Here a few classic movie picks to keep you busy this holiday weekend. This week rounds up TCM’s Summer Under the Stars and today’s star is the beautiful Ingrid Bergman. She is one of my favorite actresses and a few of her best are on today. Unfortunately one of them will be on too early to check out, but at 6:15 PM EST you can check out one of the greatest movies of all time, Casablanca. Casablanca stars Humphrey Bogart as Rick, the owner of a café in North Africa during World War II. Ingrid Bergman plays a lover from his past that draws him into the war. This movie is an essential for anyone who wants to try to appreciate classic movies.
On Wednesday, August 30, it is Sidney Poitier day and there are a couple of great movies you should check out. At 1 PM EST, The Defiant Ones will be shown and it stars Poitier and Tony Curtis as a couple of convicts who escape and are chained together. Neither one likes the other, but realize that they have to rely on each other to stay free. For all of you, like me, who love a good prison break movie, this may be the best. It is non stop action. At 10 PM EST we have In the Heat of the Night with Poitier as a black detective form Philadelphia who helps with a murder investigation in racist Mississippi. This is a great movie about society in the deep South during this time period and how people can overcome their prejudices.
On Thursday, August 31, we have Barbara Stanwyck day and perhaps the movie she is most known for is the great film noir classic, Double Indemnity. In this film, Stanwyck plays the ultimate femme fatale and seduces Fred MacMurray and gets him to help her murder her husband. This is a dark and twisty film and it has that great hard boiled dialogue that you expect in a great noir film. Such as, “They've committed a murder and it's not like taking a trolley ride together where they can get off at different stops. They're stuck with each other and they've got to ride all the way to the end of the line and it's a one-way trip and the last stop is the cemetery.” Writing like that is what makes a great movie a great movie.
On Friday, September 1, we begin a regular month on TCM, but they seem to be ready to roll out September with a bang by playing some great films. At 9:30 AM EST for all of you who like courtroom dramas we have 12 Angry Men. This movie stars Henry Fonda as man who is not quite convinced the defendant commited the crime of which he has been accused. Bratch and I watch this anytime we find it on TV. At 1:30 PM we have Sabrina starring Audrey Hepburn, William Holden, and Humphrey Bogart. I would say this is a chick flick except Bogart has never been in a chick flick. This is a great romantic movie the kinds of which just aren’t made anymore, see the remake and see for yourself.
On Saturday I must insist you check out To Kill a Mockingbird at 3:15 PM EST. Not only is it a great book, but it may be the first movie that does justice to the book. Gregory Peck plays Atticus Finch, a lawyer defending a black man accused of raping a white woman. Peck's character was voted the best hero in movie history according to the American Film Institute. If you do not watch this, you should have an eye gouged out. At 7 PM EST on Saturday, we have The Hustler starring Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felson; a character he plays an older version of Fast Eddie in The Color of Money. Newman is a pool shark whose sole goal is to defeat pool hall legend Minnesota Fats, played by Jackie Gleason. George C. Scott is the scumbag manager/gambler that takes Eddie under his wing and ruins his life. This movie is very good, but a really dark movie, very violent. Newman never makes a bad movie and this is one of his very best.
That’s all I got and probably more than you wanted. You don’t have to watch all of my picks, but you would do yourself a favor if you checked a couple out. The Fall TV season has already begun on FOX (by the way, check out Bones on FOX on Wednesday night at 8 PM EST) and will begin in the next few weeks on the rest of the networks, so you have a limited amount of time to watch and/or DVR some great classic movies. I believe you will realize what I have realized and that is Turner Classic Movies and a DVR can save you plenty of money that would have been spent renting DVDs.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
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