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11:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Snowfire (1958 USA): Remember that ‘70s pop song, Wildfire? The one about the girl whose pet pony gets lost in a blizzard? We’ll be ridin’ Wiiiiiildfire... The song was particularly popular in the teenage girl demographic back in the day - the same demographic, I suspect, who most appreciated Snowfire when it came out in 1958. Judging from the many IMDb reviews of this film - which I had neither seen nor heard of until now - young women flocked to see it back in the day, thrilling to its tale of a girl who manages to tame a vicious equine (a metaphor, I assume, for sweaty ‘50s masculinity). Snowfire seems to have been a family affair: written and directed by Dorrell and Stuart McGowan, it stars Don and Molly McGowan as characters named Mike and Molly McGowan. If you like horses or people named McGowan, look no further.

Wednesday 5/18/11

12:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
Casey’s Shadow (1978 USA): And speaking of horses, gee-gee movies are the TCM theme of the month. Here’s another one guaranteed to please the saddle-sore equestrian in your life. This one I’ve seen, though not recently, and it comes with a substantially superior pedigree to Snowfire, being directed by Martin Ritt and headlined by Walter Matthau. Matthau plays Lloyd Bourdelle, a washed up Cajun horse trainer with a drinking problem. Lloyd ruins every colt he gets his hands on, until Casey’s Shadow comes along and presents him with an opportunity for redemption. Matthau’s accent is pretty atrocious and the story fairly routine stuff about overcoming adversity, but the film provides enough Louisiana atmosphere to choke a gator. Look for the always wonderful Whit Bissell as a veterinarian, whilst the still beautiful Alexis Smith co-stars as a wealthy southern belle who likes to invest in horseflesh.

7:00 PM Sundance
The Motorcycle Diaries (2004 ARG): The Motorcycle Diaries comes from the great Brazilian director Walter Salles (Central Station), and like all his films, it looks absolutely stunning; no one can capture the wide open expanses of South America quite like Salles. As with Central Station, the story is also utterly compelling, as it follows our overly-earnest young hero, Che Guevara (Gael Garcia Bernal) and his light-hearted buddy Alberto (Rodrigo de la Serna, in one of the great overlooked performances of 2004) as they embark on a road trip around the continent. The two middle-class boys soon discover a world of poverty and despair far from the privileged one they've inhabited, setting the idealistic Che on the path towards revolutionary fervor and T-shirt immortality. This beautiful and moving film also features a superb score from Gustavo Santaolalla.

Thursday 5/19/11

3:15 AM Turner Classic Movies
Escape in the Desert (1945 USA): This odd Warners second-feature relocates 1936’s The Petrified Forest from peacetime to wartime and replaces the original film’s gangsters with Nazis. In Escape in the Desert, four German POWs break out of a prison camp and hold hostage the inhabitants of a motel somewhere in the California desert. Dutch-born actor Philip Dorn stars as Philip, a Dutch pilot who is mistaken for one of the Nazis but ends up saving the day for motel operator Gramp (Samuel S. Hinds) and sweet young thing Jane (Jean Sullivan). It’s a perfectly enjoyable billfiller, but can’t hold a candle to the original film - which, by happy non-coincidence, airs immediately following at 4:45 AM.

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