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Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread ,for the week of December 15-21, 2014.  We've got more Cary Grant movies this week, this month's Guest Programmer, and a very special programming block at the end of the week.  There's other stuff worth watching too.  As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.

We'll start off with this week's Silent Sunday Nights feature: The Cameraman, Monday at 12:30 AM.  Keaton plays the title character, a photographer whom we see at the beginning of the movie on the street, taking quick-developing tintypes for tourists.  He's got a girlfriend, however, and she works as a secretary at a newsreel company.  Newsreels are much more prestigious than tintypes, so to impress her and keep another guy from stealing her from under his nose, he invests in a newsreel camera to photograph newsreels himself.  Needles to say, his first several tries don't work out very well, as something always go very comically wrong.  And then when it looks like things won't go right, chance puts him in a place where he gets the chance to get the best newsreel of them all.  This is one of Keaton's last great comedies before MGM took too much control over his work, and is full of great sequences.

Star of the Month Cary Grant shows up on Monday nights in prime time on TCM, but this week I'll mention a Grant film that shows up outside of the Star of the Month salute: Penny Serenade, at 4:00 PM Monday on TCM.  The movie starts off with Irene Dunne, playing Julie Adams, about to divorce husband Roger (that's Cary Grant) and looking back on what's led up to the divorce.  Many years back, Julie and Roger met, fell in love, and got married.  He was sent to Japan on business, and she went along.  They were happy as she was going to have a baby.  And then the Kanto earthquake of 1923 hit, causing Julie to suffer a miscarriage and then even become infertile!  The couple returns home here Roger buys a struggling small-town newspaper, while Julie wants to adopt a child.  Because of their financial struggles, some at the adoption agency aren't sure of the couple's fitness, but they eventually get a child, which canges both of their lives, especially when the court threatens to take custody after the trial period.  It's melodramatic at times, but Grant and Dunne are such good actors that they can pull it off.

For those of you who like Fox musicals, you've got the chance to see one I haven't recommended before: Three Little Girls in Blue, at 11:55 AM Monday on FXM Retro.  If the plot of this film starts looking familiar to you, that's probably because it's from a long line of remakes, including Moon Over Miami.  Three sisters (June Haver, Vivian Blaine, and Vera-Ellen) live down on the farm at the beginning of the 20th century.  They dream of a better life, and when they get a small inheritance, they realize they've got a chance to achieve that life.  They take the money, dress up as an heiress, her secretary, and her maid, and head to Atlatic City to find a rich guy to marry.  Well, they do find men (albeit not the best men Fox had to offer), but will they find the right (ie. wealthy) guy, or will falling in love with a man of modest means spoil that plan?  And will the rightguy fall for the right woman?  Celeste Holm shows up toward the end as another threat.

On Tuesday night, we get a bunch of maritime disasters on TCM, starting at 8:00 PM with what I think may be the TCM premiere of the 1972 version of The Poseidon Adventure.  Several all-star passengers board the Poseidon (captained by Leslie Nielsen) to take a Mediterranean cruise: Policeman Ernest Borgnine and wife Stella Stevens; older couple Shelley Winters and Jack Albertson; lonely businessman Red Buttons; unorthodox man of the cloth Gene Hackman; and a couple of bratty children.  The ship hits a rogue wave on New Year's Eve, causing the ship to capsize and everybody trying to make their way to safety, which is... a good question since the ship is upside down!  Ship's steward Roddy McDowall, and lounge singer Carol Lynley, join the passengers in their trek to try to be rescued, unsure of who's going to live and who will die.  Sure, parts of the movie are cheesy 40 years on, but this is a really fun movie, with a lot of suspense.

Wednesday night brings this month's Guest Programmer to TCM: actor Jason Lee, whom many of you will recognize from the TV show My Name Is Earl.  Most Guest Programmers sit down with Robert Osborne to discuss four of their favorite movies, but for whatever reason, this month only sees three selections.  Lee starts off with a pair from Charlie Chaplin:
First, at 8:00 PM, is The Kid, in which Chaplin's little tramp winds up being the adoptive father to an orphan boy (Jackie Coogan) and fighting to keep custody of the boy.
At 9:00 PM is City Lights, which has the little tramp meeting and falling in love with a blind flower seller, and going to great lengths to try to raise the money for the medical procedure that will restore her eyesight.
Finally, at 10:45 PM is Paris, Texas, starring Harry Dean Stanton as a man who comes in from the wilderness, and is found by his brother (Dean Stockwell) who tries to return him to the wife and kid he doesn't really know after all these years.

Before that, however, we get a bunch of crime movies from 1950 on Wednesday morning and afternoon on TCM.  An interesting, but decidedly lesser, movie that I don't think I've recommended before is Experiment Alcatraz, at 7:00 PM.  Doctors have developed a radioactive isotope-based medicine that will help combat blood diseases, but they need to do final testing, so as human guinea pigs they use some Alcatraz prisoners who will get early release in exchange for the testing.  The only thing is, one of them goes nuts, stabbing another convict who was his best friend with a pair of scissors and escaping.  So the doctor who developed the isotope and the nurse fired for leaving the scissors where the convict could get them, and investigate.  They discover that the guy faked insanity as part of a complex plot to get a a quarter million dollars.  Can our doctor detective catch the vicious murderer?  An odd idea for a story, and very low budget, but it still entertains well enough.

Recently, somebody over in the "Favorite Christmas Movies" thread suggested the ending of A Christmas Carol as one of the great Christmas movie scenes.  However, he didn't mention which of the versions he had in mind.  Well, you can all judge for yourselves which version of the story is the best on Thursday night as TCM shows several of them:
MGM's 1939 version kicks off the night at 8:00 PM, starring Reginald Owen as Scrooge.
At 9:15 PM, you can catch the 1970 musical Scrooge, in which Albert Finney plays the title character.
Then at 11:15 PM is an obscure British version of the story from 1935.
Finally, at 12:45 AM Friday, you can catch the TV movie Carol For Another Christmas, which has Sterling Hayden as the Scrooge-like character.  This one was written by Rod Serling for the United Nations to try to promote their peacekeeping operations, which makes it interesting, but the story is incredibly leaden.
TCM is not showing the famous 1951 British version with Alastair Sim as Scrooge, or the mid-1970s porn version The Passions of Carol.

Earlier on Thursday, we get a birthday salute to director Jules Dassin, including the movie that made his future wife, Melina Mercouri, a star: Never on Sunday, at 11:15 AM.  Mercouri stars as Ilya, a prostitute with a heart of gold working in Piraeus, the port city to Athens, where she woos the various Greek sailors who come and go.  Into this world comes Homer Thrace (played by Dassin himself), an American professor researching Greece's fall from glory.  He gets the bizarre idea that it's prostitutes like Ilya who are in part responsible, so he decides to reform her.  Not that she thinks she needs reform of course; she loves life the way she lives it and the people love her for it.  Well, except for the man who provides all the other prostitutes; he doesn't want Ilya giving his girls ideas.  All of this is played as light comedy, remembered for Mercouri as well as the terrific Greek score and the title song which was a worldwide hit.

A few weeks back, TCM signed an agreement with Disney.  In exchange for sponsoring the "Great Movie Ride" attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studio, TCM is getting the rights to show some stuff from the Disney studios.  Probably not any of the animated features, sadly, but there are going to be some live-action features, some documentaries, some episodes of the "Wonderful World of Color" TV show, and some animated shorts, all presented under the rubric of "Treasures from the Disney Vault".  The first batch of those treasures comes this Sunday in prime time, starting with a couple of animated shorts, including Chip an' Dale between 8:00 and 8:30 PM, followed at 8:30 PM by a look at Disneyland as it was under construction 60 years ago.  Robert Benchly visits Disney in The Reluctant Dragon at 9:30 PM, mixing live action and animation.

And now for the shorts.  As you know, I love mentioning the Traveltalks shorts that MGM did from the mid-1930s through the early 1950s.  This week, there's one that might be of some "let's have a good laugh at how much things have changed" value for some of you: Minnesota, Land of Plenty, at 7:38 AM Thursday.  Made at a time before a bunch of idots thought you could fund a stadium with electronic pull-tabs, this one looks at the state as it was in 1942, at a time when supposedly half of the state's residents lived on farms.  There's also a lok at the iron mines in the Mesabi range, the State Capitol in St. Paul, and the Mississippi River which flows through the state.  OK, Minnesota posters, how much of yourselves do you see in this short? 
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