Tag: Turner Classic Movies

Like other creative enterprises that get national exposure but can be overlooked in their hometowns, Turner Classic Movies is a lodestar for fans of classic film that is sometimes taken for granted in Atlanta. The network’s film-purist canon of uncut, commercial-free movies, piped into American homes like cinematic catnip 24 hours a day, has made it a beloved binge-watch for top directors like Nancy Meyers, Alexander Payne, and Martin Scorsese.

It’s late morning on the set of Turner Classic Movies’ annual “Trailblazing Women” film festival and host Illeana Douglas and Star Wars: The Force Awakens editor Maryann Brandon are deep in a discussion about the blood-spattered violent climax of the game-changing 1967 Warren Beatty-Faye Dunaway classic Bonnie and Clyde.

For their latest project, Grammy-winning Sugarland brothers Brandon and Kristian Bush have ventured far afield of their usual country-pop hybrid. The Bush bros reached back to classic cinematic composers, including Max Steiner, Bernard Herrmann, Elmer Bernstein and John Berry for inspiration after the two Turner Classic Movie nuts got the assignment to pen a score for a brand-new 30-second TCM ID, marking the Atlanta-based cable channel’s 20th anniversary.

Q: For movie fans, debate still rages over the screenwriting credit for Citizen Kane. Your father ended up sharing the credit with director Orson Welles. Is this still an internal debate within the family too?

It's not even 11 a.m. on the set of Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz's living room in Midtown Atlanta and already Lawrence Carter-Long has the movie buff, along with director Sean Cameron and the crew completely charmed. Carter-Long, the public affairs specialist for the National Council on Disability, has flown in from Washington D.C. to co-host TCM's month-long film festival "The Projected Image: A History of Disability in Film." Carter-Long curated the 21 films in the series and they range from 1946's post-World War II drama "The Best Years of Our Lives" to Jack Nicholson's Oscar-winning performance in 1975's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" as a psychiatric patient who rebels against the institution's dire conditions. Nattily attired in a gray formal jacket, Carter-Long is artfully making a case for tonight's airing of "Charly," the now-dusty 1968 drama that won Cliff Robertson an Oscar playing an intellectually disabled man who undergoes experimental (and highly questionable by today's standards) surgery to raise his IQ.

Weary of watching grown folks run their reproductive organs into large rubber spheres on TV this summer? Beginning today, Atlanta's own Turner Classic Movies begins it's month-long Summer Under the Stars film festival with 24 hours of programming dedicated each day to a separate star. On August 4, TCM will air a day of Marilyn Monroe's films to mark the 50th anniversary of her death and a day of Elvis Presley's flicks on August 16 to commemorate the 35th anniversary of his passing.

Most of us will forever remember actor Andy Griffith as the kindly TV sheriff in the sleepy Southern town of Mayberry on "The Andy Griffith Show." Or your grandma's favorite TV attorney, "Matlock." Or perhaps the really creepy way that he was buried within seconds of drawing his last breath this week at age 86.

When Turner Classic Movies presents 24 hours of Cary Grant's film starting at 6 a.m. Sunday as part of its "Summer Under the Stars" festival, his only child Jennifer Grant will be tuned in with the rest of the world. "Thanks to this day dedicated to my dad's work on TCM, I get to catch up," Jennifer Grant tells Intel. "It's a part of his life I'm still under-exposed to. By the time I came into the world, Dad had really left that part of his life behind and had moved on."

For nearly four decades, Southern Illinois University professor Dr. Jack Shaheen taught mass media classes during the day and at night toiled on books detailing how Arabs have been portrayed in popular culture. Thanks to Turner Classic Movies' month-long "Race and Hollywood: Arab Images on Film" festival this month, Shaheen now has millions of new students. The author of "Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People" helped to curate the festival and co-hosts the series with TCM host Robert Osborne each Tuesday and Thursday night throughout July.