Screen Picks

by Sam Adams

The First Amendment Project (Tue., Dec. 7, 9 p.m. Sundance Channel, 10 p.m. Court TV) Of the four short documentaries in this two-week series, co-produced by Sundance Channel and Court TV, only two, both airing Dec. 14, deal directly with the First Amendment. John Walter's Some Assembly Required, looks at the restriction of public protest during this summer's Republican National Convention, and Bob Balaban's No Joking deals with Lenny Bruce's many obscenity trials. Instead, Chris Hegedus and Nick Doob's Fox v. Franken and Mario Van Peebles' Poetic License, which air Tuesday, treat the First Amendment as a template for free speech in the broadest possible sense. Fox v. Franken deals with Fox News' attempt to halt publication of Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, while Poetic License recalls the fallout of Amiri Baraka's appointment as New Jersey's poet laureate. By following Franken's slam-dunk example with Baraka's more problematic case, the two films form a provocative dialectic: If the state should protect Franken's right to attack Fox News, should it also fund and implicitly endorse Baraka's rants, which, among other things, involved the ignominious falsehood that 4,000 Israelis were told to avoid the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001? Van Peebles' is the messier, more outrageous film; he does himself no favor by buttressing Baraka's baseless charge with a few undercooked allegations. But its unanswered questions linger, as does its timely take on the culture war's suppressive potential.

Buster Keaton at MGM (Tue., Dec. 7, 8 p.m., Turner Classic Movies); Buster Keaton Collection ($39.92 DVD) The trick with happy endings is knowing where to stop, but this cross-promotional look at the end of Buster Keaton's career just keeps on going. The result is fascinating long after it's stopped being funny. As Kevin Brownlow's So Funny It Hurt, which kicks off TCM's 10-hour Keaton block, recounts, Keaton traded life as an independent for MGM's regular paychecks against the advice of his friends (Charlie Chaplin among them) and swiftly regretted it: Prevented from improvising, and from embracing sound as swiftly as he wanted to, Keaton crammed still-classic bits into increasingly less-inspired movies. The Cameraman and Spite Marriage have plenty of moments, particularly the former's mimed one-man baseball game, but with Free and Easy, his first talkie, the rot swiftly sets in. Warner's two-disc set includes all those films and a pair of audio commentaries; TCM's program keeps running through Parlor, Bedroom and Bath, The Passionate Plumber and What! No Beer?