Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of December 2-8, 2013. You may recall 205 as being a terrible season for the Green Bay Packers, with them being mathematically eliminated from playoff contention after about week 12. There was so much bickering going on then that I decided to mention some good movies to watch to get everybody to stop bickering. Eight years on, we've got another Packer season turning into a nightmare. Whether or not they'll turn it around, I don't know, but there are still good movies to watch. It's also the first full week of a new month, so we're going to have a new Star of the Month on TCM, and a new Friday Night Spotlight. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
A lot of you complain about the old movies, so I'm going to kick off this week with a fairly recent movie: Animal Kingdom, airing at 9:05 AM Monday on Starz Edge, and again at 6:05 PM Friday on Starz Cinema (neither of which is to be confused with plain old Starz). James Frecheville plays Joshua Cody, nicknamed J, an australian teen who at the beginning of the movie finds himself sitting on a couch next to his mother who's just died of a heroin overdose! So he calls his estranged grandmother, who invites him to live with her. What he doesn't know is that his three uncles are part of a gang of criminals. Grandma may either be Mildred Pierce, simply spoiling her sons while they raise hell, or Alex Sebastian's mom from Notorious, taking an active role when need be. (That question will be answered as the movie goes on.) Meanwhile, the gang war is brutal enough that the cops have decided to turn vigilante, and when they kill one member of the gang, J's uncles recruit him into a scheme that ultimate sees another policeman ambushed. And one of his uncles winds up being even worse than that. It's a compelling story, although disturbing at times. Jacki Weaver, who plays the grandmother, received an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress, and deserved that nomination.
Last week, I mentioned Wild River, which was directed by Elia Kazan and can be found on an an immense box set of Kazan's films. Another movie in that box set is Man on a Tightrope, which is coming up at 1:10 PM Tuesday on the Fox Movie Channel. Fredric March plays the head of a circus troupe in communist Czechoslovakia. March simply wants to perform, but the Communists keep trying to impose their political will, and would even like to nationalize the circus. March intends to have the circus escape to the West, but can't exactly tell people, not even his wife (Gloria Grahame) and daughter (Terry Moore). Meanwhile, communist functionary Adolphe Menjou is relentlessly pursuing March, to the point of having an informant in the circus. This movie shows the downside of communism not as traditional propaganda, but as a series of everyday indignities affecting everybody, including Menjou. The movie climaxes with the attempted escape, while the troupe is performing!
Tuesday over on TCM sees some cross-promotion. TNT has a program called Mob City, and TCM is spending all day and night Tuesday with gangster films. This includes several with Edward G. Robinson such as the classic Little Caesar at 5:00 PM, and others with James Cagney like White Heat at 8:00 PM. But I'd like to mention one of the shorts running in between the movies on Tuesday: How to Figure Income Tax, at 9:08 AM, or just after King of the Underwold (begins at 8:00 AM and runs 67 minutes). Robert Benchley stars, playing the same sort of character he played in a lot of these shorts, that of a slightly pompous sort of blowhard who gets his comeuppance in comic style. In this particular short, Benchley tries to explain the various tax forms one has to fill out, and thne how you can minimize your tax bill in ways that might skirt the law. I personally think that Benchley was funnier whan he was playing a supporting character providing comic relief, as in Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent.
Wednesday night sees this month's Star of the Month on TCM: Fred Astaire. This first Monday has half of the ten musicals Astaire did with Ginger Rogers, including Roberta, at midnight Thursday (which is of course 11:00 PM Wednesday out in Lambeauland). Roberta, surprisingly enough, isn't the main character, but a dressmaker played by Helen Westley who owns a fashion house in Paris. Her nephew John (Randolph Scott) comes to visit, along with Hunk, a bandleader played by Fred Astaire. John meets Roberta's chief designer Stephanie (Irene Dunne) and falls in love with her, although this is a problem because of Stephanie's background. Meanwhile, Hunk meets faux Polish Countess Schwarenka (Ginger Rogers), and falls in love and dances with her. And then John's old girlfriend also omes back onto the scene.... Among the songs is the old standard "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", sung by Dunne and later danced to by Astaire and Rogers.
Thursday marks the birth anniversary of director Otto Preminger, who was born on December 5, 1905. TCM is spending most of the morning and afternoon with his films, starting at 9:00 AM with Angel Face. Robert Mitchum plays an EMT who goes out on a call to a woman who may have tried to asphyxiate himself by leaving the gas on... or it might be an attempted murder by her husband (Herbert Marshall) and stepdaughter (Jean Simmons)! Simmons falls for Mitchum, even though he's already got a girlfriend (Mona Freeman), and eventually gets Mitchum to become the family's chauffeur/mechanic. Stupid Mitchum accepts the offer, and I say he's stupid because he should have seen what a nutjob Simmons is. She gets him to explain how you could sabotage a car, and then Dad and Stepmom die in a freak accident that Mitchum had the expertise to cause! And the only way out for him is to marry Simmons so she can't testify against him! What a crazy woman!
Cinemascope epics were a big thing in the 1950s as the movie studios tried to lure people away from their TVs with wide screens and brilliant color. One of the lesser known epics is The Egyptian, which is airing twice this week on the Fox Movie Channel, at 3:30 AM Friday and 12:30 PM Friday. The movie is set in the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaton (Michael Wilding), although the title character is actually humble Sinuhe (Edmund Purdom). He's a doctor of poor upbrining, but when he saves the pharaoh from a lion, he gets appointed to the royal court. along with his friend Horemheb (Victor Mature) and servant Kaptah (Peter Ustinov). In the royal court, there's intrigue as the pharaoh is trying to introduce monotheism; meanwhile, the pharaoh's sister (Gene Tierney) starts plotting with Horemheb against the Pharaoh, and Sinuhe himself gets involved in a love triangle with the good Jean Simmons and the bad Bella Darvi. One hopes FMC airs this in the correct aspect ratio this time.
Later on Friday is this month's new TCM Friday Night Spotlight, which focuses on costume designers. Oscar-nominated costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis will be showcasing the works of 12 diferent costume designers. This first Friday starts with Travis Banton, who worked at Paramount in the 1930s and who is a name I don't know as well as I probably ought to. He dressed Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus at 8:00 PM and Claudette Colbert in the 1934 version of Cleopatra at 10:00 PM.
That's followed by the better known Orry-Kelly, who is being mentioned by way of Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (midnight Saturday/11:00 PM Friday LFT), and the multitude of dresses Rosalind Russell wore in Auntie Mame (2:00 AM).
The look at costume design continues into the wee hours of Saturday morning with a pair of films for which Adrian (Janet Gaynor's husband, not Rocky Balboa's girlfriend) costumed women. He had a lot of women to dress in The Women at 4:30 AM Saturday, while it's 19th century fashions for Greta Garbo in the 1935 version of Anna Karenina at 7:00 AM Saturday.
Saturday, December 7 marks the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that sent hte US in to World War II. TCM is showing a couple of movies about the Pacific theater on Saturday afternoon, starting at noon with Task Force. World War II only becomes prominent in the latter half of this movie, as it's a look at the creation of one of the important weapons in fighting World War II in the Pacific: the aircraft carrier. Gary Cooper plays a fictional navy man who started off as a pilot, but after World Wai I, saw the need for bigger ships from which planes could take off and land, thus allowing a navy to project its power forward. Of course, it's tough going as some pilots get killed during the development, including one whose widow (Jane Wyatt) ends up falling in love with Cooper. Eventually, the aircraft carrier shows its worth in the Battle of Midway; a fair amount of World War II combat footage is used in showing the battle.
I don't know whether we'll be celebrating or mourning after the Packers play the Falcons on Sunday afternoon, but either way, you could wind down the week by watching Susan Slept Here, at 8:00 PM Sunday on TCM. Dick Powell plays a struggling screenwriter with girlfriend Anne Francis. However, he had told a policeman friend that he wanted to write a serious movie about a juvenile delinquent. So what happens to Powell on Christmas Eve? His policeman friend shows up with a juvenile delinquent (Debbie Reynolds), and asks Powell to look after her for a couple of days -- it will be good research for that movie. You know that Reynolds is going to fall for Powell, and he for her, which is going to cause all sorts of complications, not only because of the other woman, but because of the age difference. Ah, but it's a pleasant little comedy.
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