Born Yesterday

dvr this Turner Classic Movies, June 21, 5:15 a.m. One of the better Oscar trivia questions is, “Who won the Best Actress Oscar over Bette David in All About Eve and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard?” The answer is Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday, one of the few times a brilliant comic performance was rewarded…

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Murder by Death

dvr this Turner Classic Movies, 8:15 p.m., May 18 I don’t think Murder by Death is as good as the similarly themed Clue – both of them are parodies of the 1970s Agatha Christie murder mysteries – but it is still great fun. Written by Neil Simon, the film’s conceit is that a rich madman…

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Hair

dvr this Turner Classic Movies, Sunday, April 21, 1 a.m. While the musical Hair is a beloved classic, there is an unspoken problem with the staged version. It doesn’t really have much of a plot. The movie, on the other hand, which was directed by the great Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,…

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Tarzan the Ape Man

dvr this Turner Classic Movies, Saturday, April 13, 12:45 p.m. Imagine it’s 1932, and you’re gay, or you are sexually attracted to men but don’t use the word “gay” to describe it. But you know. You hear there’s a movie starring an Olympic swimmer, in which he’s wearing only a loin cloth. So, you go…

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Easter Sunday on Turner Classic Movies

dvr this Starting at 4:30 a.m., TCM is playing one great, not-so-great and fabulous Easter movie after another. It starts with Ben-Hur, the epic gladiator-meets-Jesus movie that star Charlton Heston didn’t realize was secretly a gay love story. At 3 p.m., they’re showing Easter Parade, the wonderful Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Ann Miller musical; forgive…

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La Femme Nikita

dvr this Turner Classic Movies, 10:45 p.m., Saturday, March 23 Luc Besson became world famous with the great thriller La Femme Nikita, in which a teenage junkie (Anne Parillaud) agrees to become an assassin in order to avoid going to jail for murder. She’s not happy at first and it’s not easy. She is put…

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The Apartment

dvr this Turner Classic Movies, 2:45 p.m., Saturday, March 2 TCM is finishing off their annual 31 Days of Oscar, and March 2, they’re playing one of the great underwatched gems of the ‘60s, The Apartment. It stars Jack Lemmon as a milquetoast corporate drone who is forced to loan out his pad to his…

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Tootsie

dvr this Turner Classic Movies, 5 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 24 For some insane reason, Dustin Hoffman didn’t win an Oscar for playing Michael Dorsey, a struggling actor who impersonates a woman in order to get a role on a soap opera. The woman he impersonates, Dorothy Michaels, is an uptight, middle-aged redhead who becomes a…

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Rebecca

dvr this Turner Classic Movies 2:15 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 22 One of my favorite movies, Rebecca is romantic, creepy, thrilling and among the most beautifully shot films ever made. It is based on the Daphne du Maurier novel about a young woman who marries a widower and is haunted by his past, his housekeeper and…

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