tcm alert thread (Jun '23 - tcm alert: dead)

NOTHING could ruin any single minute of what David Ehrenstein calls "the greatest movie ever filmed on American soil."

I thought she was just a celeb guest. Not sure she has a permanent job there.

no i think she does! i've heard that she introduces other movies on the weekend but i hope it's an inaccurate rumor

I think her only gig there is cohost of "The Essentials," taking over for Carrie Fisher...?

Yeah that's what I thought too.

Eh. it's fine with me. Just show DOWNSTAIRS (1932) again please, TCM!!!!!!!!

Bunch of early, rare musicals on tomorrow morning starting at 5am CST:

Street Girl (1929) - dig: "A girl from the wrong part of town finds a new life managing a jazz band."
Rio Rita (1929)
Dixiana (1931)
Girl Crazy (1932) - music by The Gershwins

Latter three with Wheeler and Woolsey.

i have a W&W t shirt, but lots of their stuff is pretty dire.

Yes, this is true. But I'd love to see/hear some Gershwin standards in their (ok still butchered but...) original context.

Missed Devil's Doorway. Did anyone catch it?

And does ANYONE have the Fox Movie Channel? No one seems to know it even exists.

On NYC Time Warner Cable, Fox Movie Channel is free on channel 257, but nobody knows about it. It mostly sucks though.

yes, they're heavy on the last decade.

Dassin's Naked City & Brute Force tom'w night (TCM).

In Sunday night's silent slot, Headin' Home starring Babe Ruth!

4 Jacques Tati films tonight.

lol George Hamilton triple bill. Followed in wee hrs by The Apple and Roller Boogie.

Paul Newman all day and night Sunday.

I worship The Apple. In the wee hours so Robert Osbourne (sp?) won't have to introduce it. Still, I pray TCM won't slip into AMC trash programming.

Monday the 13th, Syncopation (1942): A young trumpeter rises through the jazz world and finds love. Cast: Jackie Cooper, Adolphe Menjou, Bonita Granville. Dir: William Dieterle

4 Jacques Tati films tonight.

GAHHH

oh wait i don't have time to watch tv anymore anyway lol

They're all on disc too

Re "trash programming": Late Fridays are for cult stuff. Even for stuff cults won't touch (like Wicked Wicked).

I've always wanted to see that but keep missing it. I'm too lazy to check: is the ENTIRE film in split screen?

Yep. It's not very good at all, but the best jokes are made via the contradictions between what you see on one side and the other. The two songs that Tiffany Bolling sings are gaspingly awful.

May be coming on again soon?

can anyone recommend Jodie Foster in The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane? late tonight

I saw it a thousand years but I never forgot the twist ending. Go for it.

I liked it. Would watch again.

curious to see how you take it.
paedo vibe throughout; martin sheen on a roll; Foster body double nip shot

I just watched it recently. it's got a very play-like feel and lotsa lol 70s aesthetics but I always dug the suburban gothic vibe it purveys. acting is pretty good, especially sheen fueling his thankless paedo role with fearless creepiness.

when I was a kid it fueled my childhood fantasies of living by myself. if you remember what it was like being the weirdo smart kid you will prolly identify w/ foster's character.

factoid: body double is foster's older sister

Did anyone here see on Wednesday - or at any time before - Gregory La Cava's (My Man Godfrey) STAGE DOOR ?

Jesus what a cast - 1937's Katherine Hepburn (un-annoying), Ginger Rogers (astonishing, savage, career-best dramatic performance hands down), pre-stardom Lucile Ball, Adolphe Menjou, Eve Arden and a v. adolescent (14 yrs old) Ann Miller! Almost all women cast, everything "The Women" purports to be but actually entertaining, and line after line of witty, merciless, non-stop zings.

Quite a find...!

I was gonna catch that, but there are already so many movies on my TiVo that something had to give.

sure, Stage Door > The Women

that Jodie movie is kinda badly directed and written, but she makes it work.

I watch Stage Door every few months (Hepburn's scene in Menjou's office is one of her very best). The only mystery is why Andrea Leeds' total drip of a performance got the only Oscar nod.

Dated tragic-character sympathy factor, expected to be long-lasting tragedienne enthusiasm, otherwise I don't understand why

Alfred: Oscar's taste has always blown.

Stage Door is lovely. But The Women (1939) has been pushing and pulling me ever since Chicago Channel 32 showed it many, many, many years ago (although now that I think of it, I saw Stage Door almsot as early).

Things Stage Door lacks:

1. Joan Crawford
2. The world-historic fashion show
3. The greatest costume design of all-time (beach outfit with hand)
4. The second greatest (Sylvia's "Seeing Eye" top)
5. A line as great as "Oh the publicity! La publicité!"
6. Crystal's bathtub
7. No men (yes, yes, they're "there" but it makes a difference)
8. As bald an exploration into "the class feeling you run into nowadays"
9. The talk between Miriam and Mary in Reno
10. Joan Crawford

20 Monday
5:00 AM Kongo (1932)

A crippled madman seeks revenge on the daughter of the man who betrayed him. Cast: Walter Huston, Lupe Velez, Conrad Nagel.

I thought I had this on tape but I can't find it. I hear it's still pretty brutal to watch.

Sorry, Kevin, but I'm with Pauline Kael on The Women (who would no doubt apply the same criticism to the "Sex and the City" movie).

Also: I was struck by how unfunny it is.

Roz is HILARIOUS in it! In the lunch scene at Mary's, check out her eyes after Nancy asks "Well, Sylvia, feeling better?"

23 Thursday
7:30 AM My Name Is Julia Ross (1945)

Dir: Joseph H. Lewis

tom'w eve:

6:30 PM Cop Hater (Berke, 1958) - BW-75 mins. - From an Evan Hunter/Ed McBain novel, this B-film stars Robert Loggia as a detective at the fictional 87th Precinct looking into several killings of police officers without any obvious connection. The rest of the cast seems mostly unknown (to me anyway), with the exceptions of a young Jerry Orbach and Vincent Gardenia. United Artists is the credited distributor, putting MGM in control of the rights. It’s not on DVD.

http://filmjournal.net/clydefro/2008/10/17/the-tcm-ten-1018-1024/

I think that's based on the first of the bazillion 87th Precinct movies.

Oh, yeah. Looking forward to Cop hater.

I pointed this out on the Zappa thread: The World's Greatest Sinner and 200 Motels late night on Friday.

Damn! 'World's Greatest Sinner' doesn't seem to be showing in the UK, and Psychotronic Video and those good folks at Norton records have only been telling me to see it for twenty years!

It's definitely in a class by itself although it fascinates me most as a film in a forever unfinished state (at least in the version I own).

Thanx for that link, Morbs, although it'll probably just add to my pile of unseen films.

OK, Cop Hater wasn't bad. A couple clinker lines/deliveries; otherwise a decent piece of neo-noir.

28 Tuesday
11:15 AM Boeing Boeing (1965)
A playboy uses airline schedules to maintain "exclusive" relationships with three flight attendants at the same time. Cast: Tony Curtis, Jerry Lewis, Thelma Ritter. Dir: John Rich (who???). C-103 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format

That is widely regarded as one of Lewis's "straightest" roles.

I want to get a DVR for birthday/xmas, just for time-shifting TCM content. I want to watch The Spiral Staircase, but I ain't getting up at 5 a.m. tomorrow morning.

you know you could probably get a vcr for $3 nowadays

hahaha, I have a cheap VCR, but taped stuff looks so bad.

Yeah, get TiVo, definitely.

So what do people think of the ending of The World's Greatest Sinner? On its IMDb page, "God strikes him dead."

Or "down." Something like that.

the film sucks