The dates for the 2014 TCMFF have been announced: April 10 thru 13. Now is the time to shop for your airplane tickets and get your hotel rooms reserved. Guest writer Amanda Glenn has her plans all set.
Although, the end of the year is fast approaching, I am not concerned about making plans for the Holidays. What’s much more important to me at the moment is the next TCM Classic Film Festival.
The dates for the 2014 TCFF have been announced (April 10 thru 13). So, if you haven’t already done so, now is the time to shop for your airplane tickets and get a hotel reservation. I have mine! And because I jumped on it I will fly for slightly less than last year. Thus are the rewards of early shopping. And this year I am happy to say that instead of sleeping on my daughters couch, I will be staying at the Roosevelt Hotel. This is a classic Hollywood destination I am excited to experience firsthand, up close and personal. Yes, booking early is a very good idea.
It may seem a bit early to get so into it, but actually most of the festival’s die-hard fans have already made the commitment. If you consider yourself among them then how can you not? Somewhere out there a committee is picking and choosing, looking for gems of long unseen classics that are in need of a good airing for an eager and welcoming crowd. Somebody is exercising their best gray matter I assume in deciding what fine Fred Astaire movie will draw the most grateful appreciation from the devoted fans. I have a personal wish for A Damsel in Distress, but truly I will be delighted regardless to spend a few hours in a darkened theater with the music and the magic that is an Astaire film.
Of course, I am assuming their will be an Astaire film included in this year’s line up. After all, there has been one every year I’ve attended the festival. So, I sincerely hope TCM will continue the tradition. I also expect there to be a chilling Noir, and undoubtedly at least one wild and wooly Western. Keeping in line with tradition there should also be a silent film to remind us all of where we came in. Perhaps there will be two or three so that the festival attendees can revel in the art and the acting that makes the audience forget there is no spoken dialog, no color, and yet the film will still bring them to cheers and tears and standing ovations in the end. There’s also bound to be several examples of those wonder years of the musicals. I have my druthers, and yet hope to be surprised by the showing of films I have never seen, or have forgotten how much I enjoyed once upon a time. I know I will be awed when my once favorite late night TV entertainment is bigger than life and so much more on the big screen (which use to be the only way you could see the classics long before TCM came long).
I let my imagination run wild and fill my “dance card” with a bit of classic Doris Day, Gene Kelly, Clark Gable, Rita Hayworth, Robert Taylor, Eve Arden, Jeff Chandler, Joan Blondell, Leslie Howard, Joel McCrea… OK the list could, and would go on forever. And now the Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival is going to serve them up in grand style as they have for the past several years. The ones we don’t get this year we shall see the next year or the one after that. The really hard job has got to be drawing up the selected “menu” for our celluloid feast. I know this is October and the festival is still another six months away. But I have done my shopping. I am hungry and ready. I can smell the popcorn. Can’t you?