Posts Tagged ‘Mrs. Dalloway’

  • 21 Nov

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    Film on TV: November 22-28

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    Limelight.jpg
    Limelight, playing on TCM on Saturday

    Not too many new ones this week – in fact, almost all of the ones programmed along with TCM’s next installment of Moguls and Movie Stars are ones we’ve seen a bunch before on TCM, but that’s okay – moving into the history of sound era with Warner Bros gangsters, classic musicals, and the Marx Brothers is A-OK with me. TCM has also got one of Bette Davis’s first big films Of Human Bondage early Thursday morning, Chaplin’s last American film Limelight on Saturday, and Sundance has the first part of the Red Riding trilogy on Sunday. Among previously featured films, check out the Hitchcock triple feature on TCM on Friday.

    Monday, November 22

    7:00am – TCM – Kiss Me Deadly
    Fairly 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. I didn’t quite love it as much as I wanted to the first time I saw it, but I’m due for a rewatch, and it definitely needs to be seen at least once, especially if you’re a noir fan.
    1955 USA. Director: Robert Aldrich. Starring: Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Cloris Leachman, Marian Carr.

    8:15am – IFC – Mrs. Dalloway
    Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is likely my all-time favorite book or very close to it, and it’s a book that you’d never expect could be made into a good film. It depends an awful lot on stream of consciousness, internal monologue and memory, and a subjective experience of time – all stylistic and narrative elements that don’t translate well to film. However, this 1997 version of the novel with Vanessa Redgrave perfectly cast as the older Clarissa Dalloway and Natascha McElhone (why the heck isn’t she in more stuff?) as flashback-Clarissa comes about as close as I think is cinematically possible. It doesn’t come close to matching the book for me, but it is a solid film and captures a lot of Woolf’s spirit.
    1997 USA/UK. Director: Marleen Gorris. Starring: Vanessa Redgrave, Natascha McElhone, Michael Kitchen, Alan Cox, Sarah Badel, Lena Headey, John Standing.

    2:00pm – Sundance – The Darjeeling Limited
    Not perhaps my favorite Wes Anderson film, but that’s not really that much of a negative statement for one of my favorite directors. Certainly the central image of the train is a fitting one for his flat, widescreen visual style, and the Indian setting allows for great use of color, so if nothing else, it looks freaking gorgeous.
    2007 USA. Director: Wes Anderson. Starring: Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, Angelica Huston.
    (repeats at 5:25pm on the 25th and 1:45am on the 26th)

    8:00pm – TCM – Moguls and Movie Stars: Brother Can You Spare a Dream
    This week Moguls and Movie Stars jumps out of the silent era and into the 1930s, showcasing the films that Hollywood made during and just after the Depression Era – and the films programmed to go along with it tonight are apropos: Warner Bros. backstage musicals and gangster films.

    8:30pm – IFC – Office Space
    Anyone who’s ever worked in an office will identify with Office Space immediately – with the paper-jamming printers, the piles of beaurocratic paperwork, and the difficulty of keeping up with staplers if not the plot to make off with boatloads of money due to an accounting loophole. In fact, if you do or have worked an office job, I’m gonna call this required viewing.
    1999 USA. Director: Mike Judge. Starring: Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston.
    (repeats at 1:35am on the 23rd)

    9:00pm – TCM – Footlight Parade
    Other Busby Berkeley-choreogaphed films are better known than this one (42nd Street, the Gold Diggers series), but this one is one of my favorites, with James Cagney taking on a musical role and giving the film that extra burst of energy that he brings to everything. Though known mostly for his gangster roles, Cagney was actually a song-and-dance man before he came to the movies, and it’s fun to see him hoofing his stuff.
    1933 USA. Director: Lloyd Bacon. Starring: James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell.
    Newly Featured!

    12:00M – TCM – The Public Enemy
    Famous for the scene where James Cagney smashes a grapefruit into Mae Clarke’s face, this is one of the gold standards of early gangster films, along with Little Caesar and Howard Hawks’s Scarface.
    1931 USA. Director: William A. Wellman. Starring: James Cagney, Jean Harlow, Edward Woods, Joan Blondell, Mae Clarke.

    1:30am (23rd) – TCM – Little Caesar
    One of the classic early 1930s gangster films, the one that essentially typecast Edward G. Robinson in the role of the cigar-chewing tough guy. It’s a little more abrupt than some of the others in the genre, but still worth watching if you’re a fan.
    1931 USA. Director: Mervyn LeRoy. Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Glenda Farrell.

    3:00am (23rd) – TCM – I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang
    Paul Muni plays an initially optimistic and energetic young man who struggles to find a job during the Depression. Eventually he ends up unwillingly involved in a robbery and sentenced to the chain gang. One of Warner Bros’ best “ripped from the headlines” socially conscious films – they did a lot of them in the 1930s.
    1931 USA. Director: Mervyn LeRoy. Starring: Paul Muni, Glenda Farrell, Helen Vinson.

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  • 07 Nov

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    Film on TV: November 8-14

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    mark-of-zorro.jpg
    The Mark of Zorro, playing late Wednesday/early Thursday on TCM

    Not a lot in the way of newly featured stuff this week – most of the new ones are part of TCM’s Moguls & Movie Stars History of Hollywood series, which moves into the dawn of the studio era this week, with 1910s films from Thomas Ince, D.W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford. There’s plenty of fine repeats, though, if the early silent era isn’t your thing.

    Monday, November 8

    7:00pm – TCM – Moguls & Movie Stars: The Birth of Hollywood
    Part Two of TCM’s History of Hollywood series, moving on from the so-called primitive film of the early 1900s and into the beginnings of the studio era in the 1910s. This is still Hollywood finding its feet, moving into features as well as shorts, studios beginning to develop brand identities. Programmed alongside are representative films from the era, including a western by Thomas Ince, D.W. Griffith’s groundbreaking and controversial Birth of a Nation, and Within Our Gates from pioneering black director Oscar Micheaux (almost certainly programmed as a counter to Birth of a Nation‘s inherent racism, but also an important film on its own – there are precious few black directors in Hollywood even today, so Micheaux is a pretty amazing guy).

    Tuesday, November 9

    7:35am – IFC – Che
    Steven Soderbergh’s ambitious two-part epic about South American revolutionary Che Guevara. IFC is playing both parts back to back.
    2008 USA. Director: Steven Soderbergh. Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Julia Ormond, Rodrigo Santoro.

    12:25pm – 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 ñ 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 didnít know cinema could.
    2005 USA. Director: Terrence Malick. Starring: Colin Farrell, Qíorianka Kilcher, Christian Bale, Christopher Plummer.
    Must See
    (repeats at 9:45am on the 10th)

    6:20pm – Sundance – Nights of Cabiria
    Nights of Cabiria, one of the films Federico Fellini made during his sorta-neo-realist phase, casts Masina as a woman of the night, following her around almost non-committally, yet with a lot of care and heart. And Masina is simply amazing in everything she does – not classically beautiful, but somehow incredibly engaging for every second she’s onscreen.
    1957 Italy. Director: Federico Fellini. Starring: Giulietta Masina, François Périer, Franca Marzi.
    Must See
    (repeats at 8:45am on the 10th)

    8:00pm – TCM – Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
    Trust Stanley Kubrick to find the funny side of the Cold War. Peter Sellers plays multiple parts, including the President, an insane general who wants to nuke Russia, and the limb-control-impaired doctor of the title. It’s zany, it’s over-the-top, it’s bitingly satirical, and it remains one of Kubrick’s best films in a career full of amazing work.
    1964 USA/UK. Director: Stanley Kubrick. Starring: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott.
    Must See

    2:00am (10th) – TCM – Kind Hearts and Coronets
    In one of the zaniest of the zany comedies that Alec Guinness was best known for in his early career, he plays eight, count ‘em, eight characters – all relatives in line to receive a duke’s massive fortune upon his death. The last in line plots to murder all the others to make himself the sole heir.
    1949 UK. Director: Robert Hamer. Starring: Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, Valerie Hobson, Dennis Price.

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  • 02 May

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    Film on TV: May 3-9

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    Searchers.jpg
    The Searchers, playing on TCM on Tuesday

    There are three films playing this week that I honestly can’t believe I haven’t featured before. TCM is playing John Ford’s classic The Searchers on Tuesday and King Kong on Saturday, both of which are definitely must-sees if you haven’t seen them before. Then one of my all-time favorite films (I’ve probably seen it fifteen times) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is on Sunday on Fox Movie Channel; I don’t always include Fox Movie in this column, so that could explain why that one hasn’t come up before. Other notable newly featured films include the better-than-you’d-expect noirish Nightmare Alley, a more than adequate adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s difficult-to-film novel Mrs. Dalloway, Tommy Lee Jones’s strong directorial debut The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and the unjustly forgotten William Powell-led mystery The Kennel Murder Case. Lots of variety and good stuff to choose from this week.

    Monday, May 3

    4:15pm – 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.

    9:00am – Fox Movie – Nightmare Alley
    Fox didn’t make too many noir films, and this one just barely sneaks in by virtue of…some high contrast lighting here and there? Okay, we’ll give it to them. Anyway, Tyrone Power gives one of his better performances here as an opportunistic carney who takes a chance to turn a sideshow fortune telling act into a high-profile nightclub show, no matter who he takes down on his way to the top. What it does to his personal life and his own psyche is pretty dark and kind of fascinating, and Helen Walker is great as a psychiatrist who may have her own angle to work. Also, look out for one of the more off-putting definitions of the word “geek.”
    1947 USA. Director: Edmund Goulding. Starring: Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray, Helen Walker.
    Newly Featured!

    10:00pm – Fox Movie – Miller’s Crossing
    The Coen brothers take on 1930s gangland with this film, and do so admirably well. As they do most things. I have to admit I wasn’t quite as enamored of it as I usually am of Coen films, but it definitely has its moments.
    1990 USA. Director: Joel Coen. Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, John Turturro, Jon Polito, Albert Finney.

    3:30am (4th) – TCM – Oklahoma!
    I can’t begin to guess how many times I watched Oklahoma! growing up, but it’s well into double-digits. It’s a routine but darker-than-usual story for a musical, about minor conflicts between farmers and cowboys, a couple of young lovers, and the obsessive farmhand who wants the girl for himself. But the way the music and dancing is integrated is wonderful (and groundbreaking in the 1943 play the film is based on).
    1955 USA. Director: Fred Zinnemann. Starring: Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones, Rod Steiger, Gloria Grahame, Gene Nelson, Eddie Albert, Charlotte Greenwood, James Whitmore.

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