Tag Archives: Cary Grant

The CALS Hitchcocktoberfest moves NORTH BY NORTHWEST tonight

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North by Northwest (1959, NR)

Dodge a plane. Climb on the face of Mount Rushmore. Spot the kid covering his ears before the gunshot.

Join the CALS Ron Robinson Theater for HITCHCOCKTOBERFEST! They will be screening FIVE classic Hitchcock films throughout October, and start the series off tonight (October 1) with North by Northwest.

The film turns 60 this year, but is as taut and engaging as when Hitchcock first made it.  The screening starts at 7pm.

Cary Grant teams with director Alfred Hitchcock for the fourth and final time in the superlative espionage caper, North by Northwest, judged as one of the American Film Institute’s Top 100 American Films and recipient of three Academy Award nominations.

Grant stars as an innocent man mistaken for a spy in one of Hitchcock’s greatest thrillers. While leaving New York’s Plaza Hotel, advertising executive Roger Thornhill (Grant) has the misfortune of standing just as the name “George Kaplan” is paged — starting a lethal case of mistaken identity and a nonstop game of cat and mouse as he is pursued across North America by espionage agents trying to kill him… and by police who suspect him of murder.

Pursued by spy (James Mason) and counterspy (Eva Marie Saint), Thornhill is variously abducted, framed for murder, chased and in another signature set piece, crop-dusted. He also holds on for dear life from the facial features of the Presidents on Mount Rushmore. It all adds up to another box-office smash from the Master of Suspense.

12 Days of Christmas Movies: THE BISHOP’S WIFE & THE PREACHER’S WIFE

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the-bishops-wife-posterI will admit I have unique taste in movies veering from the ridiculous to the sublime.  This extends to my Christmas movie viewing.

It is not that I dislike It’s A Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story or Miracle on 34th Street, it is that they have become cliché. I long since tired of watching them.  Christmas movies should make me laugh, think, and/or feel.

In the final Twelve Days to Christmas, I’ll share my favorite Christmas movies. Some are designed to be Christmas movies, others simply take place at the Christmas season.  In a few instances, I feature two movies because they are linked to each other (doing so allowed me to include 5 more). They are largely in alphabetical order because I could not rank them.  The one exception is perhaps my favorite Christmas movie.

To get things started The Bishop’s Wife and The Preacher’s Wife.

I remember first seeing The Bishop’s Wife when I was a child visiting my grandparents at Christmas.  My uncle loved old movies so he would watch them a great deal.  Back then, there were only five cable stations and the 4 Arkansas broadcast stations (if you count AETN).  But there seemed to be more on TV worth watching then with fewer choices.  Anyway, I remember seeing this movie.

What’s not to love?  Cary Grant, David Niven, Loretta Young?  Any movie with two future Oscar winners and Cary Grant has to be good.  Perhaps it was this movie that planted the seeds of Episcopalianism in my then-Baptist head.  There is much humor and heart in this movie, but it does not hit you over the head with its message.

It was remade as The Preacher’s Wife with Tony winners Denzel Washington and Courtney B. Vance, Tony nominee Loretta Devine and the incomparable Whitney Huston.  Yes, it is inferior to the original, but it is still fun to watch.