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Are there any films I must not miss in the 'Race & Hollywood: Latino Images in Film' festival on TCM?

I have been very curious to see Joseph Losey's THE LAWLESS (Tuesday, May 19, 8 pm) for some time now. STRANGERS IN THE CITY (1962) (Tuesday, May 26, 4 a.m.) looks interesting as well. Though it's been on from time to time, I've never caught William Wellman's MY MAN AND I with Shelley Winters and Ricardo Montalban.

You should see SALT OF THE EARTH if you haven't already.

Am I forgetting something about the Blackboard Jungle?

My Man and I is very bizarre and very uneven in tone, although there are some great, very typical William Wellman moments of tension and cruelty. It's a message film with a semi-hard edge that also wallows in some awfully mawkish American Dream narrative tropes (Montalban's character carries around a letter to him "from" the President of the United States... ick), but Jack Elam's Mexican accent is a hoot and Shelley Winters is pretty fun.

That being said, I wouldn't plan my day around it. Catch it if you're interested in some late Wellman, or if you're a Wendell Corey completist (I mean, who isn't?)

domino harvey wrote:Am I forgetting something about the Blackboard Jungle?

"Rock Around the Clock"? Vic Morrow? Rafael Campos? Jamie Farr? Val de Vargas? Anne Francis? Paul Mazursky making his Hollywood debut? (He'd been in one film previous: Kubrick's debut feature, FEAR AND DESIRE.)

jesus the mexican boi wrote:I have been very curious to see Joseph Losey's THE LAWLESS (Tuesday, May 19, 8 pm) for some time now. .

Thanks for the heads-up. I've been wanting to see this for years. Someone showed it somewhere 30-odd years ago and I caught the last half-hour. It was pretty powerful stuff. Gail Russell plays a Mexican, Sunny Garcia, in what may be one of her best acting jobs. I think she played a reporter. The other Mexicans in the cast are played by actual Mexicans, Lalo Rios and Maurice Jara, and one Italian, Argentina Brunetti. Robert Aldrich was asst. director.

Vic Pardo wrote:"Rock Around the Clock"? Vic Morrow? Rafael Campos? Jamie Farr? Val de Vargas? Anne Francis? Paul Mazursky making his Hollywood debut? (He'd been in one film previous: Kubrick's debut feature, FEAR AND DESIRE.)

I think he's talking about the Latino-ness of it, which despite some actors, I don't recall much of either.

Vic Pardo wrote:

domino harvey wrote:Am I forgetting something about the Blackboard Jungle?

"Rock Around the Clock"? Vic Morrow? Rafael Campos? Jamie Farr? Val de Vargas? Anne Francis? Paul Mazursky making his Hollywood debut? (He'd been in one film previous: Kubrick's debut feature, FEAR AND DESIRE.)

Oh yes, how could I have forgotten that most-stirring of Hispanic anthems, "Rock Around the Clock"? My question was in reference to its inclusion in the TCM theme month, making your mentions of actors like Morrow and Farr a little less than convincing, to say the least.

EDIT: Cold Bishop beat me to it

It did pave the way for Stand and Deliver.

domino harvey wrote:

Vic Pardo wrote:

domino harvey wrote:Am I forgetting something about the Blackboard Jungle?

"Rock Around the Clock"? Vic Morrow? Rafael Campos? Jamie Farr? Val de Vargas? Anne Francis? Paul Mazursky making his Hollywood debut?

Oh yes, how could I have forgotten that most-stirring of Hispanic anthems, "Rock Around the Clock"? My question was in reference to its inclusion in the TCM theme month, making your mentions of actors like Morrow and Farr a little less than convincing, to say the least.

Rafael Campos and Valentin de Vargas are both Hispanic actors in the cast. Dominican-born Campos was one of the lead juvenile delinquents in the film and he was a major '50s touchstone for Latino moviegoers and this was his signature role. Any Puerto Rican of a certain age I talk to who remembers BLACKBOARD JUNGLE always cites Campos.

So that's why it's in there.

Booyah.

Oh wow, the 1955 Red-baiting Trial, featuring Arthur Kennedy's legendary, Oscar-nominated performance, is going to be on TCM Tuesday night at 930 EST. I haven't been able to find a copy of this film anywhere, this is appointment viewing

domino harvey wrote:Oh wow, the 1955 Red-baiting Trial, featuring Arthur Kennedy's legendary, Oscar-nominated performance, is going to be on TCM Tuesday night at 930 EST. I haven't been able to find a copy of this film anywhere, this is appointment viewing

D'oh! Two hours late to look at this thread.

The long-awaited Vidor silents The Crowd (June) and The Big Parade (2:15AM Monday) are both screening in the next couple weeks, so don't miss them! (Although I understand that The Big Parade is NOT the new restoration. That will presumably be in primetime. But the film hasn't aired in four years, so it's nice to see it!)

In other silent news, Henry King's 1923 film The White Sister, starring Lillian Gish, has never aired before, although it has been available online..

nsps wrote:

domino harvey wrote:Oh wow, the 1955 Red-baiting Trial, featuring Arthur Kennedy's legendary, Oscar-nominated performance, is going to be on TCM Tuesday night at 930 EST. I haven't been able to find a copy of this film anywhere, this is appointment viewing

D'oh! Two hours late to look at this thread.

Man, you missed out! Trial is an anti-communist film that doesn't preach to the choir but is instead a left-leaning social problem picture directed at liberal audiences(!) as a sort of warning not to fall into the spell of communism. But surprisingly, there's also a great undercurrent against the McCarthy hearings as well! Dorothy McGuire has a wonderful monologue where she tears apart a character who wants to go before the committee and present solid evidence against communists by proposing that an inquisitor doesn't actually care whether a suspected party knows communists and she then subsequently deflects every attempt he could make to convince them! Really compelling stuff. And even though I'm biased as a huge Arthur Kennedy fan, his work here is possibly his best ever. If for nothing else, the centerpiece rally scene alone should have garnered him the Oscar he lost to Jack Lemmon.

I completely agree with you domino. I wasn’t planning on seeing this because of the synapses but I’m glad I did. Not what I expected and it’s a shame this isn’t on DVD. At least on R1, I don’t know about its availability elsewhere.

I've never seen a Philo Vance film, whether the detective be portrayed by William Powell Basil Rathbone, etc. TCM is showing a bunch tomorrow. (Along with a Laurel and Hardy short parody.) Are there any in particular worth viewing? Perhaps Curtiz's "Kennel Murder Mystery?"

I have quite a few on the Latino festival in my DVR, but I haven't seen them yet so I cannot recommend. I liked The Border incident with Montalban and I'm really looking forward to The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez, which plays on Thursday.

Sunday night TCM is showing a couple of UK films, the 1948 The Winslow Boy and 1943 The Demi-Paradise, neither of which I have come across before.

I've never seen a Philo Vance film, whether the detective be portrayed by William Powell Basil Rathbone, etc. TCM is showing a bunch tomorrow. (Along with a Laurel and Hardy short parody.) Are there any in particular worth viewing? Perhaps Curtiz's "Kennel Murder Mystery?"

Well, I saw ythis too late to be of any use to you, but I find just about all of the PV movies to be interesting to some extent (aside from those two PRC entries that closed out the day, if I'm recalling the schedule correctly). KENNEL is the most interesting from a cinematic aspect. I like BISHOP because I think Rathbone is possibly the best onscreen representation of Vance. If you like puzzle mysteries, they're all good in that way.

HarryLong wrote:

I've never seen a Philo Vance film, whether the detective be portrayed by William Powell Basil Rathbone, etc. TCM is showing a bunch tomorrow. (Along with a Laurel and Hardy short parody.) Are there any in particular worth viewing? Perhaps Curtiz's "Kennel Murder Mystery?"

Well, I saw ythis too late to be of any use to you, but I find just about all of the PV movies to be interesting to some extent (aside from those two PRC entries that closed out the day, if I'm recalling the schedule correctly). KENNEL is the most interesting from a cinematic aspect. I like BISHOP because I think Rathbone is possibly the best onscreen representation of Vance. If you like puzzle mysteries, they're all good in that way.

I recorded Kennel, and almost did the Rathbone as well out of curiosity, but decided I had enough on my DVR at the moment. Thanks for the tip. Maybe I'll catch some of the others at a later date.

Has TCM been broadcasting in HD for a while now? Because a TCM HD channel just magically appeared on my cable feed a few days ago and I was pleasantly surprised to say the least.

Is the programming actually in HD though? Comcast has had an HD TCM channel in my area, but none of the films have been shown in HD. It's the same feed as the SD TCM channel.

Donald Brown wrote:Is the programming actually in HD though? Comcast has had an HD TCM channel in my area, but none of the films have been shown in HD. It's the same feed as the SD TCM channel.

Lots of details here.

The salient points - It looks like it hasn't been officially announced yet, Cablevision will be the first to carry it with the channel coming soon to Time Warner and Comcast. There hasn't been a big rollout yet since they're working on as many agreements as possible with different carriers. Everything they show will be OAR (naturally). The bad news is that they don't have complete access to HD masters or HD-quality prints for all their films, most likely because the rights they have don't include them, so for the first year at least the channel will be showing upconverted content instead of HD sourced material. Still, a 16:9 higher-bitrate channel is likely a big improvement over the standard-def compressed TCM I normally watch, especially for widescreen films. Early reports seem to confirm that the picture quality is not the tremendous improvement one might hope for.

The good news for me personally is it looks like it's coming to Comcast in the Seattle area on July 21st so I can see for myself then.

Yep, I have Cablevision so I guess that makes sense! But I watched Lumet's The Hill today and it was definitely an upconversion but looked great (and OAR) nonetheless. And it was certainly nice to not have to watch it windowboxed!

brendanjc wrote:

Donald Brown wrote:The good news for me personally is it looks like it's coming to Comcast in the Seattle area on July 21st so I can see for myself then.

Ugh. I can only get crappy Broadstripe/Millenium service in my Seattle 'hood. TCM will have everything remastered in HD before I get to view the channel.

Wasn't sure where else to put this, but TCM has a very nice series of posters to promote its summer schedule.