down, some quick notes on movies I didn't have time to address earlier. (I'm gonna include the walk-outs here, despite the wrath of one reader who believes that saying anything at all about a movie you didn't see from start to finish constitutes dereliction of duty. Obviously, you should take such judgments with a grain or two of salt — and maybe an entire shakerful in the case of Ballast, which I'll very likely see again, and in full, at some point. But at the same time, you can get a mighty strong sense of a film in thirty-five to forty minutes.)

Traces of the Trade: A Story From the Deep North (Documentary Competition): Painfully earnest young woman with unbearably whiny voice — she narrates, alas — discovers that her esteemed ancestors were slave traders, corrals nine relatives for self-indulgent journey to sore spots from the family's past. For hardcore aficionados of liberal white guilt only. (W/O)

Time Crimes (Park City at Midnight): I'm a sucker for time-travel stories, but even I had trouble warming to this Spanish gloss on 2004 Sundance prizewinner Primer, in which a middle-aged schlub travels ninety minutes into the past and finds himself engaged in unwitting battle with other versions of himself who've developed wildly divergent agendas. Ineptly directed, for the most part, and the concluding twist is singularly unsatisfying. Come back, Shane (Carruth).

The Wave (World Cinema Dramatic Competition): German filmmaker Dennis Gansel turns the true story of a high-school history experiment gone awry into a glossy, pulse-pounding thriller, employing methods almost as fascistic as those of The Wave itself. Intentional irony? One can't help but be riveted by the spectacle of ordinary teenagers willingly submitting to autocratic rule — their überhip teacher is attempting to demonstrate that the Nazis weren't anomalous monsters — but earmarking one kid as emotionally unstable from the get-go means that we're just twiddling our thumbs as we await the inevitable moment when he finally snaps.

What Just Happened? (Premieres): Hollywood made yet another mildly lacerating self-portrait, that's what. Loosely based on the memoirs of producer Art Linson (Fight Club, Into the Wild, several Mamet films), it boasts the most relaxed De Niro performance in ages and a smattering of truly hilarious jokes, most of them involving out-of-control entitlement. Too bad Bruce Willis, sporting a Grizzly Adams beard that he refuses to shave prior to the start of filming on a new picture, isn't nearly as funny as Alec Baldwin must have been in real life. (Read Linson's equally diverting book for the lowdown; it happened on 1997's The Edge.)

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (Dramatic Competition): Michael Chabon's complicated first novel has been reduced (by Dodgeball's Rawson Marshall Thurber) to a simple bisexual love triangle, with two major characters — Arthur and Cleveland — melded into one, and another, the improbably named Phlox, distorted almost beyond recognition. And yet the movie still almost kinda works, mostly because Peter Sarsgaard commits himself so fully to his ludicrous bad-boy manipulator that we, like the dazed young protagonist, are completely taken in.

Downloading Nancy (Dramatic Competition): I'd had about enough of this repugnant exercise in nihilism at the point when Maria Bello, playing a masochistic housewife who's hired a stranger she found on the Internet (Jason Patric) to torture and kill her, walks barefoot into a mouse trap, over and over and over, shrieking with laughter each time it snaps on her toes. By all accounts from those who stuck it out, it gets much, much worse thereafter. At least the "revelation" that she was sexually abused as a child isn't saved for the final reel. (W/O)

The Screengrab : primer

Set Your DVR!: October 6 - October 12, 2008

Mike D'Angelo at Sundance: Part 9