Critic Robert Koehler’s TCM Fest 2017 game plan
Despite the untimely death of its venerated, longtime host, film historian Robert Osborne, this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival isn’t likely to take on a funereal mood. Instead, it’ll probably be more like a wake. That’s because the overarching theme of the new edition is comedy, under the theme, “Make ‘Em Laugh: Comedy in the ...
Comedy-themed TCM Fest 2017 unfunny in oversight of women 2
Apr
1
2017
In our writing about TCM Classic Film Festival four years ago, we gushed in print, “We love the women of TCM Classic Film Festival 2013.” That year, the annual festival (we have covered TCM Fest since its inception in 2010) honored Barbra Streisand’s tour-de-force film debut in “Funny Girl.” Tippi Hedren, Eva Marie Saint, Mitzi ...
Triumvirate of critical talent to tackle TCM Fest
Mar
31
2017
It’s that time again. arts·meme is launching, for the eighth year running, its special coverage of TCM Classic Film Festival, a whopping four-day spectacular that would make Cecil B. DeMille proud. It’s when the popular television channel moves off the airways and into real time and space, taking over Hollywood Boulevard like the landing of ...
Wyler’s ‘House Divided’ rises from the vaults @ MoMA
A House Divided — it’s one of those handy generic titles that has lent itself to half a dozen movies and a whole lotta TV episodes over the years. Back in 1931, it was an especially apt name for an early talkie starring Walter Huston, neatly encapsulating the drama’s dark oedipal stew. It’s a work ...
Critic Stephen Farber’s TCM Fest 2016 movie round-up 1
The fun of the TCM Classic Film Festival [arts•meme has covered since 2010] is the sheer range of offerings, from obscure rarities to Oscar-anointed hits. Three of my favorite events from this year’s festival featured memorable guest appearances. The Yearling was shown in a magnificent 35mm print from The George Eastman House. Not all studio ...
TCM Fest: Angela Lansbury brings wit, hauteur, menace to ‘The Manchurian Candidate’
In 1961 Angela Lansbury was playing the mother of rising star Warren Beatty in All Fall Down, an intense family drama adapted by playwright William Inge from the novel by James Leo Herlihy. In that film she seemed thoroughly convincing as the overbearing mother to Beatty, even though she was only 11 years older than ...
TCM Fest: Stacy Keach recalls his fighting form for ‘Fat City’ 1
“I was a hero that day,” Stacy Keach told a TCM festival crowd Sunday afternoon. He was talking about the time, on the movie set of “Doc” in Almeria, Spain, when the legendary filmmaker John Huston paid him a visit, hoping he would star in his next feature, Fat City. There may be no conventional ...
Gina! The great Lollobrigida appears @ TCM Fest 2
Apr
30
2016
So much fun, at Friday’s TCM Fest 2016, to view director Carol Reed’s marvelous Cinemascope circus movie, “Trapeze,” a color-drenched treatment of a world gone-by; the setting, a circus smack in the middle of Paris. Cast as a foxy and ambitious she-acrobat, Gina Lollobrigida brings her earthy presence to the film, as she jockeys her ...
Dark doings under SoCal sun in “Private Property” at TCM Fest
The Big Sleep and Horse Feathers are among the treasured favorites unspooling in spiffed-up restorations at the TCM Classic Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday night in Hollywood. But it’s not all starry A-listers on this year’s lineup. The vintage-film faithful will have a chance to discover an obscure and deeply weird independent film from ...
arts·meme’s TCM Fest coverage announced 1
Mar
24
2016
The dream team debuted last year — and hit a home run. So… three strong film writers are set to do it again! The strategy remains the same: Divide and conquer the densely programmed, movie-studded long weekend of the seventh annual TCM Classic Film Festival. Pounding the (once-glittering, still star-studded) sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard and ...