Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of September 26-October 2, 2016. Aaron Rodgers hasn't been doing so well, so instead of fretting about his QB play, why not R-E-L-A-X with some good movies? Once again, I've used my impeccable taste to select a bunch of movies I know you'll all like. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
TCM is showing a bunch of Dick Powell movies on Tuesday. One that I don't think I've mentioned before is The King's Vacation, at 6:30 AM. That's because it's not a Dick Powell film per se; it's really a vehicle for George Arliss. Arliss, who didn't get to show his full talents in movies until sound came around and he was in his 60s, plays the King, a man who, being third in line, only took the throne out of duty, even divorcing his first wife (Marjorie Gateson) and marrying a new queen (real-life wife Florence Arliss) to take the throne. Now the country is in the throes of revolution, and our King senses that this would be a perfect opportunity to abdicate, so that he can go back to the wife and young daughter (now grown up as Patricia Ellis) he left behind. Needless to say, things are not the same when he gets back to his first wife as they were when he left. She's obviously been seeing other men and living high on the hog, while the daughter is seeing blue-collar mechanic Powell. And then there's the possibility that the revolution won't succeed and our king's country will want him back.
We get one last week of slapstick on TCM this week, looking at the 1970s and 80s. One movie that doesn't get shown very often is The Gumball Rally, which you can see at 3:30 AM Wednesday. “Gumball” is a code word that lets the hearer know that the next edition of a secret and highly illegal cross-country car race is about to take place. Showing up are organizer Michael Bannon (Michael Sarrazin) driving a Cobra; Gibson (Garey Busey) leading a team driving a Camaro, ringer Italian racecar driver Raul Julia driving a Ferrari; a couple of old guys driving a vintage Mercedes; people transporting a Rolls Royce across country; two cops in a cop car; and some others. They're all going to try to go all out for 36 hours to get from New York to Long Beach, CA, while avoiding traffic, bad conditions, and cops who would like to stop them for speeding, since there's technically a 55 MPH speed limit.
There's a movie back on FXM Retro after a long absence that I don't care for, but a lot of people do: Quintet, at 1:00 PM Saturday and 6:00 AM Sunday. Paul Newman plays Essex, a seal hunter in a post-apocalyptic world that's undergoing an ice age. It seems the seals are all gone and now, with a pregnant wife Vivia (Brigitte Fossey). So he takes her back to a city where he used to live, only to find out that the place is almost abandoned. One of the few survivors is killed, and when Essex investigates, he finds that the survivors are spending their time playing a game called “Quintet”, only they've decided to play a life-and-death version of it, with the losers dying and the winners getting a chance to play again. (One would think the only winning move is not to play.) Robert Altman directed, and that combined with the film's themes lead a lot of people to praise it, but I've always found the whole thing pretentious and tedious. Watch and judge for yourself.
If you want to watch more Paul Newman, you can do so in Fat Man and Little Boy, which will be airing on StarzEncore Classics at 4:35 AM Sunday. Those of you know know your history will know that the title does not refer to people, but to the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Newman plays Gen. Leslie Groves, the military man given the task of developing the weapon that will finally defeat the Japanese. Of course, nobody in the military has the scientific capacity to develop the weapon, so the generals have to bring together a bunch of scientists, headed by Robert Oppenheimer (Dwight Schultz of The A-Team), to Los Alamos NM for the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer in real life was a complex man, and the complexity is portrayed on screen as him having a conflict between his love for his wife (Bonnie Bedelia) and his Communist mistress (Natasha Richardson). Meanwhile, the general and the scientist continually butt heads.
Thursday is the birth anniversary of actress Greer Garson, so it's unsurprising that TCM is spending a morning and afternoon with her movies. One of her movies that I haven't mentioned before is Desire Me, which you can catch at 10:15 AM. In this one, Garson plays Marise, a Frenchwoman who was happily married to Paul (Robert Mitchum), at least until the Nazis invaded France and the French have to fight. Paul has been taken POW, which is where he's met fellow POW Jean (Richard Hart). Paul tells Jean about his wonderful wife, something Jean doesn't have. And then the two escape, but Paul gets shot in the escape. So Jean goes to Marise, confirms the news that Paul has been killed in the escape attempt. So Jean decides to woo Marise himself. And he's successful. At least until it turns out that Paul wasn't killed, and he shows up back with his wife. Oh dear. Garson was seriously injured an an accident with a wave while doing location shooting, and the shoot was unhappy in other ways.
Gene Wilder died at the end of last month. TCM is finally getting around to doing their programming tribute to him, which will air this Thursday in prime time. The lineup is as follows:
8:00 PM Role Model: Gene Wilder, an interview Wilder did for TCM with Alec Baldwin some years back;
9:15 PM Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' parody of the horror genre;
11:15 PM a repeat of the Role Model interview;
12:30 AM Start the Revolution Without Me, about sets of identical twins who get caught up in the French Revolution;
2:15 AM The Frisco Kid, about an outlaw and a rabbi; and
4:30 AM Bonnie and Clyde, in which Wilder gets carjacked by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway
It's been a while since I've been able to recommend the Bette Davis version of Of Human Bondage. It's showing up on TCM at 9:45 AM Friday, and if you haven't seen it before, it's highly recommended. Leslie Howard plays Philip, a club-footed man living in Paris because he wants to become an artist. The only problem is, he has no artistic talent, so he has to go into medicine back in London. One day at a café, he meets waitress Mildred (Bette Davis). She's a Cockney and obviously of a different social class from Philip, but Philip falls for her anyway. Not that she returns the favor, simply using him for what she can get from him and then only coming back when she needs something from him. And Philip is such a dope that he keeps falling for this! It's an interesting character study, as both Davis and Howard give excellent performances, especially Davis who has to go through a deteriorating situation. Frances Dee plays a supporting role as Sally, the “right” woman for Philip.
Since the beginning of the month, TCM has again been airing the Bowery Boys movies on Saturday mornings. This week's entry is Private Eyes (they're watching you clap clap) at 10:30 AM Saturday. Sach (Huntz Hall) is working with Slip (Leo Gorcey) in teaching young boys self defense. One of those boys hits Sach in the nose, with the result being that Sach begins to be able to read minds! How to use this power? Well, Slip and the rest of the gang find that a private detective has to leave town and sell his detective agency, so why not buy it and use Sach's newfound power to solve mysteries? Myra (Joyce Holden) shows up with a fur coat and sealed envelope, which turns out to lead to a “health farm” that's a front for stealing fur coats. Slip and Sach eventually have to go undercover to break the case, with Sach even going in drag to become a female patient! Sure, there's nothing original here, but that's not why people went to see the Bowery Boys movies.
If you like a singing cowboy like Gene Autry, you can see him in the very peculiar In Old Monterey, at 8:15 AM Thursday on StarzEncore Westerns. This one is strange because it probably shouldn't be classified as a western, other than having a whole bunch of actors from the genre doing a more contemporary movie set out west. Here, Autry plays an Army sergeant who gets sent out to the ranchland owned by people like Gabby Hayes to try to get the people to sell out to the government. The thing is, the government wants the land for training the new Army Air Corps pilots, just in case war should come to America. (The movie was released in 1939, when war was already raging in Asia and would soon come to Europe.) Of course the locals don't want to sell, but Autry will get them to realize it's their patriotic duty to sell. Meanwhile, there's a borax mining company that wants the locals to hold out so that the mining company can get more money, too. Along the way, Autry and various others sing several songs typical of the singing cowboy genre.
For a more recent and somewhat more traditional western, you could try Ulzana's Raid, at 11:10 AM Sunday on StarzEncore (or three hours later if you have the west coast feed). Ulzana (Joaquin Martinez) is an Apache chief who has escaped from the reservation and stolen some horses. The commander of the local Army fort sends Lt. DeBuin (Bruce Davison) to lead a scouting party to find Ulzana and bring him back to the reservation before Ulzana and his men can inflict too much damage. Guided by the scout McIntosh (Burt Lancaster), DeBuin and his men begin to track Ulzana. DeBuin, as a devout Christian, has always been sympathetic toward the plight of the Indians, but as he sees the destruction they're causing, he begins to wonder how God could have created such men. It doesn't help that he's got a lot of men serving under him who would just as soon kill all the Indians.