Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of June 23-29, 2008. One of our regular readers suggested these threads might get more hits if they're put in the Movies subforum instead of the loungs, so we'll try that and see what happens. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.

We're going to start off with TCM's salute to Cyd Charisse, who died on June 17 at the age of 86. TCM will be showing three of her movies in prime time on Friday night:
Singin in the Rain at 8:00 PM;
The Band Wagon at 10:00 PM; and
Silk Stockings at midnight Saturday (that's 11:00 PM Friday for those of you in flooded Iowa).

To be honest, however, TCM doesn't have as many interesting selections this week -- or at least, interesting movies I haven't yet recommended. So, we're going to start off with a movie on Encore Drama: Julia, Tuesday at 6:00 PM. Jane Fonda stars as playwright Lillian Hellman. She's in love with Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards) and, on the eve of World War II, is about to attend a writers' conference in Moscow. On the way, she stops in England to meet an old friend, Julia (Vanessa Redgrave), who has become a committed anti-Nazi. Indeed, she's so committed she can't return to Germany. So, she asks Hellman to do a favor for her: smuggle some money into Nazi Germany and give it to the anti-fascists. Julia is one of the first modern movies to do a good job of portraying Britain in the years between the death of Queen Victoria and the start of World War II, a trend which was to continue with movies like Chariots of Fire, and all those Merchant-Ivory films. Redgrave won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

This week sees the final two nights of TCM's look at Asian images in film. One of the more interesting selections is Enter the Dragon, airing at 2:00 AM Wednesday on TCM. One of the only English-language movies Bruce Lee made, Enter the Dragon nominally tells the story of a man who goes undercover for the police in order to spy on a crime lord. In reality of course, it's a showcase of Chinese martial arts with a story built around it. To get the two threads together, the writers come up with the plot that this undercover agent will get the chance to spy on the crime boss because the boss is holding a martial arts tournament at his island fortress. Sure, the plot is silly, but movies like this are watched for the fighting -- and goodness knows we've got a lot of MMA fans here. Watch for bit parts by Jackie Chan and Samo Hung.

The other movie in the series I'd like to recommend is The Killing Fields, Friday at 12:30 AM. It's more or less the true story of Dith Pran (played by Haing Ngor), the translator for a New York Times journalist working in Cambodia in the final days of the war in Southeast Asia. When Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge take over, the Americans are able to get out, but Pran is stuck in Cambodia, which is turning into a horrible, genocidal dictatorship: the Khmer Rouge are emptying the cities in a back to nature campaign, and killing off all the intellectuals. Pran, like many other Cambodians, tries to escape to Thailand in a harrowing cross-country trek, forced to walk by night so he won't be spotted, and forage for food since the Khmer Rouge's idiotic policies naturally resulted in mass famine. It's an outstanding movie, although the images may be uncomfortable for some -- and it's definitely not a family movie.

If you want something a little lighter, you might want to keep it tuned to TCM. At 9:45 AM Wednesday, they're showing the romantic comedy Come Live With Me. Hedy Lamarr stars as a woman from Austria who's trying, without success, to gain refugee status since she's overstayed her visa, and fears she'll be killed if she's sent back to Nazi Germany. One day, she meets struggling writer James Stewart, and strikes up the bargain that he'll be "married" to her in a marriage of convenience, in exchange for her paying his bills. Stewart is a bit more honorable than this, considering her payments a loan, and writing a fictionalized account of their relationship. All goes well until he's able to sell the story to a publisher -- who just happens to have been keeping Hedy as his mistress! Stewart is earnest and likeable, Hedy is good at comedy, and lovely to look at, and the story eventually does reach its happy ending.

A much different World War II movie shows up on Encore Drama at 7:50 AM Thursday: Judgment at Nuremberg. A dramatization of the war crimes tribunals that took place after World War II, Judgment at Nuremberg is an outstanding movie with an all-star cast: Spencer Tracy is the chief judge presiding over the trial; Maximilian Schell won a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the lawyer for the defense; Richard Widmark was the US Army lawyer for the prosecution; Burt Lancaster as the chief defendant; Werner Klemperer, better known as Col. Klink from the "Hogan's Heroes" TV series, is another of the Nazi defendants; and Montgomery Clift and Judy Garland play two of the witnesses, both victims of the Nazis. Marlene Dietrich plays the widow of a Nazi general who strikes up a friendship with Tracy's virulently anti-Nazi chief judge. And have I mentioned William Shatner? He appears in a smaller role as Tracy's adjutant, and does a perfectly satisfactory job.

If World War II movies aren't your thing, you might want to watch We Are Marshall on HBO instead, it's airing at 8:00 AM Thursday. I'm sure you all know the story of how half the Marshall University Thundering Herd football team were killed in a plane crash in 1970, and how the community rallied to field a team the next season.

Normally I recommend older movies, but in addition to We Are Marshall, there are a few other relatively recent movies worth mentioning this week:

The Breakfast Club, Thursday at 12:45 PM on MoMax. Those of you who grew up in the 1980s will love it; the rest of you may find it horribly dated. It's the story of a diverse group of teens who get stuck in Saturday morning detention at their high school for various things they did. My high school days were as cliquish as what we see from the cast members in this movie, but as the movie goes on and they have nobody but each other around, they begin more or less to bond. There's a lot of the faux philosophical depth that we probably all thought we had when we were 17 years old, but those of us who have grown past the 17-year-old stage will probably cringe at it. The cast contains a bunch of familiar 80s names, people whose careers never really became quite as big as you might of thought considering how big they seemed at the time: Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, and Anthony Michael Hall play the teens.

On regular Cinemax, you can watch another 80s movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Thursday at 4:00 PM. In this comedy, Matthew Broderick plays Ferris Bueller, the bored, practical-joking teenager who decides he just wants a day off from school. (There's another type we all recognize from our high school days.) So, he calls up his rich friend Cameron, gets Cameron to get Ferris' girlfriend out of school, and gets the three of them to spend a day on the town. It's another of those movies that you'll probably remember fondly if you grew up in the 1980s, but will find dated if you grew up in any other decade.

Have you ever tried to imagine Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend as a romantic comedy? Imagine no more. Our next movie shows the likely result: Less Than Zero, Friday at 12:30 AM on Encore Love Stories. Robert Downey, Jr. plays one of three Beverly Hills high-school friends who becomes a raging cocaine addict (not much acting there) who's not only sick because of the addiction; he's also deeply in debt. Andrew McCarthy plays his friend, who's returned from college out east for the Christmas holidays, while Jami Gertz plays the young woman in the middle. She doesn't mind a snort from time to time, but she's nowhere near as bad as poor Downey. These spoiled rich kids are presented as truly vapid people, replete with the ghastly 80s styles, not just in clothes and hair, but in interior design. Boy did those 80s have style faux pas! Throw in references to homosexual prostitution, and you've got a winner of a comedy. The only problem is, Less Than Zero isn't supposed to be a comedy, but a "serious" movie with an anti-drugs message. The fact that it's based on a novel, but took a lot of liberties with the story in that novel, doesn't help either. Less Than Zero is one of the cult classic of the drugs scene, right up there with Valley of the Dolls, and the rarely-seen Skidoo (which will be airing in a few weeks' time and will be one of the strongest recommendations I've had in a long time).

Back to the old movies, however; Fox Movie Channel is listed as showing the 1932 version of the pre-Code shocker Bird of Paradise, Friday at 6:00 AM. I'm not entirely certain if it's going to air, since it wasn't released by Fox, but by RKO (Fox got the rights when they remade the movie in 1951, but TCM also have broadcast rights to it, since it's supposed to show up on TCM in late July.) Joel McCrea stars as a passenger on a yacht going through the South Seas. He decides he wants to get off and see how the natives live. Eventually, he falls for one of the natives, a chieftain's daughter played by Dolores Del Rio. Here, things start to get racy, as McCrea spends much of the movie wearing very skimpy cut-offs, while Del Rio wears just a grass skirt and a lei covering up the important bits. There's even one scene where she goes swimming topless, although we only see her from the back. Although McCrea loves her, there's a catch: tradition has it that she's supposed to be sacrificed to the local volcano to placate the gods. And when the volcano starts rumbling, we reach our climax. Depending on which way you swing, you're welcome to enjoy Dolores' flesh, or Joel's -- or, I suppose, both.

A more conventional love story is Love is a Many Splendored Thing, Friday at 8:00 PM on the Fox Movie channel, being repeated at 10:00 PM Friday and midnight Saturday (again, that's 11:00 PM Friday for the FIBs) as part of the "Fox Legacy" series. William Holden stars as a journalist in 1949 Hong Kong, who meets and falls in love with a Chinese-English doctor (Jennifer Jones). Despite the social taboos regarding miscegenation, that quickly begin a torrid love affair, despite the fact that Holden is trapped in a loveless marriage -- his wife refuses out of spite to grant him a divorce. Worse, 1950 comes, and the Korean War breaks out, and Holden is sent away from Jones by his boss to cover the conflict in Korea. It's a beautifully photographed movie with a memorable title song, but it is a bit of a chick flick.

Finally, for MsPacman, I ought to mention the Cary Grant movies showing up this week. Cary Grant earned his second and last Oscar nomination for None But the Lonely Heart, which airs on TCM at 1:30 AM Sunday.
And, at 2:00 PM Sunday, you can watch him romance Ingrid Bergman in the classic Notorious.

Thanks, Fedya. I was hoping you'd bring this thread over here.

Thanks for the Cary Grant alert as well. I swear this time I'm gonna get my copy of Notorious! Suspicion is also on Chill at 7:00 AM mountain time on Saturday. Looks like a good Cary Grant week!

I know this wasn't on your list but I watched The Long, Long Trailer yesterday with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. It was so cute and funny. I loved it.

quote:

Originally posted by Fedya:

On regular Cinemax, you can watch another 80s movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Thursday at 4:00 PM. In this comedy, Matthew Broderick plays Ferris Bueller, the bored, practical-joking teenager who decides he just wants a day off from school. (There's another type we all recognize from our high school days.) So, he calls up his rich friend Cameron, gets Cameron to get Ferris' girlfriend out of school, and gets the three of them to spend a day on the town. It's another of those movies that you'll probably remember fondly if you grew up in the 1980s, but will find dated if you grew up in any other decade.

One of the few movies where the actor tears down the fourth wall and it works well.