DVR Alert: Courtroom Dramas

The cold weather being experienced throughout much of the country these days has apparently caused The Grandstander's keyboard to freeze since offerings from here have been sparse of late.  So, let's turn up the space heaters and see what we can put out there for all of you Loyal Readers.

Let's start with the always popular DVR Alert.

This coming Thursday, February 19, Turner Classic Movies is offering a back-to-back-to-back feast for fans of the courtroom drama.  

12:30 PM - "Witness for the Prosecution" (1958).  Based on classic Agatha Christie short story and play, this movie was directed by Billy Wilder and stars Charles Laughton, Tyrone Power, and Marlene Dietrich.  It is truly a Classic Christie story, and it doesn't get much better than that.

2:30 PM - "Inherit the Wind" (1960).  This Stanley Kramer directed movie is a fictional recreation of the famed Scopes "monkey trial", and it is a heavyweight championship of acting performances with Spencer Tracy and Fredric March as the opposing attorneys.  This  movie also has an interesting acting performance by Gene Kelly in a dramatic, non-singing, non dancing role.

And best of all....

5:00 PM - "Judgement at Nuremberg" (1961).  I have talked about this movie many times in this blog.  It is a story of the Nuremberg war crimes and the political reassures that were brought to bear as the political realities of a post world War II world were falling into shape.  Maximilian Schell won the Best Actor of the Year Oscar for his performance in this one, but there were also Oscar worthy performances in this one from Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift, and Richard Widmark. (Tracy, Garland, and Clift all received Oscar nominations for this one.)  This one was also directed by Stanley Kramer.  In my humble opinion, this is a movie that everyone should see at least once, and should be required viewing for every high school history student.

I'm going to stop at these three, but you could do worse than keeping your DVR humming for the remainder of the day on TCM on Thursday, as it will also be showing "Dr. Strangelove" (1964), "A Hard Day's Night" (1964), and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1968).  Both "Strangelove" and "Dinner..." were also directed by Kramer.

Man, what a day on TCM!

TCM's 31 Days of Oscar

The calendar turns to February 1 tomorrow, and that means that Turner Classic Movies kicks of its annual "31 Days of Oscar" programming, wherein every movie shown will be either an Academy Award winner or nominee, and you know what that means, don't you?  Plenty of DVR alerts from The Grandstander.

So here are a couple to get you started....

Saturday:

2:00 PM - "Stagecoach" (1939)  This John Ford western is generally considered the movie that made John Wayne a big star.

10:00 PM - "Gone With the Wind" (1939)  I'll be honest with you, I may light on this one while clicking the remote, and spend about 15 or 20 minutes watching, but that's going to be it.  I will probably never again watch this entire movie from start to finish again, but it is a movie that everyone has to see - and from start to finish - at least once.  I'll never for the life of me see why everyone went gaga over a wimp like Ashley Wilkes.  However, the scene of the camera panning away from the train yard in Atlanta is unforgettable.  One of the best scenes ever.

Sunday:

6:15 PM - "Twelve Angry Men" (1957)  A lone voice in a jury room, Henry Fonda, tries to convince the other eleven that maybe, just maybe, the kid on trial ISN'T guilty of murder. Tremendous cast and a terrific drama.  Fabulous, fabulous movie.

8:00 PM - "The Lost Weekend" (1945) Billy Wilder's story of an alcoholic, played by Ray Milland, won Oscars for Picture, Actor, Director, and Screenplay, and the movie holds up amazingly well almost seventy years later.

Yeah, I know that these last two movies go up smack dab against the Super Bowl, so nobody is going to watch them when they air, but this is why I call it a DVR Alert.

Also airing on Saturday night at 8:00 is a TCM original documentary called "And The Oscar Goes To..."  This is a "behind the scenes look at the Academy Awards and Oscar winning films through the eyes of Hollywood insiders." The TCM documentaries are always very well done.  It will air severla time throughout the month on TCM.

DVR Alert - Starring Burt Lancaster

The Star of the Month for November on Turner Classic Movies is the great Burt Lancaster, and each Wednesday night in the month TCM will be featuring Lancaster movies.  

This past Wednesday night included such classics and maybe-not-so-classic-but-still-pretty-good movies as "From Here to Eternity", "Jim Thorpe - All American", "The Swimmer", and Lancaster's very first movie, one that I had never seen, a nifty little noir flick called "The Killers" (1946).  I watched it and was a really terrific movie.

So, I didn't notify you about those, but get that DVR programmed for the following (all times Eastern):

November 13

8:00 PM  - Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957) co-starring Kirk Douglas
10:15 PM - Sweet Smell of Success (1957) co-starring Tony Curtis
12:00 AM - Elmer Gantry (1960) Lancaster won his only Oscar for this one.  Shirley Jones also and Oscar winner for her role in the movie.
2:30 AM - Seven Days in May (1964) co-starring Kirk Douglas and Fredric March, directed by John Frankenheimer.  A terrific cold war thriller.  All three stars are absolutely outstanding in this one.  A Must See.

November 20

9:45 PM - Judgement at Nuremberg (1961) I wrote about this movie in depth about a year ago (http://grandstander.blogspot.com/2012/11/judgement-at-nuremberg.html)  I won't restate it everything else again, except to say that if you ignore every other movie mentioned in this piece, don't ignore this one.  A great, great movie that should be mandatory viewing for all high school history students.  One great acting performance after another in this one.
1:00 AM Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) Okay, so maybe the movie glorifies a career criminal who was pretty much a scumbag, but that doesn't detract from yet another great Lancaster performance.

November 27

8:00 PM Field of Dreams (1989)  This is one of everybody's, including me, favorite baseball movies, and Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones are the stars, but Lancaster, in a mere five or so minutes of screen time, as the older Moonlight Graham, steals the movie, in my opinion.  It was his last movie.  "Suppose I'd have never become a doctor?  Now that would have been a tragedy."

There are many other Lancaster movies being shown in November, perhaps some of your own favorites, but these are the ones I shall be recording and watching.

I love Turner Classic Movies, if for no other reason than it has given me an appreciation for stars like Burt Lancaster, people who may have been prominent slightly before my time.  Another such star is Barbara Stanwyck and that leads me to another recommendation for November.  "Ball of Fire" (1941) Midnight, Friday, November 22.  A screwball comedy directed by Howard Hawks and co-starring Gary Cooper. A really funny movie and Stanwyck is terrific.

For a movie fan, TCM is giving us a lot for which to be thankful this November!!

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.

DVR Alerts!!!!

Some DVR Alerts for the coming days.   As is always the case, these movies are on Turner Classic Movies, and all times are Eastern.

Thursday, 8:00 PM: "Gone With the Wind" (1939)   Story of a bratty rich girl who endures a series of bad marriages because the effeminate guy she pines for pays her no heed and marries her goody-goody cousin.  Oh, and there is a war going on in the background.

Saturday, 2:00 PM: "Singin' in the Rain" (1952)  Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Conner, and Jean Hagen in this all-time classic about Hollywood when talkies replaced silent films.  Three of the great musical numbers ever in the movies: Singin' in the Rain, Good Morning, and Make 'em Laugh.  Hagen's performance as the silent star who gets left behind because of her abrasive/lousy voice is a classic, and it often gets overlooked when this movie is discussed.

Saturday, Midnight: "North by Northwest" (1959) Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in an Alfred Hitchcock classic with so many Hitchcock classic scenes: a murder at the United Nations, Grant in a cornfield and cropduster, Grant and Saint being chased over Mt, Rushmore.  Great movie.

Saturday (actually, Sunday morning), 2:30 AM: "Bad Day at Black Rock" (1955) Spencer Tracy encountering some nasty small town secrets in trying to track down a war hero.

Monday (actually, Tuesday morning), 12;30 AM: "The Good-bye Girl" (1977) Romantic comedy written by the great Neil Simon starring Richard Dreyfuss, who won an Oscar for his part, and Marsha Mason.  Classic Simon lines:  "Your lips say no-no, but your eyes say yes-yes." and "I...don't....like...the...panties on the rod."

Tuesday, 6:00 PM: "My Favorite Year" (1982)  Yeah, I know, I just hyped this one with a DVR Alert last month, but if you ignored me then, here is another chance to see this terrific comedy about 1950's television with a fantastic performance by Peter O'Toole.

Some more great movies on TCM later in the month, but I don't want to get too far ahead of myself.   Keep watching this space.

First Post of the Year - A DVR Alert!!

First Grandstander post of 2013.  What shall I talk about?  I'll bet you thought it would be something about the Pirates!  Maybe tomorrow, but first, a DVR Alert.

In perusing the Turner Classic Movie program guide for January, the pickings are slim, but here's a couple for the coming Friday, January 4:

1:45 PM (Eastern) - "Night and Day" (1946)  This biopic of songwriter Cole Porter is not all that true to life (no mention of the fact that Porter was gay; a taboo topic in 1946), but you do get to watch Cary Grant, and you do get to hear some of those great Porter songs.  They're the top!

11:00 PM - "The Incredible Shrinking Man" (1957) I am not a sci-fi guy, but this movie is the pick of the month of TCM host Ben Mankiewicz, and no less than Stephen Spielberg himself calls this "one of the best science fiction movies ever made."  Hey, that's good enough for me to set the DVR.

Enjoy!