Orson Welles: Happy First Century

Posted on May 8, 2015 at 3:14 pm

Happy 100th birthday to the writer/director/star of one of the greatest films of all time, Citizen Kane. Everyone should see that movie, and then everyone should see it again, listening to Roger Ebert’s shot-by-shot commentary, a master illuminating a master and together both of them illuminating the best and worst of the human spirit.

Turner Classic Movies has a great tribute to Mr. Welles every Friday this month, with some of this best and least known films, hosted by one of my favorite critics, David Edelstein.

Don’t miss:

Touch of Evil

The Third Man

The Lady From Shanghai

Jane Eyre

The Magnificent Ambersons

And don’t forget: “The Stranger,” “The VIPs,” “Chimes at Midnight,” “F for Fake,” and pretty much everything else Welles ever worked on.

Leon Wieseltier Loves Turner Classic Movies

Posted on March 7, 2015 at 3:46 pm

When I turn on the television, unless there is some specific program I am planning to watch I always start with Turner Classic Movies to see what’s on there. And much of the time, that’s where I stop. It’s also the only channel I routinely check to see if there’s something coming up I should schedule on the DVR. I love TCM. So I was delighted to see the revised New York Times Magazine’s second issue has a thoughtful tribute to TCM from Leon Wieseltier. It is a pleasure to read. And he provides a benefit to watching old movies I had not considered in quite this way.

Movies are quick corrections for the fact that we exist in only one place at only one time. (Of course there are circumstances in which being only in one place only at one time is a definition of bliss.) I switch on TCM and find swift transit beyond the confines of my position. Alongside my reality there appears another reality — the world out there and not in here. One objective of melancholy is to block the evidence of a more variegated existence, but a film quickly removes the blockage. It sneaks past the feelings that act as walls….When I watch the older movies on TCM, I am struck by the beauty of gray, which makes up the bulk of black and white. How can the absence of color be so gorgeous? Black and white is so tonally unified, so tone-poetic. Shadows seem more natural, like structural elements of the composition. The dated look of the films is itself an image of time, like the varnish on old paintings that becomes inextricable from their visual resonance.

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TCM’s Farewell to The Filmmakers We Lost in 2014

Posted on December 29, 2014 at 8:00 am

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Turner Classic Movies Has a New Sightseeing Tour of Movie New York

Posted on August 21, 2013 at 3:59 pm

Would you like to see where classic movie scenes happened? You couldn’t ask for a better guide than the folks at Turner Classic Movies, who now offer a new tour of New York City.

Hop on tour with Turner Classic Movies and On Location Tours for this one-of-a-kind sightseeing tour of the Big Apple and explore the most filmed city in the world!

We’ve selected the best movie sites around Manhattan to share with you in person and in movie clips. You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at some of your favorite classic films set in New York City, as your guide entertains, informs and quizzes you with trivia questions while showcasing over 60 filming locations!

Not only will you get a taste of New York film history, you’ll receive a great sightseeing tour of Manhattan. By bus, we’ll take you to neighborhoods rich with history, where some of the most iconic films of all time were made.

See Columbus Circle, Lincoln Center and the Upper West Side, hop off at Zabar’s, the well-known market place, featured in You’ve Got Mail and the famous Dakota Building, home to Yoko Ono that can be seen in films like, Hannah and Her Sisters and Rosemary’s Baby. As you make your way to the Upper East Side, you’ll cross through Central Park, learning about dozens of films set here, including the very first motion picture made in New York City.

The sights don’t end there, the tour continues down the east side of Manhattan where you’ll stop for a photo-op in front of Holly Golighty’s apartment fromBreakfast at Tiffany’s before you discover hidden neighborhoods, like Sutton Place to experience a fantastic view of the Queensboro Bridge you’ll recognized from Woody Allen’sManhattan.

As you head downtown, you’ll pass locations that have set the scene for countless films, like the Plaza Hotel, FAO Shwarz, Tiffany’s, Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building and much more before ending your journey at the famous Grand Central Terminal.

TCM Classic Film Tour is the perfect escape for movie fans, but also a great way to see how much, and how little, Manhattan has changed.

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Father’s Day on TCM: Mankiewicz and Mankiewicz

Posted on June 16, 2013 at 12:00 pm

Celebrate Father’s Day on Turner Classic Movies with the father and son team of Ben and Frank Mankiewicz picking the line-up. The TCM host and his politico father are the grandson and son of the legendary Herman Mankiewicz, who wrote the screenplay for the movie many people consider the greatest of all time, “Citizen Kane.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyv19bg0scg

Adam Bernstein writes in The Washington Post:

“Citizen Kane” co-screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who died in 1953, wrote some of the best and most popular movies of all time. His son Frank skipped a career in film and became a top aide to Democratic Sens. Robert Kennedy and George McGovern during their presidential runs.

Frank’s son Ben Mankiewicz grew up in Washington in the 1970s and 1980s in what he called the “political wing” of his family. But on TCM for the past decade, he has found a niche bringing movies of his grandfather’s day to a modern audience.

On Sunday, Ben and Frank Mankiewicz are hosting a Father’s Day lineup on TCM that includes “Citizen Kane” (1941), which ranks first among the American Film Institute’s greatest films of all time. As a tribute to Frank Mankiewicz’s political career, TCM is also screening “All the King’s Men” (1949) with Broderick Crawford and “The Last Hurrah”(1958) with Spencer Tracy.

The wild card is “Smokey and the Bandit” (1977), essentially one long car chase between Burt Reynolds and an exasperated sheriff played by Jackie Gleason. Ben Mankiewicz, who is 45, chose it because it was the first film he remembers seeing with his father.

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