Tag: turner classic movies

Cheek-fil-A

It’s been exactly four years since a top Boston plastic surgeon closed up the huge hole in my scalp, resulting from the removal of melanoma skin cancer. I assume he makes more money from cosmetic surgery than reconstructive. I’ve stayed on his mailing list and I continue to receive promotional announcements. This one showed up today:

Cheek Filler

The late Jo Shishido was known for having cheek filler surgery, in an effort to have a more distinctive onscreen appearance. I became aware of Shishido only recently, from Eddie Muller’s “Noir Alley” series on TCM.

Shishido appeared in many Yakuza (gangster) movies. Regarded as one of the best is Seijun Suzuki’s Youth of the Beast. Click the “CC” icon if the subtitles don’t appear automatically.

https://youtu.be/IlDdkouwR14

Stupid !@@!$@#$##$%^ idiots!

Verizon FiOS workers are on strike. I don’t know if one of them screwed up the TV schedule, or if TCM’s information was wrong, but I set the DVR to record an old, rare movie for somebody — something that isn’t available on video — and it recorded only the first hour of it! AAUGH!! I am so sick and fu*king tired of damned stupid mistakes like this. If we are now supposed to be recording based on program data and not time, THEN THE DATA HAS TO BE !@#$%^&* CORRECT!!!!!! Or, if the running time is in doubt, as was the case here apparently, at least record too much, and not too little. I am REALLY PIS*ED OFF about this!

Follow-up: Tonight, the FiOS DVR listed G-Men from 1935 as the movie at 8, but the original 1932 Scarface was shown. The entry on TCM’s web site was correct. Somebody, somewhere, is screwing up.

Gun hater loves Gun Crazy!

Last week, Turner Classic Movies showed Rififi, a superb 1955 French noir film I’d never seen, or even knew about, until I happened to see a tiny snippet of it at 37 seconds into this video I posted a few weeks ago. This evening on TCM I saw a movie I knew by reputation only, as the inspiration for Bonnie and Clyde — a film that I’ve never managed to watch past the first half hour, maybe because I’m not much of a Faye Dunaway fan.

The movie is Gun Crazy, a fast and tight 1950 B-grade flick. Originally released in 1949 as Deadly is the Female, it was written by Dalton Trumbo, and it’s noted for its brisk direction and groundbreaking camera work. But Gun Crazy belongs to stunning Peggy Cummins, in one of the most viscerally exciting performances I have ever seen. Now 85, Cummins was 24 when she made Gun Crazy.

The only other movie I know Peggy Cummins from is Night of the Demon, that I blogged here. Cummins in Gun Crazy is simply thrilling, defining a look and persona that reminds me of later roles by Carroll Baker, Carol Lynley, and Tuesday Weld.

Somebody has gone to the trouble of posting Gun Crazy in its entirety on YouTube, so I may as well take advantage of that and embed it here.

TCM’s 31 Days of Oscar

Turner Classic Movies — the #1 reason to keep cable TV — has started a 31 days of Oscar series. Here’s the schedule. Tonight they had a nice profile of film historian Kevin Brownlow, who has won an honorary Oscar. Knowing there’s been some contact between TCM and Brownlow gives me hope that Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film will someday be released on DVD.