AndyM108

I just discovered that FIOS in Montgomery Co., MD has THIS on channel 463. Does anyone know if its films are commercial-free?

The Battle of Algiers Open City Days of Heaven and several dozen scores for silent films But to the dump heap with soundtrack for The Graduate ----please. Edited by: AndyM108 on May 1, 2011 6:03 PM

I've only seen Laurence Tierney four times---Dillinger, Born to Kill, Reservoir Dogs, and as Elaine's father in Seinfeld ---and I wish it had been forty. Widmark and Ryan may have been equally convincing killers on the screen, but Tierney walked the walk off it. He seemed like a man who'd steal the nickels off a dead man's eyes, and then shoot him again because they weren't silver dollars. Edited by: AndyM108 on May 1, 2011 5:59 PM

What Lincoln said about fooling all of the people some of the time could easily be applied to the 1959 Oscar voters. Muni, Stewart and Lemmon wiped the floor with Heston that year, and the only reason I don't add Harvey to the group is because I've never seen Room At The Top.

I was actually thinking more of Heston's wooden acting in general than I was of the idea of trying to pass him off as a Mexican. But if you're going to cast a North American to play the Vargas part, at least get a Brando or a Lancaster, rather than scraping the bottom of the barrel and coming up with a hack like Heston, whose main acting skill was driving a chariot. Edited by: AndyM108 on May 1, 2011 11:14 AM

Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil --- The only way he could have been convincing is if he'd hunted down Orson Welles with one of those NRA specials.

Just finished going through my August selections, and I notice that the starting times are all out of order for many of the days, and maybe even all of them---I didn't first notice it until near the end of the month. Is anyone else seeing this? The most noticeable pattern is that the prime time movies show up at or near the end of the day, and the last one or two movies show up sometime before that. Yet another reason why they never should have tampered with perfection, and hopefully they'll restore the old monthly schedule format.

This only confirms my belief that August is TCM's best month: Goddard, *DAVIS*, *Dvorak*, *CHANEY!!!*, *GABIN*, *CRAWFORD*, Veidt, *BLONDELL*, Lancaster, *DARNELL*, Lombard, and plenty of other individual movies spread throughout the rest. Three big omissions that I wish they'd show sometime. Haven't seen them in years: Bette Davis, Beyond the Forest ("What a dump!") John Garfield, Body and Soul - not as good as The Set-Up or Raging Bull, but it's still one of Garfield's best Burt Lancaster, Criss Cross - not on the level of The Killers, but that one's shown about 4 or 5 times a year And now if they could only put those monthly schedules back in their original format.....They promised to do this two months ago, and what's happened to that promise?

He didn't get into all that many westerns, but I'd go with Robert Ryan over any of em. Nothing against The Duke, but Ryan's portrayals are infinitely more complex and interesting.

When Louis Calhern is "officious," that's because his role is officious. His performances in The Asphalt Jungle and Executive Suite are two of the best portrayals of white collar criminals you'll ever see on a screen, smooth-talking shysters who would steal the pennies off a dead man's eyes. He played romantic leads when he was young, played comic straight men in films like Duck Soup, and played a whole variety of roles in his later years, good guys and cads alike. But if you want to see boring, pompous, and officious, try Gregory Peck. Always so earnest, always so solemn, always so bland. Even in his few good performances he's essentially playing the same Sominex-sponsored character, insomnia's instant cure in a zombie form. But gee, do you suppose that any of this could possibly be a bit subjective? (smile)

What's doubly frustrating about all this is that (a) we were promised six weeks ago that the old monthly schedule formats would at least be offered as AN OPTION; and ( nobody out there has yet explained the NECESSITY for these changes. Since many of us saved the May schedule in the old format, that gives us just over five weeks to hope and pray that someone up there is actually paying attention, and that someone will finally come to his or her senses. The closest analogy I can think of to all this is when I was in high school, a baseball teammate of mine, who was about as fast as a snail, tried to steal second base in our team's last inning with the other team four runs ahead. When he got thrown out by ten feet and came back to face our angry coach, his explanation was "I just wanted to shake up their pitcher." That seems to have been about the level of wisdom that went into these new formats.

I just went to the links that Fred provided, and while they're a big improvement over what we've had for the past 6 weeks, they're still MUCH less workable than what we had before that. I used to be able to copy and paste the next two months' schedule as a word document, saving it as*"2011 [Month #] TCM complete schedule."* Since there were no borders between the lines, it was then relatively easy to make up a personalized schedule by just re-copying the movies I wanted to watch, and saving them as a separate word document. Since there were no borders between each show, it was a very compact and printable document. With this new format, the whole appearance is a lot clunkier, and although I can work backwards to personalize the schedule by deletion instead of copying, I can't delete each time slot's bordering spaces, meaning that instead of being able to have a relatively compact personalized schedule to print, it now takes up far more pages, and consists of a lot of blank spaces in between the movies I plan to watch. Not to mention that you need a magnifying glass to read the tiny type. I honestly can't understand why they don't just restore the old format, which NOBODY complained about and which worked like a charm. This is better than New Coke, but that's not saying much. Edited by: AndyM108 on Apr 18, 2011 8:58 PM

It often just depends on the context of when and where a film was released. The Battle of Algiers was subversive in France in 1967, but it's shown in the Pentagon of today with great respect. Wild Boys of the Road and Heroes For Sale had standard liberal endings with the FDR "things are going to be different" theme when they were released in 1933, but a year earlier those happy endings would have been impossible with Hoover the Grinch in the White House. And I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang may have been liberal in its sympathy for the poor chump who first got railroaded into prison and then suckered into turning himself back in after he'd escaped, but it's hard to imagine a movie that ends with "How do you live? ----- *I STEAL!!*" as being anything other than subversive, even if it didn't show Muni storming the Georgia Governor's mansion. Of course sometimes it's hard to tell "subversive" from "pre-emptive strategy to capture the youth market." This was especially true with such overrated pieces of pandering as The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, and Five Easy Pieces, which were about as subversive as an ad for $200 pre-torn jeans. But then pardon my cynicism. Edited by: AndyM108 on Apr 11, 2011 12:45 PM

Hepburn's fine as long as she gets to play off Cary Grant or Robert Taylor (Undercurrent), but what you say about Spencer Tracy is absolutely true. It's hard to think of very many Tracy roles that weren't centered around Tracy's annoyance with the world and everyone in it, and after awhile that act REALLY gets tired.

Damon Runyon's New York City of the 1920's. Any city with Babe Ruth and 2,000 pool rooms has got to be worth investigating. I can catch up with the movies later.

Whatever happened to all those promises of a month ago that the old monthly schedule formats (with plot summaries, and all on one page) were going to be restored and posted two months in advance, at least as an option? And why is this taking so long to "fix"? Edited by: AndyM108 on Apr 11, 2011 9:34 AM

I can see why Fred C. Dobbs has 500,000 comments so far. He sure knows how to start a conversation. And while I love Elevator to the Gallows, it's true that movie taste is completely subjective and nobody can get the best of Fred C. Anybody, because we're all right and we're all crazy. Of course if it were up to me, I'd put a torch to 90% of American war movies and put foreign classics like Open City and Days of Glory in their place. I'd have an Eric Rohmer month and send Esther Williams back to her celestial swimming pool. I'd have a moratorium on movies about singing nuns, baseball playing priests, and last second conversions by otherwise interesting gangsters. I'd select about a dozen great musicals like 42nd Street and My Fair Lady and send the rest of them to a homeless shelter for stray ferrets and Republicans, beginning with The Sound of Music and West Side Story. I'd trade Gone With the Wind to the Hungarians for Angi Vera and force anyone who hasn't seen the latter to watch it three times and then explain why it isn't the greatest film ever made. I'd take Dustin Hoffman's creepy little Benjamin from The Graduate, stuff him in a Robert de Niro taxicab, and throw him out in Al Pacino's Needle Park. And if that doesn't do him in, I'd have Kramer vs Kramer wind up like The War of The Roses. I'd never let a week pass by without showing at least one Barbara Stanwyck or Toshiro Mifune, the two greatest actors who ever graced the Earth. I'd send 90% of the post-1960 Science Fiction and Fantasy movies to Mars just to make sure that there won't be any life left there when we get around to invading them. I'd pair the Irish **** Spencer Tracy with Hanoi Jane Fonda and supply them with lots of whiskey and ammunition to spice up their conversation. I'd put the person who dreamed up those 10 minute credit scrolls at the end of every movie and force them to watch a week's worth of them without food, drink or sleep. And I'd take about 99.99% of the film soundtracks of the last 50 years and stick them in an elevator to the gallows. And then I'd invite my main man Fred C. Dobbs over for a game of pool, with the winner getting to program TCM for a year. Edited by: AndyM108 on Apr 11, 2011 7:31 AM

I completely agree with Ascotrudgeracer. I just saw Panic In Needle Park a few months ago and was completely blown away by Pacino's performance, which is every bit as good as anything he's done since then, including Godfather 2 and Glengarry Glen Ross. I've know a few junkies in my time, and the one I know the best swears that this is the best screen portrayal of the drug culture that he's ever seen. I would love to see TCM get this long neglected classic out of the library and onto the schedule. And in fact, when was the last time we've seen a good Pacino retrospective?

When TCM's godawful new schedule pages first appeared a few weeks ago and practically everyone raised this very issue, one of the TCM honchos assured us that these monthly schedules were going to be restored, and even expanded to include a third month in advance. We all breathed a sigh of relief. Of course it's now been about three weeks, and we're still stuck with a schedule that rivals the Fox Movie Channel for clumsiness and time consumption. Fortunately, many of us downloaded the April and May schedules in the old format prior to their destruction, but I sure hope that the promised restoration takes place before Memorial Day!

There are so many "worst" films from recent years that I'll restrict it to the TCM era Most overrated movies: Bonnie & Clyde, Citizen Kane -- all technique and no substance Lamest screwball: Miracle of Morgan's Creek (and Sturges is my favorite screwball director) Most godawful musical: The Sound of Music, Gold Diggers of 1935 (the 1933 version was a gem) Most overrated screen couple: Tracy and Hepburn (Her movies with Grant are much better) Most overrated genre: American-made World War II epics - 90% of the good ones are foreign-made And worst movie, period: Last Tango in Paris - I'll take my butter on toast, thanks

FMC often seems to have exclusives on 20th Century Fox films like Mr. 880, Thieves' Highway, and I Wake Up Screaming, but in many cases I think it's just a matter of waiting before TCM shows them. TCM currently has multiple upcoming playtimes listed for All About Eve, but believe it or not, until the last month or so that movie hadn't run on TCM since at least mid-2009, while the Fox Movie Channel had shown it repeatedly, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day. I'm pretty sure that this must have something to do with rights issues for 20th Century Fox movies. It can be frustrating for those of us whose favorite genre is film noir, since so many of the best noir titles from the 40's were made by 20th Century Fox, but I'm not sure what TCM can do about it.

I've never been a big fan of westerns since I was about 8 years old, but it's hard to say why. It may be because after I've had my fill of film noir, pre-codes, urban dramas, comedies, silents and foreign movies, there are just so many hours in the day. It's the same way I feel about historical dramas, costume dramas, 30's and 40's hagiographic biopics, most (not all) American war films, and any movies that rely on special effects instead of good acting and a coherent plot. There are a few exceptions: The Naked Spur, The Violent Men, and I'll probably wind up watching more of Ryan's and Stanwyck's westerns, but that's more because I'm interested in Ryan and Stanwyck than out of any particular love for the genre. Not saying that there's anything wrong with westerns; it's just that they don't float my boat.

Misswonderly, FYI Caught is showing at 10:15 PM on Monday, March 21st, with its running time listed at 88 minutes. I retrieved this information from the March complete schedule in the old format, which I'd copied as a Word document before it was zapped from the TCM website. This is one perfect example of the sort of problem that these inane scheduling format changes have caused, and I'm glad to know that they may soon be corrected and the old schedules restored.

Just in case there turns out to be a cancellation, Stella Dallas is also scheduled for 10:00 AM on Sunday, March 27th, plus once more at 10:00 PM on Friday, April 22nd. I haven't seen this on TCM for the last year or two, so it looks as if they may be making up for lost time.

I'd agree, but that's like saying that Peyton Manning is a better quarterback than Aaron Rodgers. Baby Face is my favorite pre-code movie of them all, and Stanwyck is my favorite actor or actress ever to grace the silver screen, but as a comedienne Ms. Harlow takes a back seat to no one. I've been waiting a long time for a Harlow month and I'm not going to miss a single one.