TCM: The Greatest Movie Channel

[ratgirlagogo]

On 1/16/2019 at 12:32 PM, Charlie Baker said:

The infamous bomb Skidoo, which is almost fascinating it's so weird, and which CC disavowed or never discussed, with a cast that included Jackie Gleason, Mickey Rooney, and Groucho Marx, among others.

OMG that is one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen (and you all know how I love weird movies) - as if Andy Milligan had somehow been handed a huge budget and a roster of A-list stars and just gone nuts with it. Except it was Otto Preminger - WTF????  As usual god bless TCM for showing it.  So painfully and obviously unfunny I cannot even imagine how this film was ever completed in the first place.

Edited January 18, 2019 by ratgirlagogo

[Milburn Stone]

7 hours ago, ratgirlagogo said:

OMG that is one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen (and you all know how I love weird movies) - as if Andy Milligan had somehow been handed a huge budget and a roster of A-list stars and just gone nuts with it. Except it was Otto Preminger - WTF????  As usual god bless TCM for showing it.  So painfully and obviously unfunny I cannot even imagine how this film was ever completed in the first place.

Drugs.

[Robert Lynch]

On 1/18/2019 at 10:10 AM, Milburn Stone said:

Drugs.

Raspberries! Just kidding....

[Spartan Girl]

I watched Robin and Marian with Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn and all I can say is...that was way different than any Robin Hood movie I've ever seen.

[Rinaldo]

The idea of pairing Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn as an older Robin Hood and Marian seems mouthwateringly perfect. But the actual movie, I find intensely unappealing.

[Wiendish Fitch]

49 minutes ago, Rinaldo said:

The idea of pairing Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn as an older Robin Hood and Marian seems mouthwateringly perfect. But the actual movie, I find intensely unappealing.

I groaned out loud (and, okay, maybe cursed as well) when Connery's Robin snarked about how much "heavier" Hepburn's Marian was while carrying her. Yeah, no.

Still, Robin and Marian is infinitely superior to 2010's drab, dreary snorefest Robin Hood. Even Cate Blanchett's presence can't salvage that dull piece of crap.

[Spartan Girl]

1 hour ago, Rinaldo said:

The idea of pairing Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn as an older Robin Hood and Marian seems mouthwateringly perfect. But the actual movie, I find intensely unappealing.

I found myself wondering why it took them that long to do a movie together. Interesting that Audrey was only a year older than Sean, but she still looked younger than he did. Ha! Take THAT, Hollywood age double-standards.

 

1 hour ago, Wiendish Fitch said:

I groaned out loud (and, okay, maybe cursed as well) when Connery's Robin snarked about how much "heavier" Hepburn's Marian was while carrying her. Yeah, no.

Still, Robin and Marian is infinitely superior to 2010's drab, dreary snorefest Robin Hood. Even Cate Blanchett's presence can't salvage that dull piece of crap.

I hated that line too.

The performances were good and the chemistry they had was undeniable, but yeah, I did not like the movie. I figured halfway through just by the overall tone that it was going to be a sad ending, yet my jaw still dropped when Marian poisons both of them. To quote you, "Yeah, no." I'll take the Disney animated animal Robin Hood any day of the week.

Edited January 20, 2019 by Spartan Girl

[Rinaldo]

His line early in the movie, "I haven't thought about her in years," is just spitting in the audience's face. And yes, when she takes it upon herself to poison them both (mightn't he deserve to have a say in it?) is horrible.

45 minutes ago, Spartan Girl said:

I'll take the Disney animated animal Robin Hood any day of the week.

My preference when it comes to Disney Robin Hoods is the live-action one they made in the early 1950s, with Richard Todd, Joan Rice, and Peter Finch. In fact I think I'll pop that DVD in right now, and wash the thought of Robin and Marian out of my brain.

[Wiendish Fitch]

42 minutes ago, Spartan Girl said:

I found myself wondering why it took them that long to do a movie together. Interesting that Audrey was only a year older than Sean, but she still looked younger than he did. Ha! Take THAT, Hollywood age double-standards.

Take that, indeed. :)

 

44 minutes ago, Spartan Girl said:

I'll take the Disney animated animal Robin Hood any day of the week.

1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood will always be my Robin Hood. I'm a sucker for 3 strip Technicolor, it's high spirited and entertaining without ever feeling dumb, and the casting is flawless: Errol Flynn (I'm so awful, I'm willing to temporarily forget what a garbage human being he was) is Robin Hood, Olivia de Havilland is Marian, Claude Rains is Prince John, I could go on all day. 

[Milburn Stone]

13 minutes ago, Wiendish Fitch said:

1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood will always be my Robin Hood. I'm a sucker for 3 strip Technicolor, it's high spirited and entertaining without ever feeling dumb, and the casting is flawless: Errol Flynn (I'm so awful, I'm willing to temporarily forget what a garbage human being he was) is Robin Hood, Olivia de Havilland is Marian, Claude Rains is Prince John, I could go on all day. 

And the Korngold score!

Robin and Marian is so Richard Lester. Bringing into relief the leveling mundanities of human existence even against the glories of human ambition. It's at the core of pretty much every movie he ever made. To the point that you pretty much know what you're going to get with his Robin and Marian before you walk into the theater (to use an antiquated phrase). Which is not to say it's good--or bad. 

[Rinaldo]

57 minutes ago, Milburn Stone said:

Robin and Marian is so Richard Lester.

Let's not forget it had a writer: James Goldman. (Granted that Lester likely took it on because it seemed "his sort" of idea.) This Goldman, unlike his brother William, liked to expose the mundane reality behind romantic memories and icons. Sometimes that worked great, as in The Lion in Winter (though more onstage than onscreen, in my opinion) and Follies; but not so much in Robin and Marian, if only because audiences bring their own preconceptions to that story, and won't give them up just because they're told to.

[Spartan Girl]

5 hours ago, Wiendish Fitch said:

Take that, indeed. :)

 

1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood will always be my Robin Hood. I'm a sucker for 3 strip Technicolor, it's high spirited and entertaining without ever feeling dumb, and the casting is flawless: Errol Flynn (I'm so awful, I'm willing to temporarily forget what a garbage human being he was) is Robin Hood, Olivia de Havilland is Marian, Claude Rains is Prince John, I could go on all day. 

That was good too. Olivia de fucking Havilland!

[Sharpie66]

Yeah, the Errol Flynn film is my definitive Robin Hood, too. I remember a syndicated tv series back in the early ‘80s (I think?) that recreated classic films scenes with audience members. The two clips I remember most were the inital encounters between Robin Hood and Little John and RH and Friar Tuck. Both times, the show participants did pretty well recreating the scenes.

[Rinaldo]

Sure, it's hard to disagree with that version. Even after enumerating all the splendid embodiments of the characters, we have Extra-Virgin Technicolor, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, which is both (effectively if not literally) the invention of the Hollywood original score and its most complete embodiment.

[ratgirlagogo]

14 hours ago, Wiendish Fitch said:

1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood will always be my Robin Hood

 

13 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

And the Korngold score!

 

9 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

Olivia de fucking Havilland!

And Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone and Eugene Pallette and Allan Hale and Melville Cooper!

And Una O'Connor!

And TRIGGER!

Edited January 21, 2019 by ratgirlagogo

[voiceover]

I gotta give some love to the Mel Brooks version.  Not that awful movie -- the "When Things Were Rotten" 1975 TV show starring Dick Gautier as Robin and Dick van Patten as Friar Tuck and Misty Rowe as Marian.  Some cheap joke genius:

Renaldo: "But I'm innocent!" 

Friar Tuck: "Tell that to your Creator!"

Renaldo(bellows)"Mel..!!"

Also featured one of the best theme songs ***ever: "They laughed; they loved; they fought, they drank/They jumped a lot of fences/They robbed the Rich, gave to the Poor/Except what they kept for expenses!!...So when other legends are forgotten/We'll remember back when things were rotten/Yay for Robin Hood!"

*sigh*

[ratgirlagogo]

3 hours ago, voiceover said:

"When Things Were Rotten"

Oh, how I loved that show.  I still don't understand why it wasn't a bigger hit. 

[Charlie Baker]

Adieu, Michel Legrand. Great composer of movie music and popular standards.  He appears on screen to fun effect, as what else, a musician, in Cleo from 5 to 7.

Michel Legrand

[Rinaldo]

Legrand had his schlocky moments, but most of the time I really enjoyed his stuff. There were his 3 unique musical films with Jacques Demy: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The Young Girls of Rochefort, Donkey Skin. And the many unforgettable movie themes: "The Windmills of Your Mind," "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?", Pieces of Dreams, Summer of '42. 

I had two "live" encounters with his work too. One was the stage musical called Amour in English. I saw its twice-postponed first Broadway preview, a legendary occasion with a sparse audience, scenery falling over at one point, and the director leaping onstage to announce an immediate intermission.

The other was a concert appearance. He was touring with "his" orchestra, as opening act for Cleo Laine. So after an hour of very fancy arrangements of all his famous work (including a vocal "suite" from Umbrellas...), Ms. Laine had nice orchestral backup for her hour. I'm glad I got to see them.

[GreekGeek]

On 1/16/2019 at 2:09 PM, Rinaldo said:

Carol Channing was also offered another second-lead role in a movie musical, The Girl Most Likely (a remake of Tom, Dick and Harry, and the last movie for both RKO Studios and director Mitchell Leisen). Her response was that Jane Powell wasn't a big enough star for her to play second banana to. So Kaye Ballard got the part instead.

 

I did not know that. By coincidence, Kaye Ballard died this week.

Carol Channing also played the eccentric Muzzy Van Hossmere in Thoroughly Modern Millie. 

[Milburn Stone]

3 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

Legrand had his schlocky moments, but most of the time I really enjoyed his stuff. There were his 3 unique musical films with Jacques Demy: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The Young Girls of Rochefort, Donkey Skin. And the many unforgettable movie themes: "The Windmills of Your Mind," "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?", Pieces of Dreams, Summer of '42. 

I would add his score for Yentl. I think it's really good. Especially "No Wonder."

[voiceover]

I was thinking tonight, watching the conclusion of Sounder: what a glorious thing it is, hearing Paul Winfield's laughter resound at the end of the film.  Pure joy, and one of the great father/son moments in film.

[mariah23]

Has anyone heard about this?  The Wizard of Oz grossed $1.2 million Sunday, the biggest Fathom release for a classic film.  Fathom has added two more showings for February 3 and 5.

[Rinaldo]

18 hours ago, voiceover said:

I was thinking tonight, watching the conclusion of Sounder: what a glorious thing it is, hearing Paul Winfield's laughter resound at the end of the film.  Pure joy, and one of the great father/son moments in film.

So true. Balancing out Cicely Tyson's involuntary cry when she sees her husband return. A lovely movie.

From the sublime to the ridiculous: I recently tuned past TCM and saw they were showing Bye Bye Birdie, and I had to stick with it for my favorite number. I think the studio dropped the ball with this one, cutting half the score, rearranging the story and characters to showcase a hokey speeded-up effect, trying to play starmaker with Ann-Margret (at the wrap party, we're told that a series of effuse tributes to her gifts from producers was followed up by Maureen Stapleton taking the mike and saying, "Well, I guess I'm the only one here who doesn't want to fuck Ann-Margret"), and throwing away most of what made it work as a pleasant entertainment onstage.

But: They did reconceive one song to make it way better than it had been onstage, and one of the great filmed dance numbers -- "A Lot of Living To Do." Onstage it's just the kids in the chorus doing walking patterns and occasionally throwing arms skyward to indicate high spirits. But choreographer Onna White (who wasn't involved in the stage production) sets it as a competition trio (new lyrics from Lee Adams) at the roadhouse, and it works like gangbusters. It's kind of too bad that Jesse Pearson, who as Birdie ought to be the real swinger, couldn't really move much, but on the other hand Bobby Rydell turned out to be a terrific dancer (who knew?). And the anonymous dance arranger came up with some great ideas for Ms. White, including a boogie-woogie beat and an unforgettable woodwind squeal that becomes a main motif, always matched with that silly elbows-and-neck flip that I can't get enough of (and there's a lot of it).

Someone ought to make a compendium of Onna White's choreography on film. Between this, Mame, Oliver!, and The Music Man, there's plenty of good stuff.

Edited January 29, 2019 by Rinaldo

[Wiendish Fitch]

3 hours ago, mariah23 said:

Has anyone heard about this?  The Wizard of Oz grossed $1.2 million Sunday, the biggest Fathom release for a classic film.  Fathom has added two more showings for February 3 and 5.

Really?! That warms my heart. I was worried that movie had fallen out of favor. 

[voiceover]

Because sometimes Life works out this way: today TCM scattered "Guest Programmer: Voiceover" over 24 hours.  

First was my beloved Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, where Norma Shearer's Kathi charmingly stammers out the movie's theme ("A Prince is just a human being!").  Then Count Melvyn Douglas explains the joys of credit to Communist Garbo's Ninotchka ("A radio's a little box you buy on the installment plan, and before you tune it in they tell you there's a new model out..").  Finally, Howard Keel waltzes Kathryn Grayson through their adjoining dressing rooms ("Like our love, it's wunderbar!") before the curtain rises on Kiss Me Kate.

It was like getting a heavenly "wink" emoji from Robert Osborne.  God I love the movies!!!

[voiceover]

Filmstruck's replacement is going live April 8: the Criterion Channel.

[Milburn Stone]

10 hours ago, voiceover said:

Filmstruck's replacement is going live April 8: the Criterion Channel.

This is good news.

I hope the user-interface (as experienced on Apple TV) will not be the same dumb-ass one that Filmstruck employed. (And that Watch TCM still employs.) Their system for scrolling/scrubbing through time was/is non-functional with the Apple TV remote--one must use the Remote app on one's iPhone, and even then it's clunkily inferior to the system used by every other channel. Criterion has a shot at not doing it the dumbass way.

[ratgirlagogo]

17 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

This is good news.

It sure is.  And also I agree with this article (on the same site) so much:

https://screencrush.com/the-oscars-should-be-long/

"My general sense, as an outside observer, is that the people in charge of producing and broadcasting the Oscars do not actually like the Oscars."

[Dr.OO7]

I LOVE this channel in February!

So far, I've rewatched "The French Connection" (That chase scene never fails to thrill me. And for added bonus, I'm a New Yorker, so I recognize every part of it), "Strangers On A Train", and "Wait Until Dark" (another nail biter).

Good news--"Casablanca" will not be airing on Super Bowl night as some sadistic idiot scheduled it several years ago.

Bad news-- it's airing at 6pm on the 12th. Why wouldn't they schedule it for prime time?

[Sharpie66]

Wait Until Dark is really great! My sister introduced it to me when I was in high school. She popped it in the VCR, we turned all the lights off in the room, and she just watched me levitate out of my seat at the big jump scare at the end. I did the same for a college friend when we saw the film at the video store and I found out she had never seen it. It was so fun seeing her jump five feet straight up at the same spot. 

[Wiendish Fitch]

21 minutes ago, Sharpie66 said:

Wait Until Dark is really great! My sister introduced it to me when I was in high school. She popped it in the VCR, we turned all the lights off in the room, and she just watched me levitate out of my seat at the big jump scare at the end. I did the same for a college friend when we saw the film at the video store and I found out she had never seen it. It was so fun seeing her jump five feet straight up at the same spot. 

Love Wait Until Dark! Yeah, it relies pretty heavily on Idiot Plot contrivances, (for God's sake, Suzy, lock the door and call the damn police! And don't drag a kid into this!) but the climax is outstanding, as is Audrey Hepburn's performance. She's such a style icon, it's easy to forget what a wonderful actress she really was (check out A Nun's Story and Two for the Road if you don't believe me).

[Rinaldo]

1 hour ago, Wiendish Fitch said:

She's such a style icon, it's easy to forget what a wonderful actress she really was (check out A Nun's Story and Two for the Road if you don't believe me).

Very true indeed. And good as she is in Wait Until Dark (I recall that in Oscar-guessing that year, she was my hope to win), the performance she really should have been nominated for, that same year, was Two for the Road. Love, love, love that movie, and she's great in it.

[ratgirlagogo]

I hate 31 Days of Oscar.  They rarely show any Oscar nom I haven't seen before and suspend all the more obscure/offbeat  things that I love.  This wasn't always the case.  I treasure the memory of Robert Osborne managing to keep a straight face while doing both an intro AND and an outro for the divinely dopey King of the Zombies, nominated for best musical score in 1941.  It lost to The Devil and Daniel Webster, if you're interested - other losers for that year included Citizen Kane, Ball of Fire, and How Green Was My Valley.

OTOH as Mr Rat always points out 1) only I would complain about this, and 2) lots of people have never seen these films before, and will come to love them.  Both very true.

Edited February 4, 2019 by ratgirlagogo

[Dr.OO7]

I was channel surfing one day and saw that "The Age Of Innocence" was on the schedule. I decided to watch as it's one of my favorite books/movies and even though I have the DVD (don't give me that look, you all do the same thing).

What a surprise it was to see it was the 1934 version that I didn't even know existed.

[Charlie Baker]

I used to grouse here from time to time that my Spectrum service in NYC did not get me access to Watch TCM.  But I've had it for a while now, and I'm grateful for it.  Occasionally I get the time to really work it, and over the last few days I've done just that.  I've watched Holiday again, and my love for that movie seems to deepen every time I see it.  Plus this one is rapidly becoming my favorite Katharine Hepburn performance.  I caught up with The Breaking Point, a strong version of To Have and Have Not, with John Garfield and Patricia Neal generating heat, and Phyllis Thaxter doing the best work I've seen her do.  I saw the two Rainer Werner Fassbinder works they showed on Imports--one good, one not so.  And I finally saw the very fun The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, thanks, voiceover!

I'm debating whether I can swing the new streamer from Criterion Collection.  With my New York Public Library card, I have access to Kanopy, which has a decent selection from Criterion, some classic stuff TCM shows, a collection of more recent Paramount movies, and some very recent indies and documentaries.  

Movies and more movies!

[Charlie Baker]

So as much or as little as we are into Pre-Oscar mode here, I found this interesting.  A lengthy Vulture list suggesting alternate winners for each year's Best Picture.

Oscar's Best Also Rans?

[Charlie Baker]

I never posted three consecutive posts before, but I thought this was worthy.

Julie Adams has passed away at 92.  A working actor for many decades, her splashiest movie part was as the object of the affections of the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Julie Adams

[tennisgurl]

Found The Third Man playing awhile ago, and finally got a chance to watch it on DVR. I love it more every time I watch it, such a weird, fascinating movie. I love everything about it, like the semi comedic scenes of representatives from the multiple occupying governments all having to show up for seemingly everything, plus the local police, to its jazzy soundtrack that sounds more like the soundtrack to a movie about vacationing on the French Riviera and not a dark noir in post war Vienna, but still manages to work, enhancing the darkness of the plot instead of distracting from it, to the iconic shots and the way it uses darkness and shadow. Of course the most famous scene where Orson Wells shows up for the first time is the most iconic, but they keep going all throughout the movie, like when Charlie is running through the sewers, and everything in the graveyard, at the start and end of the movie. There is just so much to discover every time I watch it. 

[voiceover]

14 hours ago, Charlie Baker said:

And I finally saw the very fun The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, thanks, voiceover!

*bows*  I'm delighted to welcome you to the club!  And you should hunt down Danny Peary's Alternate Oscars, which IIRC, I've previously bored on about.  

Dear @ratgirlagogo!  I agree with Mr Rat.  It would hardly be Oscar season without your annual complaint 😬.  Rather like me & my Ramon Defense.

[voiceover]

Albert Finney has died.

I think on that gang of Anglo-Irish boys, who defined "roguish" in the 60s: O'Toole, Harris, Bates...Finney.

He brought out the woman in Audrey Hepburn (Two for the Road), the gravitas in Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich), and made women everywhere long to go on a picnic (Tom Jones).

"Flights of angels..."

[elle]

1 hour ago, voiceover said:

Albert Finney has died.

I think on that gang of Anglo-Irish boys, who defined "roguish" in the 60s: O'Toole, Harris, Bates...Finney.

He brought out the woman in Audrey Hepburn (Two for the Road), the gravitas in Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich), and made women everywhere long to go on a picnic (Tom Jones).

"Flights of angels..."

My late father's favorite Scrooge movie was Albert Finney's musical version.

The BBC news site has a nice tribute in photos.

[WendyCR72]

It's far from his best roles or work, but I still liked Finney's musical number as Daddy Warbucks with Carol Burnett's boozy Miss Hannigan in the Annie movie from 1982.

[ratgirlagogo]

12 minutes ago, WendyCR72 said:

It's far from his best roles or work, but I still liked Finney's musical number as Daddy Warbucks with Carol Burnett's boozy Miss Hannigan in the Annie movie from 1982.

Yes, and yet almost every TV news show I saw only mentioned and showed clips from Annie, and sometimes Erin Brockovitch.  I think NBC did show a clip from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and Tom Jones.

I bet I haven't seen even half of what he did but I'd  mention Charlie Bubbles (which he also directed), and I liked him a lot as the monster dad in Washington Square, and the mythmaking dad in Big Fish.  Like Rinaldo I think he was awfully good in Two for the Road. Oh, and Murder on the Orient Express of course.

[Charlie Baker]

Of course TCM schedules far in advance, but Tom Jones turns up on 31 Days of Oscar just as many were learning of Mr. Finney's passing.  I needed a few moments after that.

In addition to the movies already mentioned, as a theater person, I must mention The Dresser.

Stop that train!

Edited February 9, 2019 by Charlie Baker

[voiceover]

Could someone post when they see the "TCM Remembers" for Finney?

p.s. WTH w/the weeping emoji?  

[StrictTime]

10 hours ago, Charlie Baker said:

Of course TCM schedules far in advance, but Tom Jones turns up on 31 Days of Oscar just as many were learning of Mr. Finney's passing.  I needed a few moments after that.

In addition to the movies already mentioned, as a theater person, I must mention The Dresser.

Stop that train!

<I>The Dresser</I> is so great. Hoping TCM will do a tribute day and include this one.  I will have to clear out my DVR because Finney was one of the best actors I’ve ever seen.

[Audpaud]

Love TCM, especially NOIR ALLEY.  It's not back 'til March 9th. 😞

[ratgirlagogo]

On 2/9/2019 at 2:13 PM, voiceover said:

p.s. WTH w/the weeping emoji?  

Well, this is a choice we have now with the New Look PTV.  It's weird to "like" the post that lets us know of someone's death, but that's what I've usually done in the past and I've used the sad emoji instead here since it appeared.   I suppose I should add that I do all my computer stuff on a desktop and not a phone/tablet and I don't use social media at all so although I know that emojis are thought of as kind of tacky I don't usually experience them as intrusive.  Also  I've come to appreciate their usefulness in communicating tone of voice online.   Honestly I'm still working my way through this update to be honest.

Edited February 11, 2019 by ratgirlagogo

[Milburn Stone]

8 hours ago, ratgirlagogo said:

Well, this is a choice we have now with the New Look PTV.  It's weird to "like" the post that lets us know of someone's death, but that's what I've usually done in the past and I've used the sad emoji instead here since it appeared.   I suppose I should add that I do all my computer stuff on a desktop and not a phone/tablet and I don't use social media at all so although I know that emojis are thought of as kind of tacky I don't usually experience them as intrusive.  Also  I've come to appreciate their usefulness in communicating tone of voice online.   Honestly I'm still working my way through this update to be honest.

How long before we see The Emoji Movie? (Unless it's already happened.)