It's DVR Alert Time!!!!

Some good movies on Turner Classic Movies in the week ahead, so get those DVR's programmed.  All times Eastern.

Monday, 10:15 PM - "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (1942)  A movie bio of George M. Cohan starring James Cagney.  Yeah, it's corny and overly patriotic, but worth seeing for Cagney's Oscar winning performance as Cohan.  Worth watching just to see Cagney/Cohan dance down the White House steps at the end of the movie.

Tuesday (actually Wednesday), 3:15 AM - "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" (1974)  A group of thugs hijack a New York city subway train and hold it for ransom.  Walter Matthau is the NY Transit cop who has to outwit head thug Robert Shaw.  also starring Jerry Stiller, Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo, and Tony Roberts is great as the chief aide to the NYC Mayor.  They remade this a few years ago with John Travolta and Denzel Washington, and it wasn't nearly as good.

Friday, 8:00 PM - "Ace in the Hole" (1951)  Forty years before there was CNN, 24 hour news cycles, OJ Simpson, Jon Benet Ramsey, Lacey and Scott Peterson, and any number of other such stories, Billy Wilder wrote and directed this story of a newspaper reporter and a trumped up story concerning a mine accident.  It defined the term "media circus" before anyone knew what that was.  This was Wilder's first movie after "Sunset Boulevard" and it bombed, but it has found a following all these years later.  A notable such as Woody Allen considers it one of his favorite movies.  Humphrey Bogart won the Best Actor Oscar in 1951 for "The African Queen".  Kirk Douglas SHOULD have won it for "Ace in the Hole".

Saturday, 11:15 PM - "Murder by Death" (1976)  This is a spoof of mystery stories and movies wherein many famous fictional detectives are depicted.  I haven't seen this movie since it was released back in '76, so I don't know if will hold up, but it does have this going for it - it was written by Neil Simon, so it can't be bad, right?

Sunday, 6:15 AM - "Ten Little Indians" (1965)  No movie version of this Agatha Christie classic is as good as the book, but they're fun to watch.  This one stars Hugh O'Brien and Shirley Eaton and Wilfred Hyde-White.