This Week on TCM
- Posted by Johanna on January 6, 2008 at 11:43 am
- Category: Movies/TV
Some notes about what’s showing this week on Turner Classic Movies.
Sweet Smell of Success (Sunday, 1/6, 6:15 PM ET) — I’m skipping it, because it won’t fit into my resolution to be more positive this year, but this is a gen-u-ine classic of the late 1950s, when media was beginning to question the ideas of achievement and capitalism the culture had been sold post-war. Press agent Tony Curtis tries to manipulate powerful gossip columnist Burt Lancaster only to find himself out-schemed. Gritty but lovely to look at.
La Jetée (Monday, 1/7, 4:15 AM ET) — Never heard of this before, but this is the kind of discovery I like to make on TCM: a classic experimental French film from the early 1960s made up almost entirely of still images. It tackles big ideas through a time travel plot and was a major inspiration for Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys. At only half an hour, how can I not give it a try to be as mind-blowing as reviews suggest?
Hello, Dolly! (Tuesday, 1/8, 12:15 AM ET) — One of the great Hollywood turkeys, an overstuffed musical that relies on money (visible on screen) and artifice to cover over miscasting and lack of heart. Barbra Streisand sashays through an unbelievable romance with a dour Walter Matthau (and reportedly, the two fought off-screen). It does have Michael Crawford long before he was the Phantom, and it won Oscars for Best Sound, Best Score, and Best Set Decoration (see? Money!).
WarGames (Wednesday, 1/9, 4 AM ET) — Love this movie! Still one of the best portrayals ever of the hacker mindset. Don’t worry about the technology (woefully outdated, when today’s kids have never heard the word “mainframe”, let alone hacked one); pay attention to the problem-solving and social engineering and pure psychology involved in how the characters interact. (And intercaps, like in the title, still haven’t gone away.)
Two scenes still perfect in my mind. The first, when Matthew Broderick first has Ally Sheedy up in his room, and she traps him between her legs, parked on his desk. Such a beautiful example of how simple and yet flustering boy-girl relationships can be. The second, when genius recluse John Wood doesn’t want to deal with the two or the potential results of his work, and he tries to dismiss them as though programming a computer: “Path. Follow path. Gate. Open gate, through gate, close gate. Run, run, run.” I think the DVD says that that happened because he couldn’t remember his lines that day, but it’s a perfect demonstration of how to break down a flow and be amusingly dismissive.
The Shining Hour (Wednesday, 1/9, 12:30 PM ET) — Glorious melodrama. Joan Crawford, a nightclub dancer (which is often old-movie code for “hooker” or “whore”), marries into a well-to-do rural family who worries about their place as town leaders. I forget if she marries Melvyn Douglas or Robert Young, but the other one is married to Margaret Sullavan, who’s jealous of Joan when her husband starts falling for her too. There’s a huge disaster at the end that reminds everyone what’s really important (and I think kills one of the trouble-makers, conveniently). Great wallowing entertainment of the kind they don’t do any more.
Rock Around the Clock (Friday, 1/11, 9:30 PM ET) — I bet that hasn’t aged well, but it’s a great way to see some foundational performers and watch outrageous dancing from an era where partners still touched.
January 6, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Johanna, thanks for the heads up on La Jetee. I will definitely be watching that myself. Sounds very interesting.
January 6, 2008 at 4:14 pm
I can’t disagree with your assessment of “Hello Dolly” but, because I was too young to notice a lot of the problems with it when I first saw it, I still have a lot of affection for it. I generally despise Barbra Striesand but am willing to give her a pass just this once. Yes, she’s way too young - she was not yet 30 when she did this and the character should be at least 20 years older. I have no problem with any of the other casting choices, although the Louis Armstrong stunt cameo is a bit embarrassing. (And it completely overshadows, in the mind of the general public, what an innovative, revolutionary artist he was in the first four decades of his career.)
It is worth pointing out that the film was directed by Gene Kelly and, although the choreography is not Kelly’s, it has a lot of Kelly’s signature athleticism.
Worth recording and then skipping over the slow bits to get to the big lavish production numbers.
January 6, 2008 at 4:33 pm
A bit more….
I’ve never seen WarGames, actually, and there is really no excuse given my age. Still, reading “Path. Follow path. Gate. Open gate, through gate, close gate. Run, run, run” cracked me up - it reminds me of when I was 14, playing Zork II on my Dad’s Osborne. I’ll have to set the TIVO for that one.
“Rock Around The Clock” sounds like fun. Can’t be any worse than “The Girl Can’t Help It.”
January 6, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Ed: Glad to hear it. I’m never sure I post these recommendations with enough time to give people a chance to find out about the good weekend stuff. (As it was, I was late, and I missed recommending I Married a Witch, a fantasy with Veronica Lake that could fit right into today’s TV.)
Dave: I can agree with that. Judging from online comment, plenty of people agree with you that the numbers, at least, are worth seeing.
And YES, you must see WarGames, if only to watch wardialing from an acoustic coupler attached to some forgotten computer brand, long before laptops.
My favorite computer game, which I never gave the attention it deserved, was a text-only, loaded from cassette tape, version of Buckaroo Banzai where you started out in a parking lot. I played it on my TI99-4A. I also loaded Hunt the Wumpus from the local university’s Vax. But now I’m just speaking gibberish.
January 7, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Another recommendation for WarGames. As much as amusing as it may be to watch for its computer technology elements, it’s also a fascinating example of Cold War/Mutual Assured Destruction early 80s anxiety playing out in popular/youth culture. On some level, I’ve always associated WarGames in my mind with Dr. Strangelove. Though the latter is obviously satirical where the former isn’t, they both seem to be examples of different generations reconciling themselves to life in a nuclear age.
Perhaps a new movie will come along to take things to the next level, now that we’re in a post-Cold-War/Age of Terrorism world now…
January 7, 2008 at 9:35 pm
We watched War Games in one of my computer networking classes in college. Then got into a discussion on what happened to the characters, especially Broderick’s afterwards.
January 7, 2008 at 9:58 pm
In college class? I am old.
I love the movie, but it sounds like your prof wanted to kill time that day. :)
Tommy, yeah, I don’t think people outside that generation understood what it felt like growing up thinking you weren’t going to see adulthood if someone pushed the button.
January 8, 2008 at 1:21 am
Yeah it was like the day before we had off before Thanksgiving holiday, so the prof didn’t want to do much for that one 2 hour(we had lab to go with class) period and one of the topics we had been covering was computer hacking.