TCM
TiVo ALERT
For
November
8-November 14
DAVID’S
BEST BETS:
THE
SLAMS (November 9, 3:45 am): TCM's Star of the Month is
Burt Lancaster. If he made a bad film, I haven't seen it so watch
anything with him in it that you can. As for my picks for the
week, The Slams comes with my highest
recommendation, particularly if you love the Blaxploitation genre.
I'm a huge fan. Two years after 1971's Shaft, The
Slams stars real-life bad-ass Jim Brown as a bad ass. He
plays Curtis Hook, an angry black man who turns to crime because The
Man has kept him down. Tired of that, Hook turns to crime, but has a
moral compass. He and a couple of white guys kill drug dealers taking
their money, $1.5 million, and their dope, though Hook does nearly
all of the work. Hook hides the money and isn't interested in the
heroin as it's bad for the brothers and sisters in the 'hood. His two
partners teach him the valuable lesson not to trust Whitey. Hook ends
up in prison, or the Slams as the brothers call it. That's when the
fun begins. Brown needs to escape to get the money as well as watch
himself as there are plenty of people who want the money and want to
kill Hook. With the help of the neighborhood pimp, who helps a
brother out, Cook is able to escape from the Slams in a portable
toilet. While not a great actor, Brown is solid as the lead in this
entertaining film.
SCENES
FROM A MARRIAGE (November 12, 3:00 am): Originally a
281-minute Swedish TV mini-series aired in 1973, Ingmar Bergman
condensed Scenes From a Marriage to a 169-minute
film released worldwide a year later. Like nearly all Bergman movies,
it's great. It's the story of divorce lawyer Marianne (Liv Ullmann)
and college professor Johan (Erland Josephson), who've been married
for 10 years. They seem to have a solid relationship, but appearances
are deceiving. A smile isn't simply a smile. It's filled with
emotions ranging from love to anger. The film explores the ups and
downs of the next 20 years of their marriage, including affairs,
considerations of divorce, the tension between the couple and the
challenges they experience. It's Bergman so the cinematography and
insightful dialogue are brilliant. Bergman and his actors,
particularly Ullmann and Bibi Andersson in a secondary but important
role, shed light on the evolution of marriage – sometimes in
ways that make the viewer uncomfortable because seeing the truth is
the last thing we want. The film is incredibly engrossing, intense,
brutally honest while also beautiful and touching. There are few
directors who understand life and have the ability to translate that
into not only watchable movies, but ones that are enlightening and
captivating. Bergman was not only among those few, but he was the
best at it, and Scenes From a Marriage is a perfect
example.
ED’S
BEST BETS:
THE
MATCH KING (November 8, 8:15 am): A wonderful, if
underrated, Pre-Code film starring that great, if underrated actor,
Warren William, at his debonar cad best. Based on the true
story of financial swindler Ivar Kruegar, whose shenanigans brought
down several banks and deepened an already bad Depression, William is
Paul Kroll, a man who gets an idea of cornering the market in
something that is not only necessary, but cal also be easily produced
– matches. We first meet him as a street sweeper outside Wrigley
Field in Chicago. His talents for deceit and easy manner eventually
take him to the top of the business world, from whence he falls, and
falls hard. William gives a smooth, clean performance as Kroll, with
the only weak spot in the film being Lily Damita, in a thinly veiled
Greta Garbo. Damita, who later married Errol Flynn and Michael
Curtiz, gives a performance that calls for a strong director with
experience with women. Unfortunately, the directors of this film –
Howard Bretherton and William Keighley – were Warners’
assembly-line directors, more concerned with getting it out on time
than with performances. However, it remains a most entertaining 79
minutes. Watch for the always-entertaining Glenda Farrell as
William’s girlfriend – and first victim.
MY
NAME IS JULIA ROSS (November 14, 8:00 pm): Great
B-noir from director Joseph H. Lewis starring Columbia starlet Nina
Foch and a young innocent who answers a newspaper ad for a job and
winds up as the prisoner of a crazy family. It’s a great old style
Gothic thriller that, despite its low budget, never fails to amaze
me, now matter how many times I’ve seen it. Lewis, who worked his
way up from Poverty Row productions, knows how to save a buck without
sacrificing quality, and this is his breakout film, one that would
lead to bigger and better things. Foch is the perfect casting as the
young innocent, with Dame May Whitty (Miss Froy in The Lady
Vanishes) as her sinister employer, with George Macready (Gilda)
as her demented son, Ralph. Film history buffs should look for the
oddly named Ottola Nesmith as Mrs. Susan Robinson. A character actor
working in film since 1913, Nesmith would later surface on television
on KTLA in Hollywood hosting late night horror films.
WE
DISAGREE ON ... ENTER THE DRAGON (November 11, 12:45 am)
ED:
B-. Were I rating
this film by the influence it has had on the martial arts genre since
its release, the grade would be A+. However, I must grade it by what
it actually is - a B movie. Compared to the usual production values
of kung fu films coming from China at the same time, this would be an
A-production. It's Bruce Lee's last film before his death, and also
stars such martial arts luminaries as Jim Kelly, Angela Mao, Bolo
Cheung, and Jackie Chan in a small role. John Saxon, who plays Roper,
was known as a good, though not great, actor. But compared to Bruce
Lee he comes off like John Gielgud. It's knot that I don't like the
film. It's great entertainment, but compared to the likes
of Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon or House
of the Flying Daggers,
with great production values, superb direction and great acting, it
comes off as a distinctly poor relation. Hence the grade.
DAVID:
A+. Enter
the Dragon is
not only the most influential martial arts movie ever made, it is
also one of the finest action films you'll see. It was groundbreaking as the first Chinese/Hong Kong martial arts film
co-produced by a major American studio, Warner Brothers. Bruce Lee,
who died six days before the film's release, is dripping with
charisma – charisma that was already big at the box office.
Had Lee lived, he likely would have been cinema's greatest and most
successful action hero. Not only was his martial arts ability on
another planet, but his ease, charm, intensity and sense of humor
makes it impossible not to love his character. In this film, he plays
Lee, a Shaolin martial artist recruited by British intelligence to
infiltrate an island owned by Mr. Han, a wealthy major drug dealer
and a former Shaolin student kicked out for violating the code of
conduct. Han has an international martial arts tournament on his
island in which only the best compete for huge prize money. Of
course, Lee goes and befriends two American martial artists, Jim
Kelly (with a great afro) and John Saxon, an actor who does a nice
job playing a martial artist. The movie has many fantastic scenes,
but three stand out to me. The first, just before the opening credits
begin, has Lee give a lesson to a young student by asking him to kick
him. The student repeatedly fails, with Lee smacking him in the head
while giving him advice until he succeeds. Lee says, "Don't
think. Feel. It's like a finger pointing at the moon." The
student looks at the finger and gets smacked again. "Do not
concentrate on the finger or you will miss all of the heavenly
glory." The second has a drunk bully on a boat to Han's island
beating up the help. Lee sees this and agrees to fight the guy, who
asks about Lee's style. "You can call it the art of fighting
without fighting," Lee responds. The guy has to see it in action
and agrees to Lee's challenge to get in a dinghy to fight on a nearby
island. Lee simply unties the rope holding the dinghy with the people
previously bullied holding on to it, humiliating the man. The third
scene (seen here)
has Lee fighting O'Hara, Han's bodyguard. O'Hara also raped Lee's
sister and led her to commit suicide rather than be raped again. The
fight itself is less than four minutes long, but the story it tells
is utterly brilliant from the tense music to O'Hara breaking a board
leading Lee to calmly tell him, "Boards don't hit back," to
Lee flashing back to what happened to his sister to O'Hara getting a
beat-down. Some of the scene is filmed in slow motion for effect, but
also shows what an excellent martial artist Lee was and the great
pained expressions on his face. The scene culminates with a funny
moment that has a guy checking on an obviously dead O'Hara. The guy
gives the "he's dead" sign – moving his hand
across his neck. There are many more excellent scenes in the movie
including the massive fight between freed prisoners of Han and his
many henchmen, and the final showdown between Lee and Han in a room
of mirrors. I've seen this film at least 20 times, and enjoy it every time.
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