Turner Classic Movies

[Matt]

It most definitely is not the new restoration. I don’t even think it’s the old restoration.

[FrauBlucher]

Fair to say there was a slim chance

[Drucker]

Flaming Road is really good! On its face, you'd think Greenstreet would be ridiculous playing that character, but he's amazing! I get what you're saying about Crawford, but I think she was surprisingly vulnerable in this role, I bought in. My bigger issue was buying into Crawford's intoxicating sexuality, but still, this is a gem of a film.

I watched the Warner Archive disc of this last night and really enjoyed it. From a technical standpoint the camera work and lighting, similar to Santa Fe Trail (which I watched last month) are really exceptional, and just seems to flow so naturally in the film. The entire plot of Santa Fe Trail was too much for me to swallow to really enjoy the film, but I had no such problem with Flamingo Road. In fact what I liked best was the somewhat convoluted politics of it. Curtiz's story of backroom king-makers whose political power is necessary because the will of the people is just too messy is ridiculous, but it plays really well in the movie! Of course, again, this kinda feels like the opposite of the politics of SFT, where Flynn insists the Southerners should be left to their own to solve their own affairs, without outside meddling.

The main plot probably could have used a bit more framing, with Crawford and Scott's love story and the latter's political ambition a bit more sketched out. But it didn't take away my enjoyment of the film, which as I said I really enjoyed.

[Fred Holywell]

Antonioni's The Passenger will make its TCM debut tonight at 8 PM ET.

[FrauBlucher]

This looks like fun...

A new limited series airing for 13 consecutive Saturday evenings beginning April 6th at 8pm ET that will explore the history, artform and allure of the double feature, a staple of moviegoing for decades.

Join TCM host Ben Mankiewicz each Saturday evening as he sits down with a different filmmaker who has carefully curated a double bill of films to share. From comforting combinations to surprising and thought-provoking duos, we will showcase how these films connect, entertain, and speak to each other and the viewer.
FEATURED FILMS & SPECIAL GUESTS

4/6/24 Martin Scorsese
Blood on the Moon (1948)
One Touch of Venus (1948)

4/13/24 Olivia Wilde
Auntie Mame (1958)
Grey Gardens (1975)

4/20/24 Paul Thomas Anderson
The Bad News Bears (1976)
Bugsy Malone (1976)

4/27/24 Rian Johnson
Trouble in Paradise (1932)
Jewel Robbery (1932)

5/4/24 Spike Lee
A Face in the Crowd (1957)
Ace in the Hole (1951)

5/11/24 Patty Jenkins
The Fisher King (1991)
Synecdoche, New York (2008)

5/18/24 Steven Spielberg
Jailhouse Rock (1957)
Forty Guns (1957)

6/1/24 Ethan Hawke
The Gunfighter (1950)
Gun Crazy (1950)

6/8/24 David Byrne
A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
Wings of Desire (1987)

6/15/24 Gina Prince-Bythewood
Central Station (1998)
Fruitvale Station (2013)

6/22/24 Todd Haynes
The Go-Between (1971)
Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)

6/29/24 Nicole Holofcener
Coming Home (1978)
The Last Detail (1973)

[Matt]

Looking ahead to May, there will be a Frank Borzage retrospective. Only sound films, though, no silents.

[Lemmy Caution]

5/4/24 Spike Lee
A Face in the Crowd (1957)
Ace in the Hole (1951)

A pair of films about megalomaniacal conmen who cynically manipulate the media.
Too bad Spike couldn't find anything topical ...

[Black Hat]

They have a Borzage silent coming up this Sunday at midnight, The Circle.

[Fred Holywell]

Sidney Lumet's The Appointment gets a rare showing tomorrow at 6 AM ET. In it, lawyer Omar Sharif drives himself half-crazy wondering if wife Anouk Aimee is secretly a prostitute.

The 1969 film was a big misfire for Lumet and MGM, but it's good-looking (Carlo Di Palma was the cinematographer) and still something of a curiosity for fans of 1960s Euro-style.

[beamish14]

Sidney Lumet's The Appointment gets a rare showing tomorrow at 6 AM ET. In it, lawyer Omar Sharif drives himself half-crazy wondering if wife Anouk Aimee is secretly a prostitute.

The 1969 film was a big misfire for Lumet and MGM, but it's good-looking (Carlo Di Palma was the cinematographer) and still something of a curiosity for fans of 1960s Euro-style.

Written by the great novelist and short story writer James Salter, who directed a single movie: Three, starring San Waterston and Charlotte Rampling

[domino harvey]

I thought I'd seen this and didn't recall either of those actors being in it, but I was thinking of the Arrangement, also from 1969

[Black Hat]

I set my DVR to record this last night and it didn't happen, was this a glitch or a thing that happens with some films? It's up on the app, thankfully.

[Fred Holywell]

I set my DVR to record this last night and it didn't happen, was this a glitch or a thing that happens with some films? It's up on the app, thankfully.

I seem to remember others complaining of the same problem, and that it may be more related to certain service providers (like YouTube TV) than others. A search/scroll back may provide some details.

The Appointment itself was actually not half as bad as I remembered. Maybe I'm just more appreciative now of a classy movie about male anxiety than I was a few decades ago. Then, any film with Anouk Aimee and Lotte Lenya in it has to have something going for it.

Unfortunately, the widescreen image TCM provided was quite blurry and murky; hopefully an upgrade will be made sometime soon.

[FrauBlucher]

I've never had a problem recording on my DVR (FIOS). Thankfully. That would be miserable.

btw... Has anyone caught the docu-series, The Power of Film? I caught 3 of the episodes yesterday. Each episode is themed, there are 6. EG Heroes and Villains, The Power of Paradox. I enjoyed it but not sure I need to see it more than once. I'll try to catch the episodes I didn't see. I wasn't familiar with Howard Suber before this

[bottlesofsmoke]

TCM recently featured a bunch of Ann Dvorak movies I hadn’t seen before. The best was the last, Friends of Mr. Sweeney. It’s a sort of proto-Preston Sturges comedy, built around a variety of vivid characters (and character actors) that keep popping up and stealing their scenes. The plot is a common one - Charlie Ruggles even plays the same role a few years later in Topper - and one the Sturges would perfect in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, but Ruggles is so good at playing these types of characters that his arc doesn’t feel stale even if it is well trod. It's still streaming on the TCM app for those with access and interest.

[fdm]

I got a bit of a kick out that one too.

[Roger Ryan]

... Has anyone caught the docu-series, The Power of Film? I caught 3 of the episodes yesterday. Each episode is themed, there are 6. EG Heroes and Villains, The Power of Paradox. I enjoyed it but not sure I need to see it more than once. I'll try to catch the episodes I didn't see. I wasn't familiar with Howard Suber before this.

Early in his career (circa 1970), Howard Suber was responsible for collecting the majority (if not all) of the research material used by Pauline Kael for her infamous "Raising Kane" treatise / "The Citizen Kane Book" publication. Not only did Suber's research reveal that Welles had a significant hand in crafting the screenplay for Kane (largely ignored by Kael in her writing), but Suber received no credit/acknowledgement for his research efforts.

I thought The Power of Film series was just okay. There were certainly enlightening moments, but Suber's approach of cataloging the tropes of, largely, popular mainstream films seemed to inadvertently diminish the value of those films. While I usually think that "more is better" when it comes to film analysis documentary series, each The Power of Film episode starts to feel repetitive after the first twenty-five minutes or so. Also, the tone of the series is more in line with what I imagine film school marketing classes are like: here are the formulas to use to create a successful release! Whatever artistic value is assigned to the films under discussion is assessed within the context of each film's popularity. That's not what interests me.

[FrauBlucher]

Agree. The series seems like it was created for more the mainstream mindset of movie goers

[Black Hat]

All this time I thought it was a rerun of the Mark Cousins doc. You'd think the marketing people would have come up with a better title.