TCM Schedule for Tuesday, April 22nd.

[CBHagman]

It's spring, and love is in the air, to say nothing of deception, corruption, and a generous dollop of management nightmares. A great schedule, with some must-sees and rarities.

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008.

12:00 AM Operation Petticoat (1959) During World War II, the crew of a decrepit submarine takes on a team of Navy nurses. Cast: Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, Dina Merrill. Dir: Blake Edwards. C-121 mins, TV-G, CC, Letterbox Format



2:15 AM I Love a Bandleader (1945) An amnesiac thinks he's a popular bandleader. Cast: Phil Harris, Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson, Leslie Brooks. Dir: Del Lord. BW-70 mins, TV-G

3:30 AM Age Of Consent (1969) An artist runs off to the South Pacific and falls for a young girl there. Cast: James Mason, Helen Mirren, Jack McGowran. Dir: Michael Powell. C-107 mins, TV-MA, Letterbox Format



TCM's article on Age of Consent is really quite interesting and worth a look, especially if you are A) a Michael Powell fan, B) a James Mason fan, and/or C) a Helen Mirren fan. The article points out that the 1990s film Sirens essentially depicts the same artist, Norman Lindsay, who was played by James Mason in Age of Consent and by the ubiquitous Sam Neill in the later film. Another interesting tidbit is that Mason reportedly mentored Neill as well early in the younger man's career.

http://www.tcm.com/thismonth/article.jsp?cid=183486&mainArticleId=183482

5:30 AM MGM Parade Show #4 (1955) George Murphy tours Lake Metro, where "Mutiny on the Bounty" and "Show Boat" were shot, and introduces a clip from "Good News." These clips feature June Allyson and Peter Lawford. BW-26 mins, TV-G

6:00 AM Saps at Sea (1940) Two factory workers accidentally set sail with an escaped killer. Cast: Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel, James Finlayson. Dir: Gordon M. Douglas. BW-58 mins, TV-G

7:00 AM Never Wave at a WAC (1952) A divorced socialite joins the Army hoping it will improve her love life. Cast: Rosalind Russell, Paul Douglas, Marie Wilson. Dir: Norman Z. McLeod. BW-87 mins, TV-G

8:35 AM Short Film: Beyond The Line Of Duty (1942) BW-22 mins,

9:00 AM Red River (1948) A young cowhand rebels against his rancher stepfather during a perilous cattle drive. Cast: John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru. Dir: Howard Hawks. BW-133 mins, TV-PG, CC

11:15 AM Key Largo (1948) A returning veteran tangles with a ruthless gangster during a hurricane. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall. Dir: John Huston. BW-101 mins, TV-G, CC, DVS



Do not miss Key Largo! You owe it to yourself to catch it.

1:00 PM Third Man, The (1949) A man's investigation of a friend's death uncovers corruption in post-World War II Vienna. Cast: Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Alida Valli. Dir: Carol Reed. BW-104 mins, TV-14, CC



2:45 PM Harvey (1950) A wealthy eccentric prefers the company of an invisible six-foot rabbit to his family. Cast: James Stewart, Josephine Hull, Cecil Kellaway. Dir: Henry Koster. BW-104 mins, TV-G, CC

4:30 PM Odd Couple, The (1968) A divorced neat freak moves in with his sloppy best friend. Cast: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Herb Edelman. Dir: Gene Saks. C-105 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format

6:15 PM Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969) A cowboy drifts into a lawless town and brings things back together. Cast: James Garner, Joan Hackett, Walter Brennan. Dir: Burt Kennedy. C-93 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format

8:00 PM Easy Living (1937) When a working girl tries to return a lost fur coat, she gets caught up in a wealthy family's battles. Cast: Jean Arthur, Ray Milland, Edward Arnold. Dir: Mitchell Liesen. BW-88 mins,



9:45 PM Midnight (1939) An unemployed showgirl poses as Hungarian royalty to infiltrate Parisian society. Cast: Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore. Dir: Mitchell Leisen. BW-94 mins, TV-G



11:30 PM Major and the Minor, The (1942) A woman disguises herself as a little girl and ends up in a military academy. Cast: Ginger Rogers, Ray Milland, Diana Lynn. Dir: Billy Wilder. BW-100 mins, TV-G

1:15 AM Weekend at the Waldorf (1945) In this remake of Grand Hotel, guests at a New York hotel fight to survive personal tragedy. Cast: Ginger Rogers, Walter Pidgeon, Lana Turner. Dir: Robert Z. Leonard. BW-130 mins, TV-G, CC

3:30 AM Asphalt Jungle, The (1950) A gang of small time crooks plots an elaborate jewel heist. Cast: Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Marilyn Monroe. Dir: John Huston. BW-112 mins, TV-PG, CC, DVS

5:30 AM Festival of Shorts #20 (1999) Animals in movies are the focus of these shorts, which include Famous Movie Dogs, Hollywood Scout and The Horse With the Human Mind. BW-27 mins, , CC

[lavenderdiva]

1. another great post, CBH!!

I haven't seen 'Easy Living', but am definitely going to DVR it! With Jean Arthur and Ray Milland, it oughta be great!!!!!

[Longhorn]

2. I love Helen Mirren!

We watched the entire Prime Suspect series through Netflix and saw The Queen the other night. I think she's an amazing actress and I'm looking forward to seeing Age of Consent, which I am recording tonight. Thanks for the heads up! :hi:

[CBHagman]

3. Jane Tennison ROCKS.

I've seen all the Prime Suspect programs and was glad I caught every one.

True story: When I was maybe 11 or 12 years old, I saw my first Shakespeare. It was a filmed version of A Midsummer Night's Dream and really captured my imagination, so much so that it stayed with me for years.

Back in the '90s I found a video of said film and my jaw dropped when I watched again and realized who was in the movie: Ian Richardson, Judi Dench, Ian Holm, Diana Rigg...and a very young Helen Mirren. I mean, geez, what did I know about any of those people when I was 11? And there was Judi Dench wearing unevenly applied green body paint and not much else (How did they show it on TV?!).

Anyway, Age of Consent is a strange one; there are parts of the movie that were totally unexpected, at least in the cut I saw (I think TCM has the most complete version, but I could be wrong). Anyway, I'm always intrigued by James Mason, and Helen Mirren's recollections of him made for interesting reading.

Happy film watching, gang! :hi:

[Longhorn]

4. After we finished Prime Suspect

we were starved for more. We came across another series, Wire in the Blood. Have you seen it? We like it a lot, too. Two season three disks are scheduled to arrive today.

Judy Dench is another favorite. For awhile, I was recording As Time Goes By until I had finally seen it from the beginning to the end. I don't love all things British -- for example, I much prefer the American version of The Office to the British version. But they have some excellent series and movies and, of course, our television shows and movies are full of British actors, some of whom are doing great American accents. :)

Funny story about Prime Suspect -- in the beginning, we had to use closed-captioning in order to understand what they were saying. :silly: I guess we got better at understanding the British accent after awhile because we didn't need it any more. I remember we had to use CC for Brassed Off! too.

[Matilda]

5. "Age of Consent" was re-cut for release here a couple of years ago,

for the Sydney Film Festival. When it was first released here, it was cut to pieces - all Helen
Mirren's nude scenes were cut - can you imagine? I don't know whether the same cut was released
overseas back then, but I suspect it was, from reviews I've read. But I would hope that the new
cut, with all "offending" scenes restored, will be the one that will be shown on TV from now on.
It would hardly be considered shocking any more.

A side note - it was an Australian film of course, but made at a time when the "cultural cringe" was
in full swing, which meant that Australians were convinced that we didn't have actors good enough
to play leads and sell a film overseas, hence we had all those films portraying quintessential
Australians played by British and American actors. We got out of that stage, and made some very
good films that went well internationally, but currently we're going through another cringe phase.
It seemed to coincide with the advent of the Howard government, so perhaps under Kevin Rudd, we will
discover our own identity again.

[CBHagman]

6. I taped it a while back.

I still haven't sat down to watch the version released on TCM, but I can report that the clever opening titles, which featured the image of a naked Helen Mirren artistically depicted in sand, have been restored.

American television remains a rather strange and contradictory expanse. On the one hand, I found that even the promotions for those popular crime-scene forensics shows contain quite grisly footage, while a skinny dipping scene (in, for example, a recent TV adaptation of A Room with a View) might cause the censors to pixelate any offending body parts. :shrug:

As for the Australian film industry, as I've mentioned before, my father and I developed a fascination with Australia back in the '70s and '80s, when a new generation of Australian directors, actors, and writers made the U.S. (and, I hope, the rest of the world) sit up and take notice. I remember borrowing my parents' car to drive to the only theater showing Breaker Morant in our area, and while I was at university I saw many of the newsmaking movies: Lonely Hearts, My Brilliant Career, Gallipoli, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Most of those Australian directors, of course, have become world cinema and Hollywood institutions, I take it, and I'd like to think that the actors have since avenged you for all the slights of yesteryear. Toni Collette in particular seems here to stay, and of course Judy Davis is acclaimed far and wide. And I notice Jack Thompson turns up in all sorts of things.

[Matilda]

7. You've seen "Lonely Hearts"?

Paul Cox is a wonderful director, and I love his work. There is such gentleness and love in
everything he does, and it shines through.

I particularly loved "Man of Flowers", with the wonderful Norman Kaye again in the lead.

I know that last year, Cox was threatening to leave Australia for good, because although he's one
of the most respected director/producer/writers in the business here, he's never had public
recognition, and has always had to struggle to find the money to make his beautiful films. That
was before Howard got unelected, and I'm not sure whether he actually left the country in the end.
Things are already improving in the film business under Rudd, so I hope Cox is still with us.

Regarding censorship - I think the brain-patterns of censors everywhere move along similar lines -
it's always puzzled me that the most tender and beautiful sex scenes can be cut to ribbons, whilst
blood and violence are considered okay. And strangely, gratuitous sex, often devoid of any emotion,
is given a pass mark. Just as so many right-wingers storm against sex, but think invading other
countries and decimating the population is perfectly acceptable - a very peculiar sort of morality.

[CBHagman]

8. Oh, yeah.

Back in the 1980s, Lonely Hearts ran at one of the local arts theaters in the city where was then living. Mind you, this was not Los Angeles or New York City, but an economically depressed place. I think we owed our good movie selection to the fact that local colleges and universities had become the biggest employers.

I see that Netflix carries Paul Cox's movies on DVD, so I put the film about Father Damien into my queue.

As for censorship, well, that's a discussion we ought to form a whole thread for. It's relentlessly fascinating.

Here in the U.S., we're rather in a strange place as far as standards go. On the one hand, titillation always sells well and so does violence, and yet there's also this huge prudish streak combined with anti-intellectualism.

Plus discussion of the arts and popular culture makes for strange bedfellows and warped logic. Rupert Murdoch, hardly the role model for purity, is the guardian of the right-wing point of view, but you've also got right-wing activists angry that modest federal funding goes to arts organizations and public broadcasting, both of which the right blasts as left-leaning and even pornographic. Yeah, I'm sure all those pictures of Mary and Jesus in the National Gallery are much filthier than anything on the Fox Channels, and of course we all know what sleazebags opera fans are. :eyes:

Add to that marketing of so-called PG-13 films to younger children and you've got the makings of a much-needed national dialogue.

That said, I do have a soft spot for the Production Code, as I think too many American films lack subtlety and freshness. I'll take Bogart and Bacall exchanging racy repartee in To Have and Have Not or The Big Sleep over the so-called genius :eyes: of Judd Apatow any day.

[Matilda]

9. The Production Code did encourage some very inventive filming of love scenes.

Two of my personal favourites are the kiss that went overtime, between
Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in "Notorious", and the "invitation" scene
between Grant and Grace Kelly in "To Catch A Thief" - both Hitchcock,
too! Clever man.

Some of the prohibitions were too silly for words - I can remember, as a
pre-teen, wondering why all American couples slept in single beds. I
had little or no idea of the uses to which a double bed could be put,
but every Australian family I knew had a double bed in the master
bedroom, and I wondered why Americans didn't have them.

I've long thought that "All This And Heaven Too" was a perfect example of
a film that managed to be quite erotic without having any sex scenes at
all. I just recently finished reading a new biog of Bette Davis, and in
regard to that film, it appears that while the author of the original
book (who was a descendant of the Duc de Praslins) believed that there
had been no love affair at all, Davis privately disagreed. I watched the
film again, and I think Davis does manage to convey a very powerful sense
of intimacy with no more than a look, and with her sense of perfection,
I'm sure it was all carefully calculated to send the message she wanted
to, without ever infringing on the Code or the original author's beliefs.