Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of February 5-11, 2018. We're in the doldrums of the year when there's not much in sport going on, so you're going to have to fill the time with something else, especially in a down year for Badger basketball. Since you can't have sex 24/7, why not spend some of that time with some good movies? Once again I've used my good taste to pick out a bunch of interesting movies that are all worth at least one watch. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
The category for Monday in TCM's 31 Days of Oscar is documentaries, including On the Bowery at 1:15 AM. Older readers will of course recall that the Bowery was New York's district for the down-and-out, the bums and winos as they were known back in the day. Documentarian Lionel Rogosin went to the Bowery and looked at the lives of a couple of those people, starting with Ray, allegedly a railroad worker who has just arrived in New York having lost his job due to his alcohol abuse. On the Bowery, Ray gets his stuff stolen by Gorman, which begins a slow downward spiral. Rogosin focuses his camera on the streets, on the bars where the denizens drink, on the mission where Christians try to get the drunks off the street in exchange for some sermonizing and no drinking, and on the flophouses where many of the drunks prefer to say because they don't want the moralizing. I don't know how much of this was real, but for a documentary from the 1950s it's a revelation.
Sometimes a foreign film wins an Oscar in a category other than the Foreign Film category. Such is the case of Z, which won both Best Foreign Film and Best Editing. Z will be on TCM at 3:45 PM Tuesday. Yves Montand plays Z, the opposition leader in a Mediterranean country (the movie is based on what happened in Greece in the 1960s, but the country in the movie is never named) who is trying to organize an anti-military protest that the authoritarian rulers are sure not to like. So a truck driver obviously paid by higher ups (not Fusion GPS) runs down Z, leaving him to die. A judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) starts to investigate officially, although this investigation is just supposed to be a cover-up. A photojournalist (Jacques Perrin) also starts to investigate, and people start getting very close to the facts. Too close for comfort for the authorities, of course. But can they prevent the facts from getting out? Regardless of your politics this is one of the great political thrillers.
Captain from Castile is back on FXM Retro this week; you can catch it at 3:30 AM and 7:15 AM Tuesday. Tyrone Power is in another of his costume dramas, this time set in the Spanish empire of the early 1500s. Power plays lesser nobleman Pedro de Vargas, who rescues young Catana (Jean Peters) from some of another nobleman's henchmen. That nobleman has very powerful friends in the Spanish Inquisition (nobody expected that), so this power is used to put the screws on Pedro and his family. His parents are able to flee to what is now Italy, and Pedro decides to make his escape along with his friend Juan Garcia (Lee J. Cobb) across the Atlantic, since Juan had already been in what is now Cuba. This time, the two end up in what is now Mexico, except at the time it still wasn't Spanish territory yet, but under the Aztecs. It's up to Cortez (Cesar Romero) to claim the territory for Spain, and Vargas does well as an officer in Cortez' army. That is, until Spain decides to send officers of the Inquisition over to Mexico…. Fox spared no expense on this one, and it's beautiful to watch and a rip-roaring adventure.
Back in the 30s, the Academy nominated a boatload of movies for the Best Picture Oscar. Some of them probably didn't deserve the nomination, such as Flirtation Walk, which will be on TCM at 6:30 AM Thursday. Dick Powell stars as Pvt. Dick Dorcy, who is stationed in Hawaii for a brief while. There he meets and falls in love with Kit Fitts (Ruby Keeler), who is the daughter of a general (Henry O'Neil). Of, and Kit also has a boyfriend in Lt. Biddle (John Eldridge). Both of these facts are bound to cause problems for a lowly private, so Dorcy decides he's going to try to become an officer by getting himself accepted at West Point. Three years pass, and guess who is named the new superintendent at West Point? Gen. Fitts, of course. And he brings Kit with her, who still has her boyfriend. Dick mistakenly thinks Kit set him up back in Hawaii, not realizing what really happened. So when his fellow cadets want to include Kit in the big musical show they put on every year, he's not happy about it. Sparks fly, leading to the predictable conclusion.
For those of you who like Don Knotts, one of his lesser-known movies will be on this week: The Reluctant Astronaut, at 1:27 AM Saturday on Starz Kids and Family. Knotts plays mild-mannered Roy, who still lives with his parents and operates a carnival ride simulating a space capsule. Roy's father Buck (Arthur O'Connell) was a war hero, and wants his son to be a hero too. So Dad sends a job application on behalf of his son to NASA, and NASA accepts! Well, they take Roy on not as an astronaut, but as a janitor. Poor Dad. But not that Roy necessarily wants to be an astronaut, since he's afraid of heights! He just doesn't want to disappoint his father. And then NASA comes up with the brilliant idea of sending a regular person into space. And who's the best regular schmo they can find? Why, it's Roy of course! Unsurprisingly, hilarity ensues. Leslie Nielsen co-stars as a real astronaut who helps guide Roy through the training.
Friday's Oscar category on TCM is Costume Design. A movie that won for that, as well as for Best Actress, is Darling, which will be on at 12:45 AM Saturday. Julie Christie won the Oscar playing Diana Scott, a successful model in swinging 1960s London. At least, her professional career is a success. Her private life is another story. She got married and divorced young, and then decided to use a series of men as she worked her way to the top. First up was TV journalist Robert (Dirk Bogarde), who had the complication that he was already married to another woman. Then there was ad exec Miles (Laurence Harvey). Actually, she already knew him since he more or less discovered her. But why not try a relationship with him? Then she meets Italian Prince Cesare (José Luis de la Villalonga) and gets to live the jet-set life with him on the Continent. But through all those relationships, she finds that her personal life remains empty.
If I say Gunsmoke, you immediately think Marshal Dillon and Miss Kitty. But there was a completely unrelated 1953 movie called Gunsmoke, and that movie will be on StarzEncore Westerns at 3:39 AM Friday. Audie Murphy stars in yet another western, this time as former gunfighter Reb Kittredge. He's planning to work as a hired hand for rancher Telford (Donald Randolph), but events conspire such that the other rancher in the area, Saxon (Paul Kelly), loses his ranch in a card game to Kittredge. It turns out that this was deliberate. Telford has been trying to get control of Saxon's ranch so that Telford can control the whole valley, and Saxon wants Kittredge on his side. Saxon could have just used his lovely daughter Rita (Susan Cabot) to lure Kittredge, as Reb falls in love with her. Reb finds that he has to get a whole bunch of cattle to market to pay off on a loan, or else he'll lose the ranch. Telford, unsurprisingly, tries everything he can to stop Reb. Further complicating matters is that Reb's old friend Johnny (Charles Drake) winds up working for Telford.
For those of you who want another gorgeous Technicolor movie, The Red Shoes is on TCM at 2:30 PM Saturday. Anton Walbrook plays Lermontov, who leads a ballet company and demands a lot out of his dancers; in exchange he gets exceedingly good dancers. One day he meets young hopeful Victoria (Moira Shearer) and sees the potential in her, so he brings her into the company, where she becomes quite the success. Lermontov is commissioning a new ballet, the “Red Shoes”, composed by Craster (Marius Goring); it's a big step up in Craster's career. The thing is, it's going to be notoriously difficult to dance, which is enough of a challenge for his dancers. Worse, however, is that Victoria falls in love with Craster during the process, which Lermontov is none too happy about. He expects his dancers to be married to their art, not to a composer. But can anybody other than Victoria dance the Red Shoes? I have to admit this story has never quite been my thing, but in terms of photography and composition it's a beautiful movie.
For practicing Christians, we're almost up to Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent. So why not celebrate with the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar? It's going to be on StarzEncore Classics at 5:42 AM Saturday. Andrew Lloyd Webber took the biblical story of Jesus Christ (played here by Ted Neeley) and put it in a modern setting. Roman lackey King Herod (Josh Mostel) wanted to be rid of this meddlesome messiah, and he was fortunate that Jesus had a traitor in his midst in Judas Iscariot (Carl Anderson), and a complex political situation in the area that would have led a lot of higher-ups to oppose this man who was gaining a large following. Mary Magdalene (Yvonne Elliman) anoints Jesus' feet. Of course, we all know how the story ends: Jesus gets crucified, and on what is now Easter rises from the dead as the zombie Jesus. An interesting movie if you like this kind of music, although I personally prefer Godspell.
Finally, I'll mention Shanghai Express, on TCM at 9:00 AM Sunday. The political situation in China in the early 1930s was rather fluid with a low-level civil war going on, so the train ride from Beijing to Shanghai isn't going to be an easy one. Dr. Harvey (Clive Brook) is making his way to Shanghai to perform an operation on the British Consul-General. Anna May Wong plays Hui Fei, a betrothed woman going to meet her new husband; there are also several other Western archetypes on board. They should be worried about going through rebel-held territory, but they're more worried about the presence of Shanghai Lily (Marlene Dietrich), who makes her way through life however she can, and was at one point the lover of Dr. Harvey. Sure enough, though, a rebel warlord (Warner Oland) stops the train and, when he finds that Dr. Harvey is on board, holds up the train for ransom. Dietrich is lustrous as always, and this might be the best role (alongside Piccadilly) for Wong, who as a Chinese-American never got the opportunities she should have.