Set Your DVR!: February 2 - 9, 2009

Hayden Childs — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 16:00:00 GMT

This week has three movies to make your DVR (or, you know, you) happy! First you have a Preston Sturges sex romp straining against the Hays Code. Then a classic sci-fi version of The Tempest with Freudian overtones! And finally, the first third of an iconic samurai trilogy. Enjoy!

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, playing on TCM on Thursday, February 5 at 7 pm central/8 pm eastern. The Hays Code forbade movies in which unmarried people had biblical knowledge of each other, if you know what I mean, and I think you do (hint: I'm not talking about smiting). But Preston Sturges had an idea about a movie in which a small-town lass goes out for a few drinks with some soldiers on their way to WWII and winds up pregnant by one of them. The character is named Trudy Kockenlocker, and if that's not enough for a quick dirty joke, she's played by the hot-to-trot Betty Dutton. To slide under the Hays Code bar, she's had a quickie marriage to the guy. Unfortunately, she can't remember his name. Professional bundle-of-nerves Eddie Bracken stars as her small-town pal stuck in the friend zone, but who wants to be so much more.

Forbidden Planet, playing on TCM on Friday, February 6 at 7 am central/8 am eastern. Many of the sci-fi flicks of this period are about creeping Communism or mindless anti-Communism (as if sacrificing basic civil liberties to fight an idea is anything other than preposterous). In this one, political philosophies are nothing compared to the horrors of the psyche. It's an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest, starring Leslie Nielson in a dramatic (non-ironic, I mean) role, and it's a lot of fun.

Samurai 1: Musashi Miyamoto, playing on IFC on Saturday, February 7 at 7 am central/8 am eastern. This is the first of the Samurai trilogy, starring the always-amazing Toshiro Mifune as Musashi Miyamoto, one of the great swordsmen of Japanese legend. This is cinema at its most epic and iconic. If you watch this, be prepared to check back over the next two Saturdays for the next two parts, because the trilogy really must be seen as a whole.

The Screengrab : samurai 1

Set Your DVR!: February 2 - 9, 2009