skip to main |
skip to sidebar
by Lani
Each month, I scour the Turner Classic Movies schedule for upcoming films that I can't miss. The highlights are posted here for your reading and viewing pleasure! (All listed times are Eastern Standard, check your local listings or TCM.com for actual air times in your area. Each day's schedule begins at 6:00 a.m.; if a film airs between midnight and 6 a.m. it is listed on the previous day's programming schedule.)
7/12, 8 PM - The Bride Wore Black (1968)
This month, TCM is spotlighting the films of French director Francois Truffaut on Friday nights. The Bride Wore Black stars Jeanne Moreau as a woman on a mission of revenge. The film was conceived as an homage to Alfred Hitchcock (Truffaut had recently published his now-classic book of interviews with Hitchcock) and was an inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill movies. So, if you like any of those three directors, this film may be worth a look.
BONUS PICK: 7/26, 8 PM - Day for Night (1973) - Truffaut's Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Film is about the making of movies, lovingly depicting the contrast between the actual tedious labor of filmmaking and the captivating magic of a finished film.
7/22: Big Band Music on Screen
All day long, 6 AM to 8 PM, enjoy musical movies and shorts featuring Big Band stars of the 30s and 40s. For an added level of fun, try to pick out future A-listers like Ronald Reagan, Ava Gardner, and Dale Evans in blink-and-you'll-miss-em roles.
In Ship Ahoy (1942), airing at 12:30 PM, dancing dynamo Eleanor Powell and Red Skelton get mixed up in a spy plot to smuggle a magnetic mine on a cruise ship to Puerto Rico. It's got the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, including a young Frank Sinatra, plus Eleanor tapping out messages in Morse code - what more do you need on a summer afternoon?
7/22: Fred and Ginger
9 PM - The Gay Divorcee (1934)
11 PM - Top Hat (1935)
1 AM - Follow the Fleet (1936)
3 AM - Swing Time (1936)
5 AM - The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939)
After a day of Big Band musicals, what's better than more musicals? Tonight's mini-marathon includes some of the best films featuring Hollywood's quintessential dance team: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
7/25: Controversial Teachers
8 PM - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)
This film kicks of a night of stories about students and teachers; however, it is not the usual story of an unconventional teacher who is championed by her students and ultimately vindicated (see Stand and Deliver, Mr. Holland's Opus, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, etc.). Anchored by an Oscar-winning performance by Maggie Smith as the arrogant, manipulative Miss Brodie, the film also contains strong performances by Celia Johnson as the school principal and Pamela Franklin as one of Brodie's favored students.
10 PM - Dead Poet's Society (1989) - If you haven't seen this "new classic" then seize the day - carpe diem! - or night, as it were.
12:15 AM - These Three (1936) - Lillian Hellman adapted her controversial play The Children's Hour into this film about the power of a lie.
7/24: Tribute to Mel Brooks
8 PM - AFI Lifetime Achievement Award: A Tribute to Mel Brooks
9:30 PM - The Twelve Chairs (1970)
11:15 PM - Carson on TCM: Mel Brooks (9/21/83)
11:30 PM - Excavating the 2000 Year Old Man (2012)
2 AM - Young Frankenstein (1974)
4 AM - The Producers (1968)
5:30 AM - The Dick Cavett Show: Mel Brooks
Tonight we celebrate the work of Mel Brooks with a tribute show, three comedies, two talk show clips, and a documentary; take your pick or enjoy them all! I'm looking forward to The Twelve Chairs, which seems to be the Mel Brooks film no one remembers. Set in Russia following the Bolshevik Revolution, it follows a once-wealthy aristocrat, a con man, and a priest in a race to find a fortune of jewels hidden in one of twelve chairs.
7/28, 8 PM: Great Expectations (1946)
John Mills, Jean Simmons, and Alec Guinness star in this Essentials, Jr. installment about poor orphan Pip who is raised up into society by a mysterious benefactor. Though the original story has been greatly pared down to focus on Pip's journey, this film version directed by David Lean remains the definitive screen adaptation of Dickens' novel.
by Lani
Each month, I scour the Turner Classic Movies Now Playing guide for upcoming films that I can't miss. The highlights are posted here for your reading and viewing pleasure! (All listed times are Eastern Standard, check your local listings or TCM.com for actual air times in your area. Each day's schedule begins at 6:00 a.m.; if a film airs between midnight and 6 a.m. it is listed on the previous day's programming schedule.)
First things first, as of this week the delightfully dark romantic comedy A New Leaf is finally available on DVD! It stars Walter Matthau as a spoiled Manhattanite who can't accept the fact that he's broke. A solution to his money troubles appears in the form of a mousy, but rich, botanist played by Elaine May, who also wrote and directed the film. Their romance is a bit awkward, since Matthau plans to follow marriage with murder; however, the film overall is funny, sweet, and completely unique. If you haven't seen this film, and don't mind taking a risk, buy this now (or at least rent it)!
9/2: Give 'em a hand
8 PM - Hands of a Stranger (1962)
9:45 PM - The Beast with Five Fingers (1946)
11:30 PM - Mad Love (1935)
12:45 AM - The Hands of Orlac (1925)
In an interesting bit of programming, tonight the TCM elves have given us 3 versions of the same tale - The Hands of Orlac, Mad Love, and Hands of a Stranger - in which an experimental operation gives a concert pianist the hands of a murderer, hands which are not necessarily under his control. Then, in a twist, the elves have thrown in a film with an almost opposite story: In The Beast with Five Fingers a concert pianist's hand is severed, and the hand goes on to become a murderer itself!
9/3, 10:45 AM - The Dot and the Line (1965)
This Academy Award-winning animated short by Chuck Jones is simply delightful. Simple - in that the characters are a dot and a line; delightful - because it succeeds in giving these shapes personalities. A romance for the ages alongside Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, Scarlet and Rhett, or Harry and Sally.
9/10: Choreo by Jack Cole
8 PM - Tonight and Every Night (1945)
10 PM - On the Riviera (1951)
11:45 PM - Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
1:30 AM - Les Girls (1957)
3:30 AM - River of No Return (1954)
As a huge fan of movie musicals, I've certainly seen the work of Jack Cole; however, I was completely unaware of it. So I'm grateful for TCM's tribute to Cole this month and looking forward to learning more about this extremely influential, but little known choreographer. Plus, tonight's line-up gives me a chance to see some of my favorite musical stars - Rita Hayworth, Danny Kaye, and Gene Kelly - in films that aren't shown very often on TCM.
9/16: Around the World with Maggie Smith!
8 PM - Travels with My Aunt (1972)
10 PM - Love, and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing (1973)
It may come as a surprise to some younger viewers, but Dame Maggie Smith, recognizable today as proper schoolmarm Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter series and Downtown Abbey's Dowager Countess (the Edwardian version of the sassy grandma), was young once. But even as a young woman, like Angela Lansbury before her, Smith often played above her age. Never so much as in Travels with My Aunt, which casts the not-yet-forty Smith as a septuagenarian. The role was originally meant for Katharine Hepburn, but Smith was able to make it her own, earning a Best Actress nomination. In Love... Maggie is once again cast as the older woman opposite a younger leading man. However, she's playing much closer to her own age as a 40 year old "spinster" who has a love affair with an 18 year old college dropout (Timothy Bottoms) on a bus trip through Spain.
By Agatha Christie
9/23, 8 PM - Ten Little Indians (1966)
9/26, 2:15 AM - Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
I love mysteries and I'm on a bit of a Christie kick lately, so I'm looking forward to these adaptations of two of her most popular stories. Ten Little Indians diverges a bit from the original story, but retains the main plot of 10 strangers trapped in a remote location and bumped off one-by-one. Murder on the Orient Express hews much closer to Christie's book and features a formidable cast of stars including Albert Finney as detective Hercule Poirot. This film along with two other all-star adaptations of Poirot stories, Death on the Nile (1978) and Evil Under the Sun (1982), offer a great introduction to Christie's work.
Thursdays in September: Mack Sennett
Producer and director Mack Sennett was a comedy pioneer who worked with many of the great talents of the silent era including Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, the Keystone Cops, and Mabel Normand. TCM is showing 83 shorts and 4 feature-length films by Sennett every Thursday this month in primetime.
7/22: Big Band Music on Screen