Screen Picks

by Sam Adams

Tanner on Tanner (premieres Tue., Oct. 5, 9 p.m., Sundance Channel) No one likes to dwell on past failures, but it's good to see Jack Tanner back again. As a Democratic presidential candidate in the 1988 race, Tanner seemed hopelessly outmatched, a dark horse trailing the pack. But as an ex-candidate returning to the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Tanner is blissfully outside the fray, and while we're following him, we are as well.

Of course the pain of Tanner's distant defeat is eased further by the fact that he was never a real contender. The star of Robert Altman and Garry Trudeau's satirical mock documentary miniseries Tanner '88, just collected as a 2-disc Criterion set, Michael Murphy's Tanner was a bland, vaguely liberal cipher who found his spine too late and in the wrong place. (Does any of this sound familiar?) But if Tanner didn't make much of a showing in the polls, he's as good an ex-candidate as Jimmy Carter is an ex-president.

The new "interviews" with the characters that prefaced Sundance Channel's reairing of Tanner '88 earlier this year sometimes outstripped the episodes that followed, and the four-episode sequel Tanner on Tanner is no letdown. In a sense, the title is misleading, since the first Tanner is not Jack but his daughter Alex (Cynthia Nixon), who's grown from a Barnard firebrand into a self-styled radical, a documentary filmmaker fighting the system one credit-card film at a time. Her latest idea, no doubt motivated by exigency as much as inspiration, is to make a film about her father's run for office, a gimmick that will get her into the Boston convention, assuming her new Discover card arrives in time. Though devious cameraman Deke, now editing porno flicks to pay his bills, is still around, he's been functionally replaced by an eager young film student who's filming the making of Alex's film, and not above using some of Deke's old tricks to get what he needs. (To say more would spoil it, but suffice it to say that if watching Tanner '88 beforehand is not essential, it's bound to significantly increase your enjoyment.)

Tanner '88 satire hasn't aged so well, and Trudeau's writing often builds towards canned punchlines which subvert the documentary atmosphere, but Tanner on Tanner is a looser creation with a bigger target. In a sense, it's not about politics at all, but celebrity (though the intimation that the two are often indistinguishable is no doubt intentional). In the first episode, the formerly shy Tanner staffer Andrea Spinelli (Ilana Levine), now a brass-balled producer, breaks away from a crucial meeting in a swank restaurant to chat up Martin Scorsese at a neighboring table. (She mispronounces his name, but seems to win him back by suggesting remedies for his asthma.) Though the two episodes available for preview stop just short of the full-on convention push, the promised run-in between Alex Tanner and Alexandra Kerry—making a documentary about her dad's run for president—twists your mind in knots just thinking about it.

The clunky cameras of 1988 have been replaced by sleeker models, but Tanner on Tanner has a similar feel to its predecessor, right down to the cornball synthesizer score, which now sounds as nostalgic as it does desperate. It's a wise move, since the deliberately crude aesthetics fit the broad-strokes characterizations, though the portrayal of Alex Tanner as a shrill, semicompetent trust-fund baby might come off as sexist or dismissive were it not for Nixon's uniformly winning performance. "Most documentaries have no content," Altman told The New York Times, and his low opinion of nonfiction film is evident in every one of Tanner on Tanner's shaky frames. It's an odd stance to take in what, regardless of the election's outcome, will likely be remembered as the year documentaries became a permanent part of the political process. Who knows—in 16 years, it might be Alex running for office.

International Puppet Films (Sat., Oct. 2, 7 p.m., $6, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542) Don't be misled into thinking this evening of short films is kid's stuff. Puppets or no puppets, some of the films to be screened are downright disturbing. It's nothing young folks can't handle, but their parents may be a different story. Co-programmed by International House, Handmade Films and Spiral Q Puppet Theater, the program incorporates marionettes mirthful and macabre and filmmakers new and old. Polish pioneer Wladyslaw Starewicz, whose Cameraman's Revenge screened recently at the Prince, is represented by The Mascot, a dark-tinged fairy tale in which a stuffed dog comes to life and roams a world of mangled toys, while Philly's own Brothers Quay, who most recently produced the few memorable minutes of Frida, contribute The Epic of Gilgamesh, also known as This Unnameable Little Broom. Jiri Trnka's totalitarian parable The Hand and Tim Burton's Vincent fill out the masters section, while shorts by Jesse Rosensweet and Jenny McCracken represent for the younger generation, as well as a few as-yet-unprogrammed surprises. The older films will be shown on 16 mm, the new stuff on video.

To Catch a Thief (Tue., Oct. 5, 7:30 p.m., free, Chestnut Hill Free Library, 8711 Germantown Ave., 215-248-0977) Rumors of the Chestnut Hill Film Group's demise turn out to be greatly exaggerated, as witnessed by this "museum quality" 16 mm print of Hitchcock's 1955 trifle. Check out the complete season at www.armcinema25.com/ UpcomingEvents04.html.

The Parson's Widow ($24.99 DVD) Scandinavian sourpuss Carl Theodor Dreyer isn't known for his sense of humor, but that's only because his later sound features are so much better known than his early silents. Released eight years before Dreyer's canonical The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Parson's Widow (1920) begins as broad comedy, shades into the supernatural and finishes with bittersweet humanism. Söfren (Einar Röd) covets a small-town parsonship, both for his own ambitions and because his girlfriend's father won't let her marry until he gets the job. When the parson dies, Söfren ably climbs over the competitors, but discovers his dream gig comes at a price: He must marry the late parson's widow (gloriously gaunt Hildur Carlberg), a wrinkled crone who's rumored to be a witch to boot. The gusto with which Söfren devours his first meal in her house suggests either witchcraft or his own insatiable lusts, but Dreyer eventually counters Söfren's fear of the old woman, though only after he's allowed it to ripen. Dreyer's clever fable also features one of the most erotic sequences silent cinema has to offer, where Söfren woos his beloved by passing his fingers through the weave of her loom. (At least that's what he thinks he's doing; the erotic turns comic when it's revealed that it's one of the widow's cronies on the other side.) Image's disc is filled out by two later shorts: the mildly revealing Thorvaldsen: Denmark's Greatest Sculptor (1949) and the live-fast-die-young morality play They Caught the Ferry (1948), which might be the most artful driver's-ed movie ever made.

Misc. Picks Fred MacMurray stars as an eccentric Philadelphia moneybags in The Happiest Millionaire, the latest benefit screening for Save the Sameric. (Fri., Oct. 1, 7:30 p.m., International House, $20). The Colonial Theatre starts a month-plus of Universal Horror with The Wolf Man, starring Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr. and the always terrifying Ralph Bellamy (Sun., Oct. 3, 2 p.m.). The County and Ambler theaters reprise their sellout Laurel and Hardy quartet, featuring Hog Wild, Towed in a Hole, Brats and Helpmates (Mon., Oct. 4, 7 p.m. at the Ambler, Wed., Oct. 6, 7 p.m. at the County).