My husband Jonathan and I have been taking turns choosing movies we care about a lot to share with each other; both of us getting to catch up on a lot we’ve missed. We’re posting about a selected ones of these films on our blogs.

The Movie

Movie: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie
Info: 1990 USA. Director: Steve Barron. Starring: Judith Hoeg, Elias Koteas, Josh Pais, Michelan Sisti, Leif Tilden, David Forman, Corey Feldman, Robbie Rist.
Chooser: Jonathan
Date and Method Watched: May 14, on DVD

He Says…

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie is one of those films you bring out to the significant other with hesitation. I’m reminded of an episode of How I Met Your Mother where one of Ted’s (many) issues was showing his girlfriend Star Wars for the first time. Would she be all over it, or would she laugh at all the ridiculous puppetry and special effects? How would that affect the relationship? As it turned out, she actually DIDN’T like the movie, but was able to appreciate it because Ted loved it. And while I wouldn’t say I hold TMNT:TM to a similar level of excellence, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t kind of nervous about showing off this treasured piece of childhood to my wife. I mean, what if she DIDN’T like it?

Well, I’ll let her fill you in on what she thought. What I will add are some thoughts from our recent re-watch. As it turns out, TMNT:TM has aged a lot better than I was expecting it to. Having not seen it for almost ten years, I was partially ready to start apologizing for this part and that, much like I would for something like Super Mario Brothers. The puppetry and special effects held up quite nicely, hitting a realism at times that most CGI still has trouble getting right. The dated elements were more charming than cheesy, and the more somber moments still hit the absolute sweet spot for me – Raphael’s and Splinter’s private conversation being the prime example. The overall goofiness held up as well, and remains the part that makes this film near and dear to my heart.

Now to dust off my copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze and cross my fingers once more!

She Says…

Of all the movies Jonathan kept mentioning to me as his touchstone movies growing up, the kind of cheesy but fun movies that he has strong emotional connections to, this one initially gave me the most pause. I was like, really, you’re going to eventually make me watch a movie about overgrown talking turtles who break out ninja moves and eat pizza? Yet when it came down to it, it was actually me who suggested we go ahead and take the plunge. And I was actually kind of weirdly excited about it, too. Probably it was the somewhat scary degree to which I’ve gotten into comics and superheroes lately, and with enough comic books under my belt, the mental jump to mutant ninja turtles apparently isn’t actually that large.

And you know what, I actually quite enjoyed the film. Sure, it’s cheesy, and it’s very much a product of its time, but those things give it a quaint charm that may not be exactly what the creators were going for at the time, but made it work for me now anyway. Definitely the kind of film you just have to give yourself over to, though, what with the mixture of an investigative journalism story and, well, mutant ninja turtles. Between the goofiness of the turtles, the “gangs are bad!” message, the meet-cute of the logically incompatible love interests, and the over-earnest wisdom of the giant rat Splinter, there’s a lot here that could easily be turn-offs, but thankfully (for both my evening and my marriage!), I just found it all pretty endearing. Up to and including the special effects, which are actually much better than I expected. I like practical effects anyway, and the puppets and animatronic elements are right up my alley, and the puppet work on the turtles’ faces is quite good.

All in all, I expected to at most enjoy it as a so-bad-it’s-good movie, but I actually enjoyed it for real. I’m sure we’ll get to the sequel soon enough, and I’ll get more ooze than I know what do to with (this is starting to sound like a not-very-subtle euphemism, so I’m gonna stop right there).

[This post is a contribution to the third annual For the Love of Film blogathon and fundraiser, which will be running from May 13-18. This year, hosts Marilyn Ferdinand, Farran Smith Nehme and Roderick Heath have dedicated the week to Alfred Hitchcock, whose early (non-directorial) work The White Shadow will be the beneficiary of any money earned during the event, to support the National Film Preservation Foundation's desire to stream the film online for free. Be sure to donate so you can see this very-nearly lost film yourself!]

[Note: I suppose I spoil The White Shadow a bit in here, but it's an incomplete film, and in terms of film preservation, that's part of its power. I wanted to get across the sense of what it was like to be in the Academy screening when we came to the end of the portion that exists. But if you particularly don't want to know anything about the film until you can see it streaming thanks to the NFPF and this blogathon's fundraising efforts, skim lightly especially in two paragraphs before and after the image of Hitchcock directing.]

We excitedly gathered on the sidewalk, anticipating being let into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ own screening room, the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills. VIPs slipped by, headed toward the bar or lounge in their finery, while the rest of us waited, patient but anxious to begin the evening’s entertainment. Any screening at the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre is a treat, a step into a more opulent past presented by the self-appointed guardians of Hollywood history, but this was no ordinary screening. This was the very first appearance of an early, long-thought-lost Hitchcock film pretty much since its original release in 1924. Well, technically Hitchcock was the Assistant Director on the film (and he tended to get in on every part of production he could in those early days, so likely he was doing much more), the second of two collaborations with director Graham Cutts and actress Betty Compson, apparently rushed into production to capitalize on the popularity of the first, Woman to Woman. According to producer Michael Balcon, “it was as big a flop as Woman to Woman had been a success.” But Woman to Woman remains a lost film, and in any case, The White Shadow could’ve been a terrible movie and we still would’ve been ecstatic to see it.

Our excitement was first of all out of curiosity to see if we could see any glimpses of Hitchcock in the film’s style, but also simply because here’s a film that has been thought lost for decades, turned up (partially at least) in an archive in New Zealand, along with a bunch of other long-lost films. If we can still locate treasure troves like this in 2011, what else might still be out there, waiting for intrepid archivists to find it, figure out what it is, and restore it so the world can rediscover it?

Archivists are kind of like detectives. Films may sit in archives for years, preserved so they don’t deteriorate, but often lacking reels or credits that would help identify what the film even is. That’s the case with several films in the New Zealand Archive, which has been the source of a lot of publicity in the silent film archiving world over the past couple of years as they, along with researchers from American archives, realized they had fragments of John Ford films, Clara Bow films, and other American films that they’d been holding on to for years but hadn’t had the resources to go through and identify. The same is probably true of many archives around the world, not to mention what private collectors or grandpa’s attic may still hold. But I think it’s important to realize that finding these films is often not simply a matter or serendipity, like finding a bunch of film reels in a relative’s home that nobody knew were there, or digging up a bunch from an underground bunker or whatever romantic flights of fancy one can come up with. A lot of times they’re actually already in archives, having been donated as part of a large collection at one time or another, and the issue is that film preservation and restoration is woefully underfunded to the point that all archivists can do is keep the films safe until they have the resources to do the sometimes daunting work that goes into just finding out what the films are, much less the often laborious process of restoring them to a watchable state.

The finding of The White Shadow is a combination of both the romantic and the mundane, having been part of a donation to the New Zealand Archive in 1989 after being found in a garden shed. It remained on the shelf mis-identified until 2011, when an archivist with the Academy who was working at the New Zealand Archive figured out that this film, labeled “Two Sisters” and “Unidentified American Film,” was actually the first few reels of The White Shadow, a British film that’s now the earliest known surviving film worked on by Alfred Hitchcock. The film world went abuzz, with many media outlets often forgetting to mention that he was AD on the film instead of full director, but really, for me, the exciting thing was the rediscovery of even part of this film, whether Hitchcock had been director or coffee-boy.

You see, fragments fascinate me and sadden me in fairly equal proportions. With some 80% of all silent films lost, the fragments that remain are heartbreaking reminders of what was and what will never be again. They have a special kind of beauty, almost ghostly and ethereal, the remnants joyous and yet constant signs of what has been lost. Some fragments are mere minutes or seconds long, as with the glorious two-color Technicolor opening of Clara Bow’s Red Hair, the first few minutes of which were discovered and restored only this year and shown at the 2012 TCM Film Festival. Who knows if the rest of the film was any good or not? Maybe seeing the rest of it would yield disappointment. Maybe someday the rest of it will be discovered and we can find out for ourselves. Until then, the fragmentary opening stands apart in time.

The White Shadow currently has the first three of six reels intact, so it’s a much longer fragment, but a fragment it remains. It tells the story of two sisters (both played by Betty Compson), one “good” and one “bad.” The “white shadow” of the title refers to the sweet and demure soul of the good sister. They both have their eye on the same man, who is initially attracted to the wild sister, but when she runs away from home and their overbearing father, the sweet sister marries him instead – but here’s the kicker: he never knew there were two of them, so he assumes he’s marrying the one he initially fell for. Mistaken identity follows mistaken identity, the now-repentant father embarks on a life-long quest to find the wild sister, and the mismatched couple struggle with their marriage. It all comes to a climax when they fatefully end up in the same nightclub. The wild sister enters the club dramatically from the top of a long, imposing stairway and…the film cuts out.

The entire sold-out audience at the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre erupted into a sigh and a groan – a resigned sigh that we may never get to see the rest (though Eva Marie Saint did read us the very brief and somewhat bizarre plot description filed with the film’s copyright materials), and a groan of frustration. Frustration that neglect has let this, and so many other films disappear. In a way, the film couldn’t have ended better in terms of raising awareness for the great need to preserve the films we have left and work to find and identify more. Though some parts of the film fall a bit too far into melodrama, the final image is one of tension and excitement, a real edge of your seat cliffhanger – as if the gods of Cinema had planned it that way so the film, as it remains today, would have the maximum impact a fragment can have, a tangible symbol of the phantom reels. The cliffhanger has no resolution, but it carries with it the hope that if this fragment could be found and recovered, perhaps more can be also.

Of course, the big question on everyone’s mind heading into the screening was, would we be able to tell the influence of Hitchcock on this very early film? Would we be able to see the seeds of the great master of suspense? To be honest, I’m not sure. There is suspense in the plot, thanks to the Compson’s double role and the way mistaken identity is played for suspense and tragedy rather than comedy (most of the time), but the tension is relatively innocuous and the film spends more time, at least in this first half, on the father’s anguished search for his daughter. You can see the idea of shadow selves and people torn between good and evil as an idea basic to much of Hitchcock’s later work, but at the same time, a lot of that feels like reading into the film because of what we know about Hitchcock.

The purpose of this blogathon is to raise money for the National Film Preservation Foundation to record a brand-new score and put the existing reels of The White Shadow on their website for anyone to stream for free. I can’t promise you that watching The White Shadow will be a totally satisfying experience – how can it be, when the conclusion of it is still lost? But I can promise you that it will be worthwhile, if only to see part of a landmark director’s origin, if only to be reminded of the necessity of caring for the films we have, and if only to remain hopeful that more films (even perhaps the rest of this one!) will continue to be found and preserved for us to see. And maybe you’ll have a better idea of how it relates to Hitchcock’s later work than I do. So join me and my fellow bloggers – donate if you can, spread the word, and when the film is posted online by the NFPF (as I have no doubt it will be), watch it!

Many thanks to Farran Smith Neame, Marilyn Ferdinand, and Roderick Heath for putting this blogathon together. And thanks also to Ed Howard, whose blogathon intro I stole and modified for my own!

Well, the Roundup kind of took an unplanned hiatus while I recovered from the TCM Film Fest and struggled to get caught back up with the blogosphere. I’m still running a bit behind, but not by much, so let’s go ahead and try to get back into the groove here.

Featured Links

For the Love of Film Blogathon

The For the Love of Film Blogathon, now in its third year, supports film preservation by raising awareness of the need for preserving film and seeking to raise financial support for a specific film preservation cause of project. This year, the project is The White Shadow, the recently rediscovered 1924 film that Alfred Hitchcock worked on as assistant director (and many other things, most likely), currently the oldest film known to exist that Hitchcock played a part in making. In order to make it possible for more people to see the film, the National Film Preservation Foundation wants to put it streaming online, a conversion and delivery system that will cost several thousand dollars. Those of us blogging as part of the For the Love of Film Blogathon this year will be discussing Hitchcock’s work in general, his silent films, or other silent films in light of the importance of preserving this cinematic heritage and making it available to a wider audience. My piece about The White Shadow itself is right here. In the meantime, Marilyn Ferdinand of Ferdy on Films, Farran Smith Neame of The Self-Styled Siren, and Roderick Heath of This Island Rod are collecting the links to other participating blogs as articles get posted. It’s quite a collection already, which I look forward to delving into.

Tales of Hollywood: Preston Sturges’ Wild Ride by The Lady Eve of The Lady Eve’s Reel Life

Preston Sturges is one of my favorite writers and directors, and The Lady Eve (who has taken her pseudonym, of course, from one of his best films) has an excellent biographical piece about him and not only how he became one of a Hollywood’s first writer/directors (paving the way for Billy Wilder and many, many others), but about his other “job” as a restaurateur, starting the famous Players’ Club on Sunset, a popular hangout for many celebrities in the 1940s. She also tells of how the place basically ruined him. It’s a fascinating story that I really didn’t know anything about.

My 11 Favorite Cinematographers by Alex Withrow of And So It Begins

Cinematography is one of my favorite things about the movies, and it’s not uncommon that a movie that looks really beautiful or distinctive will jump up a couple of notches in my estimation no matter what I think about the rest of it (story, acting, etc.). It’s all too easy to fall back on auteurist shorthand and credit a film’s look to the director – which is not always totally wrong, but often when directors have a distinctive and consistent “look” to their films, it’s because they tend to work with same cinematographer over and over again. Alex Withrow jumps straight to the source here and talks about his favorite cinematographers. Then he realized there weren’t any female cinematographers on his list, and went specifically looking for women to feature, resulting in this post. Then he went to find the films that he loved the look of, but weren’t by otherwise known cinematographers, and came up with this post for B&W cinematography and this one for color cinematography. All in all, an excellent set of posts.

Thomas Edison and the Origin of Sound and Color in Films by Lara at Backlots

Quick, film history 101: when did sound come into motion pictures? 1927, with The Jazz Singer. What about color? 1936 with Becky Sharp. Both common answers and not totally incorrect, and yet also…incorrect. As much as I love B&W films and think color is an option, not a necessity, and as much as I’ve grown to love silent cinema and think it was just as high an art form as sound film eventually became, the early pioneers of cinema were no more content with B&W and silence at the dawn of cinema than they were in the late ’20s and early ’30s, and color and sound experiments started way back with Thomas Edison, one of the original developers of cinema. Lara lays out his experiments with both color and sound in a highly informative and interesting post.

The 10 Greatest Movies of All Time (According to the Internet) by Cole Abius at Film School Rejects

If you follow Roger Ebert on his blog or on Twitter, you may have noticed him debating over his votes for this decade’s Sight & Sound poll, which creates a top ten list every decade based on the lists submitted by prominent (and invited) film critics. The poll has a certain cache, but it understandably leans heavily on accepted canon. Not necessarily a bad thing, but FSR decided to hold their own poll, inviting various prominent members of online media and film-related websites to make their own poll, which has some interesting results – about half accepted canon, and about half what I’d consider the canon of 30-year-old men, in other words, well-beloved 1980s favorites. Which is fine, and actually creates a more diverse list that captures something of our zeitgeist. Both lists have their place, and it’s fun to see alternative takes on the “best” movies of all time.

The Future is Female: 2012 is the Year of the Empowered Girl by various writers at Row Three

A group effort by a bunch of Row Three writers, in which I played only a humble part, writing about Katniss Everdeen. Others covered Haywire, Prometheus, The Avengers, The Secret World of Arrietty, Brave, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, A Lonely Place to Die, and more, talking about how this year seems to be something of a watershed in terms of having a large number (and variety) of female leads in the kinds of films that are traditionally centered on male figures. Lots of room for disagreement, additions, or even wondering whether making such a list actually negates its own purpose, so come on over and leave your thoughts.

More Links!

• Christopher Morris at The Cinementals lists his top five Ginger Rogers films (sans Fred Astaire)
• Joanna at Man I Love Films acclaims Steve McQueen as the original badass, and she is totally right
• Dan Heaton of Public Transportation Snob picks out ten of his favorite podcasts; I already listen to and enjoy a few of these, but I’ll definitely be checking out some more!
• Richard Brody calls for Every Movie Now – can’t say I disagree with him, but restoration/digitization I’m sure is a barrier
• Where Danger Lives turns up a veritable plethora of Joan Crawford posters
• Max Steiner is pretty much the father of movie scores, and Lara at Backlots (again!) runs down his career and influence thoroughly and engagingly
• Seems like everyone I know has been writing about Murnau’s The Last Laugh lately, and now Chris Edwards of Silent Volume joins his voice to the throng – apparently I gotta see this thing, and soon
• Andrew at Row Three (and other sites, but I saw it here first, regardless of favoritism) highlights some fun facts about Universal Studios as they turn 100

Cool Trailers, Videos, and More

• Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Sean Penn, Emma Stone, etc., in a period neo-noir? Based on that and this trailer, I’m there the day Gangster Squad opens
• I keep forgetting Safety Not Guaranteed exists, but with Aubrey Plaza in a time-travel-esque film, I gotta quit doing that – here’s the trailer
• Can Ben Affleck go three for three as a director? Judging from this trailer for Argo, it seems very possible
• Criterion has Three Reasons for The Gold Rush
• Classic film fans! Check out this group photo and see how many you can name – I only got 15-20 or so (right click and say “open in new tab” to see it larger)

Noteworthy News

• The Avengers is just setting records all over the place – $200m first weekend, $100m second, and over $1 billion worldwide
• Jessica Chastain drops out of Iron Man 3 (boo!), but Rebecca Hall may be her replacement (yay!) – I love Hall almost as much as Chastain, and she definitely deserves more exposure, so I’m stoked
• The existence of promo posters for Sin City 2 and Machete Kills suggest what Robert Rodriguez is up to lately
• Edgar Wright‘s next movie may be The World’s End, a third film with Pegg & Frost; he’s still planning Ant-Man, though!
• Apparently Film Socialisme isn’t to be Jean-Luc Godard‘s last film, after all; he’s prepping Goodbye to Language (which should really be the title of all his movies), and it’s gonna be in 3D – sorry JLG, I gotta *eyeroll* that
• Brad Bird and Damon Lindelof working on a mysterious sci-fi project? Yeah, I’m there

Last week I was complaining because there were hardly any releases worth glancing at; this week I opted to put in a second row of highlighted covers because there are a LOT of releases, including a bunch of last year’s festival circuit films that I didn’t want to get lost in the shuffle. Still a slow week on the Instant Watch front, for both new additions and expirations, but there are a few gems in there you won’t want to miss.

New Release Pick of the Week

Chronicle
A nice surprise in the midst of February doldrums to find this small but satisfying take on what would happen if a group of high-schoolers got the power of telekinesis. Both the “ordinary people get superpowers” and found footage genres are getting stale, but Chronicle uses both to good advantage, chiefly by being spot on in how teenagers would react to their new-found powers.
2012 USA. Director: Josh Trank. Starring: Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B. Jordan.

Other New Releases

Afghan Luke (2011 USA, dir Mike Clattenburg, stars Nick Stahl)
Agent Vinod (2012 India, dir Sriram Raghavan, stars Kareena Kapoor)
Chained: Code 207 (2012 USA, dir Tino Struckmann, stars John Greer)
The Devil Inside (2012 USA, dir William Brent Bell, stars Fernanda Andrade)
Dragonslayer (2011 USA, dir Tristan Patterson, stars Josh ‘Skreech’ Sandoval)
eCupid (2011 USA, dir J.C. Calciano, stars Andy Anderson)
Flashpoint: Season 4 (2011 USA, stars Amy Jo Johnson, Hugh Dillon)
Golf in the Kingdom (2010 USA, dir Susan Streitfeld, stars David O’Hara)
Hell on Wheels: Season 1 (2011 USA, stars Anson Mount, Colm Meaney)
Mortuary (2005 USA, dir Tobe Hooper, stars Dan Byrd)
My Perestroika (1010 USA/UK/Russia, dir Robin Hessman)
My Piece of the Pie (2011 France, dir Cédric Klapisch, stars Karin Viard)
The Tenants (2009 Brazil, dir Sergio Bianchi, stars Fernando Alves Pinto)
The Universe: Season 6 (2007 USA)
Victorious: Season 2 (2011 USA, stars Victoria Justice)
We Were Here (2011 USA, dir David Weissman, Bill Weber)
Windfall (2011 USA, dir Laura Israel)
The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake (2011 Hong Kong, dir Herman Yau, stars Rose Chan)

Catalog Pick of the Week

Being John Malkovich Criterion
There are no films that define “mindfuck” quite like Being John Malkovich, and yes, I pretty much mean that literally. When John Cusack discovers a door that leads inside the brain of John Malkovich, it’s only the beginning of one of the most bizarre and brilliant films I’ve ever seen. I’m glad to see Criterion honoring newer, deserving films like this.
1999 USA. Director: Spike Jonze. Starring: John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, John Malkovich, Catherine Keener.

Other Catalog Releases

Before and After Blu-ray (1996 USA, dir Barbet Schroeder, stars Meryl Streep)
Born Yesterday Blu-ray (1993 USA, dir Luis Mandoki, stars Melanie Griffith)
Bringing Down the House Blu-ray (2003 USA, dir Adam Shankman, stars Steve Martin)
Caravan (1946 USA, dir Arthur Crabtree, stars Stewart Granger)
D.O.A. Blu-ray (1988 USA, dir Annabel Jankel, Rocky Morton, stars Dennis Quaid)
Duets Blu-ray (2000 USA, dir Bruce Paltrow, stars Gwyneth Paltrow)
Eagle’s Wing (1979 USA, dir Anthony Harvey, stars Martin Sheen)
Fanny by Gaslight, aka Man of Evil (1945 UK, dir Anthony Asquith, stars James Mason)
Forbidden Zone Blu-ray (1982 USA, dir Richard Elfman, stars Hervé Villechaize)
Gone Fishin’ Blu-ray (1997 USA, dir Christopher Cain, stars Joe Pesci)
Hazel: Season 3 (1963 USA, stars Shirley Booth)
Holy Man Blu-ray (1998 USA, dir Stephen Herek, stars Eddie Murphy)
Love Story, aka A Lady Surrenders (1944 UK, dir Leslie Arliss, stars Margaret Lockwood)
Mr. Wrong Blu-ray (1996 USA, dir Nick Castle, stars Ellen DeGeneres)
The Odessa File Blu-ray (1974 UK, dir Ronald Neame, stars Jon Voight)
The Order Blu-ray (2001 USA, dir Sheldon Lettich, stars Jean-Claude Van Damme)
Riverboat: Complete Series (1959-61 USA, stars Darren McGavin, Dick Wessel)
Spaghetti Western Double Feature: Grand Duel / Keoma (1972/1976 Italy, dir Giancarlo Santi/Enzo G. Castellari, stars Lee Van Cleef/Franco Nero)
Terminal Velocity Blu-ray (1994 USA, dir Deran Sarafian, stars Charlie Sheen)
Walking Tall Trilogy (1973-1977 USA, stars Joe Don Baker / Bo Svenson)
White Squall Blu-ray (1996 USA, dir Ridley Scott, stars Jeff Bridges)

Instant Watch Pick of the Week

Sleep Dealer
In the near-future, borders are blocked and immigration halted, but richer countries using poorer ones for labor hasn’t changed; thanks to the wonders of virtual reality laborours can hook into a machine and control robots to do the menial tasks that the wealthier nations don’t want to do. A great setup that the film may not quite exploit (no pun intended) to its full extent, but is still a worthwhile low-budget, idea-ridden sci-fi film.
2008 Mexico/USA. Director: Alex Rivera. Starring: Luis Fernando Peña, Leonor Varela, Jacob Vargas.

Other Instant Watch Releases

Expiring Pick of the Week

Metropolis Restored [5/16]
This is the Complete Metropolis edition with the additional 25 minutes of footage, which is the best way to see it. I hope I don’t have to really sell this film too hard – it’s a simply breathtaking experience, and if you can’t get a chance to see it on a big screen, definitely don’t miss this chance to see it before it expires.
1927 Germany. Director: Fritz Lang. Starring: Alfred Abel, Brigitte Helm, Gustav Frohlich.

Other Instant Watch Expirations

Barking Water (2009 USA, dir Sterlin Harjo, stars Casey Camp-Horinek) [5/16]
The Producers (2005 USA, dir Susan Stroman, stars Nathan Lane) [5/16]
Battleground (1949 USA, dir William A. Wellman, stars Van Johnson) [5/19]
In the City of Sylvia (2007 Spain, dir José Luis Guerín, stars Pilar López de Ayala) [5/24]
Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies (2008 USA, dir Arne Glimcher) [5/24]
Singh is Kinng (2008 India, dir Anees Bazmee, stars Akshay Kumar) [5/25]
I Capture the Castle (2003 UK, dir Tim Fywell, stars Ramola Garai) [5/26]
Pretty Persuasion (2005 USA, dir Marcos Siega, stars Evan Rachel Wood) [5/26]

See all expiring titles.

An excellent week coming up on TCM, with a few scattered cool things on other channels, but for the most part, this week is all TCM all the time, and I’m hardly exaggerating. Especially look out for the Frank Capra marathon on Friday, including some of his early works, which are a whole lot of fun, even if Capracorn isn’t quite your thing.

Monday, May 14

6:00pm – TCM – Stage Door
I cannot describe to you how much I love this film. I’m not sure it’s wholly rational. Katharine Hepburn plays an heiress who wants to make it on her own as an actress, so she moves (incognito) into a New York boarding house for aspiring actresses. Her roommate ends up being Ginger Rogers (who’s never been better or more acerbic), and the boarding house is rounded out with a young Lucille Ball, a young Eve Arden, a very young Ann Miller, and various others. The dialogue is crisp and everyone’s delivery matter-of-fact and perfectly timed, and the way the girls use humor to mask desperation makes most every moment simultaneously funny and tragic – so that when it does turn tragic, it doesn’t feel like a shift in mood, but a culmination of the inevitable.
1937 USA. Director: Gregory La Cava. Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou, Andrea Leeds, Gail Patrick, Eve Arden, Lucille Ball, Ann Miller, Constance Collier.
Must See

11:30pm – TCM – 100 Men and a Girl
Deanna Durbin was Universal’s answer to Judy Garland back in the 1930s and early ’40s, a fresh-faced ingenue with a grown-up sounding set of pipes. Deanna’s voice tends more toward the operatic than the pop, though, which could conceivably be a turn-off to modern audiences. She’s still delightful on screen, though, and this is one of her most charming films, playing a young girl determined to save her father’s struggling orchestra by getting renowned violinist Jascha Heifetz (playing himself) to play with them.
1938 USA. Director: Henry Koster. Starring: Deanna Durbin, Adolphe Menjou, Alice Brady, Jascha Heifetz, Eugene Pallette, Mischa Auer, Billy Gilbert.
Newly Featured!

Tuesday, May 15

10:00am – TCM – Lolita
“How could they make a movie of Lolita?” runs the tagline, and indeed, it’s hard to imagine anyone even trying in 1962 – both because of the pedophiliac content and the interior nature of the narrative, very difficult to reproduce in cinematic form. But Stanley Kubrick decided he was up to the task, and though it isn’t considered one of his best films, it still rates pretty highly.
1962 UK/USA. Director: Stanley Kubrick. Starring: James Mason, Sue Lyon, Shelley Winters.

12:45pm – TCM – Under Capricorn
A curiosity among Hitchcock’s films, more of a lush colonial melodrama than a thriller, which is at least one of the reasons it’s not very highly considered among his works. Personally, it’s my least favorite Hitchcock film, but apparently it was a favorite of the Cahiers critics (who championed Hitchcock in general, but this is an odd one to pick out), and I’m kind of curious to check it out again to see if it was merely my preconceptions that let me down.
1949 USA. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Starring: Joseph Cotten, Ingrid Bergman, Michael Wilding, Margaret Leighton.
Newly Featured!

5:45pm – TCM – Niagara
Marilyn Monroe got a chance to play against type a bit as a calculating newlywed planning to off her husband during their honeymoon. Also unusual for what is basically a noirish crime film, it’s shot in color.
1953 USA. Director: Henry Hathaway. Starring: Marilyn Monroe, Joseph Cotten, Jean Peters.

8:00pm – TCM – Gun Crazy
A sort of proto-Bonnie & Clyde, with a pair of young lovers knocking over liquor stores and banks as they travel cross-country, indulging their love of guns and violence. This is one of the great unsung B-level noir films, though among noir lovers you’ll find it’s plenty sung, with Joseph H. Lewis bringing out the tragedy within the story’s pulp. Definitely don’t miss it if you’re into 1940s crime films.
1950 USA. Director: Joseph H. Lewis. Starring: Peggy Cummins, John Dall.

9:45pm – TCM – Remember the Night
Barbara Stanwyck is caught shoplifting just before Christmas. The prosecuting attorney, Fred MacMurray, puts off the trial till after Christmas and ends up feeling sorry for her, bailing her out, and taking her home with him so she won’t have to spend Christmas alone in jail. It’s fairly predictable what’s going to happen next, but as usual, Stanwyck makes relatively routine material worth watching. And of course, a Preston Sturges script doesn’t hurt either.
1940 USA. Director: Mitchell Leisen. Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Beulah Bondi, Elizabeth Patterson, Sterling Holloway.

1:15am (16th) – TCM – The Ox-Bow Incident
A pair of drifters become the leaders of a lynch mob when they hear about a local cattle rustler and murderer. Ahead of its time in terms of psychological depth and shades-of-grey morality at a time when most westerns were pretty simplistic with clear good guys and bad guys.
1943 USA. Director: William A. Wellman. Starring: Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Anthony Quinn.

Wednesday, May 16

11:00am – TCM – Fort Apache
The first entry of John Ford’s informal Cavalry trilogy has John Wayne and Henry Fonda posted to the eponymous Fort following the Civil War, dealing with Indian uprisings, and delving in Fonda’s character of a man driven to reclaim his lost honor in the military by any means possible.
1948 USA. Director: John Ford. Starring: John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Shirley Temple.

1:15pm – TCM – Mister Roberts
Henry Fonda is the title character, an XO on a cargo ship who often butts heads with the captain (James Cagney), who runs the ship with an iron fist. The tone is a satisfying combination of comedy and drama, and with a cast that also includes William Powell in his last role and Jack Lemmon in one of his first, you can hardly go wrong. Though John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy share credit for the film, it’s mostly Ford – LeRoy was brought in to finish it when Ford had to undergo emergency surgery, but he tried to emulate Ford’s style as much as possible.
1955 USA. Director: John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy. Starring: Henry Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell, Jack Lemmon, Betsy Palmer, Ward Bond.

8:00pm – TCM – Dead End
A highly-regarded crime drama from the classic gangster era, with a street gang of kids, an unemployed man, and a small-time crime boss gangster facing off over a chunk of turf in Manhattan’s East Side. Showcasing an early role for Humphrey Bogart.
1937 USA. Director: William Wyler. Starring: Joel McCrea, Sylvia Sidney, Humphrey Bogart, Wendy Barrie, Claire Trevor, Allan Jenkins.
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2:30am (17th) – TCM – These Three
Based on the play “The Children’s Hour,” this film abides by the Production Code by turning the play’s lesbian love affair between two teachers into a heterosexual love triangle between three, but retains the drama that erupts when a lying student implicates them in a scandal based on the intertwined relationships. Interestingly, Wyler would adapt the play again in 1961, retaining the original title and and implicit love affair, thanks to the relaxing hold of the Code. Despite the constrained morality, however, this one might be the stronger film.
1936 USA. Director: William Wyler. Starring: Merle Oberon, Miriam Hopkins, Joel McCrea, Bonita Granville.
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Thursday, May 17

8:00pm – IFC – Pitch Black
A better-than-expected B movie, with some great atmosphere and twists as a crashed spaceship strands a disparate group of people on a planet that’s not quite as lifeless and deserted as it seems. A nice genre calling card for Vin Diesel, and a great chance to see Claudia Black outside of her Farscape role.
2000 USA. Director: David N. Twohy. Starring: Vin Diesel, Claudia Black, Radha Mitchell.
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(repeats at 10:15pm)

10:00pm – TCM – Call Northside 777
One of Jimmy Stewart’s first films after spending the war as a fighter pilot; he plays a reporter compelled to reopen an eleven-year-old murder case, coming to believe the wrong man was sentenced to life in prison. A good combo of film noir and mystery.
1948 USA. Director: Henry Hathaway. Starring: James Stewart, Richard Conte, Lee J. Cobb.

12:00M – TCM – The Wrong Man
Alfred Hitchcock made many films based on the idea of the wrong man being accused for some crime, but this is the most on-the-nose one. Innocent Henry Fonda is mistaken for a suspect in a crime, and undergoes a vast extended ordeal at the hands of the police and witnesses who constantly identify him as the criminal even though he is not. The effects on him and his family are devastating. Not one of Hitchcock’s very best, but worth watching for Fonda’s performance and the distillation of one of Hitchcock’s most prominent themes.
1956 USA. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Starring: Henry Fonda, Vera Miles, Anthony Quayle, Harold J. Stone.

2:00am – TCM – Anatomy of a Murder
One of the best courtroom dramas ever made – James Stewart vs. George C. Scott as lawyers on a murder/rape trial that may not be quite what it seems. And that’s aside from the top-notch jazz score by Duke Ellington, which is in itself reason enough to see the film.
1959 USA. Director: Otto Preminger. Starring: James Stewart, George C. Scott, Lee Remick.
Must See

Friday, May 18

6:30am – TCM – The Miracle Woman
This early Frank Capra film follows a female religious leader (based on Aimee Semple MacPherson) whose fervor attracts the attention of a charlatan who exploits her explosive preaching style and message for his own profit. I liked this a lot more than I expected to, thanks in no small part to Barbara Stanwyck’s sensitive performance and more nuanced-than-expected treatment of the subject, though there is a fair bit of sentimentality thrown into the mix.
1931 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Sam Hardy, David Manners, Beryl Mercer.

8:15am – TCM – The Bitter Tea of General Yen
In what is certainly not one of Hollywood’s more racially sensitive films (though it has more nuance than you might expect for its time period), Barbara Stanwyck plays a bright-faced missionary to China who ends up captured by Chinese General Yen and finds herself falling in love with him. A strange, strange movie in many ways (not least of all the surrealistic photography); not wholly successful perhaps, but a very unusual entry in Frank Capra’s filmography.
1933 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Nils Asther, Toshia Mori, Walter Connolly.

9:45am – TCM – Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Frank Capra puts on his idealist hat to tell the story of Jefferson Smith (James Stewart), an inexperienced young man appointed as a junior senator because the corrupt senior senator thinks he’ll be easy to control. But Smith doesn’t toe the party line, instead launching a filibuster for what he believes in. Wonderful comedienne Jean Arthur is the journalist who initially encourages Smith so she can get a great story from his seemingly inevitable downfall, but soon joins his cause.
1939 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Eugene Pallette, Thomas Mitchell.
Must See

12:00N – TCM – It Happened One Night
In 1934, It Happened One Night pulled off an Academy Award sweep that wouldn’t be repeated until 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, snagging awards for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor, and Actress. Colbert is a rebellious heiress, determined to run away and marry against her father’s wishes. Along the way, she picks up Gable, a journalist who senses a juicy feature. This remains one of the most enjoyable comedies of all time, with great scenes like Colbert using her shapely legs rather than her thumb to catch a ride, Gable destroying undershirt sales by not wearing one, and a busload of people singing “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.”
1934 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert.
Must See

2:00pm – TCM – You Can’t Take It With You
Capra won his third directing Oscar for this film (the others were for It Happened One Night and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town), but to me it’s not one of his more interesting pieces. Young couple James Stewart and Jean Arthur invite chaos when his staid, wealthy family meets her wacky, irreverent one.
1938 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Spring Byington.

4:15pm – TCM – Lady for a Day
Said to be one of Frank Capra’s favorites among his own films; follows an aging apple-seller in Depression-era New York who has been leading her daughter in Europe to believe she’s a rich society matron. When the daughter plans to visit, she must figure out a way to keep up the ruse. A film basically built out of great 1930s character actors, and a wonderful one at that.
1933 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: May Robson, Warren William, Glenda Farrell, Ned Sparks, Guy Kibbee, Jean Parker.
Must See

6:00pm – TCM – Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
One of Frank Capra’s most whimsical films stars Gary Cooper as an unassuming country boy who suddenly inherits a great amount of money. When he decides to give it all away to whoever comes and asks for some, he garners a media frenzy, everyone thinking he’s crazy. Idealistic, warmly funny, and, yes, Capracorny. But as corn goes, it’s among the best. Also, any chance to see Jean Arthur is worth taking.
1936 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, George Bancroft, Lionel Stander, Douglass Dumbrille.

8:00pm – TCM – American Graffiti
Seems a little hard to believe now, but before George Lucas started in on Star Wars, he actually made other totally unrelated movies. Like this one, an excellent coming of age story set in the early 1960s, with a 1970s New Hollywood spin on it. Richard Dreyfuss before Jaws, Ron Howard back in the Happy Days days, Cindy Williams before Laverne & Shirley, Harrison Ford in a bit part, it’s a lot of good fun.
1973 USA. Director: George Lucas. Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Cindy Williams, Wolfman Jack.
Must See
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Saturday, May 19

1:15pm – TCM – The Diary of Anne Frank
One of the most famous memoirs of Jews living in Nazi Germany becomes a fairly well-regarded film, with Millie Perkins taking on the role of young Anne, whose family goes into hiding as Nazi persecution increases, sharing their space with another family and struggling for survival and secrecy. Shelley Winters won her second Oscar for her role.
1959 USA. Director: George Stevens. Starring: Millie Perkins, Joseph Schildkraut, Shelley Winters, Richard Beymer.
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4:30pm – TCM – Blackboard Jungle
Glenn Ford is the teacher who takes on rowdy inner-city kids in one of the earlier “heroic teacher” films. A young Sidney Poitier is one of the students, and a scene in which a record of “Rock Around the Clock” is played is reputed to be the first time rock n’ roll appeared in a film.
1955 USA. Director: Richard Brooks. Starring: Glenn Ford, Anne Francis, Louis Calhern, Sidney Poitier.

8:00pm – TCM – Wuthering Heights
William Wyler’s moody 1939 version of Emily Bronte’s moody gothic novel, with Laurence Olivier as the moody Heathcliff. Probably the best film version of the story up till now.
1939 USA. Director: William Wyler. Starring: Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon, Geraldine Fitzgerald, David Niven, Flora Robson.

12:00M – TCM – The Outlaw
After being a successful aviator and before becoming a hopeless hypochondriac, Howard Hughes tried his hand at moviemaking, most notably with 1930′s Hell’s Angels and this 1943 film, notable for being Jane Russell’s first major role as well as for being suppressed/banned for a few years thanks to Russell’s frank and earthy sexuality. I actually haven’t seen it myself yet, so I can’t comment on its quality, but the story surrounding it is interesting enough for me to want to take a look.
1943 USA. Director: Howard Hughes. Starring: Jane Russell, Jack Buetel, Thomas Mitchell.

1:00am (20th) – IFC – Layer Cake
Sounds like an unusual title for a crime film, but it’s also an unusually solid crime film, with Daniel Craig in one of his breakthrough roles as a drug dealer given a couple of tough jobs just before planning to retire. Last jobs never go well, so you can kind of predict all won’t go as planned.
2004 UK. Director: Matthew Vaughn. Starring: Daniel Craig, Tom Hardy, Sally Hawkins, Burn Gorman.
(repeats at 3:15am on the 20th)

2:00am (20th) – TCM – The Grapes of Wrath
John Ford’s homage to the dust bowl farmers of the 1930s, taken from the Steinbeck classic, won several awards (including one for Ford) the year it came out. Despite sounding like a downer of a time, it really isn’t – the moody cinematography by Gregg Toland and the undertones of crime and corruption give it a noirish feel that both complements and offsets the social drama of the main story.
1940 USA. Director: John Ford. Starring: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Charley Grapewin.
Must See

4:15am (20th) – TCM – Citizen Kane
Widely considered the greatest American film ever made, I’d be very surprised if anyone reading this hasn’t seen it. The quest for what makes publisher/politician Charles Foster Kane tick takes a journalist through a fractured narrative that never seems to give any definitive answers. Personally, I respect and recommend Kane for its innovations in narrative, cinematography, and cinema language, but I find it a difficult film to love (yet even that is fitting, as the difficulty of loving or being loved by Kane himself is a central theme).
1941 USA. Director: Orson Welles. Starring: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead.
Must See

Sunday, May 20

8:15am – IFC – The Limey
A favorite around the Third Row, with Steven Soderbergh directing Terence Stamp as the title character, a British ex-con who heads to Los Angeles to try to solve (and presumably avenge) his daughter’s murder. I have yet to catch up with this one myself, but as a Soderbergh fan, it’s definitely on the horizon.
1999 USA. Director: Steven Soderbergh. Starring: Terence Stamp, Lesley Ann Warren, Luis Guzmán, Barry Newman, Peter Fonda, Melissa George.

10:00am – TCM – The Great McGinty
The story goes that Preston Sturges, a well-regarded and successful screenwriter, took this script to Paramount and said he’d sell it to them for $10 if they let him direct it. They said yes, and thankfully the film was successful, opening the door not only for Sturges to become one of the best writer/directors of the 1940s, but also writers like Billy Wilder and others to make the jump into directing. The story involves a crooked politician and the fake marriage he concocts to gain voters.
1940 USA. Director: Preston Sturges. Starring: Brian Donlevy, Muriel Angeles, Akim Tamiroff, Allyn Joslyn, William Demarest.
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11:30am – TCM – The Seven Year Itch
Far from my favorite Billy Wilder movie – or Marilyn Monroe movie, for that matter, but it does contain one of Marilyn’s most iconic roles, the next-door-neighbor who infatuates middle-aged main character Tom Ewell as he becomes afflicted with the titular condition when his wife and family go on vacation for the summer. It’s a slight film that stretches the limits of incredulity to their breaking point, but watching Marilyn basically play herself is a fun time.
1955 USA. Director: Billy Wilder. Starring: Tom Ewell, Marilyn Monroe, Evelyn Keyes, Sonny Tufts.

5:30pm – TCM – The Spirit of St. Louis
A lesser Billy Wilder film perhaps, but a fairly solid biopic of Charles Lindbergh and his first solo flight across the Atlantic. A lot of it depends on Jimmy Stewart alone in a cockpit, but he’s up to the task, and it’s kind of a fascinating part of aviation history (okay, more fascinating if you’re from St. Louis, as Lindbergh and I both are).
1957 USA. Director: Billy Wilder. Starring: Jmaes Stewart, Murray Hamilton, Patricia Smith.

2:00am (21st) – TCM – The Rules of the Game
Considered one of the finest films of all time by many critics (routinely making Sight & Sound’s Best Films list, a top ten list polling notable critics once per decade), Jean Renoir’s film set on a bourgeois French estate just prior to the onset of WWII went a bit over my head when I saw it as a teenager, and I haven’t yet taken time to revisit it. From what I’ve heard, the nuances of class and social structure as well as the subtle comedy will probably work far better for me now.
1939 France. Director: Jean Renoir. Starring: Nora Gregor, Marcel Dalio, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély, Jean Renoir.
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4:45am (21st) – TCM – A Room with a View
One of Merchant-Ivory’s best films out of their many classy adaptations of period literary classics – and less, uh, stuffy than they often tend to be. For me, it vies only with Howards End (another E.M. Forster adaptation) in their repertoire. A young Helena Bonham Carter, a veteran Maggie Smith, and Daniel Day-Lewis in one of his earliest film roles, don’t hurt at all.
1985 UK. Director: James Ivory. Starring: Helen Bonham Carter, Maggie Smith, Denholm Elliott, Julian Sands, Simon Callow, Judi Dench, Daniel Day-Lewis.