Cranky Lesbian

Look what the homosexuals have done to me!

Tag: Turner Classic Movies

Are You Ready For Some Football Oscars?

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On February 22, 2009

In In the News

Awards are essentially meaningless, like almost everything else in life.

Last year, as you might recall, I covered the Oscar telecast. I’ve been asked if I plan to do the same tonight, and the answer is probably not. I’m underwhelmed by a lot of this year’s nominees and don’t think it’d be much fun to write about them, though a last-minute change of mind is possible. (A last-minute change of mind is always possible, unless it’s about something like voting Republican.)

Also blasé about tonight’s ceremony: the normally excitable Robert Osborne, the reigning queen of Turner Classic Movies and a professional Oscar historian, who recently told The Chicago Sun-Times: “We forget that the importance of the Oscars is to award artistic achievement. I’m not sure it is anymore.” I’m with Osborne on two things — that the Best Supporting Actress push for Kate Winslet in The Reader was ridiculous (she ended up being nominated in the Best Actress category and is widely expected to win; I’d rather see Melissa Leo take it for Frozen River), and that it would be great if Frank Langella won Best Actor for Frost/Nixon.

Langella isn’t thought to stand a chance in the year of Milk and The Wrestler, but he’s my sentimental favorite because Oscars, as we all know, are often awarded not to the winning performance, but for a performance previously overlooked by the Academy. In my opinion, Langella deserved to win last year for Starting Out in the Evening, but his work in that film wasn’t recognized with a nomination. Honestly, I’m still shocked by that — how dare the Academy disrespect Count Dracula! Hopefully he makes the rounds at the after-parties tonight and bites all their necks.

Step Away from The Biggest Loser and Switch to TCM

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On February 3, 2009

In Great Moments in Cinematic History

As if to make up for last month’s ill-advised Ricardo Montalban marathon, Turner Classic Movies is showing The More the Merrier tonight as part of their 31 Days of Oscar: Urban Housing block of programming. Besides featuring one of Jean Arthur’s best performances, this George Stevens comedy about the housing shortage in World War II boasts one of the most romantic scenes I’ve ever seen in any movie, as a woozy Arthur tries to resist her attraction to one of her boarders (played by the always brilliant Joel McCrea). The scene is on YouTube — everything ever recorded in the history of the universe is apparently available on YouTube — but you have to see it in the context of the movie to get the full effect.

Odd Decision of the Day

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On January 23, 2009

In Obituaries

TCM is inexplicably honoring terrible actor/”soft Corinthian leather” aficionado Ricardo Montalban with a seven-film tribute today. I fear this portends a full 24-hour block of William Shatner’s greatest non-hits when he kicks the bucket. Hopefully Shatner’s immortal and this will be a non-issue.

TCM Gets Its Gay On Thursday

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On August 6, 2008

In Uncategorized

Ebba (Elizabeth Young) enjoys being a royal subject in Queen Christina

Greta Garbo cross-dresses, dallies with John Gilbert and kisses a woman — all things she did away from the camera as well — in Rouben Mamoulian’s Queen Christina, which will be shown at 3 PM EST on TCM tomorrow as part of their day-long look at her career.

Unfortunately, TCM’s Garbo marathons are almost always the same: The Kiss, Mata Hari, Anna Karenina, Camille, Ninotchka, Grand Hotel, plus a couple more of the usual suspects, most of them long available on DVD. I’d like to see TCM (or any channel that has the rights) air something rarer, like The Painted Veil.

It came out in 1934, a year after Queen Christina, and had Garbo in another lesbian liplock, this time with Cecilia Parker. To satisfy the demands of the newly created Hays Code, their kisses were presented as mere sisterly affection. But all you have to do is see the movie, or even glance at a screen cap, to know there was nothing familial about it.

Richard Widmark, Dead at 93, Was the Man

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On March 27, 2008

In Uncategorized

As Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death (1947)

Richard Widmark, who died Monday at the age of 93, will no doubt be best remembered for his debut role, that of the gleefully psychopathic Tommy Udo in Henry Hathaway’s Kiss of Death. It was a dazzling introduction to moviegoers and critics alike; Widmark was electrifying and unpredictable and his Udo became an indelible creation, the kind of shockingly vile, violent weasel Steve Buscemi played in Fargo nearly fifty years later.

But Widmark, when his characters weren’t pushing wheelchair-bound women down staircases with wild-eyed, giddy abandon, was also capable of projecting an easy con man charm (even when his characters were morally conflicted, as in Samuel Fuller’s gritty Pickup on South Street), and, in Jules Dassin’s classic Night and the City, such palpable desperation that you’ll break into a sweat just looking at him. He was a fascinating actor, one of my favorites, and if you haven’t seen his work in the films mentioned here, you should head over to Netflix and add them to your queue.

Programming note: Widmark will be remembered by Turner Classic Movies with a 3-film retrospective on Friday, April 4th, but they’ve inexplicably chosen to show movies that kind of suck. What were you thinking, TCM programmers? Is The Tunnel of Love really the best you can do?

TCM’s 31 Days of Oscar Begins with a Nod to the ’70s

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On February 1, 2008

In Great Moments in Cinematic History

Helena Kallianiotes and Toni Basil are Alaska-bound in Five Easy Pieces

Turner Classic Movies kicks off their annual 31 Days of Oscar special tonight with a slate of films from the 1970s: Jaws, The Hospital, Network, and, my personal favorite of the bunch, Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces. Don’t just watch it because it contains what is arguably Jack Nicholson’s finest performance (he used to give good ones, you know), or because Karen Black earned a much-deserved Oscar nomination for her role as his needy girlfriend Rayette, whose hair, makeup and general dizziness paved the way for countless Jennifer Coolidge characters.

Watch it because Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe author and celebrated zany sweater-wearing Match Game panelist Fannie Flagg appears in a bowling alley scene. Watch it because of the comically angsty lesbian hitchhikers Palm and Terry (played by Helena Kallianiotes and “Mickey” singer Toni Basil), who are picked up by Nicholson and Black. Watch it because it has a wonderful supporting performance by Lois Smith. You won’t find any of those things in Jaws.

Flagg: “Old Man Periwinkle told her to put the sandwich where?”

And gluttons for punishment, take note: Darling Lili, another of those Blake Edwards movies with Julie Andrews that manages to seem oddly gay even when the proceedings are assuredly heterosexual, will air after Five Easy Pieces for reasons known only to God, if God exists, and the TCM programmers. Andrews has about as much chemistry with costar Rock Hudson as Lily Tomlin had with John Travolta in Moment by Moment, for those of you who revel in that sort of thing.

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