Not too many newly featured ones this week, but still some great stuff going on. Monday sees a Cary Grant marathon on TCM during the day (including a few I didn’t mention, so just leave it tuned in if you’re a Grant fan). Lubitsch’s Technicolor fantasy Heaven Can Wait hits the Fox Movie Channel on Wednesday, while TCM has a selection of Clint Eastwood-produced jazz documentaries Wednesday night, followed by his Charlie Parker biopic Bird in the wee hours of Thursday morning. Friday would be Judy Garland’s birthday (89th, to be exact), so TCM is celebrating with a retrospective during the day, hitting films throughout her career to culminate in her final role in 1963′s I Could Go On Singing. Finally, TCM celebrates slapstick comedy with some Laurel & Hardy, Red Skelton, Harold Lloyd, and Jacques Tati on Sunday night.

Monday, June 6

7:00am – TCM – My Favorite Wife
After being shipwrecked and believed dead for seven years, Irene Dunne returns home to her husband Cary Grant on the eve of his marriage to another woman. Oh, and she brought Randolph Scott, her fellow shipwreckee, with her. Hijinks ensue. Not quite as strong a screwball comedy as the earlier Grant-Dunne opus The Awful Truth, but still fun for fans of the genre.
1940 USA. Director: Garson Kanin. Starring: Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Randolph Scott, Gail Patrick.

8:30am – TCM – His Girl Friday
This is a remake of the 1931 film The Front Page about newspaper buddies who go after a major story – Howard Hawks takes it to a whole new level by turning one of the men into a woman, and setting reporters Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant as a former couple, now divorced who can’t seem to stay apart, either personally or professionally. The dialogue is a stroke of genius, as well, overlapping in a maelstrom of words that’s overwhelming and delightful all at the same time. I call this one of the greatest American films ever made.
1940 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy.
Must See

5:30pm – TCM – North by Northwest
Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) gets mistaken for George Kaplan and pulled into an elaborate web of espionage in one of Hitchcock’s most enjoyable and funniest thrillers. So many great scenes it’s impossible to list them all.
1959 USA. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Starring: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau.
Must See

2:05am (7th) – IFC – Shadow of the Vampire
What if actor Max Schreck, who played the vampire in F.W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu, actually WAS a vampire and kept eating various members of the cast and crew? That’s the premise set forth by this slight but entertaining film, with John Malkovich as Murnau and Willem Dafoe as the eccentric Schreck.
2000 USA. Director: E. Elias Merhige. Starring: John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe, Cary Elwes, Catherine McCormack.

Tuesday, June 7

10:45am – TCM – Some Came Running
Frank Sinatra gets to prove his acting chops again as a cynical soldier returning to his small-town home. Shirley MacLaine is a revelation, and Dean Martin gets probably his best role, as well. Meanders a bit in the middle, but thanks to strong performances and incredibly well-done yet subtle mise-en-scene from Minnelli, ends up staying more memorable than you might expect.
1959 USA. Director: Vincente Minnelli. Starring: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine.

1:15pm – TCM – Ocean’s Eleven
The original version of Ocean’s Eleven is a Rat Pack buddy hangout film first and a heist film second, but when you’ve got Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford all in the same film, that’s a-ok with me.
1960 USA. Director: Lewis Milestone. Starring: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Peter Lawford, Angie Dickinson.

8:00pm – TCM – Great Expectations
David Lean’s definitive version of one of Charles Dickens’ most well-known books, about the boy Pip and his rise to fortune through the aid of a mysterious benefactor. I’ve avoided this because of my distaste for Dickens, but hey. The movie can’t have time to ramble on like Dickens does, so maybe I’d like it.
1946 UK. Director: David Lean. Starring: John Mills, Tony Wager, Valerie Hobson, Jean Simmons, Bernard Miles, Martita Hunt.

10:00pm – IFC – Hard Candy
Ellen Page burst onto the scene as a teenage girl getting involved with an older guy she met on the internet – initially looks like a cautionary tale about internet chat relationships, but goes into even more twisted realms than that, with Ellen owning the screen every second.
2005 USA. Director: David Slade. Starring: Ellen Page, Patrick Wilson, Sandra Oh.

10:15pm – TCM – Black Narcissus
Powell & Pressburger bring their fantastic use of color and solid understanding of melodrama to this story of a group of nuns in the Himalayas, battling nature, the nearby townspeople, and their own inner natures along the way.
1947 UK. Director: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger. Starring: Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, Jean Simmons, David Farrar.
Must See

Wednesday, June 8

8:00am – Fox Movie – Heaven Can Wait
In this unusual Lubitsch fantasy, a recently deceased man tries to convince Satan that he’s belongs in hell; unconvinced, Satan listens to him recount his life. As with anything Lubitsch, wit and sophistication abounds.
1943 USA. Director: Ernst Lubitsch. Starring: Don Ameche, Gene Tierney, Charles Coburn.
Newly Featured!

2:10pm – MGM – Interiors
In case anyone doubted Woody Allen’s admiration for Ingmar Bergman, he made this film to prove it. Interiors is about the best imitation of a Bergman chamber drama you could ask for, down to the spare set design, strained family relations, and a climax involving an angry sea. Still, it is also very much Allen’s film–his first straight drama–focusing on deeply neurotic, introspective characters unable to get outside their own heads for long enough to form really true relationships.
1978 USA. Director: Woody Allen. Starring: Diane Keaton, Kristin Griffith, Geraldine Page.

8:00pm – TCM – Clint Eastwood Jazz
Clint Eastwood is well-known as an actor and a director, but he also composes much of the music for his films and is a jazz musician and aficionado. Three jazz films he has executive produced and/or acted in are on TCM tonight: Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way (2010), Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988), and Eastwood After Hours: Live at Carnegie Hall (1997).
Newly Featured!

11:30pm – IFC – Away from Her
A very strong directing debut film from actress Sarah Polley, about an older woman (Julie Christie) suffering from Alzheimer’s and her husband’s difficulty in dealing with essentially the loss of his wife as she has more and more difficulty remembering their life together. It’s a lovely, heartbreaking film, bolstered by great understated performances.
2006 Canada. Director: Sarah Polley. Starring: Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent, Olympia Dukakis, Stacey LaBerge.

1:15am (9th) – TCM – Bird
Continuing the theme of Clint Eastwood and jazz is the film biopic he directed of Charlie “Bird” Parker (Forest Whitaker), following his musical career from his start in New York in the early 1940s through his struggles with drug addiction.
1988 USA. Director: Clint Eastwood. Starring: Forest Whitaker, Diane Verona, Michael Zelniker.
Newly Featured!

2:00am (9th) – IFC – The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Not Wes Anderson’s best perhaps – it skirts the line of self-consciously quirky and ends up a bit too awkwardly artificial even for him. But there’s still a lot about it to like, and the attention to detail is top-notch. It’s worth a watch for sure, especially for Anderson fans.
2004 USA. Director: Wes Anderson. Starring: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe.

Thursday, June 9

9:00am – Fox Movie – I Wake Up Screaming
Better known for bright and sunny musicals, Betty Grable took a turn for the noir in this crime film, playing the sister of a recently-murdered model with a rising career. It’s a slight noir, but fun nonetheless, especially for the chance to see Grable in a role unusual for her.
1942 USA. Director: H. Bruce Humberstone. Starring: Betty Grable, Victor Mature, Carole Landis.

10:00am – 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 4:00pm, and at 6:00am on the 10th)

8:00pm – TCM – Them!
I love a good classic sci-fi film and this one hits all the high points. Radioactive material? Check. Mutant insects? Check. Scientists? Check. Nuclear paranoia? Check. Giant mutant ants (created by radioactivity left by atomic bomb tests in Arizona) start attacking people, first in Arizona, then to Texas and Mexico, and finally in the middle of Los Angeles. A team of scientists works with the police to take the monsters down. One of the better examples of the “atomic mutant” sci-fi films, of which there were many; it builds intensity perfectly (in fact, it’s at least half an hour in before you come close to finding out what’s happening, adding in a very welcome mystery element) and doesn’t spend to long on its obligatory romantic subplot.
1954 USA. Director: Gordon Douglas. Starring: James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon, James Arness.

8:00pm – Fox Movie – The Panic in Needle Park
A harrowing tale of NYC heroin addicts, exemplifying the dark side of youth culture that New Hollywood does so well. A star-making turn for Al Pacino, just a year prior to The Godfather.
1971 USA. Director: Jerry Schatzberg. Starring: Al Pacino, Kitty Winn, Alan Vint.

8:00pm – IFC – The Aviator
A relatively safe film for Martin Scorsese, perhaps, but a really solid one, with DiCaprio solidifying his place in Scorsese’s films as legendary aviator/producer/hypochondriac Howard Hughes and a host of near-perfectly cast supporting players as the stars and starlets of 1930s Hollywood.
2004 USA. Director: Martin Scorsese. Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale.
(repeats at 1:30pm on the 10th, 8:00pm on the 11th, and 2:00am on the 12th)

Friday, June 10

7:45am – TCM – Girl Crazy
Mickey Rooney is a city boy sent out west when his hard-partying ways get him in trouble. Seems like he’s in for a tough, boring time – until he meets the local postmistress, Judy Garland. A slightly more grown-up romance for the formerly teen couple plus a boatload of Gershwin classics (including “Embraceable You,” “I’ve Got Rhythm,” and “But Not For Me”) make this arguably the best of the ten Rooney-Garland collaborations.
1943 USA. Director: Norman Taurog, Busby Berkeley. Starring: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Rags Ragland, Gil Stratton, June Allyson.

9:30am – TCM – The Clock
This was Judy Garland’s first real purely dramatic role, directed by her then-husband Vincente Minnelli in 1945. It’s a wartime story of a soldier on leave (Robert Walker) who meets a girl (Garland) and their attempts to get married before he has to return to his unit. It’s a sweet, unassuming little film that showcases Garland’s charm quite well, and has a nice supporting role for comedian Keenan Wynn.
1945 USA. Director: Vincente Minnelli. Starring: Judy Garland, Robert Walker, Keenan Wynn.

11:15am – TCM – The Pirate
A flop when first released, The Pirate looks more and more like a potential cult classic all the time. Gene Kelly is an entertainer who impersonates the dread pirate Mack the Black Mococo to get close to Spanish heiress Judy Garland in a period Caribbean seaport. It’s over-the-top, has some of Cole Porter’s most outlandish songs, and is somehow immensely, compulsively watchable.
1948 USA. Director: Vincente Minnelli. Starring: Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Walter Slezak, Gladys Cooper, Reginald Owen, the Nicholas Brothers.

3:15pm – TCM – A Star is Born
Judy Garland’s comeback role after several years off the screen remains one of her best, crystalizing both the hope and sorrow that her later life represents. The fact that she’s playing a wanna-be star at the beginning of her career makes it just that much more poignant – and watch out for her rendition of “The Man That Got Away.”
1954 USA. Director: George Cukor. Starring: Judy Garland, James Mason.
Must See

6:15pm – TCM – I Could Go On Singing!
In her final role, Judy Garland plays a successful singer trying to reconnect with her estranged son while his father is out of town. It’s one of the few Garland films I haven’t seen yet, but I ought to strike it off my list soon.
1963 USA. Director: Ronald Neame. Starring: Judy Garland, Dirk Bogarde, Jack Klugman, Gregory Phillips.
Newly Featured!

Saturday, June 11

8:30am – IFC – The Station Agent
One of the most pleasant surprises (for me, anyway) of 2003. Peter Dinklage moves into a train depot to indulge his love for trains and stay away from people, only to find himself befriended by a loquacious Cuban hot-dog stand keeper and an emotionally delicate Patricia Clarkson. A quiet but richly rewarding film.
2003 USA. Director: Thomas McCarthy. Starring: Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson, Bobby Cannavale.

1:10pm – MGM – Capote
Phillip Seymour Hoffman inhabits the role of author Truman Capote, capturing the period of time while Capote researches the senseless murder of a Kansas family for the book that would become In Cold Blood, in the meantime getting rather too involved with one of the killers as he interviews him extensively.
2005 USA. Director: Bennett Miller. Starring: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Clifton Collins Jr., Catherine Keener.
Newly Featured!

5:30pm – IFC – Marie Antoinette
Though Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette is unconventional, it is a solid and riveting re-interpretation of the giddy but not untroubled courts of Louis XVI and Louis XVII. The use of actors like Kirsten Dunst and Jason Schwartzman, who are not known as period actors, as well as anachronistic music, sounds like an ill-conceived attempt to make the story feel contemporary, but it actually works. Coppola took some serious risks with this film, but they paid off beyond all expectation.
2006 USA. Director: Sofia Coppola. Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Judy Davis, Rip Torn, Rose Byrne.
(repeats at 9:30am on the 12th)

6:00pm – Fox Movie – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
One of the most iconic westerns of all time, revisionist or otherwise, with Paul Newman and Robert Redford putting a fresh spin on the well-known outlaws as they try to escape from both an ever-looming posse of lawmen and the encroachment of the modern world.
1969 USA. Director: George Roy Hill. Starring: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross.
Must See
(repeats at 4:00am on the 12th)

8:00pm – TCM – The Caine Mutiny
Humphrey Bogart’s Captain Queeg is a piece of work, and by that I mean some of the best work Bogart has on film. He’s neurotic, paranoid, and generally mentally unstable. Or is he? That’s the question after first officer Van Johnson relieves him of duty as being unfit to serve and faces charges of mutiny.
1954 USA. Director: Edward Dmytryk. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray, Jose Ferrer.

11:30pm – IFC – The Claim
A typically complex film from Michael Winterbottom, with Peter Mullan anchoring the ensemble cast as the rich leader of an old West mining town faced with pressure from the railroad and echoes from his past. The rest of the cast, including Sarah Polley and Milla Jovovich (in one of her rare actually good movies), are superb as well and make this well worth seeking out.
2000 UK/Canada. Director: Michael Winterbottom. Starring: Peter Mullan, Milla Jovovich, Wes Bentley, Sarah Polley, Nastassja Kinski, Shirley Henderson.

Sunday, June 12

6:30am – IFC – Dancer in the Dark
Bjork plays a factory worker whose increasing blindness threatens to keep her from being able to do her job, which will keep her from earning the money she needs for an operation that will prevent her son from suffering the same blindness. Add in the relationship with her not-as-happy-as-they-seem neighbors and a trenchant critique of the justice system and death penalty, not to mention several musical numbers juxtaposed throughout, and you have a film that’s unlike any other.
2000 Denmark. Director: Lars von Trier. Starring: Bjork, Catherine Deneuve, David Morse, Peter Stormare.

10:00am – TCM – The Taming of the Shrew
Seems like fairly inevitable casting that one of Hollywood’s most high-profile volatile couples, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, would play two of Shakespeare’s most explosive lovers in his comedy of hard-fought love. One year before Zeffirelli’s great adaptation of Romeo & Juliet, he whets his Shakespeare appetite with this.
1967 USA. Director: Franco Zeffirelli. Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Cyril Cusack.
Newly Featured!

2:00pm – TCM – Gigi
Maurice Chevalier’s “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” might come off as more pervy now than it was originally intended, but as a whole Gigi stands as one of the most well-produced and grown-up musicals made during the studio era. Vincente Minnelli gives it a wonderful visual richness and sophistication, while music from Lerner & Loewe (usually) stresses the right combination of innocence, exuberance, and ennui for its decadent French story.
1958 USA. Director: Vincente Minnelli. Starring: Louis Jourdan, Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Hermione Gingold.

5:30pm – MGM – The Apartment
Billy Wilder had a knack for combining comedy and drama into bittersweet goodness, and that’s exactly what he does here, garnering Oscars for Picture, Director, and Screenplay in the process. Jack Lemmon lends his apartment to his boss Fred MacMurray for romantic trysts – a situation that gets even more complicated when MacMurray trysts with Shirley MacLaine, who Lemmon happens to love from afar. Everything comes together perfectly in this film, one of Wilder’s best.
1960 USA. Director: Billy Wilder. Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MaLaine, Fred MacMurray.
Must See

8:00pm – TCM – The General
One of the greatest silent comedies of all time; no, scratch that, one of the greatest any kind of comedies of all time. Buster Keaton is at the top of his game as a Civil War era engineer whose train (with his girl on it) gets captured by the Union army, and he’s got to get them both back, with many an amazing stunt along the way. No one did stunt-based comedy better than Keaton, and he’s never been better than this.
1926 USA. Director: Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman. Starring: Buster Keaton, Marion Mack.
Must See

9:30pm – TCM – The Music Box
In one of their most famous shorts, Laurel and Hardy must get a piano up the longest set of stairs in existence, which turns to be a rather Sisyphean task as the piano keeps tumbling down in generally hilarious ways. The stairs still exist near Sunset Blvd in Silverlake, an LA neighborhood, now marked “The Music Box Stairs.”
1932 USA. Director: James Parrott. Starring: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy.
Newly Featured!

1:15am (13th) – TCM – An Eastern Westerner
Harold Lloyd is the title character, a city boy shipped off to the wild west by his disapproving father. This basic story has been done a bunch of times, but Lloyd is one of the great silent comedians and I’d love to see his take on it.
1920 USA. Director: Hal Roach. Starring: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Noah Young.
Newly Featured!

2:00am (13th) – TCM – Mr. Hulot’s Holiday
French writer/actor/director Jacques Tati specialized in nearly-silent physical comedy that reminds one at times of Chaplin or Keaton, but with a slightly more ironic French flair about it. In Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, a trip to the seashore turns out to be anything but relaxing.
1953 France. Director: Jacques Tati. Starring: Jacques Tati, Nathalie Pascaud, Micheline Rolla.