This Week on Cable: Sympathy For the Weirdo
As if in sympathy for The Sorcerer's Apprentice's box-office wilt, the week in prime cable picks scans like a visit to Misfit Camp -- a barrage of movie freaks, oddballs, rejects and fringe-dwellers...
Grizzly Man (Sundance, Monday @ 8:00 PM & 1:35 AM)
Werner Herzog's first authentic found-footage movie (and one of three features he saw U.S.-released in 2005, this already-famous document is comprised largely of footage taken by Timothy Treadwell, the amateur conservationist and budding tele-zoologist who was killed and eaten by a grizzly bear in 2003. A failed actor, ex-surfer, and soul-searching recovered drinker, Treadwell videotaped his adventures, shooting the beasts hunting salmon and mating, and filming himself for hundreds of hours talking about the bears to the camera as if he were in fact taping a Discovery Channel series was never actually greenlit but got filmed -- often beautifully -- all the same.
XXY (@Max, Tuesday @ 1:20 AM)
Can hardly get more outside: This 2007 Argentine drama explores the family dynamics surrounding a 15-year-old who remains equipped with two sets of, shall we say, opposed genitalia, and who is being pressured to pick a gender identity so surgery can make him/her one or the other at last. Subtly acted if not so subtly conceived, but it may be the only serious movie of its kind.
The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder (Fox Movie Channel, Thursday @ 2:00 PM)
Not something you see on cable, or anywhere, very often. It's one of those incredibly questionable movies from the '70s (1974, exactly), directed by Arthur Hiller and concerning a 'Nam vet (Timothy Bottoms) who may be either crazy or just pretending, and is planning to escape from his mental ward and flee to Canada. Produced by Hugh Hefner and co-starring Barbara Hershey as the nurse/love interest.
The Long Goodbye (Thursday @ 11:35 PM)
The American '70s were kind to satire, and Altman's best films in that decade are Lasik cuts into American mythology. One of cinema's wittiest and savviest deconstructions, this 1973 neo-detective mystery transposes Raymond Chandler to the 'Nam era and ends up an anti-noir anthem, with Elliott Gould as a beleaguered, slovenly Philip Marlowe slumming around modern L.A. like an old dog who's lost his sense of smell.
Frozen River (Starz Cinema, Tuesday @ 6:10 PM)
A tiny, badly marketed blip, Courtney Hunt's 2008 indie thriller nevertheless got a lot of attention (and awards), and deserved it all -- as the indie sphere's low-class middle-aged American woman of the moment, strapped by poverty into cross-border smuggling, Melissa Leo almost got an Oscar.
The Gift (Showtime 2, Wednesday @ 4:00 PM)
Small-boned and tense, Sam Raimi's 2000 drama about a rural woman (Cate Blanchett) and the troubles that come to her door thanks to her telepathic abilities is much more the grown-up Raimi of A Simple Plan than the Spider-Man cash train engineer. Giovanni Ribisi steals the show.
Birthday Girl (Encore Mystery, Thursday @ 2:30 PM & 10:20 PM)
Is this the best acting Nicole Kidman has ever done? Few people have seen it, certainly. Jez Butterworth's 2001 movie is neo-Hitchcockian as it pits lonely bachelor Ben Chaplin against Kidman's Russian mail-order bride, who is definitely not what she seems.
Gretchen (Sundance, Wednesday @ 8:45 AM & 2:15 PM)
Steve Collins's debut indie, emerging at festivals in 2006, might be the creepiest funny-sad-sad-funny quasi-mumblecore no-budget farce of the decade. The titular high schooler is crippled by square-peg-ness, her Texas world is a squalid wasteland and the men she knows are all the same obese, malevolent jerks. Still, every scene is a surprise, the rhythms are unique and still truthful, and Courtney Davis, as the heroine, is an unblinking sphinx of discomfort.
El Mariachi (Encore Action, Tuesday @ 1:50 AM)
Robert Rodriguez came from nowhere in 1992 with this credit-card indie about a luckless strummer come to town and getting mistaken for a gang assassin.
13 Women (TCM, Tuesday @ 1:30 PM)
An unremarkable women's melodrama from 1932, starring Irene Dunne but also featuring one of early Hollywood's most notorious outcasts: Peg Entwistle, who two days after the film's release climbed up the H on the HOLLYWOODLAND sign and jumped to her death.
The Alligator People (Fox Movie Channel, Tuesday @ 8:31 AM)
The misfit is you -- and this Roy del Ruth's cheapo 1959 horror film has it all for you, from the authentic Bayou locations to the scientific experiments gone wrong to, yes, actors in full-body scale suits.
Coffee & Cigarettes (Showtime Next, Monday @ 8:00 PM)
A whole cast of misfits: In 2003, Jim Jarmusch assembles 13 shorts, each an eccentric, celebrity confab over cups 'o joe and some smokes, all shot in high-contrast black-&-white. The cast of lazy gadflies includes Bill Murray, Jack and Meg White (musing over a Tesla coil), Steve Buscemi, Steven Wright, Roberto Begnini, Cate Blanchett, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, etc.
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Comments
[shudder] Grizzly Man weirded me out for a solid 24-hour period.
Ugh. _Grizzly Man_ just pissed me off. Treadwell was an idiot.
I'm a little frustrated. Including XXY in the list of films literally is saying that people with intersex conditions -- such as genetic conditions Klinefelter's Syndrome (XXY genetic karyotype) -- are weirdoes because of genetic variance from the norm of XX or XY.
Intersex people with Klinefelter's Syndrome are people -- they are fully human. They don't have mental issues directly from their medical condition; they should not by medical condition alone be classified as weirdoes. Instead, it's societal norms that declare their variance from the genetic norm to be weird.
Frankly, I find authorMichael Atkinson's inclusion of XXY in his list of films defined as "Sympathy For the Weirdo" to be wrongheaded and irresponsible. Atkinson loads stigma on intersex people for no other reason than he appears not to understand them -- and shows no desire to define them as fully human..
Do you guys plan on watching the VMA's tonight?
Royal Canin, this is the best food for your dog. It gives them all the nutrients they need,,, and even comes with a measuring cup so you know how much to give what breed and age of dog, we usually give our dog some of this and then rotate the additional bits we put in his bowl. For example; cooked chicken breast, gravy, stewed steak (his fave), cheese. You get the point, the extra bits are for a change, coz our dog looses interest in his bowl if every time he is fed it looks the same.