Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of February 24-March 2, 2014. We're almost to the end of 31 Days of Oscar on TCM, but there are more Oscar-nominated movies still to come. There are also good movies on other chennels, too. And for people who complain about the old movies I comment on, there are a couple of movies made after 1970 to recommend this week. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
TCM is presenting the movies nominated for Best Picture of 1938, starting tonight at 8:00 PM with The Adventures of Robin Hood. However, I'm going to mention one that airs overnight and doesn't show up so often since it was made at Fox: Alexander's Ragtime Band, at 2:00 AM Monday. To be honest, the plot isn't all that much: Tyrone Power plays a man in San Francisco circa 1913 who wants to perform popular music. He hires composer/pianist Don Ameche, and at an audition they also pick up singer Alice Faye when they play what was supposed to be her song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band". They become a success, and Power, now going by Alexander, falls in love with his lady singer. So does Don Ameche, but she loves Power more. World War I intervenes, Power goes off to fight; Faye becomes a success on Broadway without Power, who after the war hires Ethel Merman. You know Power and Faye are going to wind up together again, but how is it going to happen? Well, it's not going to happen until the characters work their way through about two dozen Irving Berlin songs, with the other well-known song being "Blue Skies".
If you want something a little more recent than 1938, switch over to the Fox Movie Channel/FXM, which is airing The Cabinet of Caligari at 7:10 AM Monday. Although it shares its title with a classic of German silent cinema, this is actually a movie from 1962. Glynis Johns plays a woman driving down a little-traveled road when she suffers a tire blowout. She walks to the nearest house looking for help, which is how she ends up at the mansion of Caligari (Dan O'Herlihy). He offers to send someone to fix the car, but she eventually discovers that this was a ruse to keep her in the house, as she's not allowed to leave when she wishes! She finds that there are other people in the mansion who seem to be suffering the same fate as her, trapped inside and held prisoner, but perhaps they're not really what she thinks they are. Will our heroine get out?
Up until 1966, the Academy Awards had a couple of categories such as set direction that were separated between color movies and black-and-white films. TCM looks at the set direction nominees in B&W on Monday night into Tuesday morning, with movies like The Slender Thread, Tuesday at 3:15 AM. Sidney Poitier plays a graduate student in psychology who as part of his work for his degree, mans a suicide hotline. Tonight is going to be his first night all alone at the hotline, but his boss (Telly Savalas) thinks he can handle it. Besides, how many people call these hotlines? Sure enough, though, Anne Bancroft calls to inform Sidney that she's just taken a fatal overdose of sleeping pills. Can Sidney keep her awake and on the line long enough for the phone company to trace the call and find her. It's a surprisingly good story, with some nice location shots of Seattle as it was in the 1960s.
At the end of January, I recommended the biopic Madame Curie when it was part of the Friday Night spotlight of science in the movies. It's airing again at 5:00 AM Saturday as part of a look at the five men nominated for Best Actor of 1943, but more on that later. Six years earlier, MGM made the short Romnace of Radium, which looks at the topic of radium in a rather different way. Radioactivity had the power to kill, which it did to Marie Curie, it was also discovered that if used right, radioisotopes could also be used to heal people if it killed their cancerous tumors. The odd thing about this one is that MGM made it as a Pete Smith short. As you'll recall from last week's Movie Pests, Smith usually looked at his topics from a humorous point of view, but there's nothing humorous here. The director is Jacques Tourneur, years before he made classics like Cat People.
Next up is The Last Picture Show, at 2:45 AM Wednesday on TCM. Set in the early 1950s in some small town in the middle of nowhere in Texas, this movie tells the story of high school seniors as they were coming of age in a world where it seems there was little hope for them. At least, not in a small town like this: the title of the movie comes from the changing economy and way of life (television) are making the small town's theater no longer a viable concern.. Jeff Bridges plays Duane, in love with Jacy (Cybill Shepherd). But Jacy wants to escape this place, and doesn't think Duane can help her in that regard, so she hooks up with Lester (Randy Quaid). Duane's best friend Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) is also interested in Jacy, but since he thinks she's going with Duane, he winds up getting involved in a relationship with coach's wife (Cloris Leachman, who won an Oscar). And then some more dramatic changes enter all of their lives....
Another Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner from the 1970s is Eileen Hecakart, who won for Butterflies Are Free two years later. You can catch that movie at 4:00 PM Wednesday on TCM. The female lead is Godlie Hawn, who lives in a San Francisco apartment as a flighty, struggling actress. She looks out her window and sees her next-door neighbor (Eddie Albert, Jr.) standing on the balcony apparently watching her change her clothes! She goes over to see what's up, and after some talking with him she realizes that he wasn't watching her at all. He couldn't have been watching her, since he's blind. He's basically run off to Frisco to try to live independently, and to get away from his overbearing mother (Eileen Heckart). The two seem to fall in love, but that love is tested when Mom shows up looking for her son and informs Goldie that being 24/7 with a blind person isn't a bed of roses. And then gets a chance at a better acting role, but it would take her awfy from him. Can love conquer all?
One of the movies TCM is showing because it was nominated for Best Picture of 1938 is Jezebel, at noon on Monday. That movie won Bette Davis her second Best Actress Oscar; the first was for Dangerous, which is on Thursday at 8:00 AM on TCM. Bette Davis plays Joyce Heath, an alcoholic who a few short years earlier, before becoming a drunk, was a famous stage actress. Don Bellows (Franchot Tone) is a man who saw one of those stage performances, and it changed his life, making him decide to go into a job requiring more creativity, architecture. So when Don finds the drunken Joyce, he wants to repay her for changing his life by helping her get sober again, and possibly even helping produce a play for her. Along the way, he falls in love with her, which is a problem since he's already engaged to Gail (Margaret Lindsay). Joyce refuses to marry Don, however, and the reason why is one of the dark secrets she's carrying, a secret which could destroy both her and Don. It's melodramatic, but entertaining.
For those of you who insist on movies that are more recent, you might wish to try the dated howler that is Breakin, at 4:55 PM Saturday on Encore Black. Lucinda Dickey plays Kelly, a classically-trained dancer who's working as a waitress while she's struggling to get work dancing in a musical. One day, she introduced to two guys doing a bizarre new dance: breakdancing! Ozone ("Shabba Doo" Quinones) and Turbo ("Boogaloo Shrimp" Chambers) take a liking to her, although all the "serious" people don't think she should be learning breakdancing, and the feeling is mutual. But our three heroes decide to take on the world anyhow, complete with their 80s wardrobe and music. Watch for Ice-T in a small role. The movie inspired a sequel; meanwhile, Shabba Doo would reunite with director Joel Silberg six years later to make another classic dance film, Lambada.
TCM will be honoring the five Best Picture nominees from 1967 on Saturday night. During the morning and afternoon on the weekend, they'll be showing movies from other years that actually did win the Best Picture Oscar. So instead I'd like to recommend somthing that I haven't mentioned in several years: The Bellboy, at 4:35 AM Sunday on Encore Classic. Jerry Lewis plays Stanley, a bellboy at the upscale Hotel Fontainebleau in Miami Beach. Stanley is well-meaning but kind of incompetent, much to the consternation of his Bob (TV announcer Bob Clayton). Other than that, there's little plot; like M. Hulot's Holitday, this is more a collection of sight gags, with Stanley not having a word of dialogue until the very end of the movie. Jerry Lewis as himself does show up in a scene with an impossibly-crowded limousine and I think has some dialogue then. Other scenes to watch for involve the bellbooy trying ot get a seat at a lunch counter, as well as one with a very large trunk. Fun for the whole family, even if you're not normally a fan of Jerry Lewis.
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