Though he’s remembered mostly as a song-and-dance man, Gene Kelly also performed in a handful of films that required no tap shoes or leotards; straight dramas that required only acting chops and a willingness to commit. One of those is 1950’s Black Hand, an early example of a mafia drama, with Kelly taking a turn as an …
She wasn’t a mass murderer, a vicious gangster, or a supernatural sorceress, but Baby Jane Hudson still ranks as one of cinema’s most sinister villains, just for being herself: a sister, a child star, and an abuser. Played by Bette Davis in Robert Aldrich’s 1962 film, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Baby Jane was named one of AFI’s Top 50 Villains, and well deservedly so, as she’s one of the most insidious villains in movie history—even without a sky-high body count.
Well, this year’s TCM Film Festival has come and gone, and with it, many of my best laid plans. As I mentioned in my intro, this was my first year attending the festival with an actual pass, as opposed to buying standby tickets for individual screenings. While this was an amazingly fantastic way to experience the summer-camp-like atmosphere of movies! movies! movies!, it did mean I had to adjust my perspective a bit to accommodate the new opportunities. Should I get the opportunity to attend again next year, I’ve collected some advice for myself (and others!) to keep in mind to get the best possible experience.
Somehow, throughout these last four days, time had continued progressing in a forward motion to the point that we now reached the LAST day of TCM Fest, a thought that seemed unimaginable on Thursday, or even still today. But we festival-goers now faced that terrible chasm of darkness after Sunday evening, determined to make the best of our final …
Saturday was a bit of an odd day for me, as I only ended up watching one, single film! If you’re wondering how that’s even possible: while, yes, there are slews of amazing films to see every day at the festival, there’s also a bevy of non-film-screening related programming as well… and for me, all of my top choices for those types of events happened to fall on the same day. Normal people might prefer to split up these experiences across several days, but nope, I hoarded them all for Saturday.
Day 2 of the TCM Classic Film Festival was my biggest day of pure movie watching madness, although I ended up not having to make a choice on the death match in the 9am block that I’d been concerned about—The Thin Man, East of Eden, Stagecoach, and On Approval—as I’d lost my phone somewhere between Fifth Avenue Girl and the Chinese Theatre lobby the previous night, and had been up ’til about 2:30am trying to sort it out. The sacrifices I make for movies!