TCMFF Top 5 Redux

A couple of weeks ago I posted my top 5 films that they are showing at this year's TCM Classic Film Festival (TCMFF). Well, it looks like I jumped the gun, because since then, the list has about doubled. At the risk of looking like a flake, I'm going redo my list, and that should keep me satisfied until the full schedule comes out. The films announced so far:

1776 (1972)
42nd Street (1933)
The Apartment (1960)
Apollo 13 (1995)
Calamity Jane (1953)
The Children's Hour (1961) 
The Cincinnati Kid (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
The Grim Game (1919)
Gunga Din (1939)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Lenny (1974)
Limelight (1952)
The Loved One (1965)
Malcolm X (1992)
Marriage Italian Style (1964)
My Darling Clementine (1946)
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
Out of Sight (1998)
Patton (1970)
Pinocchio (1940)
The Proud Rebel (1958)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Reign of Terror (1949)
The Return of the Dream Machine: Hand-Cranked Films from 1902-1913 (2015)

• A Trip to the Moon (1902)
• The Great Train Robbery (1903)
• A Corner in Wheat (1909) 
• Suspense (1913)

Rififi (1955)

Roman Holiday (1953)
The Sound of Music (1965)
Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928)
The Wind and the Lion (1975)
Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)

My revised top 5:
5. Kind of a tossup between Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928) and Pinocchio (1940), but I have to make a choice, so I'm going with Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928)
4. Marriage Italian Style (1964)
3. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
1. The Return of the Dream Machine: Hand-Cranked Films from 1902-1913 (2015)

• A Trip to the Moon (1902)
• The Great Train Robbery (1903)
• A Corner in Wheat (1909) 
• Suspense (1913)

My Sister's Psycho Quilt

My sister Laura is a quilt artist. Normally, when you think of when you think of quilts, you think of geometric patterns and colonial designs. My sister's stuff, not so much. I was visiting with her last weekend, and we were talking about old movies.

She told me that she had been running in a challenge for her local quilt group, where everybody in the group would do a quilt built around a certain theme. It was her turn to pick the topic for the theme. She picked movies.

Her first thought was Fantasia. Then she found out that Disney was very picky about letting people use their characters. Not just picky, really, they didn't want people to use their characters at all. If they caught somebody using their characters, they would make them take down not just the single piece of art that had the Disney characters, but would shut down the entire show.

Since she didn't want to take a chance on having the show shut down, much less get sued by Disney, she had to come up with something else. She had already started the Fantasia quilt, so she decided to turn it into a Psycho quilt.

Makes perfect sense, right? Well, here it is.

Full quilt, size is about 3 feet square 

Detail – Owl, Patrolman, and Norman's eye

Detail – The Shower

Detail – The Fly, lettering in green is a bit hard to read, but says, "... she wouldn't even hurt a fly"

TCMFF Just Got Real

I recently posted a list of my top 5 picks of what I wanted to see at this year's TCM Classic Film Festival (TCMFF). Well, looks like I was a little premature. Since then, the following films have been added:

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Lenny (1974)
Malcolm X (1992)
Out of Sight (1998)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
The Return of the Dream Machine: Hand-Cranked Films from 1902-1913 (2015)

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

This more or less decimates my top 5 from three days ago. I haven't had a chance to digest and figure out how much, but I think at least two of these would push out something from my top 5. Easily my top of what's just been added is, The Return of the Dream Machine: Hand-Cranked Films from 1902-1913 (2015) which includes Georges Melies’ A Trip to the Moon (1902) and other early classics (details here).

Previously announced films:

1776 (1972)
42nd Street (1933)
Apollo 13 (1995)
Calamity Jane (1953)
The Cincinnati Kid (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
The Grim Game (1919)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
Marriage Italian Style (1964)
Patton (1970)
Pinocchio (1940)
The Proud Rebel (1958)
Rififi (1955)
Roman Holiday (1953)
The Sound of Music (1965)
Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928) 

Look for #TCMFF15YO Hashtag at 2015 TCMFF

This year at the TCM Classic Film Festival (TCMFF), my lovely, smart, and snarky 15-year-old daughter will be providing her <140-character film reviews of the films we see. This will be happening on the @TCM Twitter feed and tagged with the hashtag, #TCMFF15YO.

[Update 3/23 – Looks like the tweets will be going out through my @ChrisSturhann account and be retweeted from the @TCM Twitter feed]

To give you an idea of what this will be like, we watched The Bad Seed yesterday. Her review:

If I gave you a basket of kisses, what would you give me? A restraining order

The Bad Seed 

Some of my favorite over the last several months:

I know I'm only 14 and all, but these guys get way more dates than I ever do

Some Like It Hot 

#### 

Now I need to add Electric Sex to my everyday vocabulary 

A Christmas Story

#### 

I've never felt so threatened by boiled eggs

Blade Runner 

And of course, the one that started it all:

That was so cute. Now, my heart feels all weird

City Lights 

If you're attending TCMFF and on Twitter and you have not already done so, you should follow at least these accounts:

• @tcm – Official TCM Twitter account
• @tcmfilmfest – Official Twitter of the 2015 TCM Classic Film Festival

These accounts are a good source of last-minute info of things happening at the Festival, and if you want to follow me too, @ChrisSturhann, I probably wouldn't complain.

Confession – My Mom Used to Do FanFic

My sister and her husband were down from the Bay Area this weekend. We had dinner on Saturday and spent Sunday afternoon in the living room at my house just talking, killing time before their flight. I had TCM on with the sound down real low, and no one was really watching, but I think having an old movie on in the background made her think of something she might not have otherwise. My sister told me something about our mom that I didn't know before.

It turns out my mom was so upset by the ending of the book, Gone with the Wind, that she wrote a final chapter that ended of the story the way she thought it should have ended. Doing the math, my mom would have been about 9 going on 10 when the novel, Gone with the Wind, was first published. I'm assuming she was a little bit older, maybe 13 to 16 when she wrote it.

She hung onto it for years to come, but unfortunately ended up throwing it out when she and my dad moved the family out from Kansas to California in the mid-1950s. I would have loved to read it. The upshot to this is that my mom was writing FanFic about half a century before they even had a name for it. I'm not saying my mom was a pioneer or anything. I'm sure lots of girls did that sort of thing back when. Still, it's kind of cool.

TCMFF Top 5

At about this time last year, I posted a list of the top five movies I was looking forward to at the 2014 TCM Classic Movie Festival (TCMFF). This is what my list looked like last year:

[Read explanation here]

So far, they've announced the following films:

1776 (1972)
42nd Street (1933)
Apollo 13 (1995)
Calamity Jane (1953)
The Cincinnati Kid (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
The Grim Game (1919)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
Marriage Italian Style (1964)
Patton (1970)
Pinocchio (1940)
The Proud Rebel (1958)
Rififi (1955)
Roman Holiday (1953)
The Sound of Music (1965)
Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928)

[Spartacus was pulled off the list.]

To be honest, I'm less psyched about the initial list of this year's offering than I was about last year's. Am I worried? Not in the least. Let me explain.

Last year, I only saw three of my top 5. First off, numbers 1, 3, and 4 were all playing between 6:00 and 10:00 pm on Friday night. Double Indemnity and Blazing Saddles were playing one after the other at the TCL Chinese IMAX. Why Worry was playing at a different theater more or less opposite Double Indemnity. I toyed with the idea trying to watch a bit of Double Indemnity, leaving early to pick up Why Worry, and trying to  make it back in time for Blazing Saddles, but decided it wasn't worth the risk. I might end up screwing up all three.

Number 5, The Wizard of Oz (new restoration in 3D), was playing opposite The Lodger (new restoration of Alfred Hitchcock silent film with live musical accompaniment). Although I had initially planned to see The Wizard of Oz, I completely changed plans on Sunday. It really came down to The Wizard of Oz, which I might get a chance to see in the theater vs The Lodger which I might never get a chance to see in the theater again. The Lodger it was. The Lodger was great, and Ben Mankiewicz was very funny in his intro. He told a great story about something that happened to him on his way over to the theater that night. And as it turned out, I ended up seeing The Wizard of Oz twice in the theater back home after the Festival anyway.

Were they good calls? Most definitely. So when I say, I'm not as psyched about what they are offering so far this year, I know this is just a small fraction of what they will be showing. I know if will be great, and I'll be just fine.

Without further ado, I give you my top 5.

5. The Proud Rebel – I honestly don't know if I've seen this or not, but it sounds really good.  Plus, David Ladd will be in attendance.
4. 42nd Street – I've never seen a Busby Berkeley film in the theater. I saw it a few weeks ago the first time. The choreography is not quite as impressive as some of the other Berkeley films, but I'll give it a shot.
3. Marriage Italian Style – One word, Sofia Loren. Okay, that's two words, but who's counting.
2. Pinocchio – Of the old Disney animated features, Pinocchio is my second favorite behind Fantasia. This year my 15-year-old daughter, Jasmine, is along. I don't think she's even seen it. I know we used to own it on VHS, but I don't think we ever replaced it on DVD. Jasmine is young enough to have not been around when we still had a functioning VCR.
1. Steamboat Bill Jr. – I love Buster Keaton, but I don't think I've ever seen one of his films on the big screen. This should be a treat.

Under normal circumstances, The Sound of Music would go in there somewhere. Since it is a special screening, and I can't get in with the level pass I have, I won't list it. Also Spartacus would probably make the top 5, but it got pulled from the schedule.

µ-Blog – My 15-Year-Old Daughter and the Dress

µBlog – Too long to tweet, too short to call a real post

My 15-year-old daughter is out of school today. Apparently they get a four-day weekend for Presidents Day. I poke my head in her room. She's sitting on the floor organizing one of her drawers. "I want to buy you a dress," I say. [She looks at me like I have snakes growing out of my ears.] "For the TCM Film Festival." [Apparently the snakes just got bigger or they're doing that thing with their tongues and hissing.] "Okay, I'm planning on getting that white dinner jacket. It's like a tuxedo. I think you should have a dress."

"But I like wearing sweats." she says.

"You wore a dress at your graduation."

"My middle school graduation?" [Still snakes]

"Yes, your middle school graduation." I say. "You wore a dress at your graduation and you survived it. Wearing a dress, that is. So I want to buy you a dress so that you look nice when I'm wearing a dinner jacket."

"Umm, I guess," she says under her breath. [Snakes got a little smaller; possibly wishful thinking on my part.]

Now, I love that we get along as well as we do. But as good as we get along, she's still 15. I just have to deal with that.