31 Days of Oscar TCM Premieres

Turner Classic Movies is once again presenting 31 Days of Oscar, this year organized by nominees and winners in a different category each day. The channel has scheduled a bunch of films that have never graced TCM airwaves before, even venturing into the 21st century, which, in my unpopular opinion, is welcome addition. (This isn’t a new thing for me. I’ve been advocating for Future Classic Movies since 2012.) Most of the Oscar films are in heavy rotation year-round, and, as controversial as it may be, it’s nice to get some variety. Some titles like Gosford Park, The Triplets of Belleville, Far From Heaven, and Lincoln map obviously to classical genres, but all of these deserve a chance. Try one, you might like it. After all, even Wings (1927) was new once. More on the remaining premières after the jump

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Review: Nearly 60 years later, RUSH TO JUDGMENT is still worth your time and attention

In 1967, Impact Pictures released Rush to Judgment, a documentary about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The film, by lawyer Mark Lane and filmmaker Emile de Antonio, is based on Lane’s book of the same name. Lane had been one of the earliest critics of the Warren Commission and its report, and had for a time represented Lee Harvey Oswald at the behest of Oswald’s mother. Both the book and the film were Lane’s attempt to provide a defense of Oswald, who was arrested within an hour of the shooting and murdered in police custody two days later.

Although there have been many non-fiction and fiction features, series, and TV shows about the tragic events in Dallas on November 22, 1963, Rush to Judgment has never been widely available in its complete form until now. A 4K digital restoration by the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theatre Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Sphinx Productions is being released by Films We Like, and it is a rewarding, if sometimes difficult, watch.

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Turner Classic Movies Summer Under The Stars 2022 — Week 05 Picks

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Review: Hank and Jim and the 50-Year Friendship PLUS Giveaway

As a classic movie devotee, I’ve always wondered how two so different people as Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart — somehow he is never “James” — could maintain such a lasting and close friendship as theirs apparently was. I’d heard about the model airplane they built together, and the double dates. Yet Fonda was a New Deal Democrat who was married 5 times, had issues with his kids, and seemed to keep to himself; Stewart was a conservative Republican, got married once for life, had a decent relationship with his kids, and seemed to know everybody. The new double biography Hank and Jim: The Fifty-Year Friendship of Henry Fonda and James Stewart, by Scott Eyman, acclaimed author of John Wayne: The Life and Legend, reconciles this conundrum, and in the process reveals that these two actors were more alike than I knew. Giveaway winner announced after the jump.
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What A Character! “Crazy Russian” Leonid Kinskey

Just like everybody goes to Rick’s, everybody knows Leonid Kinskey, whether they know his name or not. Kinskey portrays Sascha, the voluble Russian bartender, in that classic of all classics, Casablanca (1943). We meet him quite early on, when Yvonne, Rick’s latest ex-girlfriend, has had a little too much to drink and needs to be escorted home. But as I learned, there’s more to Kinskey than Sascha. Not that I won’t bask in the glory that is Casablanca first…

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What A Character! Shot and A Chaser: M. Emmet Walsh

Paula’s note: This post is one of several by movie maven Jack Deth that I have had the pleasure of hosting on this site. See the rest here.

Welcome Bloggers, Cinephiles, Film Fans, and Aficionados of “Just Plain Good!”

Having received an invitation from our hostess Paula to expand and illuminate that arena of young and unrecognized talent usually relegated to the back of a crowd or corner of a set before being noticed and given lines to speak and scenes to execute, I would be remiss to not give it my best effort and reach back to an unsung purveyor of the thespian craft, who literally started off in the background of Midnight Cowboy, Alice’s Restaurant, Little Big Man, and Cold Turkey in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Plying his craft while being one of many. Building up a body of work and a reputation for being able to fill any slot for any type of dumpy, balding, kind of slimy, local or municipal bureaucrat, guard, telegrapher, cop, or barber. Sometimes affixing a Southern accent, or sticking to his high-pitched, upstate New York pronunciations, while using whatever was at hand to enhance his many characters. Before crossing my path in a big way in a small, very personal cinematic gem ramrodded by Dustin Hoffman and directed by Ulu Grossbard. A film which also prompted the parole of recidivist convict, Edward Bunker (Mr. Blue in Reservoir Dogs), through his semi-autobiographic novel, No Beast So Fierce. Which makes up the two fingers of Rye for this…

Shot & A Chaser: M. Emmet Walsh

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