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October 2008 Archives
WATCH THIS: Watergate and Arab music
October 31, 2008 2:19 PM
Politics and entertainment meet in two must-see ways this weekend. Watergate becomes a Hollywood drama, and Arab musicians cross cultural boundaries to join forces with American rockers.
The musical explorations of people connected with The Police continue in Dissonance and Harmony (Sunday at 10 p.m. ET, PBS; check local listings). In this documentary from group manager Miles Copeland (who was raised in the Middle East), American musicians like Nile Rodgers, Charlotte Caffey of The GoGos, and Wu-Tang Clan's RZA work with artists visiting from Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. It's part of PBS' globetrotting film series America at a Crossroads. (Watch previews here.)
The same night, former Nixon administration counsel John Dean joins Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne for a screening of 1976's All the President's Men (Sunday at 8 p.m. ET, TCM). Dean discusses the Alan Pakula movie's take on the Watergate scandal, starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as real-life Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. It's one of those rare films that manages to convey the workaday reality of reportorial digging and journalistic decision-making.
HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: 'Phantom of the Paradise,' 'Young Frankenstein'
October 30, 2008 12:38 PM
Fright flicks and creepy comedy are all over the tube for Halloween. No Roseanne celebrations, unfortunately -- her Halloweens were always so frightfully fun -- but lots of other ghoulish goodies. Young Frankenstein. Phantom of the Paradise. The Munsters. And more.
Turner Classic Movies is already unreeling its 48 Hours of Horror marathon, running Thursday and Friday with vintage tales from the 1930s to 1970. Thursday's treats lean toward mid-century low-budgeters from William Castle and Roger Corman, and foreign-made frights. Friday's toppers include Val Lewton's 1942 original Cat People (Friday at 7:30 a.m. ET), Tod Browning's long-banned sideshow chiller Freaks (Friday at 9 a.m. ET), and the Underground double feature of Herschell Gordon Lewis' Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs! (Friday night at 2:30 and 3:45 a.m. ET).
AMC's round-the-clock Fearfest continues toward its Friday conclusion with recent titles like Keanu Reeves' Constantine (Thursday at 8 p.m., Friday at 5:30 p.m. ET) and library classics like Jamie Lee Curtis' Halloween (Friday at 9:30 a.m. ET).
Young Frankenstein, the fine Mel Brooks-Gene Wilder horror lampoon, gets appropriately classic treatment from Fox Movie Channel. First there's the half-hour retrospective It's Alive: Creating a Monster Classic (Thursday at 10 p.m., Friday at noon and 5:30 p.m. ET), then the 1974 blockbuster itself (Thursday at 10:30 p.m., Friday at 12:30 and 6 p.m. ET).
The Munsters runs non-stop on WGN from 4 p.m. to midnight ET, with '70s fright-fiend rocker Alice Cooper hosting the '60s sitcom marathon.
E! contributes a showbiz cheesefest: Doomed to Die? 13 Most Shocking Hollywood Curses (Friday at 8 p.m. ET), outlining the curses, jinxes and misfortunes related to Superman, The Exorcist, James Dean and other tinseltown names.
Dee Snider's Dead Art (Friday 8 p.m.-1 a.m. ET, Gallery HD) tours world cemeteries filled with classic art, architecture and famous names. (Full episodes also stream online here.)
History Channel's Primal Fear (Friday at 10 p.m. ET) explores our instinctual responses to such common fears as being buried alive or attacked by monsters. (More Halloween history here.)
And the best for last:
Brian DePalma's delirious Phantom of the Paradise is Fox Movie Channel's Fox Legacy classic of the week (Friday night at 8, 10 and midnight ET). This 1974 gem is an astonishingly ambitious mix of Faust, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Phantom of the Opera and rock music burlesque, chronicling a composer's descent after 
making a deal with a rock mogul for immortality. Paul Williams -- yes, the '70s popster who wrote Carpenters songs -- not only plays the villainous mogul with slimy relish, but also composed the song score that smartly sends up death doowop, surf music, glam rock and other genres. Keep your eyes (and ears) open. The music/movie/literary references come fast and furious.
WATCH THIS: Opie for Obama
October 27, 2008 6:29 PM
Oh, lord, look at the rugs! From top to bottom, Ron Howard and Henry Winkler sacrifice big time in this FunnyorDie.com video, made in support of Barack Obama but wild to watch whichever candidate you like. See the big-time director channel his inner Opie (with help from Andy Griffith!) and Richie Cunningham.
FLICK PICKS: 'To Be or Not to Be'
October 27, 2008 2:57 PM
The way politics is today, the way world conflicts are evolving, the way we take everything so seeeriously, there's something to be said for finding ways to make your salient point with humor.
To Be or Not to Be (Monday at 8 p.m. ET, Turner Classic Movies) is right up there with Dr. Strangelove in attacking the most horrific threat with pungent humor. Like Stanley Kubrick's 1964 black comedy about The Bomb, Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 take on the Nazis looks right into the teeth of the beast and takes it down with well-aimed mockery.
Carole Lombard gets her last hurrah as TCM's October star of the month in this unusual comedy about a Polish theater troupe struggling to operate under the thumb of Hitler's troops. Surprisingly adult for its era in terms of sexuality, too, the script finds Lombard's married actress character having an affair with a handsome young pilot (Robert Stack), whose anti-Nazi efforts enlist both her and her cuckolded husband, as embodied by an underrated Jack Benny, who finds himself forced to impersonate German officers under desperate conditions.
The "Lubitsch touch" of sparkling wit and romance leavens the tough-sledding subject matter, which had to be no mean feat, considering that Lubitsch and story author Melchoir Lengyel had themselves fled their fascist-occupied homelands (Germany and Hungary, respectively).
It's followed on TCM by another unlikely comedy -- one from Alfred Hitchcock. Lombard and Robert Montgomery partner as not-legally-wed marrieds in her next-to-last film, 1941's Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Monday at 10 p.m. ET, TCM).
TV WORTH BUYING: 'West Wing' sale!
October 27, 2008 12:31 PM
By the way, if you're pining for a presidential candidate with the moxie of good ol' Jed Bartlet, the complete series set of The West Wing is today's deal of the day at Amazon.com, priced at just $115 (off a list price of $300).
In addition to all seven seasons of NBC's Emmy winner starring Martin Sheen, the 45-disc set in an impressive navy blue presentation box also includes a glossy episode guide and Aaron Sorkin's pilot script.
Click here to buy.
FLICK PICKS: Chaney's gonna get you
October 26, 2008 12:13 PM
The movies' original frightmeisters strut their stuff tonight on Turner Classic Movies. And 80 years later, it still holds up.
Makeup maven Lon Chaney, Hollywood's "man of a thousand faces," met his match in director Tod Browning, later to attain immortality with the sound classics Dracula (originally slated to star Chaney, who died first) and Freaks. But silent films may have been their ultimate medium, building moods more in our minds than on screen -- though the images they created there were pretty disturbing, too.
The Blackbird (Sunday night at midnight on TCM) let Chaney do double-jointed double duty, as the benevolent Bishop and his cunning crime lord alter ego, the title character. [Photo at left.]
A year later, in 1927, with The Unknown (Sunday night at 1:30 a.m. on TCM), Browning and Chaney upped the creep quotient further, in what Wikipedia calls "the most intense and demented" of Browning's films (which, remember, include Freaks).
Chaney plays a circus troupe's "armless wonder" [photo at top], initially a two-armed cheat who later becomes what he would pretend, under truly twisted circumstances. (What else could you call doing something gruesome for the love of Joan Crawford?)
Take a taste in clips here.
WATCH THIS: 'Flintstones' marathon
October 23, 2008 7:41 PM
So many channels, so little capacity. That's why many cable systems still aren't offering channels that have been around for awhile. Like Boomerang, the "classic" Cartoon Network spinoff that's been around since 2000, yet still reaches relatively few cable homes as a full-service channel. (Comcast and other systems sometimes offer Boomerang shows on-demand.)
Too bad, since Boomerang frequently busts it out with cool vintage cartoons. This Sunday, Oct. 26, Boomerang lines up musical episodes of The Flintstones from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. ET. Who could forget the immortal "Ann Margrock Presents"? "Surfin' Fred"? Or "Shimrock A-Go-Go"?
Excuse our cynicism, but we also notice this Boomerang event airs just as corporate sibling Warner Home Video prepares to street The Flintstones: The Complete Series on Tuesday, Oct. 28 -- a limited edition gift set with all 6 seasons in a box shaped like a stone-age TV set. List price is $130, though Amazon.com has it here for $90.
If you'd rather not drop that many rocks, and if you do have Boomerang (DirecTV and Dish carry it), you can always watch The Flintstones weekdays at 6:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET. Boomerang offers such other oldies as The Jetsons, The Smurfs, Yogi Bear, Top Cat and Pink Panther. Peruse the lineup here.
HBO-equipped masochists can also check out the live-action movie The Flintstones, a 1994 dud starring John Goodman, Weeds wonder Elizabeth Perkins, Rick Moranis and Rosie O'Donnell. It's screening via HBO On Demand, and on HBO Comedy, too, Monday at 1:50 p.m. and midnight ET. Also Halloween morning at 8:15 ET. Scary indeed.
OH, NO: Why you shouldn't tune into World Series games until at least 8:30 p.m. ET
October 22, 2008 3:29 PM
Is there nothing that cannot be somehow politicized in this wacky presidential election year? Could we please stop treating momentous current events like some handy celebreality/amusement/promotional platform?
"Throughout our history, this country has faced times of peril," intones this World Series montage from Fox, attempting to appropriate football's God-and-country vibe. "But standing by our side, as it does tonight, has been baseball."
Then the Fox montage salutes soldiers taking baseball breaks from the "bleeding battlefields" of the Civil War.
Oh. No.
Direct from the Fox press release:
MCCAIN & OBAMA HELP OPEN WORLD SERIES ON FOX -- With Election Day just around the corner, presidential candidates (and baseball fans) Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama took time out of their hectic campaign schedules to take an active role in FOX Sports' World Series coverage. Each candidate recorded inspirational quotes from American icons including Martin Luther King, Jr. and former presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy about the game of baseball as a beacon of hope through some of America's most difficult times. These quotes will be woven into the opening segment of each World Series broadcast. Academy Award-winning actor Michael Douglas narrates the open for World Series Game 1 between the Philadelphia Phillies and Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday, Oct. 22 at 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT on FOX.
Kinda makes you wish for TBS-style transmission woes . . .
WEIRD & WILD: 'The World's Greatest Sinner' on TCM
October 21, 2008 12:15 PM
Look up "weird" in the dictionary, and you might well find the 1962 flick The World's Greatest Sinner, a bizarre odyssey of anointedness in rock music, religion and politics that unreels Friday night at 2 a.m. ET on Turner Classic Movies' Underground showcase.
Writer-director-star Timothy Carey -- "a rough-hewn, riveting beastie" -- took on his messianic project after slathering his twisted intensity over supporting parts in The Killers, Paths of Glory, One-Eyed Jacks and the immortal 1957 four-waller Poor White Trash.
No words can do it justice, but The World's Greatest Sinner captures ego on the rampage for both its protagonist and its maker. It's a breakneck parade of omnivorous blasphemy that's been called "the most inspiring depth-charge ever put on film."
Straight outta El Monte (the L.A.-'burb where this low-budgeter was filmed), Carey plays an insurance salesman who uses rock and roll to present himself as a new god, through spellbinding rhythms that inspire riots, a presidential campaign and underage sex. If that weren't wild enough, the outrageous movie's music comes courtesy of Frank Zappa, when this mother of invention was just 22 and beginning his career as a "musical bicyclist." (Zappa promotes "the world's worst movie" to Steve Allen in the vintage TV talk show clip here.)
Watch Carey mesmerize his rock flock:
WEIRD & WILD: Paul Newman hits the ice for 'old-time hockey!'
October 17, 2008 5:34 PM
One more Paul Newman post, and I'm done. (For now, anyhow.) The late actor won Oscars, made millions for charity, and did much more to be remembered for. But I'm willing to wager he'll live longest in fans' hearts for one performance that snooty cineastes might be too inclined to discount.
The foul-mouthed, two-fisted hockey comedy, yes. But it's THE movie of the sport. And while hockey may not be the biggest sport (except in Canada), it's likely the one with the most dedicated fan base -- fans who loooove their somewhat marginalized game and loooooove this movie with a compulsive passion. I know because I'm one of them, with an annual viewing of Slap Shot something akin to revisiting a shrine, reciting the lines along like prayers, paying ritual homage to the core of the sport we adore.
Now this 1977 classic is available on-demand through Oct. 23 in many Starz cable households -- and in HD, too! It's also airing on digital cable/satellite's RetroPlex channel Saturday, Oct 25 at 11:20 p.m., Oct. 30 at 3:15 p.m., and the night of Oct. 30 at 1:15 a.m. (If you miss it, the 25th anniversary DVD with extras is just $10 here, and well worth it.)
Starring as a not-as-smart-as-he-thinks player/coach for a two-bit team in a podunk town, Newman absolutely nailed the game's feisty esprit, its rhythm and flow, and the knockabout nature of its working-class workforce and fandom. Not to mention the brawling, in all its bench-clearing '70s glory. And the skating, in which the then 52-year-old looked surprisingly like a lifer on the ice. Reunited with director George Roy Hill from The Sting and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the pair recreated those hits' warmth and warped wit, along with the cameraderie, here of a minor-league team in a dying mill town that needs something to believe in. Which adds social commentary to the story, too.
Not that that's why we watch. There are, of course, the immortal Hanson brothers, the adolescent trio of long-haired, four-eyed brawlers forever "puttin' on the foil" to punch opponents lights out (or pummel vending machines that "took my quarter!"). There's the promotional "exposure" of an ill-fated players' fashion show. There are the machinations of Newman's Reggie Dunlop when he fears the team may be folding, and his byplay with old Cool Hand Luke nemesis Strother Martin as the team's wheeler-dealer manager (with the story about the guy who purposely got himself sent to the penalty box so he could -- well, play in a different way). And last but not least -- spoiler alert! -- there's the climactic on-ice striptease by hot bod college boy Michael Ontkean, as the team plays desperately for the championship and a modicum of self-respect.
But all the details of the game (and the life) are what make Slap Shot resonate so enduringly. Amid the fireworks and fistfights lie evocative characters studied movingly in their devotion to the ice and each other. Newman, Hill and scriptwriter Nancy Dowd -- in the '70s, nobody believed a woman (!) could write something this bleeping vulgar -- are so deep inside the hockey persona that fans feel immersed in this movie. We know this game, and these people, and they know us, and how we feel about them. Hockey, even in its major league form, is probably still the sport closest to its fans and least impressed with its own (arguable) importance.
Of course, Slap Shot is also just rudely, crudely, gut-bustingly funny. As the 1977 theatrical trailer accurately opined (watch it here), "There's never been a film like Slap Shot. There may never be another."
FLICK PICKS: TCM gangsterama!
October 15, 2008 1:25 AM
James Cagney has always been my favorite actor, but it took Orson Welles to explain why. Hearing the auteur admire him in the 1988 profile With Orson Welles: Stories from a Life in Film (why isn't this wonder on DVD?!), I finally understood Cagney's visceral appeal in cerebral terms: "What is more unreal and stylized than Cagney? It's a totally stylized, unreal performance. No human being ever behaved the way he does. And every moment of Cagney's entire life in films is truth. He never had a second that wasn't true."
That's certainly confirmed in the bookend films of Tuesday night's Turner Classic Movies tribute to Public Enemies: The Golden Age of the Gangster, which is also the title of a new 8 p.m. documentary about what may be my favorite classic film genre.
After narrator Alec Baldwin lays out the case, the evidence follows:
- 9:45 p.m. -- The Public Enemy (1931), Cagney's breakthrough film about an ill-fated Prohibition bootlegger, directed like a fusillade by William Wellman.
- 11:15 p.m. -- The Amazing Doctor Clitterhouse (1938) -- Edward G. Robinson as a scientist flirting with the dark side to better study crime, as embodied by star-to-be Humphrey Bogart.
- 12:45 p.m. -- Invisible Stripes (1939) -- George Raft gets out of the joint, just as younger brother William Holden is acting up to go in, with help from Bogart.
- 2:15 a.m. -- Larceny Inc. (1942) -- Edward G. again, this time comedically discovering that getting out of crime might pay just as well.
- 4 a.m. -- White Heat (1949) -- A coda for the '30s gangster generation, speeding toward modernity. Cagney leads a small-time gang with his mother, to whom he has a strange psychological attachment.
Cagney continually rips the roof off the sucker in that finale, directed by Raoul Walsh toward a literally explosive climax. But their film was figurately putting a period to the dwindling gangster genre. It had been born out of the post-World War prohibition and Depression, at precisely the moment that budding sound movies needed its force, fury and chatter -- both human and Tommy-gun. By 1949, a more complex society was emerging out of the Second World War, to be defined more by the guy in the grey flannel suit than the street thug.
TCM's lineup of public enemies is easy to quibble with -- no Little Caesar, no Scarface, no Roaring Twenties? -- but also easy to enjoy. Consider it a primer for one of the most robust movie genres, and also one of the most relevant, reflecting the sociology of the time as much as the egos of its exponents -- and legendary portrayers.
WEIRD & WILD: Tart 'Chocolate News'
October 13, 2008 1:38 PM
If only David Alan Grier had been on the case on-air for weeks already. But maybe it's best he waited till now to unleash his new Comedy Central lampoon Chocolate News (premiering Wednesday night at 10:30 ET). Right before this contentious election is when we need pointed parody most. And Grier's had plenty of time to polish his satire to a shiny black sheen.
In the campaign report video below (from Oct. 22's episode), the In Living Color star says reluctant whites could vote for "the white half" of Barack Obama -- "He barely passes the brown paper bag test!" Remember, he declares, "the Republicans have an ex-prisoner whose running mate is a heat-packin' mama of five with a knocked-up teenage baby mama. And that's the white option?"
Clearly, Grier's packin' his own (comedic) heat. "This is not your father's investigative news -- it's your baby daddy's," he says with a smile in promos for his race-based take on everything pop culture, from politics to hip-hop to porn to Tyler Perry.
See Chocolate News promos here, topped by Grier's gotcha tagline: "It's only racist if you are."
Try wiggling out of that one.
FLICK PICKS: Lombard & cable
October 13, 2008 11:28 AM
[UPDATED for Monday, Oct. 13:]
The lady is a scamp. And a sex bomb. And a sophisticate. And a screwball queen.
Carole Lombard was the whole package, which not enough movie fans realize today, since Lombard died at the age of 33 -- at the height of her Hollywood fame, yes, but before she could cement the eternal name recognition of a Davis or Crawford.
And Lombard is likely more incomparable than those golden-age icons, as this month's Monday Star of the Month screenings on Turner Classic Movies make sparklingly clear. She was less a personality than a stunningly flexible actress, who could ace dizzy satire, romantic comedy, hearttugging drama and more. She could even land Clark Gable as a husband in real life. Imagine what might have been, had Lombard not died in a plane crash during a 1942 war bonds tour.
TCM's 18-film stash also spotlights how modern Lombard plays in comparison with many of Hollywood's studio-era divas. Maybe that's because she wasn't so much selling herself -- as a "star," bigger than life -- as she was selling what her films wanted to say. And that's plenty.
Here's a look at TCM's Lombard lineup for Monday, Oct. 13:
My Man Godfrey (8 p.m. ET) -- One of Lombard's most widely seen comedies (thanks to public domain video), this 1936 gem casts her as a screwball heiress who turns a hobo (former husband William Powell) into the family butler. (Photo above. Clip/trailer preview here.)
No Man of Her Own (10 p.m. ET) -- Made in 1933, Lombard's sole film with husband(-to-be) Clark Gable follows the strange romance of a gambler (him) and a librarian (her).
Fools for Scandal (11:30 p.m. ET) -- Another odd romance, from 1938, between an American movie star and a slumming French lord.
Swing High, Swing Low (1 a.m. ET) -- Lombard and Fred MacMurray reteam in 1937 as a cruise passenger and a would-be musician who cross paths in Panama.
Here's a look at TCM's Lombard lineup for Monday, Oct. 6:
Twentieth Century (8 p.m. ET) -- John Barrymore gets top billing in Howard Hawks' 1934 gem as a volatile Broadway director, but Lombard steals the show as the leading lady he tries to win back during a cross-country train trip. (Photo at left.)
Hands Across the Table (9:45 p.m. ET) -- Long before "My Three Sons," Fred MacMurray was a swell movie star, as seen in this warm 1935 romantic comedy from Mitchell Leisen.
Nothing Sacred (11:15 p.m. ET) -- William Wellman savages celebrity in 1937's screwballer about hoaxing reporter Fredric March turning the "dying" Lombard into a national sensation. (See photo at top.)
Also 1934's Lady by Choice (12:45 a.m. ET) and The Gay Bride (2:15 a.m. ET), sandwiching a 1935 Warner Bros. Goof Reel (2:05 a.m. ET).
Tune back in on Mondays Oct. 13 (titles include My Man Godfrey with William Powell and No Man of Her Own, a pre-marriage pairing with Gable), Oct. 20 (early offerings like 1929's talkie The Racketeer), and Oct. 27, when TCM's tribute wraps with a don't-miss double feature -- Ernst Lubitsch's immortal Nazi farce To Be or Not to Be with Jack Benny, and Alfred Hitchcock's comedy (yes, comedy) Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Robert Montgomery (photo at right).
TCM's entire Lombard tribute is detailed here.
WEIRD & WILD: Cartman vs. China
October 6, 2008 6:56 PM
Obviously, Comedy Central's publicists haven't heard Lou Dobbs rant lately. Here's what their press release has to say about the semi-season return of South Park this Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET:
"Cartman seems to be the only person aware of the gathering threat the Chinese pose to the United States in an all-new episode of South Park entitled 'The China Problem' ... After watching the intimidating opening ceremonies of the recent Olympic Games, Cartman understands that the Chinese are only just days away from invading his homeland. While the rest of the American people are haunted by the memory of a recent tragic event, only Butters will stand with Cartman as he confronts the Chinese."
Topical? Sure. Smart? Probably. Offensive? Undoubtedly.
Look at the art above.
And then be there.
