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TCM’s 31 Days of Oscar: Best Actor
Over today and tomorrow, TCM’s Oscar festival features movies with Best Actor nominees/winners. Among the highlights today:
3 p.m. - Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: Orson Welles once said that Jimmy Stewart’s performance in this film was “beyond praise.” It is indeed one of his best. (To find out what I think is the best, tune in tomorrow.)
5:15 p.m. - Anatomy of a Murder: Jimmy again, this time in the best courtroom drama ever made - after “Twelve Angry Men” of course.
8 p.m. - Inherit the Wind: More courtroom drama, with Spencer Tracy and Frederic March acting up a storm in Stanley Kramer’s dramatization of the infamous evolution trial. It’s also interesting to see Gene Kelly as a cad of a newspaper reporter.
10:15 p.m. - Starman: Jeff Bridges was nominated for his affecting turn as an alien who has taken the form of Karen Allen’s deceased husband. My favorite line comes when Bridges is driving, runs a light and causes a wreck behind him. When Karen Allen yells at him, Bridges replies, “I observed you very carefully. Red light, stop. Green light, go. Yellow light, go very fast.”
12:15 a.m. — Good Morning Vietnam: Sure, it was Robin Williams basically improvising on camera, but I preferred him to that year’s winner, Michael Douglas in “Wall Street.”
MONDAY
10 a.m. - The Informer: Victor McLaglen won an Oscar as a guilty man harboring a secret in this early John Ford film. Lots of people have seen a little bit of this without even realizing it: It’s the movie that’s playing on TV in “The Departed,” just before DiCaprio shoots a man in the leg, if I recall correctly.
3:45 p.m. = Stalag 17: One of Billy Wilder’s lesser movies, which is to say it’s merely very good instead of indisputably great. Holden was deserving of his Oscar, however.
6 p.m. - The Philadelphia Story: Many people say that Stewart won the Oscar for this movie as a makeup for losing for “Mr. Smith.” That may be, but I prefer not to imply that this performance was less than deserving. He and Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn make for a heck of a triple threat.
10 p.m. - Tender Mercies: Robert Duvall won his Oscar as a country star in this quietly moving film by Bruce Beresford, who went on to direct “Driving Miss Daisy.”
1:30 a.m. - Network: Peter Finch was his Oscar posthumously for his famous “mad as hell” turn, but the best feature of this movie is its screenplay, which was nothing short of prophetic in how it forecast sensationalized news and reality TV.
While we’re on the subject of Best Actor, I’ll tease my blog topic for tomorrow. What are the best movie performances given by a lead actor and a lead actress? I’ll let you all ponder that until I reveal my answer. But if you have a candidate already, feel free to name him/her now.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Movies on TV
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By SRCputt
February 8, 2007 10:27 AM | Link to this
Best Actor of all time? James Stewart, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. (although I’m sure Eric prefers his performance in Vertigo) My runner-up would be Marlon Brando is A Streetcar Named Desire. Third probably Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs.