Well, we’re in the final week of TCM’s Summer Under The Stars (SUTS), the channel’s annual tribute to one star per day for the month of August. I’ve still got a little room on the DVR. Check out these last few days of picks! As always, all times are Eastern. Week 01 picks are here. Week 02 picks are here. Week 03 picks are here. Week 04 picks are here.
Continue reading “Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 05 Picks”Category: TCM Picks
This Week on TCM spotlights a highly subjective selection of the week’s essential or undiscovered films on the Turner Classic Movies channel to help plan viewing or DVR scheduling. All times are EST.
Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 04 Picks
We’re now coming into the stretch of TCM’s Summer Under The Stars (SUTS), the channel’s annual tribute to one star per day for the month of August. I’ve watched a lot of new-to-me films, some great, some not-so-great. Emphasis for these picks is on films I haven’t seen yet and those increasingly rare rarities. Fun fact: I got hooked on TCM for good on Jean Gabin Day during the 2011 SUTS, so in a roundabout way, SUTS led to TCM Party. Picks for each day after the jump. As always, all times are Eastern.
Continue reading “Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 04 Picks”Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 03 Picks
Here is a list of what I’ll be watching and/or DVRing during Week 03 of TCM’s Summer Under The Stars (SUTS), the channel’s annual tribute to one star per day for the month of August. Emphasis is on films I haven’t seen yet and those increasingly rare rarities. Fun fact: I got hooked on TCM for good on Jean Gabin Day during the 2011 SUTS, so in a roundabout way, SUTS led to TCM Party. Picks for each day after the jump. As always, all times are Eastern.
This week is gonna kinda sorta be super random because I’m running late (it’s Tuesday as I write this) and I’m not crazy for anyone this week other than Joan Crawford and Toshiro Mifune, and many of these films play on TCM quite often. So I’ll really be looking for the odd and the rare.
Continue reading “Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 03 Picks”Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 02 Picks
Here is a list of what I’ll be watching and/or DVRing during Week 02 of TCM’s Summer Under The Stars (SUTS), the channel’s annual tribute to one star per day for the month of August. Emphasis is on films I haven’t seen yet and those increasingly rare rarities. Fun fact: I got hooked on TCM for good on Jean Gabin Day during the 2011 SUTS, so in a roundabout way, SUTS led to TCM Party. Picks for each day after the jump. As always, all times are Eastern.
Continue reading “Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 02 Picks”Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 01 Picks
Here is a list of what I’ll be watching and/or DVRing during TCM’s Summer Under The Stars (SUTS), the channel’s annual tribute to one star per day for the month of August. Emphasis is on films I haven’t seen yet and those increasingly rare rarities. Fun fact: I got hooked on TCM for good on Jean Gabin Day during the 2011 SUTS, so in a roundabout way, SUTS led to TCM Party. Picks for each day after the jump. As always, all times are Eastern.
Continue reading “Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 01 Picks”Reckless Review: UN FLIC
Every year, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) throws a few surprises into their Summer Under The Stars (SUTS) programming. As you may know, SUTS means each day in August is dedicated to the films of a single brilliant star. Along with actors you might expect, such as Humphrey Bogart (Aug. 1) and Bette Davis (Aug. 14), TCM always includes a few surprising choices. For instance, I don’t know of any other cable channel that would run nearly 24 hours of silent films, but that’s exactly what happened on Ramon Novarro‘s day (August 8). If you missed Ben-Hur (1925) starring Novarro and Francis X. Bushman, you really should check it out.
The other somewhat unconventional and totally welcome choice in the SUTS mix this year is Catherine Deneuve (Monday, August 12). As I said on Jean Gabin day in 2011…big ups to TCM for running 24 hours of subtitles. (Actually, there is one English-language Deneuve film, The Hunger, showing at 4:15 a.m. on Tuesday, August 13. But still…it’s not something you see every day.)
Of Monday’s films, I highly recommend Un flic (1972). It’s showing at noon on Monday and stars Deneuve, Alain Delon and Richard Crenna, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville.
Un flic is French for “a cop;” the film’s American title is less ambiguous: Dirty Money. Delon plays the title role, a brutal, not-so-clean police commissioner, who suspects that his friend, a nightclub owner (Crenna), is behind a series of bank robberies and drug deals. Cathy (Deneuve) is caught between them, sleeping with both and keeping both their secrets. Her model beauty and perfectly coiffed hair belie the anxiety in her nervous gestures and darting eyes. It’s a small part but a memorable one.
Melville is one of my favorite directors, he does crime pictures as well as anyone. His newsreel-style, on-location filmmaking was influential on Jean-Luc Godard (whose use of jump cuts was inspired by Melville). This was Melville’s last film, and like my favorite Le samouraï, Un flic may as well have been shot in the black and white of a film noir…cold desaturated colors, dark rooms, inky shadows. Thematically it’s as melancholy as any noir, and the line between the lawman and the criminal is as hazy as dusk in the Paris of Melville’s creation…this isn’t Woody Allen’s City of Lights. Part of it is unbelievable (you’ll know it when you see it), and I’m pretty sure Crenna was dubbed, but these are minor details in a suspenseful and enjoyable neo-noir.
UPDATE: No worries if you missed this on Deneuve day and you have Netflix. I searched the site on the off chance they would have Un flic on DVD, and lo and behold, not only do they have it, it’s also streaming. C’est super!
TCM Week – July 30-August 5
Interesting week on TCM. Leslie Howard month wraps up and Summer Under The Stars kicks off with two of my favorites, John Wayne and Myrna Loy. As always, all times are Eastern.
Monday, July 30
9:30 p.m. Island in the Sky (1953)
***TCM PARTY***
Captain Dooley (John Wayne) is the pilot of a plane that crashes “so far north that the area is barely on the map.” He’s in charge of the stranded crew, which has very limited provisions, only a wood fire for heat and barely any juice for the radio signal. Can the Duke keep everyone alive until they’re rescued? Look for us on Twitter with #TCMParty…watch and tweet along with our guest hosts @biscuitkitten and @ScribeHard.
Tuesday, July 31
Star of the Month: Leslie Howard
8:00 p.m. The Scarlet Pimpernel (1935)
This is one of my favorite Leslie Howard films ever. In the 1790s, an apparently shallow British nobleman, Sir Percy Blakeney (Howard), defies the evil French revolutionary Chauvelin (Raymond Massey) by spiriting his fellow aristocrats away from the guillotine and out of France. Also starring the beautiful Merle Oberon as Lady Marguerite Blakeney and luxuriously produced by Alexander Korda, this is perhaps not the most realistic film ever made about the French Revolution, but it may be the most fun.
Beginning early Wednesday at 1:30 a.m., TCM has booked three mystery films starring Joan Blondell: There’s Always a Woman (1938), co-starring Melvyn Douglas and Mary Astor; The Famous Ferguson Case (1932), directed by Lloyd Bacon; and Miss Pinkerton (1932), with George Brent. I haven’t seen any of these, but Blondell’s sassy presence is enough to get me to set the DVR.
Wednesday, August 1
John Wayne
Summer Under The Stars kicks off today. It’s difficult to go wrong with anything on the schedule…seriously…it’s John Wayne. If you need to start somewhere, and can only DVR one movie today, I recommend Stagecoach (1939), The Searchers (1956) or Rio Bravo (1959).
Thursday, August 2
Myrna Loy
Loy is another favorite of mine who is mostly known today as Nora Charles in The Thin Man series, but she made around 80 films before she became a star in 1934 with the first of those films. So the films she made before that are lesser-known. There’s five of them this morning beginning with The Great Divide (1929) at 6:00 a.m. and including The Naughty Flirt (1931), The Barbarian (1933), When Ladies Meet (1933), and The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933). Then tonight at 8:00 p.m., Loy has a supporting but pivotal role in William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives, one of the best movies ever made. It’s also our ***TCM PARTY*** for tonight. Look for us on Twitter with #TCMParty…watch and tweet along!
Friday, August 3
Johnny Weissmuller
What can I say, a lot of people dig Tarzan pictures. Maybe I’ll check some of them out.
Saturday, August 4
Marilyn Monroe
The film I haven’t seen today is Clash By Night (1952) and it’s got an interesting director and cast. Directed by Fritz Lang, it stars Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Ryan and Monroe. I’m expecting something in noir, seeing as Lang directed M, The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, The Big Heat, etc.
Sunday, August 5
Claude Rains
You can’t really go wrong with anything today either. I say that a lot. If I’m forced to pick, I’ll go with The Invisible Man (1933) and Mr. Skeffington (1944). Did you know that in addition to being a great actor, Rains was an acting teacher? Two of his most famous students were Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud.
TCM Week – July 16-22
TCM has some really intriguing stuff scheduled for this week. Crank up the DVR and let’s go…as usual, all times are Eastern.
Monday, July 16
TCM’s Classic Adventure series continues with a full 24 hours of rip-roaring action. Must-sees include The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland at 2:00 Eastern; Gunga Din (1939) starring Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Victor McLaglen at 4:00 p.m.; and The Thief of Baghdad (1924) with Douglas Fairbanks and Anna May Wong at 3:45 a.m. Tuesday.
Tuesday, July 17
Today kicks off with a couple of silents, The Sheik (1921) starring Rudolph Valentino, and Our Modern Maidens (1929) with soon-to-be newlyweds Joan Crawford and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. The latter is the first of a block of eight ’20s and ’30s films directed by Jack Conway. Conway began as an actor in D. W. Griffiths’ Westerns and moved into directing, first at Universal, then at MGM, where he proved to be adept and prolific. He worked cost-effectively in all genres, bringing pictures in on time and within budget, a capability that endeared him to studio honchos Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer. He is probably best known for A Tale of Two Cities (1935), starring Ronald Colman and Elizabeth Allan, and one of my all-time favorites, Libeled Lady (1936). Enjoy his work until George Cukor takes over at 8:00 p.m. tonight.
Star of the Month: Leslie Howard
I am a huge fan of Leslie Howard, but even I have to admit he was horribly miscast in Romeo and Juliet (1936), scheduled for 8:00 p.m. Though the film is gorgeous, Howard, in his forties, and his Juliet, Norma Shearer, in her mid-thirties, are both too old to portray a teenaged couple caught up in their first love. (Shakespearean scholars estimate that a real Romeo would have been 16 or 17 years of age and it’s directly mentioned in the text that Juliet has just turned 13.) But the rest of Howard’s films tonight — A Free Soul and Smilin’ Through, both also with Shearer, and Outward Bound (Howard’s Hollywood debut) and Captured! both with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. — look pretty interesting.
Wednesday, July 18
Tonight’s block of early Francis Ford Coppola work includes You’re A Big Boy Now at 8:00 p.m., The Rain People at 10:00 p.m., Dementia 13 at 12:00 a.m. Thursday, and Finian’s Rainbow at 1:30 a.m. I wouldn’t recommend Finian’s but I’m keeping an open mind about the rest.
Thursday, July 19
Apparently today’s films have a theme: jail. Whether it’s women behind bars (Caged, House of Women (1962)), escape (House of Numbers) or riot (Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison), TCM has every kind of filmic incarceration one could want during the daytime hours. I’ll be sure to record Ladies They Talk About, which stars Barbara Stanwyck as a gangster’s moll sent up for her role in a bank robbery.
At 8:00 p.m., TCM is featuring The Science of Movie Making, a block co-hosted by sound designer Ben Burtt and visual effects supervisor Craig Barron, both Oscar-winners in their fields, who have chosen films that have inspired them.
Friday, July 20
Stanwyck Pre-codes
***TCM PARTY***
Presumably in honor of Ms. Stanwyck’s 105th birthday (July 16), TCM has scheduled four films she made before enforcement of Hollywood’s Motion Picture Production Code (aka Hays Code) began in 1934. The pre-codes include Shopworn (1932), Ten Cents A Dance (1931), Illicit (1931) and Forbidden (1932). Look for us on Twitter…watch and tweet along with #TCMParty.
Saturday, July 21
To Have and Have Not (1944)
***TCM PARTY***
In Martinique during World War II, a fishing-boat captain (Humphrey Bogart) gets mixed up with the French Resistance and a beautiful saloon singer (Lauren Bacall). This was Bacall’s first film and she was such a natural that screenwriter William Faulkner started adding to her part. The critics said it had “much more character than story” and that it was “confusing and klutzy, the ending is weak, and the secondary characters are poor substitutes for Casablanca‘s (1942) memorable cast of heroes and villains” but I think it’s great. Look for us on Twitter…watch and tweet along with #TCMParty. Guest hosted by @joelrwilliams1.
Sunday, July 22
If you haven’t seen Christmas in July (1940) at 10:30 a.m., Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) at 2:00 p.m., or The Great Escape (1963) at 8:00 p.m., definitely tune in for those. There’s a silent at 12:30 a.m. Monday, The Mating Call, and at 2:00 a.m. there’s The Leopard (Il gattopardo – 1963), starring Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon. Set in the early 1860s during the turmoil that preceded Italy’s unification, the film follows the slow fall of aristocratic Prince Fabrizio (Lancaster) and the parallel rise of upstart Tancredi (Delon). This film has lavish detail, gorgeously shot, and is unfortunately dubbed (you can’t have everything). It’s also a very poignant film, infused with a sense of nostalgia for a lost time and the inevitability of one generation letting another take over.
TCM Week – July 2-8
It’s always so weird when July 4 falls in the middle of the week and TCM runs some of the best movies in the middle of the night. I shouldn’t complain though, Leslie Howard is the Star of the Month. As always, all times are Eastern.
Tuesday, July 3
8:00 p.m. Gone the with Wind (1939)
***TCM PARTY***
During the daytime hours, TCM has 12 hours of Ann Rutherford’s movies scheduled. She very sadly passed away on June 11. Rutherford is probably best known as Carreen O’Hara, Scarlett’s nice sister, in GWTW but I also liked her as Lydia Bennett in Pride and Prejudice (1940), showing today at 10:45 a.m. I’m definitely going to record Two O’Clock Courage (1945), an early Anthony Mann film, starring Rutherford and Tom Conway (brother of today’s birthday boy George Sanders). Rutherford appeared at the TCM Classic Film Festival in 2011 Look for us on Twitter with #TCMParty…watch & tweet along.
midnight Stand-In (1937)
Star of the Month Leslie Howard plays an uptight banker sent to overhaul a Hollywood studio; Joan Blondell is the title character, a sassy former child star, who decides to help him, if he’ll only let her; Humphrey Bogart is the beleaguered producer burdened with a dud film, a histrionic leading lady, and a drinking problem. This has been one of my favorite movies since I saw it last year and my friend Classic Film Freak was kind enough to post my review.
Wednesday, July 4
Patriotic movies are scheduled all day today and two of the most interesting are The Scarlet Coat (1955), about the beginnings of the U.S. Secret Service at 9:15 a.m. and The Devil’s Disciple (1959). You really can’t go wrong with Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) either.
Thursday, July 5
7:00 a.m. Evelyn Prentice (1934)
This is an interesting pairing of William Powell and Myrna Loy outside of the Thin Man series. He plays a lawyer whose wife (Loy) hasn’t really done anything to deserve being blackmailed. The film was rushed into production after the huge success of The Thin Man to capitalize on their chemistry. It’s so good you sort of won’t believe it when they’re supposed to not be getting along.
5:45 p.m. Penelope (1966)
I haven’t seen this movie. I recorded it last year before we changed cable companies, it was one of the movies that was on the DVR and there was no way to transfer it. But Natalie Wood and Peter Falk are in it, so I’m going to record it again.
8:00 p.m. Ace in the Hole (1951)
***TCM PARTY***
In the first of guest programmer Spike Lee‘s picks for tonight, a reporter who’s been demoted to a small-town newspaper tries to leverage a catastrophe into a return to the big time. Watch and tweet alone with our special guest host @WillMcKinley.
Friday, July 6
Certainly if you haven’t seen The Manchurian Candidate (1962) at 3:45 p.m. or Bye Bye Birdie (1963) at 6:00 p.m., check those out. I’ll be trying to catch at least one Jimmy Stewart Western of the three that are scheduled: The Man from Laramie (1955) at 8 p.m., The Naked Spur (1953) at 10 p.m. and Two Rode Together (1961) at midnight.
Saturday, July 7
6:00 a.m. Seven Women (1966)
Anne Bancroft, Sue Lyon, Margaret Leighton, and Flora Robson play missionaries in John Ford’s final feature.
4:15 p.m. Dr. Strangelove (1964)
“Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the war room.”
Sunday, July 8
It’s really difficult to go wrong today. My favorite favorites:
2:15 p.m. The Thin Man (1934)
Sometimes well enough really should be left alone. See above. Celebrate that this isn’t going to be remade by watching the original and best.
6:00 p.m. My Favorite Year (1982)
A 1940s radio show writer (Mark Linn-Baker) struggles to keep playboy thespian Alan Swann (Peter O’Toole doing his best Errol Flynn) sober and upright, at least until the latter can guest star on that week’s show.
midnight Bande à part (1964)
Two thugs and a girl attempt to rob her aunt’s house with complications to be expected from a director, Jean-Luc Godard, whose biggest influences are the bright and dark sides of Hollywood — musicals and film noir.
TCM Week – June 4-10
Not that anyone noticed that I stopped doing my weekly TCM picks, but there’s a very simple reason. My subscription to Now Playing, the TCM monthly magazine, ran out and I forgot to renew. Evidently I’m quite reliant on it because I missed two months of it and it’s too difficult to do picks without it. Everything is back to normal this month. Just so you know 🙂
Monday, June 4
8:00 p.m. The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
***TCM PARTY***
Possibly in honor of Elizabeth II’s real-life Diamond Jubilee, TCM has two Elizabeth I-related films tonight, the #TCMParty Private Lives at 8:00 and The Virgin Queen (1955) following at 10:00, both with Bette Davis as Britain’s best-loved monarch. (I just conducted a scientific poll via Google search and she is the one royal about whom people have the least bad things to say.) Watching her run a country while trying to keep the Earl of Essex (Errol Flynn) and Walter Raleigh (Richard Todd) in line is quite a treat. Apparently Davis and Flynn were no more well-matched than their characters and feuded during filming to the point of physically injuring each other. Despite this, or because of it, this is a great period drama, with beautiful costumes, sets and lighting. Watch for Herbert Marshall and Joan Collins in Virgin Queen. Watch and tweet along with #TCMParty.
Tuesday, June 5
12:45 a.m. (Weds) Union Depot (1932)
A rather racy-sounding pre-code picture chosen for the presence of Joan Blondell and the fact that it takes place in real time, 20+ years before High Noon.
Wednesday, June 6
TCM has scheduled a bunch of 1930s horror films for daytime, several of which —Island of Lost Souls, Mark of the Vampire, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) — have the gorgeous Expressionistic cinematography I love so. I’ve chosen two I’ve not yet seen. Doctor X (1932) at 7:45 a.m. was directed by the versatile Michael Curtiz (Casablanca) and is sung about in “Science Fiction/Double Feature,” the first number in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Mad Love (1935) at 3:30 p.m. shares a cinematographer, Gregg Toland, and some details with Citizen Kane. This film is one of several based on the novel Les Mains d’Orlac and it will be interesting to compare to The Hands of Orlac (1924), which starred Conrad Veidt as the recipient of the titular evil hands.
Thursday, June 7
8:00 p.m. Jailhouse Rock (1957)
***TCM PARTY***
This is one of the best Elvis Presley movies, along with Loving You and Viva Las Vegas. Unfortunately, it’s also his only his third movie, and he made quite a few more. However, nobody delivers a classic line such as “That ain’t cheap tactics, honey. That’s just the beast in me” better than Elvis. With special #TCMParty guest host @CitizenScreen.Watch and tweet along
Friday, June 8
TCM has scheduled an unofficial block to honor Alexis Smith on her birthday. Born in 1921, this Canadian actress, though not as well-known today as some of her contemporaries, had a career in movies, stage and TV for more than 50 years.
7:45 a.m. Dive Bomber (1941)
Smith had uncredited roles in 12 films before landing this, her first credited role, opposite Errol Flynn and Fred MacMurray as the girl who comes between them in a WWII drama made just before the U.S. entered the war. (Her last film role was in Age of Innocence (1993)).
9:30 a.m. The Constant Nymph (1943)
I won’t even front like I like this movie. I find it very odd and at times ridiculous. Joan Fontaine is supposed to be a teenager who separates her composer cousin (Charles Boyer) from his wife (Smith). (Seriously, am I the only one who thinks this is weird?) By the end of the film, I felt they deserved each other. But I’m going to watch it again just for Smith, as I’ve read this was her breakthrough role which led to her parts in Night and Day (1946) and The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947).
There’s a great summary of today’s TCM Gothic offerings here, courtesy of Classic Movies Examiner Jennifer Garlen.
Saturday, June 9
5:30 p.m. The Train (1965)
***TCM PARTY***
In the waning days of World War II, a French railway inspector who is also a member of the Resistance (Burt Lancaster…just go with it) is ordered by the Nazi-in-charge (Paul Scofield) to get a train through to Germany no matter what. Which wouldn’t be a big deal, except that nearly every important piece of art left in France is on that train. Directed by John Frankenheimer, this excellent film is an unpredictable chess match that’s as near to an anti-war statement as you’ll get in a WWII picture. Look for us on Twitter with #TCMParty.
midnight The Mad Miss Manton (1938)
The Lady Eve co-stars Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda made this lesser-known comedy three years before Eve. Let’s see…great chemistry in a comedy/mystery with Hattie McDaniel…i’m so there.
Sunday, June 10
JUDY GARLAND’S 90th BIRTHDAY
You can’t really go wrong with anything today.
Paula's Cinema Club 