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The Academy Awards take only one night, but for Turner Classic Movies, they’re good for a month.
February is “31 Days of Oscar” time on the channel, and the annual festival of films honored or nominated by the Motion Picture Academy begins anew today. This time, each attraction is linked to the following one by a performer they share – appropriately starting and ending with Kevin Bacon, of “Six Degrees of …” fame.
While the classics “Casablanca” and “On the Waterfront” are in the festival, TCM host Robert Osborne also is pleased about Oscar winners new to TCM, like “Titanic” and “Gladiator.”
“Some of these things go in and out of license, so somebody has to be on top of that,” he says. “We have ‘Gladiator’ this year, but next year, we may not.”
Osborne introduces each film on-air, but he weighed in on some ahead of time:
•“Lawrence of Arabia” (1962), tonight: “It’s absolutely a big-screen movie, but so many of those aren’t accessible in theaters now, I would rather have people be able to see it on TV – particularly now that so many have big screens and high definition at home – than not see it at all.”
•“Bullitt” (1968) and “The French Connection” (1971), Saturday: “The same guy (stunt coordinator Bill Hickman) did the car chases in both. I’m told that when (director) William Friedkin and the others were putting ‘The French Connection’ together, their instructions were, ‘Do it like “Bullitt” ... but top it.’ ”
•“8 1/2 ” (1963), Sunday: “It’s so interesting, having just seen (the musical) ‘Nine’ to see the original source it came from. It’s also a great example of black-and-white cinematography.”
•“The Graduate” (1967), Feb. 12: “It’s one of those movies that might not have traveled well with time, but I think it does. It’s so good and so clever.”
•“Casablanca” (1942), Feb. 14: “Ingrid Bergman never wanted to do it. She was at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel once and got a stack of mail, all from people talking about ‘Casablanca.’ She said, ‘I can’t understand it. It’s such an ordinary film, and I’ve made so many good ones.’ She really was kind of irritated about that.”
