Monday, March 5
6:15am – TCM – Bombshell
One of the first films to really bring Jean Harlow to prominence (or at least use her talents to their fullest), as she plays a Hollywood star who tries out various other life pursuits, with comic results.
1933 USA. Director: Victor Fleming. Starring: Jean Harlow, Lee Tracy, Frank Morgan, Franchot Tone.
11:45am – TCM – Only Angels Have Wings
I’ve never gotten into Only Angels Have Wings as much as I have into other Howard Hawks films – why I don’t know. It has elements I like – Cary Grant as a daring pilot making dangerous cargo runs in exotic locales, Jean Arthur in an uncharacteristically dramatic turn, and a sighting of a young Rita Hayworth. Just doesn’t seem to come together in a memorable whole for me.
1939 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell.
3:45pm – 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.
5:45pm – TCM – To Have and Have Not
It’s said that this film came about because Howard Hawks bet Earnest Hemingway that he (Hawks) could make a good film out of Hemingway’s worst book. Of course, to do that, Hawks ended up basically changing the story entirely, but hey. It’s the thought that counts. Mostly notable for being Lauren Bacall’s first film, the one where she met Humphrey Bogart, and the one that spawned the immortal “you know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve” bit of dialogue. That one scene? Worth the whole film.
1944 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan.
8:00pm – IFC – Pan’s Labyrinth
One of my absolute favorite films of the past decade (or ever, really), an absolutely beautiful and terrifying fantasy that juxtaposes the gruesome horrors of the Spanish Civil War with an equally horrifying fantasy world that provides, if not escape, at least some measure of importance and control to the film’s young heroine. Guillermo Del Toro solidified my view of him as a visionary filmmaker with this film, and it still stands to me as a testament to what fantasy can and should do.
2006 Spain/Mexico. Director: Guillermo Del Toro. Starring: Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Meribel Verdú, Doug Jones.
Must See
10:00pm – Sundance – L’auberge espagnol
A French student moves into an apartment with six other people in Barcelona. The interactions of these roommates with diverse cultural backgrounds and personalities forms the basis of the film as a whole, which may be short on plot but is great on the interpersonal relations and conversations that the French are so good at putting on film.
2002 France. Director: Cédric Klapisch. Starring: Romain Duris, Judith Godrèche, Kelly Reilly.
5:30am (6th) – TCM – Suddenly, Last Summer
Hollywood powerhouses Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor clash as Hepburn, an imperious matriarch, wants to have Taylor lobotomized to cover up the circumstances of Hepburn’s son’s death, which Taylor witnessed and for some reason drove her insane. Seeing these two duke it out in an adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play sounds like my idea of a good time.
1959 USA. Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Mercedes McCambrige.
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