Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of Novmeber 11-17, 2013. With Aaron Rodgers being injured, the Packers' season may be a disaster from here on in, at least if you're a Negative Nellie. If so, why not relax with some good movies instead? There's a lot interesting on this week, from silent comedy to screwball comedy to a popular sitcom star as this month's TCM Guest Programmer. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
We'll start with this week's Silent Sunday Nights selection. Actually, there are two films this week, and they're both comic westerns. The first is a two-reeler: An Eastern Westerner, just after midnight Monday (ie. 11:00 PM tonight LFT). Harold Lloyd once again plays a character named "The Boy", who starts off the film as a sort of playboy back east, hence the "Eastern" part of the title. His parents want to make a man of him, so they send him to a dude ranch out west. There he meets "The Girl" (Mildred Davis, who in real life would go on to marry Harold Lloyd), but the town also has to deal with "The Bully", who terrorizes the town with his gang of hired goons. You know Harold is going to defeat them and get the girl, of course, with a series of inventive comic set pieces.
Monday marks the birth anniversary of actor Robert Ryan, so TCM is spending the morning and afternoon with a bunch of his movies. I don't think I've ever recommended The Set-Up before; you can catch that one at 10:30 AM Monday. Robert Ryan plays Stoker, An aging boxer who thinks he can make it to the big time but in reality is destined to fight only in the types of boxing cards you'd see at the beginning of Rocky (the first one, not the 708275847850 sequels). His wife (Audrey Totter) doesn't want him to box, but there you are. What Stoker doesn't know that his manager Tiny (George Tobias) has decided to take a dive -- after all, Stoker is so bad he's going to lose anyway, so if you can get some extra money why not do so? Stoker doesn't know that, and actually goes into the fight planning to win, not knowing what's going to happen to him if he does. Wonderful camera work and a brutally bleak story make this little picture better than you'd otherwsie think.
Monday night is Part 11 of The Story of Film: An Odyssey, which will be airing at 2:30 AM Tuesday on TCM. This episode deals with the rise of the Hollywood blockbuster in the 1970s and how this and other things coming out of Hollywood changed movie viewing habits. Jaws, which is on at 8:00 PM Monday on TCM, was one of the first Hollywood blockbusters to receive a nationwide premiere in a large number of theaters all across the country; previously, movies would premiere in Hollywood and New York and then over the course of weeks if not months hit the rest of the country. Jaws, however, had a huge advertising campaign and a release in over 400 theaters on the same day, which is small by today's standards but huge for 1975. Of course, you know the story of the northeast beach town that has a murderous shark show up, killing business and forcing the sheriff (Roy Scheider) to hire an oceanographer (Richard Dreyfuss) to help deal with the shark. Of course, they could have used a bigger boat.
The ironic thing is that most of the other movies being shown in Monday's prime time lineup are not Hollywood movies. Probably the most controversial of them will be The Message, at 3:45 AM Tuesday. When it was first released in the US, it went under the title Mohammed: Messenger of God, which fairly well describes whtat the movie is about, which is the founding of Islam. The only thing is, the filmmakers wanted to make a movie that would be acceptable to Muslims, so they couldn't actually show Mohammed. Instead, much of the story is told from the perspective of his uncle Hamza (Anthony Quinn). Apparently the polytheistic rulers of Mecca were oppressing the people, and Mohammed got the idea to revolt; the rest, as they say, is history. Part of the reason for the controversy is that former Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi helped fund the movie.
Tuesday night sees this month's Guest Programmer on TCM: Simon Helberg, whom some of you might recognize from the hit TV series The Big Bang Theory. Johnny Z will like him because he's short; the rest of you may enjoy his eclectic mix of films that he's sitting down with Robert Osborne to talk about:
First at 8:00 PM is The Party, in which Peter Sellers plays a man from India who mistakently gets invited to a bizarre Hollywood party.
That's followed at 9:45 PM by Dr. Strangelove, with Peter Sellers playing a triple role in a dark comedy about nuclear annihilation.
Third up is the chick flick Brief Encounter at 11:45 PM; Celia Johnson plays a woman who meets doctor Trevor Howard by chance at a train station and has a brief love affair with him.
Finally, at 1:15 AM is Albert Brooks' comedy Modern Romance.
You'll all remember the movie Peyton Place. What you may not realize is that it spawned a sequel. That sequel, Return to Peyton Place, is airing at 12:45 PM Wednesday on the Fox Movie Channel. You may recall from the end of the original film that Allison (played here by Carol Lynley) had gone off to New York to become a writer, and this film is more or less the story of what happens to the town of Peyton Place after Allison's book is published. Like real-life Grace Metalious' book Peyton Place, Allison's book is a thinly-veiled look at her home town, and that needless to say scandalizes a good portion of the town, especially school board president Mrs. Carter (Mary Astor). Carter is the mother of Ted Carter (Brett Halsey), who in the earlier movie had gone off to fight in World War II after his relationship with wrong side of the tracks girl Selena (Tuesday Weld) was broken off. Now, Ted is married to an Italian woman, and Mom doesn't like that relationship either. One other subplot involves Allison falling in love with her editor (Jeff Chandler). Not as steamy as the original.
Burt Lancaster returns for a second night of films as TCM's Star of the Month on Wednesday. The night kicks off with Gunfight at the OK Corral at 8:00 PM. Lancaster stars as Wyatt Earp, who went to Tombstone AZ where he planned to run a ranch with his brothers (including DeForrest Kelley and Martin Milner). However, the Clantons (including a young Dennis Hopper) got in the way, which would eventually lead to the titular gunfight. Earp is assisted by Doc Holliday (Kirk Douglas), who was an alcoholic, suffering from tuberculosis, and treating his common-law wife (Jo Van Fleet) like dirt. Earp's love interest is played by the typically beautiful Rhonda Fleming. The actual gunfight isn't particularly accurate historically, since it took under a minute in real life, but damn if the movie isn't entertaining!
If you want some little movies that remain little, unlike The Set-Up, Thursday's lineup on TCM is for you. Among the movies airing then is Sing and Like It, at 2:15 PM. Nat Pendleton (probably best remembered as the dumb detective in The Thin Man) plays a gangster who, during an attempted safe-cracking hears Zasu Pitts rehearsing a song. Unfortunately, Zasu can't sing a lick. But Pendleton doesn't care. He loves her voice, even if nobody else does. And dammit, he loves the voice so much he wants her to star in a Broadway show! So he takes her to producer Edward Everett Horton, and basically demands Horton to put her in a show. After all, he's got the capability of using force to back up his demands. Rounding out the cast are Pert Kelton, hired to be a chaperone to Zasu, and Ned Sparks who tries to drum up support for the show in a way only a gangster knows how.
TCM is honoring Lizabeth Scott on Friday afternoon, although her birthday is actually in September. Among the Scott movies showing up on the Friday schedule is Dead Reckoning, at 10:45 AM. Humphrey Bogart stars as a World War II paratrooper who's seen heroism in combat, in the form of his best friend (William Prince). He wants his friend to receive the Medal of Honor, but the friend takes a powder from the train heading for Washington DC. So it's up to Bogie to investigate what's happened to his best friend. Bogie goes to Prince's southern home town and finds that his friend had a past and is afraid his past is going to catch up with him if he receives the award... or has the past already caught up to him? Unfortunately, the plot is a bit muddled at times. As for Lizabeth Scott, she plays the nightclub singer who drives men wild, including Humphrey.
Friday night sees the third installment of this month's spotlight of screwball comedies on TCM. One that aired once on TCM five years ago or so and I don't think has shown up since is Easy Living, at 11:30 PM. Jean Arthur plays a working girl who has something odd happen to her one day: a fur coat falls on her from out of the sky! That coat was thrown out of a window by wealthy banker Edward Arnold, who however doesn't want his family to be extravagant and so got rid of hte coat his now angry wife (Mary Nash) bought. People, now believing that Arther is Arnold's mistress, start treating her differently. Meanwhile, she meats Arnold's son (Ray Milland), not realizing at first who he is. He's trying to make his way in the world independently to show Dad he's worthy, working at an Automat restaurant. You know that he and Arthur are eventually going to fall in love, but there are going to be complications along the way. The food fight in the Automat is a classic, and with Preston Sturges providing the script, there are a lot of other great moments as well.
Finally, there's another interesting movie in this week's TCM Underground: Hatchet for the Honeymoon, at 2:30 AM Sunday. Made by Italian horror director Mario Bava, the movie stars unknown Candian abroad Stephen Forsythe as the owner of a bridal shop who has a problem: he's insane, and he tells us in an opening voiceover. Like Norman Bates, he killed his mother with the titular hatchet because he didn't like her new partner. He then procedes to lure a bunch of pretty women into supposedly modeling his wedding dresses, only to kill them as well! And he's even killed his wife, who reminds him of his mother, and dabbles in the occult. That murder presents a problem for him when she retunrs as a ghost. She didn't like him in this world, and now she really hates him.
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