The Third Man, playing on TCM, May 15th at 10:45am

As always, if I didn’t write anything for a film, it’s usually because I’ve pitched it in earlier posts. Use the tags at the bottom to find earlier posts regarding the same film if you so desire.

Monday, May 11th

4:15am (12th) – TCM – Network
Newscaster Peter Finch is as mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore. To see why, watch this incendiary unmasking of the ruthless world of network television. And this was 1976. Think what it’s like now!

Tuesday, May 12th

6:30am – TCM – Little Women (1933)
Katharine Hepburn is Jo March in this early adaptation of Alcott’s classic novel. There’s a bit of creak to this one, but Hepburn is luminous. I grew up with this one, so I have a special place in my heart for it, as well.

9:45am – TCM – Holiday
Kate Hepburn teams up with Cary Grant for their second film (TCM is playing all their pairings except the first, Sylvia Scarlet, for some reason) – this is the same year as Bringing Up Baby and has been overshadowed by it, but Holiday is also well worth a look.

11:30am – TCM – Bringing Up Baby
Must See

1:15pm – TCM – The Philadelphia Story
Hepburn here is Tracy Lord, a spoiled socialite about to marry Ralph Bellamy when ex-husband Cary Grant turns up. Throw in newspaper columnist James Stewart and his photographer Ruth Hussey, along with a bunch of great character actors filling out the cast, and you have both rollicking wedding preparations and one of the best films ever made.
Must See

5:30pm – TCM – The Lion in Winter

Wednesday, May 13th

10:45am – TCM – I Know Where I’m Going!
This is one of those films you probably haven’t heard of, doesn’t get much press, is very quiet and unassuming, but once you watch it you won’t easily forget it. Wendy Hiller is a confident young woman who knows exactly what she wants and where she’s going – that is, to meet her wealthy fiance and marry him on one of the Scottish Hebrides. But when a storm strands her on the way, she finds herself thrown off-course in more ways than one. There’s nothing wasted here, and I Know Where I’m Going! stands as one of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s crowning achievements, even if it’s not as well-known as Black Narcissus or The Red Shoes.

5:45pm – TCM – I Could Go On Singing
I haven’t actually seen this one, but it’s Judy Garland’s final film. So there’s that. Also, TCM is apparently doing a series of films today that start with “I” – which is just an interesting approach to programming. :)

Thursday, May 14th

5:00am – TCM – Dinner At Eight

7:00am – TCM – Remember the Night
Not a great film, this one, but it has Barbara Stanwyck, who always managed to transcend her material and make whatever she was in worth watching. This is no exception.

8:45am – TCM – The Letter
Bette Davis shoots a man on her front porch. But…is it self-defense? Murder? Something else? Classic melodrama on display here.

12:45pm – TCM – Anna Christie
Garbo Talks. And thus, silent screen superstar Greta Garbo leapt into the sound era. (Disclaimer: I haven’t seen this one, either. But it has the tagline Garbo Talks. I have to work that in.)

5:45pm – TCM – The Women
Only the cattiest, most man-less film every made. :) Several of Hollywood’s greatest female stars, from established divas like Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford to up-and-comers like Rosalind Russell and Joan Fontaine to character actresses like Mary Boland and Marjorie Main (and even non-actresses like gossip columnist Hedda Hopper), give their all to one of the wittiest scripts ever written. It’s tremendous fun every time I see it. And I’ve seen it like ten or fifteen times.
Must See

10:00pm – IFC – Blue Velvet
(repeats at 3:15am on the 15th)

Friday, May 15th

7:15am – TCM – Shadow of a Doubt
Must See

9:25am – IFC – Primer
(repeats at 2:35pm)

10:45am – TCM – The Third Man
Carol Reed directs Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten in a Graham Greene script with a film noir style that seems to point directly toward European filmmaking styles of the 1950s and 1960s. Can’t be beat, I tell you. Can’t.
Must See

9:30pm – IFC – The Proposition
Australia’s answer to the western; Guy Pearce must hunt down and capture his brothers for the law in order to save his own skin. Gritty and violent almost to a fault, but it definitely brought new life to the Western genre – maybe it’s finally due to recover in the 2000s?
(repeats at 3:00am on the 16th)

Saturday, May 16th

6:00am – TCM – Murder!
Best.Title.Ever for a Hitchcock film, right down to the included exclamation point. :) It’s an early Hitchcock, one of his first sound pictures.

Sunday, May 17th

9:45am – IFC – Far From Heaven
Director Todd Haynes homages 1950s melodrama king Douglas Sirk with this film, loosely based on Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows. I don’t think he succeeded as well as he might’ve (Sirk’s sort of in a class by himself), but he and lead Julianne Moore make a darn good attempt.
(repeats at 2:15pm)

11:30am – TCM – Double Indemnity
Must See

6:00pm – TCM – In the Heat of the Night
Northern police officer Sidney Poitier is brought in to aid racist small-town cop Rod Steiger. It’s 1967. You think sparks aren’t gonna fly from that? Come on. Steiger won an Oscar.

Rio Bravo, playing at 10:30pm on TCM on the 6th

Monday, May 4th

3:00pm – TCM – Roman Holiday
A double-feaure of Audrey Hepburn today. Enjoy!

5:00pm – TCM – My Fair Lady

Tuesday, May 5th

3:45pm – TCM – Witness for the Prosecution
Just when you think you’ve seen all the twists, this film throws another one at you. The last great film for Charles Laughton (as an irascible lawyer), Tyrone Power (as his smarmy client, on trial for murder), and Marlene Dietrich (as Power’s wife).

Wednesday, May 6th

8:00pm – IFC – Clerks
Kevin Smith burst onto the indie scene with Clerks, a low-budget dialogue-heavy film about clerks at a convenience store.
(repeats at 2:45am on the 7th)

9:35pm – IFC – Chasing Amy
I think this was the first Kevin Smith film I saw. Liked it enough to check out the others. :)

10:30pm – TCM – Rio Bravo
Howard Hawks’ response to High Noon, which he didn’t like because Gary Cooper kept asking for help to face the bad guy. In Rio Bravo, lawmen John Wayne, Dean Martin, and Ricky Nelson refuse all help offered, guarding a captured outlaw against rescue by his gang all on their own. And even have time to break into a song once or twice in the middle! (Image above courtesy of Row Three and Mike’s great post on Escapist Cinema for Recessionary Times)
Must See

1:00am (7th) – TCM – High Noon

2:30am (7th) – TCM – The Man From Laramie
James Stewart made several westerns with director Anthony Mann, and they’re all quite good – you can see the beginnings of the darkness and moral ambiguity that would inform the revisionist westerns of the 1960s and 1970s.

Thursday, May 7th

7:50am – IFC – Primer
Today is apparently mindbender day on the cable stations. Primer is a time travel movie that assumes a) time travel is scientifically possible and b) the audience doesn’t need anything explained to them. Watching it is like being thrown into the deep end of a pool before learning to swim…and there’s an undertow.
(repeats at 12:25pm and 5:05pm)

10:00pm – Sundance – INLAND EMPIRE
And then you can jump over to Sundance and watch David Lynch’s latest magnum opus, which pretty much can’t be understood by any use of normal narrative logic. It works thematically and emotionally though. You know those 3D images that you can only see by throwing your eyes out of focus? Do that with your mind in order to “see” INLAND EMPIRE.

Friday, May 8th

6:00pm – IFC – Closely Watched Trains
This Czech film won the Best Foreign Film Oscar back in 1965, at the forefront of a Czech film renaissance. I’m not a huge fan of it as a whole (because it’s basically a coming-of-age story, and that’s not my favorite genre), but it has a number of great moments in it.
(repeats at 6:25am and 1:45pm on the 9th)

8:00pm – TCM – Goldfinger
My pick for best Bond film of all time. “Do you expect me to talk?” “No, Mr. Bond! I expect you to die!”
(repeats at 2:00pm on the 9th)

Saturday, May 9th

12:00N – TCM – Stagecoach
John Ford and John Wayne had worked together before this, but Stagecoach was the film that really solidified how great a team they made. A disparate group of people (outlaw, bank man, town drunk, prostitute, etc.) are thrown together in the closely confined space of a stagecoach – a potent situation even before the Indians start attacking. Thomas Mitchell won an Oscar for his role, and Claire Trevor was equally deserving for hers.
Must See

6:15pm – TCM – The Adventures of the Robin Hood
Must See

10:30pm – TCM – Captain Blood
The first pairing of Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland (they’d eventually make eight films together) is still one of the best – probably only beaten out by The Adventures of Robin Hood. Plus, pirates!

Sunday, May 10th

6:00am – TCM – Bachelor Mother
Slight Ginger Rogers vehicle, but one I always enjoy – she picks up a baby left on the steps of an orphanage just in time for everyone to think it’s hers, including her boss (David Niven) at the department store where she works. So she has to keep it.

11:00am – TCM – Mildred Pierce

There wasn’t anything on Monday, so being one day late wasn’t a big issue. However, then my computer started misbehaving and I didn’t get it posted Monday night, either, which means this’ll post too late for the first few on Tuesday. But they’re good enough films that I let them stand. If they play again, or you see them at the library or whatever, check them out.

Tuesday, February 3

5:00am – TCM – Top Hat
Arguably the best of the ten Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals. Song, dance, mistaken identities, romance…yep, we gots it.

6:45am – TCM – Gold Diggers of 1933
Warner Bros was known in the 1930s for their gritty dramas and action films, but also for their backstage musicals, which are somehow both gritty and glitzy. Gold Diggers of 1933 is one of the best, full of witty one-liners and amazing geometric Busby Berkeley choreography. Oh, and Ginger Rogers ad-libs “We’re in the Money” in pig latin. It’s worth it JUST FOR THAT.

8:00pm – TCM – The More the Merrier
A World War II housing shortage has Charles Coburn, Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur sharing an apartment; soon Coburn is matchmaking for McCrea and Arthur, and we get a wonderful, adorable romance out of it.

2:00am (4th) – TCM – Hannah and Her Sisters
Ha! I took TCM to task for playing Annie Hall too much and Hannah and Her Sisters not enough, and look what happens. (Okay, the schedule had been made for over a month, so I can’t really claim any influence. But still.) Annie and Manhattan notwithstanding, Hannah is my favorite Woody Allen film – almost certainly his most balanced.

Wednesday, February 4

3:00am (5th) – TCM – Yankee Doodle Dandy
Hollywood turned out a heap bunch of musical biopics of composers in the 1940s. This biography of WWI-era Broadway composer/performer George M. Cohan is one of the few that is actually good, even earning James Cagney an Oscar (though he’s better known now as a tough guy gangster, Cagney got his start as a hoofer, and he’s as comfortable dancing as beating things up).

Thursday, February 5

8:00am – IFC – Primer
Welcome to sci-fi at its most cerebral. You know how most science-dependent films include a non-science-type character so there’s an excuse to explain all the science to audience? Yeah, this film doesn’t have that character, so no one ever explains quite how the time travel device at the center of the film works. Or even that it is, actually, a time-travel device. This is the sci-fi version of getting thrown into the deep end when you can’t swim. Without floaties. When I first rented it a couple of years ago, I watched it twice, back to back. Good thing it’s on three times today, eh? :)
(repeats 12:15pm and 5:05pm)

9:00am – TCM – 2001: A Space Odyssey
Heh, I bet IFC and TCM didn’t even plan this, but you get a choice between watching 1960s cerebral sci-fi or 2000s cerebral sci-fi (well, you can watch Primer later, because it’s repeating). Kubrick made a lot of brilliant films, but I’ve gotta say, none of them enthrall me on repeat viewings quite as much as 2001.

Friday, February 6

4:00pm – Sundance – Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
In 1943, few Germans were willing to stand against Hitler, even if they knew about the atrocities being committed. Sophie Scholl and her brother and a few friends were among the ones who did, and this fantastic film follows the group just before and during their arrest and trial. It’s not particularly surprising how it ends, but the screen fairly crackles throughout – the Nazi interrogator who questions Sophie is no match for her quiet conviction. 

9:45pm – TCM – Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Or, or, Stanley Kubrick takes on the Cold War in one of the most piercing satires ever made. Plus Peter Sellers in three roles, what’s gonna be wrong with that? 

Saturday, February 7

4:00pm – TCM – Lawrence of Arabia
Most epics are over-determined and so focused on spectacle that they end up being superficial – all big sets and sweeping music with no depth. The brilliance of Lawrence of Arabia is that it looks like an epic with all the big sets and sweeping music and widescreen vistas, but at its center is an enigmatic character study of a man who lives bigger-than-life, but is as personally conflicted as any intimate drama has ever portrayed. 

8:00pm – TCM – Casablanca
Just so you know it’s on, here’s another chance to catch one of the best movies Golden Age Hollywood ever produced. 

11:30pm – TCM – The Great Escape
 One of the most enjoyable POW films you’ll ever see, and yes I get the irony of that statement. It may not be realistic of the POW experience, but it is one heck of a reverse heist film.

2:30pm – TCM – Das Boot
Before Wolfgang Petersen went Hollywood (Air Force One, other action films that aren’t that great), he did this German U-boat film, which has quite a good reputation – it routinely lands on lists of both best foreign films and best war films. And yeah, I haven’t seen it yet. We’ll see if I can make time for it this time. 

Sunday, February 8

7:15am – TCM – Shadow of a Doubt
Said to be Hitchcock’s favorite among his own films, Shadow of a Doubt is quieter than most of his, but in terms of psychological subtlety, it’s definitely one of his best. Small-town girl Teresa Wright idolizes her uncle Charlie, but what will she do if he turns out to be the infamous Black Widow murderer?

1:30pm – TCM – Gigi
Maurice Chevalier’s “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” might come off as more pervy now than it was originally intended, but as a whole Gigi stands as one of the most well-produced and grown-up musicals made during the studio era. Director Vincente Minnelli gives it a wonderful visual richness and sophistication, while music from Lerner & Loewe (usually) stresses the right combination of innocence, exuberance, and ennui for its decadent French story. 

3:30pm – TCM – The Quiet Man
John Ford directs his favorite couple John Wayne and  Maureen O’Hara in this lovely and understated romance of a retired boxer returning to his Irish roots and conflicting with O’Hara’s hard-headed brother Victor McLaglen over her dowry (and O’Hara’s character is plenty stubborn herself). None of the principles have been better, and the supporting cast that surrounds them is great.

5:45pm – TCM – Roman Holiday
Not Audrey Hepburn’s first film, as it’s sometimes mistakenly claimed, but her first lead and the role that propelled her to stardom and won her an Oscar. She’s a princess who wants to experience ordinary life for a change and runs off to Rome – reporter Gregory Peck senses a story and tags along incognito.

6:30pm – IFC – Elephant
I’ll be honest with you. When I first saw Gus Van Sant’s take on high school shootings, I pretty much thought it was pretentious bullcrap.  And I may in fact still think so when I see the film again. But there are elements to the tone and mood that are still with me, a couple of years later, and I’m already on my way to revising my opinion, partially due to my personal shift towards a greater appreciation for slow-moving, thoughtful, well-shot films. All of which things Elephant is. 

11:30pm – IFC – Trainspotting
While you’re getting ready for Danny Boyle to win multiple Oscars this year with Slumdog Millionaire, don’t forget to check out his earlier films, which are all worthwhile, especially this one which thrust Boyle, Ewan McGregor, and Kelly McDonald onto the international scene. A searing look at Scottish heroin addicts, it’s sometimes hard to watch, but it’s never less than riveting. 

4:00am (9th) – TCM – The Jazz Singer
The Jazz Singer is not a good movie. But it is an important movie, as the first feature film with synchronized sound. At the time (1927), producers thought sound would only be useful for musical numbers, and The Jazz Singer is basically a silent film about a Jewish boy (Al Jolson) defying his family to go into show business with sound musical numbers. Jolson’s ad-libbed “you ain’t heard nothing yet” was, of course, prophetic. Silent pictures would be almost completely obsolete within a year.

Next Week Sneak Peek

Because I’m always late, heh.

Monday the 9th
7:35am, 1:00pm – IFC – Everyone Says I Love You
9:15am – TCM – The Apartment
9:20pm, 2:45pm – IFC – Strictly Ballroom
1:45pm – TCM – Citizen Kane
3:45pm – TCM – Mildred Pierce

Tuesday the 10th
6:00am, 10:35am, 3:15 – IFC – Waiting for Guffman
2:45pm – TCM – Henry V

Wednesday the 11th
3:45am – TCM – Rebecca
1:30pm – TCM – Mon Oncle
3:30pm – TCM – The Birds
9:00pm – Sundance – Spectacle: She & Him, Jenny Lewis (Not a movie, per se. Indulge me.)
10:00pm – TCM – Lassie Come Home
10:00pm, 4:00am – Sundance – Wristcutters: A Love Story
11:45pm – TCM – National Velvet

I’m not quite finished with the December reading/watching recap, but since publishing “best of” lists is the thing to do at the end of the year, I figured I could go ahead and do that. And by “best of 2006″ I mean “best that I saw or read in 2006,” because, as usual, I was not proactive enough at theatres and new release bookshelves to give any sort of a best movies or books released in 2006 list.

Top Ten Films I Watched in 2006 (none of the lists are in any particular order…most are chronological of when I saw them, because that’s the order of the records I started from)

• Brick (original reaction)
• Grave of the Fireflies (original reaction)
• In a Lonely Place (original reaction)
• Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (original reaction)
• Downfall (original reaction)
• The Constant Gardener (original reaction)
• Wit (original reaction)
• Grand Illusion (original reaction)
• The Queen (original reaction)
• Volver (original reaction)

Honorable Mentions

• Match Point (original reaction)
• Munich (original reaction)
• Pickpocket (original reaction)
• Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit (original reaction)
• Inside Man (original reaction)
• Good Night and Good Luck (original reaction)
• The Departed (original reaction)
• Talk to Her (original reaction)
• Transamerica (original reaction)
• Little Miss Sunshine (original reaction)

Ten Films You Probably Haven’t Seen But Ought To

• Junebug (original reaction)
• Primer (original reaction)
• Cache (original reaction)
• Elevator to the Gallows (original reaction)
• November (original reaction)
• Sholay (original reaction)
• Thumbsucker (original reaction)
• Smiles of a Summer Night (original reaction)
• Thank You for Smoking (original reaction)
• A History of Violence (original reaction)

Some Films I Really Had Gotten to St. Louis Before I Had to Go Back to Waco:

• Children of Men
• Pan’s Labyrinth
• Curse of the Golden Flower
• The Good German

Top Ten Books I Read This Year

• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (original reaction)
• The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (original reaction)
• Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi (original reaction)
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (original reaction)
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (original reaction)
• Hitchcock’s Films by Robin Wood (original reaction)
• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (original reaction)
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard (original reaction)
• Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges (original reaction)
• One by One in the Darkness by Deirdre Madden (original reaction)

Top Five TV Shows (network only; I can’t keep track of cable)

• Veronica Mars (CW)
• The Office (NBC)
• How I Met Your Mother (CBS)
• House (FOX)
• Heroes (NBC)

Top Five Guilty Pleasure TV Shows (by this I mean either that they aren’t really GOOD, but I like them, or merely that I enjoy them, but not in a substantial, fannish way)

• Desperate Housewives (ABC)
• The Amazing Race (CBS)
• Bones (FOX)
• Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (FOX)
• Standoff (FOX)

On the subject of TV shows, 24 will probably be joining the first set of TV shows this spring, and American Idol will certainly be joining the “guilty pleasure” set in LIKE TWO WEEKS! Just so you know, this blog will likely be taken over by American Idol fever after the premiere on January 16th.

I’m a month behind again! Hey, I’ve been putting more effort into watching and reading than writing. (No, really. I’ve been busting through my goals pretty well this year. I’m practicing for grad school, when I hear I’ll have half as much time to do twice as much work. We’ll see.)

Also, some day I’m going to write about something other than movies and books. Really. I promise.

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