Playtime, playing on TCM on Monday night.

Sorry I’m running a bit late with this – I didn’t plan adequately for the time suck of a festival. Anyway, didn’t miss too much this morning, but be sure to check out Jacques Tati’s Playtime tonight; of everything I saw for the first time last year, Playtime was my favorite. We’ve also got a great actress showcase in Notes on a Scandal on Tuesday, Bertolucci’s New Wave homage The Dreamers late Thursday/early Friday, a slew of Rudolph Valentino films all day on Friday, plus a bunch of top-notch repeats.

Monday, May 2

8:05pm – IFC – thirteen
As disinterested as I am in Twilight and as dubious as Red Riding Hood looks, I keep giving Catherine Hardwicke the benefit of the doubt based on this film, a pretty solid exploration of a young teenager’s troubled relationship with her mother as she acts out with a wild-living friend.
2003 USA. Director: Catherine Hardwicke. Starring: Evan Rachel Wood, Holly Hunter, Nikki Reed.
(repeats at 2:15am on the 3rd)

11:30pm – TCM – Playtime
This easily jumped into my Top 100 films when I saw it last year, and hasn’t budged. A supremely funny film from Jacques Tati with a wonderful edge of satire on modernist consumerism. Very few words are spoken, as is Tati’s wont, but his points are made through some of the best shot composition I’ve ever seen, making full use of the 70mm full-frame format.
1967 France. Director: Jacques Tati. Starring: Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek, Rita Maiden.
Must See
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Tuesday, May 3

6:00am – TCM – Red Dust
You want some pre-Code action? We got your pre-Code action right here! Clark Gable and Jean Harlow made several films together, and Red Dust is one of the most entertaining, in no small part because its story of a love triangle on a South Seas rubber plantation gives them plenty of opportunity to push the sensuality envelope. It was remade as Mogambo in 1953 with Gable and Ava Gardner, but that version isn’t nearly as, um, interesting as this one.
1932 USA. Director: Victor Fleming. Starring: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Gene Raymond, Mary Astor, Donald Crisp.

10:30am – TCM – The Kennel Murder Case
William Powell is well-known for playing detective Nick Charles in the Thin Man series of movies, but he also played private eye Philo Vance in a less well-remembered series of films based on detective novels by S.S. Van Dine. This is probably the best of the lot, a witty mystery that’s not really too far off from the Thin Man vibe.
1932 USA. Director: Michael Curtiz. Starring: William Powell, Mary Astor, Eugene Pallette, Ralph Morgan.

11:30am – IFC – Notes on a Scandal
If you want to see a be-all-end-all actress-on-actress battle of the wills, this is the film to watch. Aging teacher Judi Dench finds out her younger colleague Cate Blanchett is carrying on with one of her students, and Dench sets out to psychologically blackmail Blanchett, with whom she is secretly infatuated. There are a ton of levels to these characters, and both actresses shine in their roles, playing off each other with an intensity rarely seen on-screen.
2006 UK. Director: Richard Eyre. Starring: Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench, Andrew Simpson.
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3:00pm – TCM – Midnight
Solid Billy Wilder/Charles Brackett-penned screwball comedy that ought to be better known than it is. Claudette Colbert ends up in the middle of a millionare-wife-gigolo triangle, paid by the millionaire husband to break up the wife and gigolo by impersonating a baroness; meanwhile, a poor taxi driver she’d met previously is smitten with her and seeks her out, only to find her in her new guise. Sparkling dialogue and a strong cast give this a sophisticated twist that doesn’t quite match Lubitsch at his best, but is on the same track.
1939 USA. Director: Mitchell Leisen. Starring: Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore, Mary Astor, Francis Lederer.

8:00pm – TCM – A Day at the Races
The Marx Brothers take over the racetrack in what is probably the last of their really great comedies. As with A Night at the Opera you do have to put up with the silly romantic subplot, but it’s not too big a strain.
1937 USA. Director: Sam Wood. Starring: The Marx Brothers, Allan Jones, Maureen O’Sullivan, Margaret Dumont.
Must See

10:05pm – IFC – Requiem for a Dream
Darren Aronofsky’s breakthrough film (Pi remains a cult favorite) follows a quartet of people as their lives spiral out of control due to drug addiction.
2000 USA. Director: Darren Aronofsky. Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans.

Wednesday, May 4

3:45pm – TCM – My Fair Lady
George Cukor finally won an Oscar in 1964 for this film, a high-quality adaptation of Lerner and Loewe’s musical, itself an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, itself based on the Greek story of Svengali and Trilby. Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn acquit themselves well as phonetics professor Henry Higgens and street urchin Eliza Doolittle. I guess I just find it a bit overlong and overproduced, as most 1960s musicals were, but I’m in the minority. [NOTE: TCM is also playing a bunch of lesser-known Hepburn films just prior to this, none of which I've seen - check them out if you're interested: Love in the Afternoon, Green Mansions, The Nun's Story]
1964 USA. Director: George Cukor. Starring: Rex Harrison, Audrey Hepburn, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White.

8:00pm – IFC – Alien
Often considered one of the best sci-fi/horror creature features of all time (or just behind its sequel Aliens). Sigourney Weaver gets an iconic role as ass-kicking astronaut Ripley.
1979 USA. Director: Ridley Scott. Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, Ian Holm, John Hurt.
(repeats at 2:15am on the 5th)

10:30pm – IFC – Evil Dead 2
The sequel/remake to Sam Raimi’s wonderfully over-the-top demon book film, set in the same creepy wood-bound cabin, with even more copious amounts of blood and a lot more intentional humor. I’m still not sure which I like best, but either one will do when you need some good schlock. (I still haven’t seen Army of Darkness, I’m shamed to admit.
1987 USA. Director: Sam Raimi. Starring: Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry, Dan Hicks.

Thursday, May 5

8:45am – TCM – You Can’t Take It With You
The sequel/remake to Sam Raimi’s wonderfully over-the-top demon book film, set in the same creepy wood-bound cabin, with even more copious amounts of blood and a lot more intentional humor. I’m still not sure which I like best, but either one will do when you need some good schlock. (I still haven’t seen Army of Darkness, I’m shamed to admit.
1987 USA. Director: Sam Raimi. Starring: Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry, Dan Hicks.

8:00pm – TCM – Bathing Beauty
Here’s the thing with Esther Williams movies. Most of them aren’t that good. But it’s worth it to watch them anyway because she’s charming and no one else does what she does. This one is a cut above most of the others (Take Me Out to the Ballgame is also good, but doesn’t have much of her swimming), with the help of costar Red Skelton, so if you want to be able to say you’ve seen an Esther Williams movie, dive in with this one.
1944 USA. Director: George Sidney. Starring: Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Basil Rathbone.
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1:05am (6th) – IFC – The Dreamers
Bernardo Bertolucci’s love letter to the French New Wave, with American Michael Pitt heading to Paris just in time to join the ’68 Cinematheque riots, becoming friends and eventually lovers with a siblings Louis Garrel and Eva Green, a pair of fellow cinephiles. Bertolucci draws on Band of Outsiders and Jules and Jim especially, as well as the history of the era and his own sensibilities. It loses me personally a bit in the eroticism of the second half, but the first part is fantastic.
2003 France/UK/Italy. Director: Bernardo Bertolucci. Starring: Michael Pitt, Louis Garrel, Eva Green.
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Friday, May 6

8am-5pm – TCM – Rudolph Valentino marathon
I’ve not heard of most of the films TCM is playing in this Valentino marathon, but I’m hoping to add to my experience of the great silent screen lover. Among the notable ones are a 1921 version of Camille (remade in the ’30s with Garbo) and the 1921 version of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
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12:45pm – Sundance – Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman
As an architectural photographer covering modernist architecture during the mid-twentieth century, Julius Shulman captured some of the most iconic images ever of homes and other buildings, basically creating an entire generation’s perception of Los Angeles and Palm Springs especially. This well-designed documentary is a great primer on his life and work, and through his work, on modernist ideals and architecture itself. Definitely worth a look if you’re interested in photography, architecture, modernism, or Los Angeles.
2008 USA. Director: Eric Brickner. Starring: Julius Shulman, Dustin Hoffman.

8:00pm – TCM – Kiss Me Deadly
Iconic noir film, with hard-boiled action, nuclear paranoia, and one of the more memorable non-Hitchcock McGuffins in movie history. Plus some great LA locations. One of the pulpier noir films, and one of the most enjoyable.
1955 USA. Director: Robert Aldrich. Starring: Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Cloris Leachman, Marian Carr.

3:45am (7th) – TCM – The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T
One of the most delightfully weird films you’ll ever see, and the only thing Dr. Seuss ever wrote directly for the screen. A young boy hates his piano lessons and dreams of a surreal world where he and 499 other boys are held prisoner and forced to play the piano by the evil Dr. Terwilliker.
1953 USA. Director: Roy Rowland. Starring: Tommy Rettig, Hans Conried, Peter Lind Hayes, Mary Healy.

Saturday, May 7

8:20am – IFC – Paranoid Park
I go back and forth on whether I think Gus Van Sant is brilliant or a pretentious bore – maybe some of both. But I really quite liked the slow, oblique approach in this film about a wanna-be skateboarder kid who relishes hanging out with the bigger skateboarders at the titular skate park – but there’s a death not far from there, and it takes the rest of the movie to slowly reveal what exactly happened that one night near Paranoid Park. Gets by on mood and cinematography.
2007 USA Director: Gus Van Sant. Starring: Gabe Nevins, Daniel Lu, Jake Miller, Taylor Momsen, Lauren McKinney.
(repeats at 2:15pm)

9:30am – TCM – The Hound of the Baskervilles
Arguably the best of the extensive series of Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, from one of Doyle’s best-known novellas about the great detective. A moody piece with Holmes investigating a series of deaths on the northern moors that many are attributing to a local legend of a supernatural hound.
1939 USA. Director: Sidney Lanfield. Starring: Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Richard Greene, Wendy Barrie, Lionel Atwill, John Carradine.

3:15pm – TCM – Dodge City
Dodge City, not a particularly great movie. It’s a fun entry in the group of Errol Flynn-Olivia de Havilland matchups, as Flynn deals with the outlaw element in the western frontier town of Dodge. The real reason I like it? It has one of the best barroom brawls ever put on film.
1939 USA. Director: Michael Curtiz. Starring: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Alan Hale.

8:00pm – TCM – Bicycle Thieves
One of the best and most iconic films from the Italian Neo-Realist movement. A man finally acquires a job, because he has the requisite bicycle needed to do the job. But when his bicycle is stolen, he and his son go on an increasingly desperate odyssey to try to recover it. Neo-Realism is known for its use of urban, location shooting and non-actors to deliver an authentic picture of life, and Bicycle Thieves succeeds superbly on every front. (aka The Bicycle Thief)
1948 Italy. Director: Vittorio De Sica. Starring: Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola, Lianella Carell, Gino Saltamerenda.
Must See

Sunday, May 8

6:45am – 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

12:30pm – TCM – Mildred Pierce
In quite probably Joan Crawford’s best role (only perhaps excepting her catty “other woman” in The Women), she plays a woman trying to work her way up in the world from lowly waitress to entrepreneur, all the while dealing with her shrew of a daughter. Melodrama isn’t a particularly prized genre these days, but films like Mildred Pierce show how good melodramas can be with the right confluence of studio style, director, and star.
1945 USA. Director: Michael Curtiz. Starring: Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott, Ann Blyth, Eve Arden.
Must See

2:30pm – TCM – Gypsy
One of the best shows ever written about stage mothers turns into a pretty decent film – it purports to be the story of vaudeville/burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee, but ends up being much more about her mother Mama Rose. It’s a good showcase for any actress, and Rosalind Russell, though not quite the singer that the role pulls on Broadway, does a fine job. Plus, it’s chock-full of showstopping tunes.
1962 USA. Director: Meryvn LeRoy. Starring: Rosalind Russell, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden.

5:00pm – IFC – The New World
Terrence Malick may not make many films, but the ones he does make, wow. Superficially the story of John Smith and Pocahontas, The New World is really something that transcends mere narrative – this is poetry on film. Every scene, every shot has a rhythm and an ethereal that belies the familiarity of the story we know. I expected to dislike this film when I saw it, quite honestly. It ended up moving me in ways I didn’t know cinema could.
2005 USA. Director: Terrence Malick. Starring: Colin Farrell, Q’orianka Kilcher, Christian Bale, Christopher Plummer.
Must See

8:00pm – IFC – Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
I need to give another look to this Peter Weir film about a British commander pursuing a French vessel through dangerous waters during the Napoleonic Wars; it didn’t impress me a whole lot when I watched it, but it’s pretty highly regarded in the Third Row. I’m kind of back and forth on Weir in general, but I’d be plenty to happy to add this one back to the “pro” column.
2003 USA. Director: Peter Weir. Starring: Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, Billy Boyd.

10:30pm – TCM – Stella Dallas
I tend to prize Barbara Stanwyck most for her sparkling comedic performances, but she did her fair share of melodramas, and Stella Dallas remains one of the best. Stanwyck is the title character, a working class girl who marries above her class, leading to various problems and heartbreak. It’s a three-hanky film, but a pretty solid one.
1937 USA. Director: King Vidor. Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles, Anne Shirley.