What’s on TCM: July 2014

Happy July, everyone!  With summer now in full swing, TCM has plenty of great movies to watch on hot summer nights.  Maureen O’Hara is July’s Star of the Month and will be featured every Tuesday night this month.  TCM will also be commemorating the hundredth anniversary of World War I every Friday by showing some of the best WWI movies, including The Big Parade, Sergeant York, Grand Illusion, and All Quiet on the Western Front, just to name a few.

The night I am most looking forward to this month is July 10th.  TCM will be featuring six classic documentaries such as Salesman, Harlan County USA, and Sans Soleil. I really like documentaries and that night’s movies is a nice mix of things I’m looking forward to re-watching and ones I’ve been wanting to see.

Now, on to the rest of the schedule…

Gearing Up for TCMFF 2014

The 5th annual Turner Classic Movie Classic Film Festival kicks off one week from today, and like many fellow attendees, I’ve been poring over the festival schedule, trying to make my plans.  Trying to decide between some of these events has been an absolutely wonderful problem to have.  The movie schedule is a great mix of crowd-pleasing hits, lesser-known gems, and everything in between; not to mention all the additional events with some very highly respected historians and people in the film industry.  Since this is my first time attending the festival, I want to try to experience a little bit of everything.

My main strategy for planning my TCMFF schedule is to do as many things as possible that I would not be able to do at home.  Some movies on the schedule such as City Lights, The Wizard of Oz, and Imitation of Life are movies that I’ve either already seen on the big screen at least once or I know will be playing at theaters at home in the near future.  So even though I adore City Lights, I did just go to a screening of it in December, which made my decision to go for Stella Dallas instead on Saturday morning a fairly easy one.

Although I’m trying to do things I can’t do at home, it’s not the only deciding factor.  In theory, I would love to nothing but silent, foreign, lesser known titles, and new-to-me movies, but many of the screenings are more than just the movie. For opening night, I’m planning on going to the poolside screening of American Graffiti.  Although I went to a screening of that movie a year or two ago, Paul Le Mat, Candy Clark, and Bo Hopkins weren’t there and there aren’t many chances to watch movies poolside in Michigan.

With my mission to experience things I can’t do at home, that means many of the Club TCM events are musts for me.  I’ll be spending a good deal of time at there on Friday with the conversations with Richard Dreyfuss, William Friedkin, and Quincy Jones all happening that day.

So, here’s how my schedule is looking right now…

What’s on TCM: August 2010

It’s August, and that can only mean one thing: Summer Under the Stars!  Like 31 Days of Oscar, Summer Under the Stars never disappoints and I’m definitely excited for this year’s schedule.  There are plenty of days dedicated to showcasing some SUTS mainstays like Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Henry Fonda.  But this year they’re really mixing things up and spending nearly half the month focusing on people who have never been part of SUTS before, including John Gilbert, Ethel Barrymore, and Gene Tierney.  Not only are there lots of stars who are new to SUTS, there are also tons of movies being premiered this month.  I counted a grand total of 54 TCM premieres in August, 19 of which are on Thelma Todd day alone.

Here is a complete list of the stars featured this month.  To get the complete schedule, you can download a copy here.