TCM
TiVo ALERT
For
September
1–September 7
DAVID'S
BEST BETS:
BEING
THERE (September 3, 8:00 pm): Peter Sellers was known
for his versatility as an actor. He often played more than one
character in films and could easily go from maniacal to subdued while
always being interesting. Being There is one of
Sellers' last films and his finest role. He is a simple-minded
gardener in this 1979 film who learns everything from watching TV.
One circumstance leads to another and Chance (Sellers) ends up being
an adviser to the president of the United States with what he says
interpreted to be brilliant advice. It is a clever, funny,
heartwarming and beautiful. Melvyn Douglas as a wealthy businessman
and adviser to the president is outstanding, and won the Oscar for
Best Supporting Actor. Sellers was nominated for Best Actor, losing
to Dustin Hoffman (Kramer vs. Kramer). During his acceptance
speech, Hoffman said he couldn't believe he beat Sellers; neither can
I.
PLANET
OF THE APES (September 7, 8:00 pm): Along with 2001:
A Space Odyssey, 1968's original Planet of the Apes is
the greatest science-fiction film I've ever seen. Whenever it airs, I
stop everything and watch it even though I've seen it at least 50
times and I own the entire DVD collection of the original five Apes
films. Charlton Heston is among a group of astronauts who land on a
strange planet and come across mute and not intelligent humans. They
think they're going to run the place in a few weeks. It turns out the
planet is actually controlled by talking apes. The interaction
between Taylor (Heston) and three key apes - Cornelius (Roddy
McDowall), Zira (Kim Hunter) and particularly Dr. Zaius (Maurice
Evans) - are the keys to this movie. The ending is among the best
you'll ever see. It turns out Taylor time traveled and landed on a
post-apocalyptic Earth. So many of the lines are iconic, the makeup
and costumes are incredible for its time (years ahead of its time),
and the cinematography is amazing.
ED'S
BEST BETS:
HITLER’S
CHILDREN (September 4, 1:00 pm): There’s junk, and
there’s junk, but this one is great junk. Bonita
Granville is Anna, a German girl born in America. Tim Holt is Karl.
He’s in love with Anna, but he’s also in the Hitler Youth. Guess
what comes first? Anna, for her part, just doesn’t get the whole
Nazi thing. Given a chance to be a good little Nazi and study at the
University of Berlin, Anna denounces the system and the Fuehrer
instead. It’s one thing to denounce the system, but the Fuehrer?
You can guess what happens to Anna from here, but I will tell you
there’s a great scene where she’s publicly flogged at a
concentration camp. No surprise here, but this film was RKO’s
biggest moneymaker for 1943.
SAFE
IN HELL (September 5, 12:15 pm): This is one of the
most adult of the Pre-Code films, and brutally frank to boot. Dorothy
Mackaill is a whore in New Orleans who believes she’s killed one of
her johns. So she hotfoots it to the island of Tortuga, where she
can’t be extradited. Unfortunately, she’s stepped from the frying
pan right into the fire, as Tortuga is a sanctuary for every kind of
pervert imaginable. To say this is one of the seamiest movies ever
made is a definite understatement. Leonard Maltin says it’s more
astonishing than entertaining, but I disagree. This is great
low-class fun, and Mackaill fits the part perfectly.
WE
DISAGREE ON . . . OUR TOWN (September 2, 6:30 am)
ED:
A. Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning play
about life in the fictional New Hampshire town of Grover's Corners in
the years 1900 through 1913 is one of the theater's best-loved
examples of Americana. Producer Sol Lesser and director Sam Wood have
turned it into a film, and a pretty good one at that. You see, it all
depends on how you look at it. One thing is for sure - it can’t be
taken at face value because it depicts an America that most likely
never existed. In that respect it’s like the Hardy Family series.
So we look at other aspects, such as the performances, the
mise-en-scene, the art direction, the scoring, sound, and
photography. The performances are superb, led by a young William
Holden and Martha Scott, who came over from the Broadway production.
The film also has a treasure-trove of excellent supporting actors,
led by Guy Kibbee, Thomas Mitchell, Beulah Bondi, Fay Bainter, and
Stuart Erwin. It was nominated for five Oscars, including Best
Picture and Best Actress (Scott). The score, by Aaron Copland, is
memorable, and was also nominated, as was William Cameron Menzies for
Art Direction. Wood is a competent, if unspectacular, director, whose
job was to implement producer Lesser’s plan. A large part of that
plan involves changing the end from tragic to happy. It’s 1940, and
we’re pretty sure that World War II is only a matter of months
away, so who needs a downer? Take it for what it is, enjoy the
performances and revel in Holden, so young and full of life.
DAVID:
D+. If corny, sappy, dated films about life in a
small town that's about as authentic as a $3 bill is your thing,
then Our Town is your movie. Only William Holden's
performance and a nice musical score saves this film from being a
complete bomb. But I'm not watching a movie for the musical score or
to see a single actor do a good job. The play has probably been done
by thousands of high schools nationwide during the past 75 years and
I'm sure several of them are as "good" as this 1940 film.
Among the most annoying aspects of this movie is Frank Craven, the
narrator who tells us more than anyone could ever want to know about
the good people of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, during the early
years of the 20th century. There's nothing interesting about the film
and the characters. It's as if the film's plot is intended to be
boring, and the folksy message beats the viewer over the head
repeatedly to the point you give up hope of being entertained. In the
play, Martha Scott's character, Holden's wife, dies during
childbirth. In this film, she starts to drift into death, sees her
deceased loved ones, remembers some of her memories and recovers to
deliver the baby. Simply put: it's a bad movie.
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