Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of June 2-8, 2008. This is the first week of a new month, so we have a new star of the month on TCM, as well as a special month-long festival on TCM. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise specified.

If you've been watching TCM regularly (and of course, you have), you will have seen the promos for TCM's June series "Asian Images in Film", airing on Tuesdays and Thursdays. However, there's a bonus they haven't mentioned: we get some silents and TCM Imports from Asia, too. This week's selection is the Japanese drama Cruel Story of Youth, Monday at 2:00 AM. This is a 1960 movie that fits in well with the "troubled teens" movies that Hollywood was churning out in the 1950s, but with a decidedly Japanese flavor. A young college man has a high-school aged girlfriend, but doesn't treat her so well. One night she gets an a car with an older man, who is ostensibly taking her home. Of course, he has other ideas, and when he shows those intentions, trouble ensues -- in the form of her boyfriend, who shows up threatening the older man. He pays them off, giving them an idea: they'll pull this routine for the money. It's nihilistic, and rather disturbing, but a very interesting story. One of the big plusses about Cruel Story of Youth is that it was filmed in color, giving us a glimpse into the bright Tokyo of the early postwar period, when it was on its way to becoming an economic powerhouse.

Tuesday night sees a number of silent movies featuring Sessue Hayakawa, who is probably best remembered for playing the Japanese prison camp commander in Bridge on the River Kwai.

Thursday sees a salute to the great Chinese-American actress of early Hollywood, Anna May Wong. There's a new documentary about her that's airing at 7:00 PM Thursday, with a repeat at 3:30 AM. In between, we get several of her movies, including Picadilly, Thursday at 10:45 PM. Picadilly was made when Anna went to Europe in search of better roles in the late 1920s. Unfortunately, she didn't really get better roles, here being reduced to a nightclub performer (although, to be fair, the whole story is about the nightclub, and Wong steals the show). Watch out for a brief appearance by Charles Laughton.

Wong eventually returned to Hollywood, and made talkies like Shanghai Express, Friday at 2:00 AM. Set against the backdrop of the Chinese Civil War, Shanghai Express tells the story of several passengers on a train from Peking to Shanghai, who have various secrets they're trying to keep. Wong is only in a supporting role; the star is the equally beautiful Marlene Dietrich. Warner Oland shows up as a man of mixed Asian and European descent, and character actor Eugene Pallette is another of the passengers. Despite the stereotypical views of Asians, this is actually quite a good movie.

I started a thread about the death of director Sydney Pollack a few days back; TCM are honoring him with four of his films on Monday in prime time. The night kicks off with The Slender Thread, Monday at 8:00 PM. Sidney Poitier stars as a psychology student who for one of his classes is manning a suicide hotline. One day, Anne Bancroft calls up, and tells him that she's taken an overdose of tranquilizers with the intention of killing herself. It's up to Poitier to keep Bancroft on the line long enough for the phone company to trace the call and find her, and also to keep her talking so that she'll remain conscious and not die. It's a gripping, well-acted story, with future TV stars Telly Savalas showing up as Poitier's boss, and Ed Asner as a police detective. Those of you (Benzene) who live out in the Seattle area will be interested in the vintage location shooting.

The rest of the Sydney Pollack tribute includes:
Three Days of the Condor at 10:00 PM Monday;
Tootsie at midnight Tuesday (that's 11:00 PM Monday in the Central Time Zone); and
Jeremiah Johnson at 2:00 AM Tuesday.

Just before the Sydney Pollack tribute is the little movie A Man to Remember, Monday at 6:30 PM on TCM. Edward Ellis, who played the businessman (and title character) at the beginning of the original The Thin Man, stars as a doctor in a small midwestern town. The people aren't well off, so he's always struggling to make a living. However, most of the people he treats love him, even if the businessmen don't. Matters come to a head when he determines that there's an outbreak of polio, and asks for the county fair to be cancelled so that the polio outbreak won't spread. This was a movie that was though lost for many years, and the only known surviving copy was found in a Dutch archive, so this print has the Dutch subtitles on it.

In between the Sydney Pollack tribute and the look at Asians on film is, of course, Tuesday morning. A very interesting movie on Cinemax on Tuesday morning is one that I don't think I've recommended in about two years: Carmen Jones, Tuesday at 6:40 AM. This is a retelling of Bizet's classic opera, with an all-Black cast, set against the backdrop of World War II. Dorothy Dandridge plays Carmen, a worker in a parachute factory, who meets Harry Belafonte, who falls head over heels for her despite being engaged to another woman. Indeed, he ends up accidentally killing a man over her, and going AWOL to Chicago in order to follow Carmen. The one problem with the movie is that none of the actors had any operatic training, but other than that, it's a timeless story, and the choreography is wonderful, especially a dance sequence to "Beat out that Rhythm on the Drum" led by Pearl Bailey.

On Wednesday morning, we've got something from the Fox Movie Channel: The Jackpot, Wednesday at 10:30 AM. James Stewart stars as a middle-management type in a department store in a small town in Indiana. One day, he gets a phone call from a radio network asking him if he can listen to their program "Name the Mystery Husband", because they might call him up with a chance to win the grand prize. Eventually, he does get called, and wins the "jackpot": $24,000 worth of merchandise. The only thing is, a lot of it is crap that nobody in real life would want -- notably, a home makeover by a designer (played by veteran character actor Alan Mowbray) who hates everything in the house, and wants to get rid of it all, regardless of what Stewart and his wife think. Worse, there are the taxes. Stewart and his wife decide to pay off the taxes by selling some of the things they don't want, but still, winning all this schlock puts a strain on their marriage. It's by no means Stewart's greatest work, but it's pleasant enough, and you can always watch for the always-worthy James Gleason, or a young Natalie Wood as Stewart's daughter.

If you prefer mysteries to comedies, you might want to watch TCM on Wednesday morning instead: they're showing In a Lonely Place at 10:00 AM Wednesday. Humphrey Bogart stars as an alcoholic screenwriter with a violent streak who invites a young woman back to his apartment to help him with a treatment of a pulp novel. He sends her home with cab fare, only to find out the next morning she's been murdered; he's the last person to have seen her alive; and he's the prime suspect! However, one of his fellow tenants, Gloria Grahame, seems to have an alibi for him. They meet, and fall in love, but he still has his violent streak, and she's not so sure he's innocent....

TCM's "Essential" movie this Saturday is Fanny, which stars Leslie Caron. TCM uses this as an excuse to play more Leslie Caron movies the rest of Saturday night. These include the comedy Father Goose, in which Caron plays a teacher of a class of schoolgirls who's protected by beach bum/army planespotter Cary Grant, at 10:30 PM; and
the classic An American in Paris, in which Gene Kelly plays an American artist in Paris who falls for Caron despite the fact that each of them is romantically involved with other people, Sunday at 2:45 AM

On Sunday morning, we have a couple of classics on TCM that I've recommended several times:
The 1939 version of Stagecoach, which made John Wayne a star, at 6:00 AM; followed by
The Asphalt Jungle, in which Sterling Hayden gets mixed up in a jewel heist that goes wrong, at 8:00 AM.

I don't think I've recommended the 1973 version of Tom Sawyer before. That shows up on TCM at noon on Sunday. Johnny Whitaker, from the TV sitcom "Family Affair" plays the title role, while his love interest, Becky Thatcher, is played by a young Jodie Foster. Tom Sawyer's Aunt Polly is played by Celeste Holm. This is a musical version of the movie, so there are some silly songs in it, like Tom Sawyer singing about "Gratifaction", but it's a well-made movie that's suitable for the whole family.

TCM's also spending Sunday nights this summer showing movies that are suitable for the whole family, as part of its "Essentials, Jr." series. This week's movie is 20 Million Miles to Earth, at 8:00 PM Sunday. The story is simple enough: the first manned mission to the planet Venus returns to Earth by crash-landing in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Sicily. One of the things that goes missing from the space capsule is a new life form, the Ymir. What nobody could have known is that the Ymir grows -- and grows -- into something huge, and escapes, eventually making its way to Rome. The Ymir was animated by the great Ray Harryhausen, using his stop-motion photography, and is the highlight of an otherwise pedestrian 1950s scifi movie.