Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of January 14-20, 2008. We're all happy that the Packers have advanced to the NFC Championship game, and that's cause to celebrate by watching some classic movies! (At least, these are better than any of the dreck that's showing up on regular TV thanks to the writers' strike.) As always, all times are in Eastern.

TCM is showing a number of William Powell movies on Monday afternoon. If you enjoy Powell together with Myrna Loy, you will of course remember the "Thin Man" movies. However, none of these are being shown; instead you can get your Powell and Loy fix in two dramas:

Evelyn Prentice at 12:30 PM Monday, in which Loy is unfaithful to Powell, and gets blackmailed for it; and
Manhattan Melodrama at 2:00 PM, in which Powell and Clark Gable grow up together, only to end up on the opposite sides of the law.

If you want a more "Thin Man"-like movie, your best bet is The Ex-Mrs. Bradford, Monday at 5:00 PM. Powell stars as a Nick Charles type, Dr. Bradford. He's in the process of a divorce from Mrs. Bradford (Jean Arthur) -- until murder strikes, and the two have to team back up to solve the murder. It's a fairly obvious rip-off of the "Thin Man" idea, with the same attempts at witty repartee that Powell and Loy had, but it's a very good ripoff. Powell has almost as good chemistry with Arthur that he did with Loy, and there is a plethora of supporting actors in this one: James Gleason (from last week's The Clock) is the poor put-upon police inspector; his wife Lucile shows up as Mrs. Hutchins; 30s stalwart Grant Mitchell (you'd probably best remember him for playing Billie Burke's cousin who doesn't want to be at her Dinner at Eight and ends up with Marie Dressler's dog) as the owner of the horse Luxury; and Frankie Darro (from last week's The Mayor of Hell) as jockey Spike Salisbury.

If William Powell and 1930s movies aren't your thing, you might want to switch over to the Fox Movie Channel instead; at 4:00 PM on Monday they're showing The Quiller Memorandum. This movie stars George Segal as Quiller, the British spy who is sent by his commander (Alec Guinness) to investigate the murder of two fellow agents in West Berlin. It turns out to have been done by a ring of neo-Nazis (led by Max von Sydow). To be honest, the movie is a bit of a mess, as the story isn't so easy to follow. But one of the nice advantages is that it was filmed on location, so we get a wonderful glimpse of West Berlin as it was back in the swinging 60s. Also, it's got veteran British actor George Sanders appearing briefly in one of his final movies. If you enjoy spy movies -- especially from the Cold War era -- then this is not a bad choice.

TCM has a very special treat for us on Monday night: Martin Scorcese has produced a documentary on one of his great influences, the 1940s producer Val Lewton. I've mentioned Lewton a bunch of times; he made some excellent horror movies despite having very limited budgets. Scorcese's documentary is showing at 8:00 PM Monday, and is repeated at midnight Tuesday (that's 9:00 PM Monday out on the left coast) for those unable to catch the original showing.

The documentary will be followed by an entire night of Lewton's movies. Needless to say, I've recommended quite a few of these before, since they're such good movies. What makes them so good is that the horror isn't in what we see (unlike today, where blood and gore seem obligatory), but in what we don't see, and what the mind sees when running wild. First up, at 9:30 PM, is Cat People, in which Simone Simon believes she's under a curse that turns her into a big cat; watch for the scene in a swimming pool where light and shadows cause the fright.

Cat People is followed by I Walked With a Zombie, at 10:45 PM Monday, in which Frances Dee plays a nurse who tries to cure her patient of zombiism, despite being in love with the patient's husband.

Next up is The Leopard Man at 1:30 AM Tuesday, followed by a Satanic cult in The Seventh Victim, at 2:45 AM Tuesday.
At 4:00 AM Tuesday, The Curse of the Cat People, the sequel to Cat People re-teams Simone Simon with Kent Smith, althoguh Simone doesn't play a murderous cat here. Instead, she's the imaginary friend of Smith's daughter.
Then, there's The Body Snatcher, at 5:15 AM Tuesday. Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi both star in this movie about a mad scientist, and grave robbery.

Switching to something completely different, MoMax is airing the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet at 6:35 AM Tuesday. This is Franco Zeffirelli's version of the classic William Shakespeare play starring Leonard Whiting as Romeo and Olivia Hussey as Juliet, the "star-crossed" lovers from feduing families whose illicit love leads to a great tragedy. I won't give any more away, in case there's one poster here who's been under a rock for the last 400 years and has no idea who Romeo and Juliet are, or who William Shakespeare is.

Moving ahead, we have another Sonja Henie movie, Iceland, on the Fox Movie Channel at 6:00 AM on Wednesday.

Probably of a higher quality, however, is TCM's Star of the Month tribute to James Cagney, every Wednesday in January in prime time. This Wednesday, we get Cagney in musicals. His most famous musical, of course, is Yankee Doodle Dandy, which won him the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of George M. Cohan. That's airing on TCM at 11:45 PM Wednesday.

Another Cagney musical is Love Me or Leave Me, the true (more precisely dramatized, this being Hollywood) story of Ruth Etting, a popular singer of the 20s and 30s who had to escape from the mobster who loved her and originally made her career. Etting is played by Doris Day; Cagney plays the mobster. It's airing at 2:00 AM Thursday.

After TCM is done with the Cagney musicals, we get some more traditional Cagney roles. At 4:15 AM on Thursday, he plays a taxi driver who goes to extreme lengths to prevent a gang from muscling in on his business, in the unimaginatively titled Taxi!.

Much more interesting is the 1933 gem Picture Snatcher, Thursday at 6:45 AM. Here, Cagney plays a gangster who's just gotten out of prison. He tries to go straight, doing so by getting a job at one of the big-city newspapers as a photographer. The thing is, he's got the experience as a gangster of knowing how to use people and trespass into areas he shouldn't be in order to get pictures other photographers wouldn't be able to get. This works until he has to go up to Sing Sing to witness an execution: he surreptitiously snaps a picture of the electrocution despite the authorities' express prohibition of this, and he has to escape to get the pictures back to the paper. Cagney is captivating as always, and the movie, at only about 75 minutes, always zips along with more than enough action. (For the record, Cagney's photographing the execution is apparently based on a real story that had happened several years earlier.)

The rest of Thursday morning and afternoon, TCM is reshowing the movies from Warner's British arm, Teddington Studios, that they first showed back in September. I mentioned them then, but couldn't recommend them fully since they'd never been shown in the USA. Having seen them now, I can say that they're all interesting, although some of them are significantly better than others:

First up, at 9:45 AM, is Something Always Happens, a comedy about business shenanigans in a competition between competing service stations. It starts off a bit slow, but once they get to the shenanigans, it's quite a fun little B movie. It was directed by Michael Powell, before he went on to direct such classics as 49th Parallel, Black Narcissus, and The Red Shoes.
That's followed by Crime Unlimited at 11:00 AM, a nifty little drama looking at police trying to crack a crime ring. It would fit in perfectly with all those wonderful Warners' US crime drama B movies from the 1930s.
Man of the Moment, at 12:15, is one of the weaker movies; Douglas Fairbanks Jr. plays a man about to be married who saves a woman from drowning, only to find out she's fallen in love with him.
At 1:45 PM is Crown vs. Stevens starring Patric Knowles (you'll remember him as Will Scarlett in The Adventures of Robin Hood). He witnesses a murder at a loan shark's, and then comes to suspect that the murderer is his boss' wife. This is another really enjoyable movie.
The Peterville Diamond, at 3:00 PM, is a silly comedy about a jewel heist; there's nothing deep to it, but it's the sort of fun movie to sit with a bowl of popcorn and watch on a rainy day.
Finally, at 4:30 PM is The Dark Tower, starring Herbert Lom (from the "Pink Panther" movies) as a man who uses hypnosis to make a circus trapeze act better -- only to drive a wedge between the two members of the act, who are in love with each other. This is another really good movie, and would fit in well with the Val Lewton movies I mentioned above.

The movies that TCM is showing this Thursday night as part of their look at the great love stories are some of the great movies of all time:

Casablanca at 8:00 PM -- need I say more?
From Here to Eternity at 10:00 PM -- Burt Lancaster making out on a beach with Deborah Kerr, with Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra, and Donna Reed all putting in excellent performances as well;
Notorious at 12:15 AM Friday, in which Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman stop Nazi Claude Rains; and
To Catch a Thief at 2:00 AM, in which Cary Grant and Grace Kelly drive like maniacs in the hills overlooking the French Riviera.

There are more Cary Grant movies for MsPacman and her pumpkin pie on TCM on Friday, although I've recommended all of them before:
Only Angels Have Wings at 7:45 AM;
His Girl Friday at 10:00 AM; and
The Awful Truth at noon

Moving forward to Saturday morning, we have the intriguing Roxie Hart, Saturday at 7:30 AM on the Fox Movie Channel. Ginger Rogers stars as a dancer in 1920s Chicago who kills a man; Adolphe Menjou plays the lawyer whose job it is to get her off. He does so by manipulating the media and the court -- and this is where the movie fails a bit, as the courtroom scenes are even more unrealistic than the normal courtroom fictions you'd get from Hollywood. If you're a fan of Ginger Rogers, you'll want to watch this; ditto if you want to see the underrated Adolphe Menjou. Oh: it's also got William Frawley in a small part.

Finally, we have two interesting movies on Sunday morning on TCM. First, at 6:30 AM, is Smashing the Money Ring. This is one of four movies to star Ronald Reagan as Secret Service agent "Brass" Branigan; in this one he's investigating a ring of gambling ships. These were B movies, all clocking in at just under an hour. As Warners B movies, they're on the whole not that good, being hampered by lesser budgets, relatively poor writing, and outside of the now well-remembered Reagan, not much in the way of a cast. But watching these movies, it's apparent that the problems with the movies are not Reagan's fault. People like to make fun of Reagan's movies because of his later political career, but watching him as Brass Branigan, it's obvious that he was well-suited for action movies like this.

Immediately following Smashing the Money Ring, at 7:30 AM, is the original version of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Directed in Britain in 1934 by Alfred Hitchcock (and later remade in 1956 in the US), it stars Leslie Banks and Edna Best as a couple on vacation in Switzerland who witness the murder of a diplomat. The diplomat whispers something to Banks, and the baddies, knowing this, kidnap his daughter (Nova Pilbeam, three years before she did Hitchcock's Young and Innocent; and, last I checked, still alive at 88). In its own way, this movie is just as fun as the remake, although it doesn't have the production values -- or the lovely Doris Day in that hot charcoal number. What it does have, though, is the English-language premiere of one Peter Lorre.