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February 4 movie: Battleground. War movie starring Van Johnson, John Hodiak, Ricardo Montalban, George Murphy and many others. I read on IMDB that the script was based on the writer's own experiences in the infantry, and a lot of the moments that seemed cliche (like the guy who keeps losing his false teeth, and then pretends to lose them to avoid a detail) were actually true stories. I mainly recorded it for Ricardo Montalban but unfortunately he gets killed early on. Which I should have expected: the plucky ethnic guy always gets killed early on. Still, I really enjoyed the movie. It was a nicely done portrait of living in a constant mixture of danger and boredom.

February 1 movie: Picadilly Jim. This was great. One of the highlights of Robert Montgomery's "Star of the Month" turn in TCM. Based on a P.G. Wodehouse novel, Montgomery plays a cartoonist whose father, Frank Morgan, is spurned by the horrible family of his would-be amour. So Montgomery does a satirical cartoon about the family to get back at them. Trouble is, the object of Montgomery's affection is also a member of the horrible family! This was very funny and fast-paced with biting satire. Very much what I want from a screwball comedy.

January 21 movie: AV Geeks: Greatest Hits. Does this count as a movie? It lasted for two hours, it was fiction, and I saw it on a movie screen. So I think it counts. This episode of AV Geeks was all films with catchy and/or annoying songs. My main reason for being there was Shake Hands With Danger, a Caterpiller safety film from the 70s full of guys falling off heavy equipment, getting their hands mangled, and so forth. And yes, it includes an obscenely catchy song, called "Shake Hands With Danger," of course.

The bad thing about the evening was a horrifyingly bad puppet show that Skip showed in its entirety before the program began. He said it was made by some friends of his. I'm sure they're nice people, but the show was awful. It was all shock value, no funny. The low points were so gross they made me feel kind of ill. He said he might do an entire program of the puppet show. I hope he does, because that will reduce the chance of him showing it before another regular show. I would walk out if that happened again. I would have walked out this time if I had known how bad it was going to be and how long it was going to last. Even though I was in Raleigh, a 40 minute drive away. The puppet show was that unpleasant.

January 30 movie: Petticoat Fever. Robert Montgomery plays a wireless operator alone in the Arctic wilderness. Myrna Loy and Reginald Owen crash land near Montgomery's station and have to stay with him until help can arrive. Loy and Montgomery immediately fall for each other and treat Owen rather badly, considering he did nothing except have the bad luck to be the antagonist in someone else's movie. I can't recommend this unless you're a Montgomery (or Loy) completist. And I would definitely avoid it if you're offended by offensive portrayals of minorities in old movies.

January 29 movie: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Whew, I think this is the most movies watched in one day since I started the movie list two years ago. Some cable channel was showing the theatrical version of this, Encore I think. This is the first time since the movie came out that I had watched the shorter version instead of the DVD. It was kind of weird because I kept forgetting there were two versions, and wondering what had happened to all those missing scenes. For a moment I was all outraged at Encore for editing the movie. It did lead to some funny moments, like Georg calling Faramir "Lord Not Appearing In This Film."

January 29 movie: Whisper of the Heart. I believe this movie was written by Miyazaki but directed by someone else at Studio Ghibli. It was a wonderful story about two teenagers who meet just as their lives are both changing. It was much more based in reality than any other Ghibli film I've seen, but still had a magical sensibility. While watching I felt like magical things might happen at any moment, and maybe were happening just off screen, if that makes sense.

This movie wasn't much for the big drama of, say, Mononoke or Spirited Away. It reminded me more of Totoro in the sense of building a story out of small, beautiful moments. I don't want to give much away, but I loved how much books figured into their relationship. The girl develops a crush on the boy sight unseen, because she keeps seeing his name on the cards in the backs of library books. Then eventually she finds out that he'd been reading books he thought she might like, because he already had a crush on her. I hope this comes out on DVD soon because I really want to see it again.

January 29 movie: Down With Love. While that idiot Ben Mankewitz was introducing Pillow Talk, he gratuitously dissed Down With Love. He said that Down With Love wasn't as funny as Pillow Talk (well, duh), and also it wasn't as funny as Tango and Cash. I haven't seen Tango and Cash but that sounds like an insult to me. So I pulled out the DVD of Down With Love and watched it again.

On previous viewings I was totally smitten with the retro vibe, and didn't really look any further. This time I noticed that the movie falls apart in the third act (actually Pillow Talk has the same problem, but not nearly to the same degree). A lot of the humor is incrediblyt juvenile, even moreso than Pillow Talk. And the retro stylings, while cool, are all over the place -- the movie is set in 1962 but the set and fashions at the ladies' magazine are all kind of 1968 Pierre Cardin. But you know what? I don't care. I still love this movie. It's worth watching for David Hyde Pierce alone. His Tony Randall is pitch perfect.

January 29 movie: Pillow Talk. I love this movie, but I have nothing to say about it that I haven't already said. In fact the same is true of the next movie that day, It Happened One Night. What can I say, it was my birthday and I wanted to watch movies I knew I would love. One time I subbed Divaville on Claudette Colbert's birthday, and I played a couple of clips from the Lux Radio Theater production of It Happened One Night. Alan Hale wasn't in it, alas, but Colbert and Gable were. I think if I recall correctly I played the hitchhiking scene. Which played surprisingly well on radio.

January 29 movie: Ninotchka. I love this movie! Very funny romantic comedy starring Greta Garbo as a dedicated Soviet who comes to Paris on government business, and falls in love with Melvyn Douglas in spite of herself. Great supporting work by the master comic actors Sig Ruman, Felix Bressart and Alexander Granach as the three degenerate Soviet agents Garbo is sent to bail out. Also features Bela Lugosi as the stern Soviet commissar. The movie was remade as a musical called Silk Stockings with Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse in the leads, with Peter Lorre as one of the three Soviet goofs.

Joseph Cotten and Dolores Del Rio star in a suspense film about Nazis trying to stop Cotten before he can get back to the US with some kind of military secret or something. I found the movie kind of hard to follow actually. It had good suspense though, and nice supporting work by Ruth Warrick, Agnes Moorehead and Orson Welles (who was given high billing by TCM even though he's hardly in the movie).

January 28 movie: Executive Suite. William Holden, Walter Pidgeon, Barbara Stanwyck and Fredric March star in a drama about executives in a furniture factory jockeying for position after the founder and president suddenly dies. It was a good drama, with excellent acting. But mainly interesting for the (now naive) portrait of corporate ethics. Holden gives a stirring speech about the company's future, how they will only succeed if they value quality and worker morale over short-term profits. It's kind of sad to realize that this vision of American corporate practices has almost totally failed. I do know of companies that operate this way, but only very small organizations in a luxury niche where customers are willing to pay a premium.

January 26 movie: Vanessa, Her Love Story. Melodrama starring Helen Hayes and Robert Montgomery as a couple who separate for stupid reasons and then spend their lives pining for each other. It had some nice moments but my main reaction was "meh."

January 25 movie: 20,000 Years in Sing Sing. Spencer Tracy stars as a prisoner in Sing Sing who is allowed to leave for a day on the "honor system" to visit his sick girlfriend (Bette Davis) and gets blamed for a murder while he's out. Why the warden didn't send a guard with him on his outing, I have no idea. The movie was remade almost shot for shot with John Garfield and Ann Sheridan, but I like this version better. The title refers to the combined sentences of everyone in Sing Sing.

January 25 movie: The Big House. Another one of the movies about prison. This one stars Robert Montgomery as a soft kid who gets sent to a tough prison and is slowly destroyed by it. Actually the latter half of the movie is more about fellow prisoner Chester Morris trying to turn his life around. Wallace Beery is great as one of the hardened prisoners.

January 25 movie: Ladies They Talk About. TCM showed a series of movies about prison. This one starred Barbara Stanwyck as a gangster moll who goes to prison and falls in love with the guy who sent her there. He's some kind of evangelist and she blames him for a failed breakout, shoots him, then realizes she loves him. This was the second movie in recent weeks in which the girl demonstrates her love by shooting the guy. (Untamed was the first.)

January 23 movie: Electric Edwardians. This was an amazing show we saw on Duke campus: a series of short films made in Britain in the earliest years of movies. The purpose of the movies was to capture as many people on film as possible. They would set up a tent and show the movie, and all the people in the town would pay to see themselves in the movie. They filmed things like parades, college graduation ceremonies, workers leaving a factory at the end of a shift, etc. There were films from all over the British midlands, but nothing in Walsall (my dad's hometown). They did show a few minutes of a Manchester United game though.

The main series of movies were from England, and they also showed some similar movies made in North Carolina in the 50s. The main difference between the two that I noticed was people's reaction to the camera. In the NC films, a fair number of people covered their faces or turned away from the camera, 15-20% maybe. But in the British films almost no one did. I only saw one person in all the thousands on film who covered their face. It makes perfect sense when you think about it. In 1904, most of the people in small British towns had probably never seen a movie, much less a movie camera.

January 22 movie: John Loves Mary. This is one of those wacky farces based on a tissue of lies that's simultaneously funny and cringe-inducing. Ronald Reagan plays a WWII vet who helps out a war buddy (Jack Carson) by marrying the buddy's long-lost British girlfriend to get her into the country. Why didn't he just write Carson and tell him that he found the girl? Because then there would be no movie. Reagan was already engaged to Patricia Neal, a senator's daughter. Why doesn't he just tell her what's going on? Because then there would be no movie.

This was funny, but totally wrong for Patricia Neal. She's much better as a serious actress than in a silly movie like this. On the other hand, Reagan was scarily appropriate for the GI who lies constantly but with the best of intentions, and is forgiven by everyone when he gets caught and flashes his "aw shucks" grin.

January 22 movie: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai in the Eighth Dimension. I loved this movie to death when I first saw it years and years ago. Hadn't seen in it all that time, and then discovered that I still love it just as much. This is a rare and wonderful thing. I love the corny jokes, the cheesy props, the parade of 80s fashions. I can even live with the near total lack of female characters. (Penny the damsel in distress hardly counts.) What a shame that it was a flop and they never made the sequel.

January 22 movie: Sahara. Humphrey Bogart leads a ragtag group of soldiers who try to hold a deserted outpost against the Nazis in Africa. It was a good movie, very tense, though there's a level of sadism --Bogart taunting Germans who are dying of thirst with a well they don't know is dry -- that I found a bit hard to take. But there's a twist at the end that makes things okay. [major spoiler: the Germans shell the outpost, hit the well and cause the water to start flowing. So when the German soldiers surrender to get the water, there really is water for them.]

January 21 movie: Dodsworth. This was a nice melodrama about a retired couple who go to Europe and fall out of love. My only criticism is that I could have lived without the conceit of it being all the wife's fault. I suppose it does sometimes happen that a marriage ends entirely because of one's person's problems, but it seems to me that's pretty rare. Usually both people take their part in messing things up. Anyway, Mary Astor is in it as a sensible women, so at least they didn't portray all women as shrill and selfish.

January 20 movie: Diary of a Madman. I had heard of this as one of the better Vincent Price horror movies, but I wasn't that into it. Price plays a judge who convicts a killer, not knowing the killer is possessed by the evil spirit. The spirit jumps into Price and spends the rest of the movie forcing him to do horrible things. I didn't enjoy it. Over and over Price tries to fight off the evil impulse, and fails miserably. There's not a lot of tension when you know that the awful thing is going to happen, every single time.

January 20 movie: My Neighbor Totoro. Another brilliant movie from Miyizaki. He has such a strong understanding of how kids behave and think and different ages. A lot of times kids in movies act like tiny 40-year olds. But the girls in Totoro truly behave and react like the ages they're supposed to be. Also, the cat bus is the coolest thing in the world.

Jan 19 movie: Spirited Away. Georg was away when TCM aired this one, so we watched it again together. It really is an amazing movie. We agreed that one of the best parts of the movie is the sequence on the train: you get to take a break from the tension and plot, just pause and enjoy a few moments of mesmerizing images. Georg commented that the sequence has an Edward Hopper feel to it. I opined that it was the silhouettes of men in fedoras.

I'm so far behind on writing up movies, I feel like I'll never catch up. But feeling that way makes me not even try, which is the only way to ensure that I never do catch up. So here goes.

Jan 18 movie: The Masque of the Red Death. Sometimes you're just in the mood for something deliciously awful, you know? Well, I do anyway. This filled the bill perfectly. I know I've said this before, but Vincent Price is kind of a sad figure to me. He was such a great actor, and he ended up making movies like this -- and this was one of the good ones. He always gave a certain dignity to his characters, no matter how stupid the movie was.

This was a very stupid movie, with only a tenuous connection to the Poe story. My favorite part is the very end, when the Red Death finishes up and meets up with his colleagues: the Yellow Death, the Green Death, the Purple Death, the Blue Death, etc. It's a colored Death convention!

January 18 movie: The Man in Possession. This was a great movie which requires some explanation. According to the movie, in England, if a person owed money, the bailiff could post someone in their house. And the debtor would have to let the person stay in their house until they paid the debt. Can anyone who lives or has lived in England confirm if this was true in the 30s, and if so is it still true now? It's kind of hard to imagine.

Anyway, Robert Montgomery is the guy who has to stay in the house, he falls in love with the woman who owes the money, P.G. Wodehouse did some of the writing, and do you really need to know any more? I enjoyed Robert Montgomery month immensely, especially this one.

January 18 movie: Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. In retrospect it was a big mistake to watch this movie right after all those gritty Depression-era melodramas. I kept wanting to shake my fist and yell "Bourgeois pigs!" at the screen. After Robert Montgomery and Tallulah Bankhead laughing and dancing around their one-room hovel because he stole food so they have something to eat that day, it was a bit hard to sympathize with Cary Grant's trauma at having to share a bathroom with his wife, who clutters up the vanity with her beauty products, and never puts his socks in the sock drawer! For the love of god, why can't she put the socks in the sock drawer? How can anyone live like that?

Okay, I'm selling this movie short. It is funny, especially if you've ever had to do any home building or renovation. Just don't watch it right after Faithless or The Easiest Way or After Office Hours. Or any movie that acknowledges the Depression existed.

January 17 movie: Faithless. Tallulah Bankhead and Robert Montgomery star as a socialite and a .. I can't remember exactly but he had some kind of respectable career. Anyway it's about the two of them sinking to the absolute bottom during the Depression, and finding love with each other on the way. Montgomery tries to get work as a scab truck driver, but the union truck drivers attack him and he's horribly injured, forcing Bankhead into prostitution to pay his medical bills. But Montgomery forgives her. He does that a lot in those early 30s movies. Seems like he's always the guy who forgives the woman for prostitution or being a kept woman or whatnot. I enjoyed the movie, mainly for getting to see Bankhead on screen. Her voice was amazing.

January 17 movie: Another Language. Helen Hayes and Robert Montgomery elope. Then they go home to start their lives and Hayes is crushed to discover that her new husband is totally under the thumb of his horrible family. This was a great romantic drama, with good acting by the two leads and also the family. I particularly liked Margaret Hamilton as Montgomery's sister.

January 16 movie: Private Lives. I enjoyed this a lot more this time than the first time. I stand by my statement that it's about two people who stay together because they're too horrible to inflict themselves on anybody else. But they're funny, so it's worth it. Also Norma Shearer wears a very revealing gown in the first act. Hubba hubba.

January 16 movie: The Easiest Way. Another one of those sordid pre-code movies. The title refers to the "easiest" way for a woman to make money. Constance Bennett plays the kept woman, Adolphe Menjou the cruel rich guy who exploits her, Robert Montgomery the nice guy who falls in love with her, and a very young Clark Gable as the obnoxiously self-righteous brother-in-law.

Robert Osbourne said the movie was based on a much more explicit play: in the play the main character is a prostitute, not a kept woman, and at the end she goes off with another man, unrepentant. In this version they tacked on a "happy" ending where she reforms. Blah, blah, blah.

January 15 movie: Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Another great Miyazaki movie. This one is more of a "ripping yarn," and turns surprisingly violent at the end. But I love it. My favorite character is the crazy older woman who leads the air pirate gang. She's crass and bossy, but she loves her gang, keeps them together, and does the hardest jobs herself. The best part is a scene in her room, where you get a brief glimpse of a portrait of her as a smiling young girl, happy and sweet. It's just onscreen for a second or two but it gives a whole extra dimension to her character.

January 14 movie: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. I really wish I had written this up in a more timely manner. I remember I had lots to say about it the day we watched it. Oh well, it's probably better for everyone if I keep it brief.

This is a relatively early Miyazaki film and in a lot of ways it seems like a precursor to Princess Mononoke, with a lot of similar themes -- the environment, two communities with opposing relationships to the natural world, a girl heroine with a special ability to communicate with animals -- but not as much depth. There are also visual parallels -- the attack of the Ohms is a lot like the rampage of the boars, for example, and the death of the spirit of the forest reminded me a lot of the death of the giant warrior.

If I had to pick only one, I'd probably watch Mononoke because the characters are more complex. But of course it would be better to watch both!

January 12 movie: Seven Seas to Calais. Oh lordie, I'm behind on the movie list. This was Rod Taylor starring as Sir Francis Drake. And I must say, Rod Taylor was the most unconvincing Drake imaginable. He had the exact same hair as in The Glass Bottom Boat, except they added a little goatee. The movie follows Drake to the new world and against the Spanish Armada. Elizabeth in this movie wasn't as memorable as Bette Davis, but she wasn't bad. The most interesting story was Drake's sidekick, whose stupid French girlfriend gets stupidly mixed up in the Babington plot against Elizabeth. The girlfriend carries messages to Mary Stuart; in real life the messages were smuggled inside a beer barrell! Not very flattering to the girlfriend.