TCM's 31 Days of Oscar: Week 4
Turner Classic Movies is counting down to the Academy Awards with 31 Days of Oscar, a marathon of hundreds of Oscar-nominated films. With ten or more movies running every day and none of them repeating during February, the schedule is a little overwhelming to even the most seasoned cineaste.
So contributors Sarah Moffatt, Oliver Ward, and Alex Castle are going to take it a week at a time, with a full schedule for the week with comments on some of our favorites. Note that most of the movies are going to show up in TCM’s on-demand section soon after they air, so you can catch them even if you miss the live broadcast.
Week 4:
(All times Eastern)Monday, February 22
7:45 AM The Enchanted Cottage (1945)
9:30 AM The Sin of Madeline Claudet (1931)
11:00 AM Romance (1930)
12:30 PM Grand Hotel (1932)
2:30 PM Captains Courageous (1937)
4:30 PM The Strip (1951)
6:00 PM High Society (1956)
8:00 PM A Foreign Affair (1948)
10:00 PM The More the Merrier (1942)
12:00 AM Foreign Correspondent (1940)
2:15 AM The Sky’s the Limit (1943)
4:00 AM Hide-Out (1934)
5:30 AM The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933)
Tuesday, February 23
7:30 AM The Navy Comes Through (1942)
9:00 AM Tom, Dick and Harry (1941)
10:30 AM That Uncertain Feeling (1941)
12:00 PM Comrade X (1940)
1:45 PM I Remember Mama (1948)
4:15 PM The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)
6:00 PM Cyrano de Bergerac (1950)
8:00 PM The Caine Mutiny (1954)
10:15 PM Marty (1955)
12:00 AM Kind Lady (1951)
1:30 AM The Constant Nymph (1943)
3:30 AM The Sea Hawk (1940)
5:45 AM Mr. Skeffington (1944)
Wednesday, February 24
8:15 AM Blues in the Night (1941)
9:45 AM Four Daughters (1938)
11:30 AM Dangerous (1935)
1:00 PM G-Men (1935)
2:30 PM Mighty Joe Young (1949)
4:15 PM She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)
6:00 PM All the King’s Men (1949)
8:00 PM A Little Romance (1979)
10:00 PM M * A * S * H (1970) – Since it was adapted into a TV show that ran for roughly 47 years, it’s easy to forget that Alan Alda did not originate the role of army surgeon Hawkeye Pierce. That honor went to Donald Sutherland, who along with Elliott Gould as Trapper John McIntyre and Robert Duvall as Major Frank Burns leads an ensemble cast in Robert Altman’s thinly veiled anti-war comedy, with Kore playing the role of Vietnam. I admit, I never much cared for the football game setpiece that closes the movie, but Sutherland and Gould are great together, and like a lot of Altman’s work, it’s a slightly aimless but still very engaging couple of hours. (AC)
12:15 AM Network (1976) – This movie is pretty mindblowing when you consider how accurately it predicted how far TV news would degenerate into sensationalism and reality shows 20+ years before it actually happened. A wicked satire of the industry kicked off by a news anchor’s on-air nervous breakdown, the movie won Oscars for Peter Finch (Best Actor), Faye Dunaway (Best Actress), Beatrice Straight (Best Supporting Actress) and Paddy Chayefsky (Best Original Screenplay). (AC)
2:30 AM Bonnie and Clyde (1967) – A watershed moment in the history of film, Bonnie and Clyde is widely recognized as the beginning of “The New Hollywood,” when the unwritten rules against explicit sex or violence on screen began to erode. By turns darkly funny and horribly violent, the film stars Warren Beatty as the impotent bank robber Clyde Barrow, Faye Dunaway as his red-hot girlfriend, accomplice, and beret model; Gene Hackman as Clyde’s brother; and Gene Hackman as a hostage. This movie is nearly 50 years old, but it doesn’t look a day over 20. (AC)
4:30 AM McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)
Thursday, February 25
7:00 AM Far from the Madding Crowd (1967)
10:00 AM Goodbye Mr. Chips (1969)
1:00 PM My Favorite Year (1982)
2:45 PM What Next, Corporal Hargrove? (1945)
4:30 PM Giant (1956) – With an iconic cast of James Dean, Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor, Giant was a staple of golden age Hollywood. If the casting alone isn’t enough to watch, this was James Dean’s final film before he was tragically killed in a car accident. Giant was released after his death and Dean earned a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor as part of the 10 nominations this film received: Best Actor (Rock Hudson), Best Supporting Actress (Mercedes McCambridge), Best Director (George Stevens), and Best Picture. Giant tells the story of a wealthy Texas rancher named Bick Benedict (Hudson), who returns home from an East coast trip with a new love, Leslie Lynnton (Taylor). Leslie finds herself butting heads with Bick’s sister, Luz (McCambridge), and catching the eye of Jett Rink (Dean). Even though the couple have wed, Jett and Bick find themselves, once again, tangled in a tense rivalry. (SM)
8:00 PM The Longest Day (1962)
11:15 PM Red River (1948)
1:45 AM 55 Days at Peking (1963)
4:30 AM The Night of the Iguana (1964)
Friday, February 26
6:30 AM King Solomon’s Mines (1950)
8:15 AM The Young in Heart (1938)
10:00 AM Waterloo Bridge (1940)
12:00 PM Knights of the Round Table (1953)
2:00 PM Lili (1953)
3:30 PM Day for Night (1973)
5:30 PM Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
8:00 PM Young Frankenstein (1974) – What do Young Frankenstein, The Producers, and Blazing Saddles, have in common? The dynamic comedic duo of Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder, that’s what. Young Frankenstein is easily one of the most quotable movies from the 1970’s – maybe ever. Gene Wilder stars as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (pronounced Frahn-ken-steen), a young surgeon who inherits his grandfather’s estate in Transylvania. When he arrives at the castle, Dr. Frankenstein discovers his grandfather’s experiments and creations and decides to pick up where he left off with the help of his servants Igor (Marty Feldman), Inga (Teri Garr) and Frau Blucher (Cloris Leachman). After he brings to life his own monster (Peter Boyle), Dr. Frankenstein runs into trouble when his fiancee (Madeline Kahn) arrives. While the film was only nominated for Best Writing and Best Sound at the 1975 Oscars, Gene Wilder certainly put on a performance of a lifetime in this cult classic comedy.(SM)
10:00 PM The Candidate (1972)
12:00 AM Ninotchka (1939)
2:00 AM Bitter Sweet (1940)
4:00 AM Balalaika (1939)
Saturday, February 27
6:00 AM Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)
8:00 AM Gaslight (1944)
10:00 AM Mrs. Miniver
12:30 PM Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939)
2:30 PM Gandhi (1982)
5:45 PM Chariots of Fire (1981)
8:00 PM Breaking Away (1979)
10:00 PM Diner (1982)
12:00 AM Apollo 13 (1995) – If you have ever been able to skip past this movie while channel-flipping, you are a stronger person than I. The unbelievable true story of the botched 1970 moon-landing mission that forced NASA and the astronauts in space to improvise and repurpose their Lunar Module as a lifeboat to get home is well paced, superbly acted by the likes of Tom Hanks, Ed Harris, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, and Kathleen Quinlan, and exciting even when you know how it all turns out. It is also worth noting that there is nothing inappropriate for kids, except maybe a swear word or two – I watched it with my 7-year-old and he loved it. (AC)
2:30 AM Philadelphia (1993)
4:45 AM Rachel, Rachel (1968)
Sunday, February 28
7:00 AM Watch on the Rhine (1943)
9:00 AM The Seventh Cross (1944)
11:00 AM Sunrise at Campobello (1960)
1:30 PM The Apartment (1960) – The first movie I ever saw Shirley Maclaine in was Terms of Endearment, where she played a brassy, bossy grandmother whose daughter dies of cancer, so it was a bit of a shock to see how incredibly adorable she was in her early career. Here she plays the elevator operator at a New York office building where insurance adjuster C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) has won favor with his bosses by letting them use his apartment for extramarital flings, a policy that soon runs into a conflict with his interest in the elevator operator. Both an amusing romantic comedy and an arch critique of corporate culture, few comedies have aged as well as this one.
3:45 PM Double Indemnity (1944)
5:45 PM Going My Way (1944)
8:00 PM Blue Skies (1946)
10:00 PM Swing Time (1936)
12:00 AM Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936)
2:00 AM The Public Enemy (1931)
3:30 AM Libeled Lady (1936)
5:30 AM One Way Passage (1932)
Monday, February 29
7:00 AM Always in My Heart (1942)
9:00 AM Captains of the Clouds (1942)
11:00 AM The Yearling (1946)
1:30 AM Dragon Seed (1944)
4:00 PM The Corsican Brothers (1941)
6:00 PM Flight Commander (1930)
8:00 PM Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
10:15 PM The Strawberry Blonde (1941)
12:00 AM The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
2:15 AM Young Bess (1953)
4:15 AM Random Harvest (1942)
Tuesday, March 1
6:30 AM The Informer (1935)
8:15 AM Lifeboat (1944)
10:00 AM Battleground (1949)
12:00 PM Mystery Street (1950)
1:45 PM Them! (1954)
3:30 PM Battle Cry (1955)
6:15 PM Torpedo Run (1958)
8:00 PM Sense and Sensibility (1995)
10:30 PM The Remains of the Day (1993)
1:00 AM A Room With a View (1984)
3:00 AM The V.I.P.s (1963)
5:00 AM Citizen Kane (1941)
Wednesday, March 2
7:00 AM Caged (1950)
8:45 AM Johnny Belinda (1948)
10:30 AM Lassie Come Home (1943)
12:00 PM Vivacious Lady (1938)
1:45 PM Romance on the High Seas (1948)
3:30 PM Small Town Girl (1953)
5:15 PM Guys and Dolls (1955)
8:00 PM Spartacus (1960) – It won four Academy Awards and helped to end the Hollywood blacklist of Communists – a behind-the-scenes story that is currently playing out in cinemas nationwide in Trumbo (Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad fame could win an Oscar for his portrayal of Dalton Trumbo, the screenwriter of Spartacus). Like Ben Hur and Gladiator, Spartacus is one of Hollywood’s greatest spear-and-sandal epics, widely known for its much-parodied proclamation, “I am Spartacus,” a climactic demonstration of solidarity. Starring Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, and Peter Ustinov (who won an Oscar for his supporting role), the film tells the true story of a slave who led a rebellion against the Roman Empire. (OW)
11:30 PM Lust for Life (1956)
1:45 AM A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)
3:30 AM Around the World in 80 Days (1956)