TCM
TiVo ALERT
For
April
15–April 22
DAVID’S
BEST BETS:
JAILHOUSE
ROCK (April
15, 10:00 pm): This 1957 film is easily one of Elvis' best. He’s
in prison on a manslaughter conviction. His cellmate, a former
country-and-western singer played by Mickey Shaughnessy, recognizes
Vince Everett (Presley) has musical talent after hearing him
sing, and serves as a mentor. When Everett is released after
20 months in prison, he looks for work as a singer. He becomes a
success thanks to a producer and his love interest, played by Judy
Tyler (she and her husband died shortly after the film wrapped up
production). Presley does a solid job, showing that if he had the
right material, he was a good actor. The film is critical of the
music industry with Vince, tired of getting ripped off, creates his
own record label with Judy. The film's highlight is the iconic
“Jailhouse Rock” performance Everett does for a television
special. It doesn’t get much better than
this.
THE
MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (April 22, 10:00 p.m.):
I'm not a John Wayne fan, but I certainly recognize when he gives an
excellent performance. The Man Who Shot Liberty
Valance (1962) is his finest film. It doesn't hurt that he
gets to play off the legendary James Stewart and Lee Marvin, one of
cinema's most underrated actors who is at ease playing the hero or
the villain; he's great as the latter in this movie. Told in a
flashback, this film, directed by John Ford, is extraordinary and one
of the finest Westerns you'll ever see. It also features one of
film's most iconic lines, told to Stewart's character, a U.S.
senator, by a newspaperman: "When
the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Don't miss this one
if you haven't seen it.
ED’S
BEST BETS:
THE
REMAINS OF THE DAY (April 16, 8:00 pm): Anthony
Hopkins and Emma Thompson follow up their acclaimed performances in
Howard’s End with this classic character study about a butler who
sacrifices personal happiness for his duties. Emma Thompson is simply
wonderful as the one he loves and loses; the housekeeper who nearly
penetrates his Stoic armor. It’s the director-producer team of
Ivory and Merchant at their finest. Scriptwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
does a marvelous job in adapting the Booker Prize winning novel by
Japanese-born Englishman Kazuo Ishiguro. This is a thoughtful,
intelligent, quietly intense movie that stands out in an era where
the mindless, CGI action picture was beginning to establish box
office dominance. I always thought it a shame that Hopkins and
Thompson never teamed for another film, especially with Ivory and
Merchant.
MY
MAN GODFREY (April 16, 12:00 am): William Powell was
an actor who improved any film in which he appeared. So imagine what
he could do when given a first-rate film with first-rate co-stars,
first-rate script, and a first-rate director. Thus we have My Man
Godfrey, a film that artfully combines screwball comedy with social
commentary without becoming annoying in the process. Powell plays a
bum, a “forgotten man” who becomes the butler for a very rich –
and very zany and self-absorbed – household, managing to serve
their needs while teaching them about caring for their fellow men.
Carole Lombard was nominated for an Oscar for her performance as the
dizzy heiress who discovers Powell in the city dump while on a
“scavenger hunt” for a charity event. Lombard decides the best
thing to do would be to hire him as the family butler, which sets
everything in motion. The chemistry is so strong between Powell and
Lombard that one wonder why they ever divorced a couple of years
earlier. Gail Patrick is great as Lombard’s scheming sister, Alice
Brady as the girl’s scatterbrained mother, and always memorable
Eugene Pallette as the family’s exasperated father. Mischa Auer
also gives a wonderful performance as the “mascot” of the
household. (Watch for his imitation of a gorilla.) In short, this is
film in which everything adds up to a masterpiece of the genre, and
one that can stand up to repeated viewings.
WE
DISAGREE ON ... A KING IN NEW YORK (April 19,
6:00 am)
ED:
B-. There comes a
time when an artist reaches the end of the road. This film is a
perfect example, a mixture of excellent social commentary and
self-indulgent sermonizing about the McCarthy era. Most of the second
half of the film is devoted to this tedious and pompous dialogue. The
fact that Chaplin uses his own 10-year old son – playing a
schoolboy whose parents are damaged by the anti-communist purges –
to utter the dialogue, is testament to the futility that creeps in
when the humor leaves. The young man’s lines don’t come across so
much as normal conversation as they do as political pronouncements
delivered with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. They manage to
undo the first half of the film, which was riding along quite nicely.
Charlie would have been better served if he would have just gotten
over it. Thus the grade.
DAVID:
A-. In his last
starring role, Charlie Chaplin goes out with a bang. This satirical
look at America's Red-baiting in the early 1950s is both biting,
dead-on and quite funny. Chaplin's personal liberal leaning landed
him in hot water with the U.S. House on Un-American Activities
Committee, and he takes great joy in exposing its members and
supporters as he did with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in The
Great Dictator, though
that film is better than A
King in New York. This
film is ahead of its time as it shows America's obsessions with
television and advertising that still resonate today. Chaplin is the
deposed king of a fictional European country who escapes to New York
to live in a luxury hotel. That is until his prime minister steals
the royal treasury leaving Chaplin's character with no other choice
than to be a TV pitchman and media celebrity to pay the bills. It's
not an all-time classic, but it's an entertaining and interesting
film made all the more important as it's Chaplin's final movie.
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