Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of January 4-10, 2016. The Packers are playing one more game (at least) this coming weekend, and since at the time of writing we don't know what time that's going to be, why not deal with the nervous anticipation of that game by watching some good movies? We're in the first week of a new month so we've got a new Star of the Month, but there are some other good movies too, as my good taste would never steer you wrong. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Overnight tonight, or early Monday morning depending upon your point of view, we're going to have in the TCM Imports slot a couple of movies directed by Alain Resnais. Among them is the half hour short Night and Fog, at about 3:30 AM. (Note that the previous Resnais film, Hiroshima Mon Amour, is listed as starting at 2:00 AM and running 90 minutes.) The film starts off with some idyllic-looking color footage , but in fact this footage has been shot at Auschwitz a decade after the end of World War II. The movie switches to black-and-white documentary footage from Auschwitz during the Holocaust, with narration explaining how such a thing could possibly have happened. The footage is brutal and disturbing, but that of course part of the point.
Monday morning and afternoon on TCM are being spent with Jane Wyman. I can't recall whether I've recommended her film The Doughgirls before; that's airing at noon Monday. Wyman plays Vivian, who at the start of the movie has just gotten married to Arthur (Jack Carson). The two go off to enjoy their honeymoon, except that they made the stupid decision of scheduling their honeymoon for Washington DC. I say that's stupid because this is World War II, and with the huge expansion of government thanks to the war effort, there's a severe housing shortage in the city. Vivian gets to the "honeymoon suite", and finds... there are two other women there already. Edna (Ann Sheridan) is an old friend of Vivian's, and there's also Nan (Alexis Smith). Complicating matters even further is that a female Soviet soldier (Eve Arden) shows up. Lots of zaniness ensues Oh, and Arthur's boss (Charles Ruggles) has an eye for Vivian too. Poor Arthur, who just wants his honeymoon.
A movie returning to FXM Retro after a long absence is Cavalcade, at 6:00 AM Wednesday. Based on a stage play by NoËl Coward, this movie looks at the first 30 years of the 20th century, as seen through the eyes of two British couples. One, the Marryots (Diana Wynyard and Clive Brook), are the wealthy "upstairs" couple; the other are the Bridges (Una O'Connor and Herbert Mundin), who are the "downstairs" couple working in service for the Marryots. The couples go through the Boer War, the death of Queen Victoria, the sinking of the Titanic (terribly telegraphed but that's difficult to avoid) and, most memorably, World War I and the beginning of the Great Depression. It's clearly not all happy, especially when a loved one is blinded by mustard gas in World War I and then as the Depression hits, leading people to wonder if the world is hurtling out of control. This won the Best Picture Oscar for 1932-33, although it tends to get overlooked today because it is somewhat dated.
For those of you who like more recent films, perhaps you might like Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, airing at 10:00 PM Tuesday on TCM. The scene is 1975 in some God-forsaken town in Texas that has as its only claim to fame that scenes from the James Dean movie Giant were shot there 20 years earlier. So several of the teenage girls in town at the time founded a James Dean fan club. Now, 20 years after Dean's untimely death, they have a reunion to talk about now and the past. The only thing is, life hasn't gone the way most of them expected as the town has died around them. Kathy Bates plays Stella, who like the Liz Taylor character in Giant married into oil; Cher plays waitress Sissy; Sandy Dennis plays Mona, who worked on Giant as an extra and had a baby nine months later. Karen Black plays Joanne, who has the biggest secret of them all.
Another film that's even more recent than this is Twins, which is airing on the Encore package on various channels several times this week, including 11:40 AM Tuesday on Encore, and 1:50 PM Sunday on Encore Classic. Arnold Schwarzenneger plays Julius, who was bred as part of a secret government program to build the perfect genetically engineered human. He's been living at a facility out in the Pacific for his entire life, but now he's learned that there was a glitch in the experiment, which is that he was part of a pregnancy that produced twins. Since he's got a twin, he heads for America to find that long-lost sibling . When he gets to the US, he finds that his brother, Vincent (Danny DeVito) is in many ways nothing like him: a heck of a lot shorter and obviously not the physical specimen Julius is, as well as being a lot wiser about the way the world works -- he's gotten himself in jail as a small-time con artist, and is up against loan sharks. By putting together Vincent's street smarts with Julius' physical gifts, the two solve Vincent's problems while looking for their mother to find out what really happened.
We're in the first full week of a new month, which means we've got a new Star of the Month: Fred MacMurray, who many of you will remember from My Three Sons and the light Disney movies he made from the 1960s on, but who had a distinguished career for 25 years before that. His movies will be on TCM every Wednesday night in January. This first Wednesday in January includes movies like Murder, He Says, at 9:30 PM. MacMurray plays Pete, a big-city pollster working out in the sticks, when he comes upon a hillbilly family, the Fleagles, to ask them his survey questions. Unfortunately, he gets a lot more than he bargains for. Apparently, they may be in possession of some hidden loot, and they're practically at each other's throats trying to get that loot, to the point that Grandma has already been poisoned (and glows in the dark because of it). Mayhem ensues as each family member tries to get that money all for him or herself, and Pete gets in on the action too. Marjorie Main plays one of the daughters, and Barbara Peppers a granddaughter.
For western fans, one over on Encore Westerns that I haven't recommended before is Ten Wanted Men, at 5:00 AM Thursday. Randolph Scott plays John Stewart a ranch owner out west who is looking to get the rule of law to come to his area in the presence of his lawyer brother Adam and nephew Howie (Skip Homeier). John has long been opposed by Campbell (Richard Boone), who seems to be trying to buy up all the land, and when he's unable to do that, willing to resort to murder to get the land! Things get even worse when the Mexican orphan Campbell has raised takes a shining to Howie's come-ons, something which Campbell does not approve of at all. Campbell hires a bunch of outlaws to get rid of the Stewarts, but be careful what you wish for as those outlaws aren't going to settle down at all once they do their job. And did they even successfully get rid of John? (Of course not; consider the fact that the Production Code wouldn't allow it.)
Somebody who doesn't get the attention she still deserves 80 years after her death is the wonderful Marie Dressler. One of her lesser known movies is coming up at 11:00 AM Thursday on TCM: Prosperity. In this one, Dressler plays Mrs. Warren, who owns a bank before gifting it to her son John (Norman Foster) when he gets married to Helen (Anita Page) in the mid-1920s. Fast forward a few years, and we're once again in the Great Depression, which meant a lot of bank runs. Thankfully, the Warrens have been able to avoid that thanks to prudent management. Until Helen's mother Mrs. Praskins (Polly Moran), who has never gotten along well with Mrs. Warren anyhow, decides she wants to take all her money out of the bank, which ultimately leads to a bank run, and the Warrens having to sell their assets to keep the bank afloat, leading all of them, including old Ma Warren, to have to move in with Mrs. Praskins. Dressler and Moran were good at comedy together, but this one is less comedic than their other works.
Friday marks the birth anniversary of Elvis Presley, who in addition to being a very talented singer was also a capable actor who unfortunately didn't get scripts that suited him. One of his films that I don't think I've recommended before is Live a Little, Love a Little, airing at 9:45 AM Friday on TCM. This one has Elvis playing a photographer who meets Bernice (Michele Carey) at the beach and falls in love with her, although she seems to have a whole string of boyfriends. He starts living above his means to try to keep Bernice, resulting in his having to get two jobs -- but trying to keep each of his bosses from finding out about the other job! This one is more grown up than the early and mid-60s stuff Elvis was making and has fewer songs, although some of you will definitely remember "A Little Less Conversation" being reused elsewhere.
As long as the Packers aren't playing the Saturday night, you can catch Yankee Doodle Dandy at 8:00 PM Saturday on TCM. James Cagney stars in this biopic of George M. Cohan, the famous Irish-American songwriter and entertainer. The framing story is that George has been invited to see President Franklin Roosevelt, leading Cohan to tell Roosevelt the story of his life, starting with his birth allegedly on the 4th of July which gave him his love of America, to his early years traveling with his family (Walter Huston, who plays Cohan Sr., gets a good death scene later in the movie) as part of the family stage at, to becoming a success on his own, with the love of his life Mary (Joan Leslie playing a fictitious character as the real Cohan was married twice, neither time to a woman named Mary). Cagney is often remembered for all those tough guy gangster movies, but he could dance too, and shows it in this one.