It’s cinematic cornucopia time for the premium pay cable channels this week, especially since June transmogrifies into July midway through the seven days – and then there’s the whole flag waving, celebrate your country call of the fabled Fourth to take into consideration. With all those potential pitfalls in the way, it’s a wonder that the powers who program these channels have any nails left to nibble. Indeed, how do you keep them glued to the set when there are tons of illegal fireworks to purchase and play with? Harder still is the competition from the local Cineplex. Die Hard is back. Pixar is back. And Michael Bay and his robots in disguise are waiting in the wings. It’s clear that for many in the great unwashed demographic, television will be the last things on their BBQ and blockbuster minds. So cut the premium networks some slack. What they’ve got scheduled – including the SE&L selection for 30 June – is enough to make a dedicated couch potato smile:
Premiere Pick
A Prairie Home Companion
It’s a shame that Robert Altman had to leave this agreeable little gem behind as his last feature film. While many critics complimented its typical intertwined storylines, a few couldn’t get past the foundational material – i.e. Garrison Keillor’s twee Podunk radio show. In fact, it’s funny how many of the movie’s best bits seem to simultaneously embrace and deconstruct this perplexed personality’s Lake Wobegon stories, settings, and characters. Granted, it will be hard to see the sequences where the talent-free Lindsay Lohan battles mightily to keep in step with onscreen Mom Meryl Streep, but in the long run, this bright and brassy swansong for the fictional show will always be remembered as Altman’s last stand. And when measured against time honored masterworks like MASH, Nashville, 3 Women and Short Cuts, it has some hard company to keep in step with. Still, there is an impish kind of creativity here that shows the legendary director was still as sharp as ever. His remains a voice that will be sorely missed. (30 June, HBO, 8PM EST)
Additional Choices
Idlewild
It’s a sure sign of too much success. The duo known as Outkast (Andre 3000 and Big Boi), responsible for some of the most inventive and invigorating music in the last 10 years, parlay their popularity into a chance to create a full fledged movie musical. Oddly enough, the results are much better than one would have imagined. While the storyline is formulaic and the acting average, the songs really sell this amiable period piece. (30 June, Cinemax, 10PM EST)
The Guardian
Kevin Costner as a rough and tumble Coast Guard rescue swimmer instructor. Ashton “Demi” Kutcher is the high school athlete who thinks he’s hot spit. Together, they clash over conduct and duty while big fat CGI waves threaten innocent boaters on the high seas. If by that vague synopsis you can already see where this story is going, don’t be surprised. So did everyone else who actually paid to see this supposed action slop. (30 June, Starz, 9PM EST)
Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction
Who, besides Ms. Stone herself, still thinks she’s capable of rip-roaring erotic sexuality? Show of hands? The fading 49 year old must have been absolutely desperate to take up the Catherine Tramell mantel again, especially with all the stink she caused over certain sequences in the 1992 original. Of course, back then, she could pull off the seductress. Now she looks like a member of the Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? touring company. (30 June, ShowTOO, 9PM EST)
Indie Pick
The Aristocrats
Humor, like music, is a highly personal and subjective passion. Either something makes you laugh, or it doesn’t. So if you find incredibly vulgar and racy jokes to be the decline of Western civilization, perhaps you should skip this otherwise fascinating documentary by comedian Paul Provenza (with some help from outsider magician Penn Jilette). Taking a traditional dirty gag – a famed piece that’s been around since the earliest days of stand-up – and allowing dozens of current and former quipsters a chance to explain and riff on it, the obvious tact taken here is to discuss the concept of taboos and onstage envelope pushing. But Provenza also manages to sneak in some commentary on how society views such subjects, as well as how free speech and speaking freely may actually be two different things. If you can handle the bewildering ‘blueness’ of the material, you’ll thoroughly enjoy this devious discussion. (05 July, IFC, 8:25PM EST)
Additional Choices
The Cooler
One day, Alec Baldwin will get his Oscar. He deserves it, and he’s given plenty of performances worthy of such peer recognition. On the other hand, it’s hard to say if this movie contains his best work. Granted, back in 2004, the buzz was building on the actor’s turn as an old school casino boss. But come trophy time, he was barely acknowledged. That doesn’t take away from the film’s effectiveness, however. It’s very well done. (30 June, IFC, 9PM EST)
Control Room
Al Jazeera is the controversial Arab news channel that has both the Bush Administration and their right wing wiseguys up in arms. They claim the station merely functions as a mouthpiece of the region’s radicalized beliefs. The agenda-guided journalists there might not disagree. Filmmaker Jehane Noujaim finds himself smack dab in the middle of the melee as he exposes the truths, and the tricks, used by either side of the story on the War in Iraq to win support, both at home and abroad. (02 July, Sundance Channel, 7:30PM EST)
La Haine
The title is translated literally as ‘hate’, and there is plenty of said emotion in this amazing film from French director Mathieu Kassovitz. Addressing the despair and dissolution rampant in the ghettos surrounding Paris, we are introduced to three wayward youths who epitomize the current struggles (one’s black, one’s Arab, one’s a Jew). Aside from the obvious influence of American hip-hop and rap, the lack of power fuels a destructive, fatalistic rage inside them. Then one of them finds a gun. (03 July, Sundance Channel, 7:30PM EST)
Outsider Option
Grace of My Heart
Why has no one made a definitive film about the Brill Building? What? That name doesn’t ring a bell? Well, how about the songwriters who earned their music mythos while working in the historic hit factory – Lou Reed, Neil Diamond, Carol King, Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart? Perhaps it’s a question of publishing rights, but it seems that this subject has been ripe for a motion picture epic for far too long. The closest we’ve gotten is this Allison Anders effort that, while incredibly evocative of the time and place, must substitute newly minted melodies – and a girl power narrative center – to get its occasionally arch points across. To make matters even more meandering, the narrative includes fictionalized sketches of Phil Spector and Brian Wilson that just don’t seem to fit into the overall theme being explored. It’s a noble failure, however, one that argues for another go round with what is some highly substantive subject matter. (01 July, Indieplex, 5:05PM EST)
Additional Choices
West of Zanzibar/ The Unholy Three
Lon Chaney was not only the Man of a Thousand Faces, he was also one of the first major genre superstars. This inspired combination of Tod Browing classics, shows off the man’s amazing talent for mimicry more than his well known penchant for remarkable make-up. It’s too bad that he died so young, and that most of his creative canon is lost. Even here, toward the tale end of his career, Chaney remains a stark, stunning performance powerhouse. (29 June, TCM Underground, 2AM EST)
Squirm
Radioactive killer earthworms – you just can’t get more schlock than that. But writer/director Jeff Liebermann desperately tried to up the exploitation ante by setting the story in the steamy, slow-witted South, and piling on the hillbilly hokum. It more or less worked, as this passion pit staple proves. Liebermann leaves no hoary old cliché unturned, and even reinvents a few just for fun. The result is a dime store definition of the ‘so bad it’s good’ ideal. (30 June, Drive-In Classics Canada, 9PM EST)
Left In Darkness
Every once in a while, an inventive independent horror movie will come along, using intelligence and ideas to substitute for a lack of special effects and eerie eye candy. While less than stellar, it usually soothes the horror fan’s savaged breast. Well, this isn’t that kind of fright flick. Instead, it’s a moderately entertaining work of misapplied macabre that’s just barely coherent enough to be engaging. (06 July, Sci Fi Channel, 3AM EST)