Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of April 27-May 3, 2020. There's only so long that we can celebrate the brilliance of Brian Gutekunst's drafting, so once that wears off, why not spend the long days by watching some interesting movies? This week sees movies spanning 70 years, three continents, and the gamut of acting from silent stars to talking animals. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
If you want a bizarre little movie, you could do far worse than to watch Hollywood Party, showing at 3:45 PM Monday on TCM. Jimmy Durante plays Schnarzan, an actor whose jungle movies because of the appalling lack of realism. When he hears that a Baron Munchausen (Jack Pearl) is in town with a bunch of lions that would be just the thing for Schnarzan's next movie. But his competitor wants the lions also. So Schnarzan and the studio bosses hold a big party to try to convince the Baron to sell the lions to Scharzan. In reality, this paper-thin plot is an excuse for MGM to bring in a bunch of its second-tier comedy stars to do their skits, with varying quality. Laurel and Hardy show up with Lupe Velez, for example. Perhaps most amazing is that Walt Disney decided to distribute one of his color cartoons (the rest of the movie is in black and white) with MGM, so it shows up in this movie. Don't miss this if you can.
With the NFL Draft over and the Nazis in state governments continuing to lock us down, there's no sports, so you're going to have to do your best with sports movies such as Mr. Baseball, at 7:25 PM Monday on StarzComedy. Tom Selleck plays Jack Elliot, an over-the-hill ballplayer for the Yankees who's up for trade because the Yankees have a young player (actually Frank Thomas, who went on to a fair career of his own in baseball). The only team willing to take Jack is the Chunichi Dragons, who are in one of Japan's professional leagues. So as you can guess there's going to be a lot of culture clash between Jack and the Japanese since Jack doesn't speak the language, know the culture, or even necessarily want to be in Japan. Things get further complicated when Jack falls in love with the manager's (Ken Takakura, also in Robert Mitchum's The Yakuza) daughter (Aya Takanashi). Jack's play eventually starts turning the team's fortunes around but the conflict between individual performance and team play is going to rear its head again….
Wednesday morning and afternoon's lineup on TCM is a bunch of circus movies. For those of you who like recent movies, give He Who Gets Slapped a try. You can see it at 11:15 AM Wednesday. Lon Chaney (Sr.) plays the “he”, who at the start of the movie is a professor with a brilliant theory. But the professor's rival Baron Regnard (Marc McDermott) takes both the theory and the professor's wife, leaving the professor to run off and join the circus. There, he's a clown whose stock in trade is getting slapped, although the bareback rider Consuelo (a young Norma Shearer) takes a liking to him. He falls in love with her, even though she's in love with Bezano (John Gilbert), another performer in the circus and the relationship with “HE” can only be friendship. To make matters worse. Consuelo's dad is one of those types who thinks he should have a say in whom his daughter marries, and he wants her to marry up when the Baron shows up. Even if HE can't have Consuelo, he's not about to let the baron have her.
Elsewhere on Wednesday, you've got a chance to watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which will be on StarzEncore Westerns at 4:44 AM. Paul Newman plays Butch, who was part of the Hole in the Wall Gang together with the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) and a bunch of others circa 1900. One of their train robberies goes wrong and results in a small posse on their trail, one that doesn't seem to have any quit in it, largely because it turns out the railroad company president has paid the posse to kill them. So the two visit Sundance's girlfriend, schoolteacher Etta Place (Katherine Ross) to see if she can help them in any way. The idea is to flee the country, which involves the trio fleeing the country via New York to get a boat to South America. They wind up in Bolivia where they try to rob more banks to keep afloat, but they're not very successful, and now they have the Bolivian authorities closing in on them too. Ironically, the iconic song “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” plays over what is probably the worst scene in the movie.
The TCM spotlight on New York in the 1970s returns this week with two nights. First on Tuesday there's the night that was rescheduled from April 16 due to the TCM Festival at home, and that night looks at blacks in New York. The Thursday night lineup includes Dog Day Afternoon at 10:15 PM. Al Pacino plays Sonny, a man who leads a group of small-time criminals robbing a bank because, well, Sonny needs the money. However, the robbery goes wrong in every way imaginable, as the robbers other than Sal (John Cazale) back out, and it turns out the robbers showed up late as most of the cash in the bank branch has already been transferred. Meanwhile, the police led by Moretti (Charles Durning) announce that they've surrounded the bank. A circus develops as a crowd gathers outside the bank to see the standoff and the reason for the robbery – Sonny's lover (Chris Sarandon) needs the money for a sex-change operation – is revealed. Inside, the managers and tellers have, if not sympathy, at least no hatred towards the robbers
A movie that's appropriate for describing what the state lockdowns are like might be The Breakfast Club. You've got a chance to watch it this week, as it will be on StarzEncore Classics at 4:48 AM Thursday. One Saturday morning, five archetypes show up at a high school to serve a Saturday morning detention for various things they've done. There's the jock Andrew (Emilio Estevez), the rich girl Claire (Molly Ringwald), the chronic bad boy Bender (Judd Nelson), the normally straight-arrow Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), and basket case Allison (Ally Sheedy). None of them know each other, and under normal circumstances they would just walk on by. But they're all stuck together in the library by their idiot principal Vernon (Paul Gleason), and tasked with writing an essay about what they've learned from the experience. They take the opportunity to rebel as best they can and possibly remember each other when they all go back to school on Monday. A classic 80s movie, known for another iconic song, “Don't You Forget About Me” as well as the movie poster created by Annie Liebovitz.
A lot of athletes dislike sports reporters, and frankly, it's a reputation that's not undeserved. A very humorous look at a sports reporter shows up in Hot News Margie, which shows up at about 8:08 AM Saturday as part of TCM's Saturday matinee block. (It's the second short in the half hour before the first “feature”.) Marjorie Beebe plays Margie, the reporter who is given the story of finding out whether a certain college football star has gotten secretly married. (Remember that college coaches didn't necessarily want their players getting married, and Bart and Cherry Starr had to elope.) Margie goes to some pretty elaborate lengths to get her story, although it ultimately ends in tragedy with an ending that has a shocking punchline.
A decade before the TV show Mr. Ed, there was a series of movies featuring Francis the talking mule. The first movie in that series, simply called Francis, is airing on TCM at 10:00 PM Saturday. Donald O'Connor plays not the mule of course (although the voice of the mule is provided by character actor Chill Wills); he's Peter Stirling, a young army officer in southeast Asia during World War II. He's trapped in the jungle when he meets Francis, who starts talking to him and helps him to safety. Francis continues feeding Peter military intelligence, but of course the mule doesn't seem to be talking to anybody else. So when Peter is asked by his superiors to explain where he got this secret information, Peter tells the truth any naturally nobody believes him. The commanding officers respond by putting Peter in the psych ward. Will Peter be able to convince people of the truth? Will Francis help Peter in this regard? (Well, the story is told in flashback so you know Peter gets out alive.) Good, although sometimes a little bit of Donald O'Connor can go a long way.
A search of x4 claims that the last time I recommended Trouble Man was almost five years ago. It's returning to the FXM lineup, and is going to be on Saturday at 3:00 AM and again at 11:20 AM. Robert Hooks plays Mr. T., a confident black private detective in Los Angeles. He's approached by Chalky (Paul Winfield), who runs a floating craps game together with white Pete (Ralph Waite). Somebody's been breaking in on the games and stealing the take, and the two would like Mr. T. to figure out who's doing it, something the good detective is willing to do for a price. What he doesn't realize is that somebody is setting T up. They've kidnapped the underling of Big (Julius Harris), a rival boss, and kill that underling to make it look like that underling was the one robbing the games, and that T is the one who killed the underling. So now both Big and the cops are on the tail of Mr. T., and there's going to be a lot more violence before he can clear himself and unmask the real killer, albeit with several hot women along the way.
Finally, I'll recommend a movie that I know will appeal to people like Goldie who normally watch the Hallmark Channel: I Know Where I'm Going!, at 4:00 PM Sunday on TCM. Wendy Hiller plays Joan Webster, a young woman who is on her way to Scotland to get married to her wealthy fiancé Sir Robert. He's so wealthy that he owns an entire island in the Hebrides, Kiloran, where the wedding is going to be held. Things go well until she reaches Tobermoray, not far from where she's supposed to take the ferry to Kiloran. The weather turns bad and there's no way anybody's going to be able to get to Kiloran. Also stranded there is Toruil MacNeil (Roger Livesey), a naval officer who is not well-to-do and is on leave to visit his family on Kiloran. As the two remain stranded longer and longer, they begin to fall in love, although Joan still feels she needs to continue on to Kiloran to get married in what is really a marriage of convenience, not love.