Posts Tagged ‘Bringing Up Baby’

  • 17 Jan

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    Film on TV: January 17-23

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    Black Narcissus, playing Sunday on TCM.

    Keep an eye out this week for gung-ho adventure Gunga Din on Tuesday, acclaimed Angry Young Man drama This Sporting Life on Wednesday, Tony Jaa’s martial arts extravaganza The Protector and first-class homage Murder by Death on Thursday, class gangster flick Scarface on Friday, and most of all, Powell & Pressburger masterpiece Black Narcissus on Sunday. Sundance also has the full Red Riding trilogy late Thursday/early Friday, which is nice to see after they’ve just had the first one playing periodically for a few weeks. Also, if you’re into silent comedy, check out TCM’s tribute to the Hal Roach studios on Wednesday, starting with a bunch of Charley Chase shorts – I’ve seen a few of these, and they’re definitely worthwhile.

    Monday, January 17

    8:15am – IFC – Before Sunrise
    Before Sunrise may be little more than an extended conversation between two people (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) who meet on a train in Europe and decide to spend all night talking and walking the streets of Vienna, I fell in love with it at first sight. Linklater has a way of making movies where nothing happens seem vibrant and fascinating, and call me a romantic if you wish, but this is my favorite of everything he’s done.
    1995 USA. Director: Richard Linklater. Starring: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy.
    Must See
    (repeats at 3:15pm)

    1:15pm – TCM – The Defiant Ones
    Convicts Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier escape, but are chained together and must learn to work with each other to evade the authorities. Made in 1958, just a few years into the Civil Rights Movement, it probably falls squarely into the message picture arena, but sometimes those are needed.
    1958 USA. Director: Stanley Kramer. Starring: Tony Curtis, Sidney Poitier, Theodore Bikel.

    3:00pm – TCM – Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
    Interracial marriage may not be quite the hot topic now that it was in 1967 (although if you check some parts of the American South, you might be surprised), but at the time, Katharine Houghton bringing home Sidney Poitier to meet her parents Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy (in his last film) was the height of socially conscious filmmaking.
    1967 USA. Director: Stanley Kramer. Starring: Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn, Katharine Houghton, Cecil Kellaway.

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  • 16 Aug

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    Film on TV: August 16-22

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    The Quiet Man, playing on TCM on Tuesday

    Notable newly featured films this week: the Monty Python troupe turn their irreverent eye towards the New Testament in The Life of Brian on Monday; John Ford, John Wayne, and Maureen O’Hara join forces for a couple of classics in The Quiet Man and Rio Grande on Tuesday; Cillian Murphy crossdresses for Neil Jordan in Breakfast on Pluto on Wednesday; Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn team up for the first time in Woman of the Year on Thursday; Paul Newman and Robert Redford follow up their Butch Cassidy success with the great conman flick The Sting on Friday; Gandhi comes to life and the Swiss Family Robinson get shipwrecked on Saturday. I also saw the Julius Shulman documentary Visual Acoustics since featuring it sight-unseen last week, and it is definitely worth a look, if only to get a glimpse behind some of the most stunning photographs of Los Angeles buildings ever taken.

    Monday, August 16

    8:05am – 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
    (repeats at 2:20pm)

    1:15am (17th) – TCM – Airplane!
    The classic Abrahams/Zucker spoof of 1970s disaster and airplane crash movies has the all the crew and passengers fall ill, leaving a former war pilot who’s now terrified of flying the only one who can land the plane safely. But the plot pales in comparison to the random collection of wacky characters and the script full of snappy one-liners – lines that have been repeated in and out of context ad nauseum since the film’s release.
    1980 USA. Director: Jim Abrahams, David & Jerry Zucker. Starring: Robert Hays, Julie Haggerty, Leslie Nielsen, Lloyd Bridges, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Peter Graves, Robert Stack.

    3:00am (17th) – IFC – Monty Python’s Life of Brian
    After dismantling the King Arthur legends, Monty Python turn their attention to the Bible itself, satirically suggesting what might happen if a random 1st century baby got mistaken for the Messiah. Irreverent and hilarious, though not as consistently so for me as Holy Grail.
    1979 UK. Director: Terry Jones. Starring: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin.
    Newly Featured!

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  • 08 Jun

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    Film on TV: June 8-14

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    Singin’ in the Rain, playing Tuesday, June 9th at 12:30am on TCM

     

    This week, TCM continues their celebration of great directors with Stanley Donen, Fred Zinnemann, Preston Sturges, Akira Kurosawa, Woody Allen, Billy Wilder, and Howard Hawks. They also seem to be doing director mini-marathons for John Huston, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, and Val Lewton/Jacques Tourneur, though they aren’t officially in the Great Director series. Whether they should be or not is definitely arguable. And IFC and Sundance have a few gems to throw in, as well.

    Monday, June 8

    12:45pm – IFC – Howl’s Moving Castle
    Hayao Miyazaki has been a leader in the world of kid-friendly anime films for several years now, and while many would point to Spirited Away as his best film, I actually enjoyed Howl’s Moving Castle the most of all his films. Japanese animation takes some getting used to, but Miyazaki’s films are well worth it, and serve as a wonderful antidote to the current stagnation going on in American animation (always excepting Pixar).

    6:15pm – TCM – The Big Heat
    Director Fritz Lang came out of the German Expressionist movement of the 1920s, so it’s not surprising that he ended up making some of the better noir films, given film noir’s borrowing of Expressionist style. Glenn Ford is a cop working against his corrupt department, but the parts you’ll remember from the film all belong to Gloria Grahame in a supporting role as a beaten-up gangster’s moll. Her performance and Lang’s attention to detail raise the otherwise average story to a new level.

    Great Directors on TCM: Stanley Donen
    Stanley Donen shone at directing flashy musicals and mod comedies throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The films he co-directed with Gene Kelly (On the Town and Singin’ in the Rain, see below) stand among the best musicals ever made, and his later films like Charade and Arabesque merged Hitchcockian thrills with 1960s comic panache in a way that no-one else really matched.

    9:00pm – TCM – On the Town
    Sailors on leave Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin hit New York City, spending the day sightseeing and searching for Kelly’s dream girl Vera-Ellen, meanwhile picking up Betty Garrett and Ann Miller for the other boys. Not much plot here, but enough to precipitate some of the best song and dance numbers on film. Also one of the first musicals shot on location. Must See

    9:45pm – IFC – Far From Heaven
    Director Todd Haynes homages 1950s melodrama king Douglas Sirk with this film, loosely based on Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows. I don’t think he succeeded as well as he might’ve (Sirk’s sort of in a class by himself), but he and lead Julianne Moore make a darn good attempt. Moore plays a 1950s housewife, trapped in her marriage to a man struggling with his own sexual identity (Dennis Quaid), and slowly falling into an affair with her black gardener (Dennis Haysbert).
    (repeats at 3:30am)

    10:45pm – TCM – Royal Wedding
    This isn’t one of the all-time great Fred Astaire musicals, but it’s quite charming in its small way, and has the distinction of including the Fred’s “dancing on the ceiling” extravaganza, as well as a few surprisingly competent dance numbers from Fred and not-dancer Jane Powell. Oh, and Fred’s love interest is Sarah Churchill, Winston Churchill’s daughter, which is interesting (Powell plays his sister).

    12:30am (9th) – TCM – Singin’ in the Rain
    After On the Town, Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly teamed up for what is now usually considered one of the greatest musicals of all time. Inspired by songs written by MGM producer Arthur Freed at the beginning the sound era, Singin’ in the Rain takes that seismic shift in film history for its setting, focusing on heartthrob screen couple Don Lockwood (Kelly) and Lina Lamont (the hilarious Jean Hagen) as the transition into sound – problem being that Lamont’s voice, like many actual silent screen stars, doesn’t fit her onscreen persona. Hollywood’s often best when it turns on its own foibles, and this is no exception. Must See

    2:30am (9th) – TCM – Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
    What do you do when you’re seven brothers in the backwoods and need wives? Why, go kidnap them of course! Patriarchal values aside, Seven Brides is one of the most entertaining movie musicals ever made, and I defy anyone to outdo the barn dance/raising scene.

    See the rest after the break.

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