What We're Watching Returns!

It's been far too long since the last What We're Watching segment here a Facets Features. Apologies. Won't happen again. Suffice to say, our staff has seen a whole lot in the interim, but let's focus on the recent to avoid a mammoth list!

One Potato, Two Potato (Larry Peerce, 1964) - I watched an indie film from 1964 called One Potato, Two Potato about an interracial couple who marry in a small town in Ohio–and what happens to them afterward. This was three years before Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and it’s a far, far better film – much more realistic. It was shot entirely on location in Painesville, Ohio, and it makes excellent use of a small-town atmosphere without stereotyping small-town life. The look and locations are authentic, which makes the story believable and effective. Directed by Larry Peerce, who’s had a sporadic career going back and forth between low-budget films and tv, this film was daring for its time but not strident. It’s not on DVD or any other format, but the Turner Classic Movies station (TCM) is showing the movie on November 20th in the evening. Indie films from back in the day are much more interesting and daring than some of the self-absorbed junk today turned out by twenty-something directors who think their childhoods should be fodder for yet another movie on suburban angst. (Susan Doll)

South Park: Seasons One and Two (1997-98) - Yard sales are a treasure-trove, particularly the one that I stumbled upon in Chicago's Ukrainian Village a few weeks back. For 5 bucks a pop, I picked up Seasons One and Two of quite possibly the funniest cartoon series in television history. Compared with the relatively slick, but still rough around the edges veneer of current episodes, these early runs look positively archaic. The animation does nothing to detract from the humor, though, which is just as knife sharp, raunchy and topical as present episodes, with jabs at homophobia, celebrity, assisted suicide, the anti-drug crusade, and more. And an elephant makes sweet love to a pig. Sold. (Phil Morehart)

Spellbound (Alfred Hitchcock, 1945) - All good things: Amnesia-driven mystery, sexually suggestive editing, sweeping Rozsa score, playing "Where's Hitchcock?", dream sequence inspired by Dali, and female psychoanalyst (Ingrid Bergman) getting too personal with her forgetful patient (Gregory Peck). The one minor drawback is not being able to watch said Swedish star without thinking about how Kyle MacLachlan put his disease in her daughter. Shiver. (Brian Elza)