Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of June 16-22, 2008. TCM's look at Asians in cinema continues, but they also give us some little-seen movies as well. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.

We're going to start off with one of Alfred Hitchcock's earlier movies. Actually, there's a double bill of them, but I've already recommended Murder! before. That kicks off the double bill Monday morning at 8:45 AM on TCM. Immediately following is Number Seventeen, Monday at 10:30 AM on TCM. The setting is a vacant house, and at the beginning we find a dead body. A detective is called in, and it turns out that the house is apparently being used by a gang of thieves involved in a jewel heist -- and that nobody in this movie is who he or she seems to be. The plot is a bit tough, and the heavy British accents in an early talkie don't help either, but the movie is short, at about 65 minutes, and halfway in, the plot swtiches to the thieves trying to get away. For them to do so, they have to get to Dover to take the ferry across the English Channel; this leads to a chase between the train and a bus trying to follow them. The special effects here are pretty poor, since it's 1932, but Hitchcock's direction of the chase is actually quite good. Number Seventeen is generally considered to be not one of Hitchcock's best, but it's still a lot of fun, and at only a little over an hour, it's not like you're wasting a lot of your time.

TCM's Guest Programmer for June is Bill Maher; he's presenting his selections on Monday night in prime time. His first selectoin is the classic My Fair Lady, at 8:00 PM Monday. Rex Harrison plays Professor Henry Higgins, who takes a bet that he can turn a lowly flower seller into a lady. Of course, this is the movies, and so that "lowly" woman is in fact Audrey Hepburn, who didn't need any help being a lady. But, the acting is superb, and, being a musical version of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, it's got both a better plot than a lot of musicals, and good songs to boo.
The rest of Bill Maher's selections are: The Oscar, at 11:00 PM;
Where the Boys Are at 1:00 AM Tuesday; and
Tootsie at 3:00 AM Tuesday.

My Fair Lady isn't the only adaptation of a Shaw work on TCM this week. At 7:30 AM this Saturday, you can watch Caesar and Cleopatra. Claude Rains stars as Caesar and Vivian Leigh as Cleopatra. When Caesar visits Cleopatra, he immediately falls in love with her, even though this might be dangerous for him. The plot is a bit convoluted, though -- probably because it's not terribly historically accurate -- and the story is too long-winded. However, it's a beautiful movie to watch from a cinematographic point of view, and Claude Rains is one of those actors who is worth watching in almost anything he does. Watch for a young Jean Simmons, briefly playing the harp.

If you've been reading these movie threads long enough, you'll know I'm a big fan of the character actors, since they make the Hollywood movies what they are. One of my favorites is Thelma Ritter, and she shows up in our next movie: [URL=]With a Song in My Heart[/URL], airing at 10:00 AM Tuesday on the Fox Movie Channel. It's based on a true story, that of 1940s singer Jane Froman. Froman was seriously injured in a plane crash on her way to entertain the troops in World War II, but recovered from her injuries and eventually retunred to singing. Froman is played here by Susan Hayward, who does a reasonably good job. The better job, though, is that of Ritter, who plays the nurse who takes care of Froman after her accident. If you like the music of the 1940s, you'll really like this movie. Watch also for a young Robert Wagner, playing a GI.

TCM's look at Hollywood's portrayal of Asians continues on Tuesday night. I've mentioned Spencer Tracy in Bad Day at Black Rock before; this fine movie airs at 9:45 PM. More interesting in its treatment of Asians, however, is the following movie, Teahouse of the August Moon, at 11:15 PM; it features a "yellowface" performance from -- Marlon Brando!

Marlon Brando appears in one of Thursday night's films in the "Asian Images in Film" series: Sayonara, airing Friday at midnight (that's 11:00 PM Thursday for those of you in the flood-ravaged midwest). Here, Brando isn't in yellowface; that honor is given to Ricardo Montalban. Instead, Brando plays an American officer in Japan who falls in love with a Japanese woman against military regulations. Don't watch it for Brando, though; he's not what makes the movie good. (In fact, he comes close to ruining the movie with his dreadful delivery of lines and his stilted "method" acting. He's much worse than Montalban.) What you should watch is the supporting love story, that of Red Buttons and Miyoshi Umeki, who both won Oscars. Theirs is a tragic but beautiful love story. I know several of the x4 members have served in Japan while in the military and will point out that Sayonara's depiction of Japan is unrealistic, but that doesn't mean it's not a good movie with some excellent performances.

Another love story for the ladies is All This, And Heaven Too, airing at 1:30 PM Wednesday on TCM. Bette Davis stars as a teacher at a girls' school in middle 19th century America. The girls know that she's infamous for some reason, but they don't quite know why. So, she tells them. Before she came to America, she had worked in Europe as a governess, getting a job in Paris at the home of a duke (Charles Boyer, with his authentic French accent). His kids (Virginia Weidler and a young June Lockhart) love their new governess, and it seems he does too; a fact which really bothers his high-strung wife. This jealousy leads to tension between the Duc and Duchesse, eventually resulting in his beating her to death, and trying to cover up the killing to make it look like a burglar did it. This was Warner Brother's "prestige" movie for 1940, and they put a lot of effort into it, making it beautiful to look at with its lavish sets and costumes. The plot, however, is definitely that of a "chick flick", even if it is based no a true story.

But, enough of love stories for now. We'll switch to a couple of comedies. First, on HBO we have a pair of parodies: Hot Shots at 6:00 AM Friday, followed by Hot Shots! Part Deux at 7:30 AM. Charlie Sheen and Lloyd Bridges star in both of these movies, which parody the macho military/action movies of the 1980s like Top Gun and Rambo. If our previous selection was for the women, this is definitely more for the guys.

We have another comedy on Saturday, Alias Jesse James, Saturday at 2:15 PM on TCM. Bob Hope stars as a struggling insurance salesman whose career is saved when Jesse James (played by Wendell Corey) buys a large insurance policy from him. However, due to the nature of James' "profession" and the likelihood of his getting killed, the company sends Hope out west to make certain nothing bad happens to James until they can cancel the policy. Along the way, Hope falls in love with Jesse James' girlfriend, played by the lovely Rhonda Fleming, and Jesse gets an idea: pass Bob Hope off as Jesse James, have him killed, and get the insurance money. Eventually, all this leads up to the "climactic" shootout, which is probably the scene most worth watching in this movie: it contains a large number of actors who were starring in TV westers at the time the movie was made, each reprising his or her role from TV for a few brief seconds.

TCM's Essential movie this week, airing at 8:00 PM Saturday, is the long Akira Kurosawa masterpiece The Seven Samurai, which kicks off a night of action movies of men banding together. There's also The Dirty Dozen, at 2:00 AM Sunday; in between the two is The Professionals, Saturday at 11:45 PM. Ralph Bellamy plays a Texas millionaire whose wife has been kidnapped and taken to Mexico by a revolutionary. He hires four men: Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, and Woody Strode, to go into the Mexican desert and take his wife back from the revolutionary (Jack Palance). I'm generally not that big a fan of westerns, but The Professionals is less a western than it is an action movie set in the early 20th century west. It's got a stellar cast, and some interesting action sequences.

Our next movie might have worked better as just an action movie, but it's got a love story tacked on to it: The Key, Sunday at 6:00 AM on TCM. The main thrust of the story should be the World War II era British tugboat captains who, before the entry of the US into the war, had the thankless task of rescuing ships that had become stragglers from the convoys thanks to the attacks by German U-boats or planes. These sequences are very well done, and Trevor Howard and William Holden are both excellent as tug captains, as is Oscar Homolka, who plays the second captain of Holden's boat (each boat had two captains, who alternated operations). Unfortunately, there's a dumb love story: Sophia Loren plays a woman with an apartment in the port who gives her key to tugboat captains, telling them to make a copy of it and give it to another. It seems that every captain she gives a key to dies. At the start of the movie, it's Trevor Howard who's got the key; he has a copy made and gives it to Holden. Watch for the captains' commanding officer, who sends them on their missions: that's Bernard Lee, who would later become more famous for playing James Bond's boss M.

A better naval movie might be this week's Essentials Jr. selection, the 1935 version of Mutiny on the Bounty, airing at 8:00 PM on Sunday night. But I've recommended it before, so will make my final selection something I haven't mentioned previously: I Married a Witch, Sunday at 8:30 AM on TCM. The gorgeous Veronica Lake stars as the witch, who along with her father Cecil Kellaway, was one of the victims of the Salem witch trials and is reincarnated as a tree. One night, lightning hits the tree, freeing the two witches. Lake then proceeds to make life a living hell for Fredric March, the descendant of one of her persecutors. He's just about to be married, and is running for governor, and it seems that Lake's presence is going to ruin both the upcoming marriage and the political campaign. The cast also includes Susan Hayward as March's fiancée, and Robert Benchley.

Oh, yeah! My Fair Lady and All This, And Heaven Too are definitely on my list for this week. Love those movies!

PS - I'm a little disturbed by the lack of Cary Grant flix recently. Come on, Fedya, I need my fix!

If you really want Cary Grant in a historical drama, you can watch him with Sophia Loren in Napoleonic-era Spain in The Pride and the Passion, Thursday at 3:30 AM on TCM. Considering the job Grant did in The Howards of Virginia, though, I don't know if you want to see him doing more historical drama.

I Married A Witch might give me flashbacks to my first marriage.