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This madcap musical from 1935 about an American dance star visiting London swirls effortlessly back into cinemas, with classic songs from Irving Berlin

Like a Shakespearean marriage comedy with a spoonful of Feydeau farce, this madcap musical from 1935, from screenwriters Allan Scott and Dwight Taylor and director Mark Sandrich, saunters back for a re-release. It features Fred Astaire as Jerry, the American dance star visiting London, a city seen in almost surreally weird back projections – and Astaire incidentally does an intentionally terrible Cockney accent when he pretends to be a hansom cab driver. (It is one of the rare times he does not appear in faultless evening dress.) Irving Berlin’s classic songs Cheek to Cheek and Top Hat, White Tie and Tails are great, and Astaire swirls on a forward-tilting gyroscopic axis with his spindly arms and legs effortlessly orbiting him like Saturn’s moons.

Playing opposite him – and of course,...

The great actor Robert Picardo, a frequent Joe Dante collaborator and long time Star Trek hologram, joins Josh and Joe to discuss movies that compel him to sit and watch all the way through any time they just happen to be on.

Also… Josh and Bob discuss the best cheesesteak joints in Philly.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Howling (1981)

A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)

A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

The Running Jumping and Standing Still Film (1959)

Swing Time (1936)

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

Cabaret (1972)

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

On The Waterfront (1954)

Some Like It Hot (1959)

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

Innerspace (1987)

Ordinary People (1980)

Hollywood Boulevard (1976)

Rock ‘N’ Roll High School (1978)

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather Part II (1974)

Jaws (1975)

The Wiz (1978)

The Godfather Part III (1990)

Alien (1979)

Star Wars (1977)

Death Becomes Her (1992)

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

I Knew It Was You (2009)

Touch Of Evil (1958)

Citizen Kane (1941)

The Day The Earth Stood Still...

The Lady Eve

Blu ray

Criterion

1941/ 94 min.

Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, William Demarest

Cinematography by Victor Milner

Directed by Preston Sturges

In The Lady Eve a wealthy ophiologist named Charlie Pike and a sexy card shark named Jean Harrington fall in love. It’s a rapid-fire romance fueled by equal portions of love and lust and when the affair crashes and burns, director Preston Sturges simply restarts the movie: Jean reintroduces herself to Charlie as a British socialite named Eve and la affaire d’amour begins anew. The brazenness of her charade is part and parcel of Sturges’s own impudent take on the Human Comedy – the result is a screwball work of art.

Henry Fonda is Charlie and Barbara Stanwyck plays Jean – they meet aboard a cruise ship where Jean’s father, an avuncular but remorseless con man played by Charles Coburn, has pigeonholed Charlie as a sucker par excellence.

A bigger and brighter film debut couldn’t be imagined … Doris Day became America’s sweetheart in Michael Curtiz’s peppy production, graced with a witty script and several catchy, radio-ready song hits. And the color is better than new in this impressive Blu-ray remastering job — Woody Bredell’s Technicolor hues are literally eye-popping. It’s great fun seeing Ms. Day invent her natural, fresh-faced screen persona right before our eyes.

Romance on the High Seas

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1948 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 99 min. / It’s Magic / Street Date June 16, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Doris Day, Jack Carson, Janis Paige, Don DeFore, Oscar Levant, S.Z. Sakall, Fortunio Bonanova, Eric Blore, Franklin Pangborn, Sir Lancelot, Barbara Bates, George N. Neise, Maila Nurmi, Grady Sutton.

Cinematography: Elwood Bredell

Film Editor: Rudi Fehr

Art Direction: Anton Grot

Special Effects: Robert Burks, Wilfrid M. Cline, David Curtiz

Original Music: Ray Heindorf, Oscar Levant

Written by Julius J. Epstein,...

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“Pratfalls And A Zoom Supplement”

By Raymond Benson

The brilliance of Preston Sturges’ brilliant screwball comedy aside, what is striking about the new Blu-ray edition of the filmmaker’s 1941 The Lady Eve from The Criterion Collection is the supplement that is a Zoom conversation between Tom Sturges (Preston’s son), filmmakers Peter Bogdanovich, James L. Brooks, and Ron Shelton, and critics Leonard Maltin, Kenneth Turan, and Susan King. While it’s unclear if this is the first acknowledgment of the Covid-19 pandemic in the production of home video supplementary features, this reviewer found the inclusion to be revelatory. How amazing it is to see these personages in the Brady Bunch-style squares all discussing Sturges and the film, and mirroring what many of us are doing while working at home. At one point, Brooks’ internet connection fails and his image freezes. All the others...

By Lee Pfeiffer

The Warner Archive has showcased another "B" movie and rescued it from relative obscurity with the release of "Lady Scarface". The 1941 movie is an Rko "Poverty Row" production with a low budget (i.e. there are almost no exterior shots) and abbreviated running time of only 66 minutes. The titular character is never referred to as such in the film. She's simply called Slade and she's a mysterious Chicago gangster who the police have been searching for under the assumption their prey is a man. Slade does bear a scar on her cheek but it would appear this was added simply to enable the producers to capitalize on the "Scarface" moniker in order to tie the film in with Paul Muni's classic gangster flick. Slade appears in the opening scene in which she and her gang rob a businessman and loot his safe. She ends up shooting him in cold blood.

Stars: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Victor Moore, Helen Broderick, Eric Blore | Written by Howard Lindsay, Allan Scott | Directed by George Stevens

Dazzling dancer “Lucky” (Fred Astaire) steps off stage and straight into his wedding outfit. But his colleagues don’t want to lose their star player to some dame, so they find ways to stop him. Lucky’s lateness triggers a fit of rage in the father of the would-be bride, and he issues an ultimatum: Lucky must go to New York, build a fortune, and return only when he earns the status (i.e. money) to marry his daughter.

Moments later, Lucky is in the Big Apple, where he falls in love with literally the first girl he meets. In classic rom-com stalker style, Lucky pursues Penny (Ginger Rogers) against her wishes. He chases her into a dance studio, where he masquerades as an amateur in order to humiliate...

Swing Time

Blu ray

Criterion

1936 / 1.33 : 1 / 103 Min.

Starring Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers

Cinematography by David Abel

Directed by George Stevens

The image of a tuxedo clad Fred Astaire hopping an empty boxcar sums up the double-edged appeal of Swing Time, a transcendent musical-comedy in which Fred and Ginger meet the depression head-on – Runyonesque sentimentality is avoided thanks to George Stevens’ no-nonsense direction and the clear-eyed love songs of Dorothy Fields and Jerome Kern.

Astaire plays a down-on-his-luck hoofer named Lucky who catches sight of a beautiful dance instructor named Penny and naturally falls in love (those too-perfect names will hang over the movie like a curse). The smitten hoofer trails her to the studio where she coaches would-be romantics in the art of… being Fred Astaire. Penny does her best with the supposedly flat-footed interloper but only succeeds in getting fired by her bad-tempered boss played by Eric Blore.

Lucky...

Merle Oberon movies: Mysterious star of British and American cinema. Merle Oberon on TCM: Donning men's clothes in 'A Song to Remember,' fighting hiccups in 'That Uncertain Feeling' Merle Oberon is Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Month of March 2016. The good news: the exquisite (and mysterious) Oberon, whose ancestry has been a matter of conjecture for decades, makes any movie worth a look. The bad news: TCM isn't offering any Oberon premieres despite the fact that a number of the actress' films – e.g., Temptation, Night in Paradise, Pardon My French, Interval – can be tough to find. This evening, March 18, TCM will be showing six Merle Oberon movies released during the first half of the 1940s. Never a top box office draw in the United States, Oberon was an important international star all the same, having worked with many of the top actors and filmmakers of the studio era.

The American Film Institute announced today the films that will screen in the World Cinema, Breakthrough, Midnight, Shorts and Cinema’s Legacy programs at AFI Fest 2015 presented by Audi.

AFI Fest will take place November 5 – 12, 2015, in the heart of Hollywood. Screenings, Galas and events will be held at the historic Tcl Chinese Theatre, the Tcl Chinese 6 Theatres, Dolby Theatre, the Lloyd E. Rigler Theatre at the Egyptian, the El Capitan Theatre and The Hollywood Roosevelt.

World Cinema showcases the most acclaimed international films of the year; Breakthrough highlights true discoveries of the programming process; Midnight selections will grip audiences with terror; and Cinema’s Legacy highlights classic movies and films about cinema. World Cinema and Breakthrough selections are among the films eligible for Audience Awards. Shorts selections are eligible for the Grand Jury Prize, which qualifies the winner for Academy Award®consideration. This year’s Shorts jury features filmmaker Janicza Bravo,...

Groucho Marx in 'Duck Soup.' Groucho Marx movies: 'Duck Soup,' 'The Story of Mankind' and romancing Margaret Dumont on TCM Grouch Marx, the bespectacled, (painted) mustached, cigar-chomping Marx brother, is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” star today, Aug. 14, '15. Marx Brothers fans will be delighted, as TCM is presenting no less than 11 of their comedies, in addition to a brotherly reunion in the 1957 all-star fantasy The Story of Mankind. Non-Marx Brothers fans should be delighted as well – as long as they're fans of Kay Francis, Thelma Todd, Ann Miller, Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, Allan Jones, affectionate, long-tongued giraffes, and/or that great, scene-stealing dowager, Margaret Dumont. Right now, TCM is showing Robert Florey and Joseph Santley's The Cocoanuts (1929), an early talkie notable as the first movie featuring the four Marx Brothers – Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo. Based on their hit Broadway...

Katharine Hepburn movies. Katharine Hepburn movies: Woman in drag, in love, in danger In case you're suffering from insomnia, you might want to spend your night and early morning watching Turner Classic Movies' "Summer Under the Stars" series. Four-time Best Actress Academy Award winner Katharine Hepburn is TCM's star today, Aug. 7, '15. (See TCM's Katharine Hepburn movie schedule further below.) Whether you find Hepburn's voice as melodious as a singing nightingale or as grating as nails on a chalkboard, you may want to check out the 1933 version of Little Women. Directed by George Cukor, this cozy – and more than a bit schmaltzy – version of Louisa May Alcott's novel was a major box office success, helping to solidify Hepburn's Hollywood stardom the year after her film debut opposite John Barrymore and David Manners in Cukor's A Bill of Divorcement. They don't make 'em like they used to Also, the 1933 Little Women...

Olivia de Havilland on Turner Classic Movies: Your chance to watch 'The Adventures of Robin Hood' for the 384th time Olivia de Havilland is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” star today, Aug. 2, '15. The two-time Best Actress Oscar winner (To Each His Own, 1946; The Heiress, 1949) whose steely determination helped to change the way studios handled their contract players turned 99 last July 1. Unfortunately, TCM isn't showing any de Havilland movie rarities, e.g., Universal's cool thriller The Dark Mirror (1946), the Paramount comedy The Well-Groomed Bride (1947), or Terence Young's British-made That Lady (1955), with de Havilland as eye-patch-wearing Spanish princess Ana de Mendoza. On the other hand, you'll be able to catch for the 384th time a demure Olivia de Havilland being romanced by a dashing Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood, as TCM shows this 1938 period adventure classic just about every month. But who's complaining? One the...

Olivia de Havilland picture U.S. labor history-making 'Gone with the Wind' star and two-time Best Actress winner Olivia de Havilland turns 99 (This Olivia de Havilland article is currently being revised and expanded.) Two-time Best Actress Academy Award winner Olivia de Havilland, the only surviving major Gone with the Wind cast member and oldest surviving Oscar winner, is turning 99 years old today, July 1.[1] Also known for her widely publicized feud with sister Joan Fontaine and for her eight movies with Errol Flynn, de Havilland should be remembered as well for having made Hollywood labor history. This particular history has nothing to do with de Havilland's films, her two Oscars, Gone with the Wind, Joan Fontaine, or Errol Flynn. Instead, history was made as a result of a legal fight: after winning a lawsuit against Warner Bros. in the mid-'40s, Olivia de Havilland put an end to treacherous...

Q: “What are the grounds for divorce in this state? “

A: “Marriage.”

No – it’s not the Richard Gere/ Susan Sarandon film from 2004. That was a remake of the same-named 1996 Japanese film. Both of those films had grammatically correct titles ending in question marks but this is The Hi-Pointe’s Classic Film Series so of course it’s the 1937 Shall We Dance starring the great team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

In Shall We Dance Fred Astaire played Peter Peters, an American ballet dancer who’s known as Petrov. He wants to blend classical ballet with modern jazz, and when he sees the picture of tap dancer Linda Keene (Ginger Rogers of course), he immediately falls in love with her. Before they know it, they’re married. Or at least the press thinks so. Shall We Dance was the seventh of the ten Astaire-Rogers movie. This confection has the...

Probably the single most influential piece of film criticism in my life is Manny Farber's piece on Preston Sturges, and in particular his paean to the Sturges stock company ~

"They all appear to be too perfectly adjusted to life to require minds, and, in place of hearts, they seem to contain an old scratch sheet, a glob of tobacco juice, or a brown banana. The reason their faces--each of which is a succulent worm's festival, bulbous with sheer living--seem to have nothing in common with the rest of the human race is precisely because they are so eternally, agelessly human, oversocialized to the point where any normal animal component has vanished. They seem to be made up not of features but a collage of spare parts, most of them as useless as the vermiform appendix."

There are things I don't love about Farber—his insistence upon virility as a...

Doris Day movies: TCM’s ‘Summer Under the Stars 2013′ lineup continues (photo: Doris Day in ‘Calamity Jane’ publicity shot) Doris Day, who turned 89 last April 3, is Turner Classic Movies’ 2013 “Summer Under the Stars” star on Friday, August 2. (Doris Day, by the way, still looks great. Check out "Doris Day Today.") Doris Day movies, of course, are frequently shown on TCM. Why? Well, TCM is owned by the megaconglomerate Time Warner, which also happens to own (among myriad other things) the Warner Bros. film library, which includes not only the Doris Day movies made at Warners from 1948 to 1955, but also Day’s MGM films as well (and the overwhelming majority of MGM releases up to 1986). My point: Don’t expect any Doris Day movie rarity on Friday — in fact, I don’t think such a thing exists. Doris Day is ‘Calamity Jane’ If you haven’t watched David Butler’s musical...

Son of a bitch! George Brent and other Warner Bros. stars forget their lines (photo: George Brent ca. 1940) The Warner Bros. outtakes from the studio’s 1939 and 1940 productions (see below) feature a whole array of movie stars and supporting players not getting things quite right while the cameras were rolling. Perhaps the biggest "star" — i.e., the one featured the most — in the montage is George Brent, who curses right and left after not getting his lines right in several scenes. But not to worry; "son of a bitch" is the strongest exclamation we get to hear. (I’m assuming stronger fare is to be found in the outtakes’ outtakes.) Besides George Brent, the Warner Bros. bloopers montage has Paul Muni joking around while forgetting his lines during the making of We Are Not Alone; Miriam Hopkins having her dramatic moment in The Old Maid ruined by a young maid...

Hayao Miyazaki, Gregory Peck, King Vidor, Ingmar Bergman: Packard Campus January 2011 Thursday, January 6 (7:30 p.m.) The Gay Divorcee (Rko, 1934) An unhappily married woman mistakes a suitor for the gigolo hired to end her marriage. Musical, comedy, romance. Directed by Mark Sandrich. With Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Alice Brady, Edward Everett Horton, Erik Rhodes and Eric Blore. Black & White, 107 min. Friday, January 7 (7:30 p.m.) Tron (Disney, 1982) A computer genius falls into the game he's designed and has to fight an evil intelligence he accidentally created. Science Fiction, action, adventure. Directed by Steven Lisberger. With Jeff Bridges, David Warner and Bruce Boxleitner. Color, 96 min. Rated PG. Saturday, January 8 (2:00 p.m.) My Neighbor Totoro (Toho,1988) When two girls move to the country to be near their ailing mother, they have adventures with the wondrous forest spirits who live nearby. Animation, family adventure, fantasy. Directed by Hayao [...]...

The history of queer characters in mainstream movies has been, at least in part, a history of heterosexual protagonists making fun of gay second bananas. It’s pretty much a given that the gay guy never gets to be the hero, so it boils down to how the supporting gay is going to be handled by the major players and what style of humor society has deemed appropriate for the era when the movie was made.

In the same way that gays off the screen spent the 20th century going from invisible to mocked to militant to a fact of life, so did the "funny" barbs sent our way on the big screen.

Phase One: “You’re gay, and you’re ridiculous.”

When movies began to talk in the late 1920s and beyond, gays were still pretty invisible in American society; that invisibility was mirrored on screen, particularly after the...

Ginger Rogers is Turner Classic Movies‘ Star of the Month of March. Most of the films — perhaps all of them — have been shown on TCM before. So, don’t expect hard-to-find titles such as The Confession, Forever Female, The Groom Wore Spurs, Young Man of Manhattan, Sitting Pretty (1933), A Shriek in the Night, or Harlow (the Carol Lynley version). TCM’s Ginger Rogers salute begins tonight at 5 p.m. Pacific Time with a screening of The Gay Divorcee (above), one of Rogers’ best pairings with Fred Astaire, partly thanks to a top-notch supporting cast that includes Alice Brady, Eric Blore, and Erik Rhodes. That will be followed by the other nine Rogers-Astaire (I know it’s usually the other way around) [...]...

There’s a mixed bag waiting for Disney fans with Volume 5 of the Disney Classic Short Films collection. On one hand you have the unforgettable The Wind in the Willows with the awesome J. Thaddeus Toad and a genuinely touching version of The Ugly Duckling. But then you have four more cartoons all on the older spectrum making it hard to say whether or not the younger ones in your life will be able to sit still. This volume has the highest concentration of older cartoons as well as a newer cartoon that most kids won’t really latch onto – so I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that older children will get more out of this volume than the youngest ones.

The Wind in the Willows (1949)

Directed by James Algar & Jack Kinney, Written by Winston Hibler & Kenneth Grahame

God, what can really be said about this incredible classic.

While Sean Penn’s recent Best Actor Oscar win for Milk helped bring Harvey Milk’s message to a wide audience — both from the increased visibility of the film and from Penn’s moving acceptance speech — the occasion marked another instance of a Hollywood tradition: a gay character played by a heterosexual actor.

Penn, like Tom Hanks (Philadelphia [1993]) and William Hurt (Kiss of the Spider Woman [1985]) before him, was praised for his “bravery” for taking on the role and even — eek! — kissing another man.

Gay actors, on the other hand, get no such credit for playing gay roles; let’s not forget the year that Rupert Everett’s hilarious supporting turn in My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997) was ignored by the Academy, with the implication that queer thespians need merely show up to play queer characters, with no actual acting involved. (To add insult to injury, that same year saw...