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Next August, how about Summer Under the Character Actors?
Don’t get me wrong… I love stars. Big ones, little ones. Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn and John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart and Sidney Poitier and Myrna Loy. I love them dearly. But after years of...
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A Few Fun Facts About Michael Caine
Who doesn’t like Michael Caine? It’s hard to imagine that there are any film fanatics alive who don’t appreciate at least one or two of the 123 films that he’s appeared in. I happen to love Michael...
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The Co-Stars of Katharine
Today is Katharine Hepburn’s day on TCM and I’d like to take this opportunity to discuss something I’ve always found to be one of her greatest strengths: Finding chemistry with just about anyone. It’s...
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The Good, the Bad, and the Weird
A couple of weeks ago I posted an article looking back at the 1980s apocalyptic-screwball singularity that was Miracle Mile. One of the comments posted to that thread exhorted TCM to stop showing...
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Carnal Knowledge
TCM will be highlighting films by Ann-Margret this Thursday. The memory of her basking in a spray of beans and chocolate as she then makes love to a man-sized, hotdog-shaped pillow are so well-seared...
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Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, and . . . Dali ?
This Friday, August 14, TCM salutes Groucho Marx as part of this month’s Summer Under the Stars. Most of the day is devoted to the classic comedies of the Marx Brothers, which regular TCM viewers have...
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Invisible Intruder: The Amazing Transparent Man (1960)
In April of 1959 Edgar G. Ulmer was given an impossible task. Toiling in Dallas for Miller Consolidated Pictures, a short-lived B-picture studio, he was assigned to shoot two features in eleven days....
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Old movie guys who were younger then than I am now: a lament
I have a memory of watching THE AFRICAN QUEEN (1951) as a child and thinking Katharine Hepburn looked like Mrs. Bates from PSYCHO (1960) — wizened, withered, old, maybe even ancient. Long story short,...
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The Kitten & The Cowboy: When Ann-Margret Met The Duke
THE TRAIN ROBBERS (1973) airs on TCM August 12 at 4PM EST/1PM PST When I spotted Ann-Margret on the August cover of TCM’s Now Playing guide, I jumped for joy and then I pulled out my treasured...
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The Ones that Didn’t Work (or Did They?)
It’s said you can learn just as much from a failure, or more, than you can from a success. Today on TCM, The Marx Brothers run all day long and while many of their movies are celebrated, like Duck...
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Smells Like Teen Spirit: the Grease Sing-a-Long
TCM is partnering this month with Fathom Events to present exclusive theatrical screenings of the Grease Sing-A-Long in select theaters August 16 and 19 only (buy tickets by clicking this link). For...
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When a Villain’s Not a Villain
Tonight TCM airs the classic sci-fi social commentary, The Day the Earth Stood Still, in which an alien named Klaatu comes down to visit us earthlings with his robot Gort and lets us know we’re...
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Capitolfest: The Best Film Festival You’ve Never Heard Of
Every year in August, all roads lead to Rome—Rome, New York, that is. For three days, the historic Capitol Theatre in downtown Rome hosts an amazing film festival that is a showcase for rarely...
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Way Down East: House of Bamboo (1955)
For his last film under contract at Twentieth Century-Fox, Sam Fuller directed House of Bamboo (1955), a film noir relocated to Japan. Daryl Zanuck took Harry Kleiner’s screenplay for The Street With...
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I’ve got a bad case of YouTuberia!
Movies are getting bigger and better these days, so they tell me, but man I just can’t get off the YouTube! There are few things as enticing to me in my old age as getting the chance to see a movie...
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Mae Clarke: Frankenstein’s First Bride
FRANKENSTEIN (1931) airs tonight on TCM at 9:30PM EST/6:30PM PST The name Mae Clarke might not immediately ring any bells but the fair-haired, spirited and sad-eyed beauty was a promising leading lady...
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The Matryoshka Doll Performance
In the recent Best Picture winner, Birdman, Michael Keaton plays an movie actor searching for legitimacy by mounting a Broadway adaptation of the works of Raymond Carver. During a confrontation with...
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The Return of Arsene Lupin Returns, Returns
This is a DVR alert for the upcoming screening of the 1938 mystery thriller Arsene Lupin Returns, starring Melvyn Douglas, Virginia Bruce and Warren Williams. It’s a sequel to one of my all-time...
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Six degrees of Wild Bunch separation
Tomorrow, TCM puts a spotlight on Warren Oates, and as tempted as I am to write about The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969) I see that fellow Morlock Greg Ferrara has covered that epic western in five...
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Grab Your Tux and Let’s Go Clubbing
Between Capitolfest and TCM’s focus on stars from the 1930s, I have discovered a newfound love for films from the Depression era. Among the many reasons for this recent interest is the imaginative,...
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