Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of February 25-March 3, 2013. This week sees the beginning of a new month, although since the week only goes through March 3 it means TCM still has the rest of 31 Days of Oscar to go through this week; none of March's special features will show up until March 4. But March 1 brings a few movies back to FMC after a long absence, and there are always some good movies on TCM. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
We'll start off this week with In Cold Blood, which is airing at 10:15 AM Monday on TCM. Based upon a true story and the book written about the events by Truman Capote, In Cold Blood tells the story of two young men from broken homes (played by Robert Blake and Scott Wilson) who hear about a safe containing a large sum of money in the farmhouse of a remote Kansas farming family. So they go to the house to take the safe, but only wind up with about $40 since there was no safe. Oh, and they murdered the family, too, since we see the dead family the next morning. (It could have been worse: they could have been cyberbullied.) Our two hoodlums proceed to drift aimlessly throught the country and northern Mexico, until they eventually get caught in a stolen car in Las Vegas, and the whole story comes out, something for which the two would eventually be executed. John Forsythe plays the police detective investigating the case.
On Tuesday morning, TCM is putting the spotlight on Hal Roach studios, starting at 6:00 AM with Captain Fury. Brian Aherne stars as Michael Fury, an Irishman fighting against the UK at a time when the UK took its criminals and sent them to Australia. Once in Australia, Fury and his fellow convicts are made the indentured servants of a landowner who treats them like dirt because he can. The convicts obviously don't like this, so Fury leads a revolt with the help of thief Victor McLaglen, and has allies in the form not only of the convicts, but of other settlers who have their own problems with the landowner. Coming from Hal Roach, it's a fairly low-budget affair, and California looks nothing like Australia, but filmmakers back then knew how to make even the low-budget stuff entertaining.
A movie with a rather bigger budget is Guys and Dolls, which TCM is showing at 1:00 AM Wednesday. Adapted from the Broadway musical, and based upon the stories and characters created by Damon Runyan, the movie stars Marlon Brando in his one musical role. But more on him in a bit. Frank Sinatra plays Nathan Detroit, who runs the big floating craps game in New York. He's got two problems: one is a long-time fiancée (Vivian Blaine), but more importantly is that he's $1,000 short of what he needs to fund the craps game. So he takes a bet with Sky Masterson (Brando), an inveterate gambler who will bet on anything. Specifically, Nathan bets that Sky can't woo a certain woman and take her on a date in Havana (this being the days before Castro). That woman is Jean Simmons, playing Sergeant Brown, that Sergeant being in the Salvation Army. Getting Sgt. Brown out of the Salvation Army mission frees up some space for that craps game.... If you like the singing of Frank Sinatra, or the acting of Marlon Brando, you'll probably like this one.
London Films produced some of Britain's finest work in the 1930s and 1940s, and TCM is putting the spotlight on them for much of Wednesday afternoon and Wednesday night. The night concludes at 4:00 AM Thursday with The Private Life of Henry VIII. Charles Laughton is wonderful as Henry, the English king who married six times in an attempt to produce a male heir to the British throne. The first marriage to Catherine of Aragon was boring, so the movie starts off with Wife #2, Anne Boleyn (Merle Oberon), who gets executed when the King falls in love with Wfie #3, Jane Seymour (Wendy Barrie). Unfortunately, she dies in childbirth, so Henry marries Anne of Cleves (Elsa Lanchester) who, despite a later divorce reamins in the movie friends with the King. Wife #5, Catherine Howard (Binnie Barnes) cheats on the King and gets executed for it, while Wife #6 is almost an afterthought. This movie is Laugnton's all the way, although Lanchester comes close to him at times. Also worth looking out for is Robert Donat as a nobleman Wife #5 has her eyes on.
After the movies from London Films, TCM switches to Britain's endearing Ealing Studios, who gave us stuff like The Lavender Hill Mob at 7:45 AM. However, the movie I'd like to mention this week is The Man in the White Suit, which follows at 9:15 AM Thursday. Alec Guinness stars as an idealist young chemist and inventor who one day invents a new fabric which would be a boon to humanity: it's extremely stain-resistant, as well as extremely resistant to wear. As a result, poor people wouldn't have to spend so much on the maintenance of their wardrobe. Ah, but there's a catch. If the clothes never get destroyed and never have to be replaced, what's that going to do to all the people who work in those mill towns producing the fabrics that make the current clothing? It'll put the factories out of business and the blue-collar workers out of their jobs, and that will never do, so they have to band together to stop it. Note that this is a comedy.
I mentioned last week that the current Pope of the Catholich Church is stepping down. I suppose it's timely, then, that TCM has another epic about a Catholic priest scheduled for this week: The Cardinal, which airs at 4:45 PM Thursday. Tom Tryon stars as Stephen Fermoyle, a man who takes the priestly vows in Boston around the time that World War I begins, and continues for the next several decades, as he rises through the priestly hierarchy eventually to become a cardinal. Along the way, there are a lot of personal challenges for him, and for the Church and society as well. The 1920s in the US saw the resurgence of the Klan, and Fr. Fermoyle has to help a Black priest in the South; while the 1930s saw the rise of the Nazis, which was a particularly difficult time for the Church since the Vatican was physically surrounded by Fascist Italy. For those of you who want cheesecake in a Catholic film, well, there's Carol Lynley as Fr. Fermoyle's sister, and Romy Schneider as an Austrian woman who tempts him while he's in Vienna.
As I said at the beginning, Friday is March 1, which means the start of a new month and a few movies which return to the Fox Movie Channel after not showing up there for a long time. The first of these is Five Weeks in a Balloon, at 9:00 AM Friday with a repeat at 6:00 AM Saturday. Based on a novel by Jules Verne, the movie has Cedric Hardwicke as a man who's invented a balloon-powered blimp, and is given the task by the British government of flying the blimp from British East Africa to west Africa to stop a bunch of slave traders. Along for the ride are an American journalist (Red Buttons), a military officer (Richard Haydn), and for the teeny-boppers, Fabian. At least, that's the putative plot; the movie is really about the adventures along the way, during which they pick up Barbara Eden a few years before she became Jeannie, as well as a corpulent, sickly Peter Lorre in one of his last films.
The other of this week's "back on FMC" movies just happens to be another one with Peter Lorre in a supporting role: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, at 1:00 PM Friday, with a repeat at 9:30 AM Saturday. Walter Pidgeon is actually the lead here, as the captain of an atomic submarine. Earth is in crisis: the Van Allen belts protecting the planet from too much radiation have caught fire, and this is causing the temperature of the earth to increase dramatically! What's a doomed planet to do? Pidgeon has a brilliant idea that involvesfiring nuclear missiles at the belt to set the balance right again, but the angle of trajectory requires shooting the missile from the deepest point of the sea, something for which only the sub he commands is suitable. Needless to say there are a lot of people who think this is only going to create bigger problems (they think the fire will burn itself out), so they send the regulat military subs to try to stop Pidgeon. Oh, and there are other dangers in the sea, too. Lorre is the scientist, Barbara Eden is the eye candy, and this time it's Frankie Avalaon and not Fabian brought in to try to lure the teeny-boppers.
Some of you bitch and moan about the age of the movies I suggest. (That's because you have no taste, but that's another story.) For those of you who want something a little more recent, how about Earth Girls Are Easy, at 6:45 AM Saturday on Showtime. Geena Davis plays a Valley Girl (remember those?) who works as a manicurist. She's engaged to a doctor, but he's not such a good catch. One day, literally out of the sky, fall three aliens into her life: her then-husband Jeff Goldblum, Damon Wayons, and Jim Carrey before he became a star. They're going to be stranded on Earth for a whie fixing their spaceship, so what's an Earth girl to do? Why, treat them with hospitality by getting them made up to look like Earthlings. Not that they understand Earth culture, of course. As you can probably guess, Geena's character falls in love with Goldblum's character along the way, punctuated by several musical numbers.
Finally, at 10:00 PM Sunday on TCM, you can watch The Landlord. Beau Bridges stars as a spoiled son of wealthy parents who has decided to take his money and buy an apartment house in the Park Slope neighborhood in Brooklyn at a time when the neighborhood was mostly Black but just beginning to undergo decades of gentrification that have completely changed it; Bridges' plan is to renovate the building for a place for him to live in, even if it means evicting the tenants. And then he meets the tenants, who are a motley crew of people just trying to get by. Bridges also begins to fall for one of the tenants (Diana Sands), but she's already got a boyfriend (Louis Gossett, Jr.), and unsurprisingly, he doesn't like Bridges. There's also Bridges' mother (Lee Grant), who obviously doesn't think any of this is a good idea. And then things take a dramatic turn for Bridges and Sands....
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