Turner Classic Movies: the home of Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart and . . . Gwyneth Paltrow?
Better known these days as a lifestyle guru who described her separation from her husband as “conscious uncoupling’’ than for her recent acting roles (such as “Mortdecai”), the much-mocked founder of goop.com joins the lineup of screen immortals as one of her most notorious movies is shown as part of TCM’s annual “31 Days of Oscar” series, which begins Sunday.
“Shakespeare in Love” controversially won the Best Picture Oscar for 1998 in an upset over the far more worthy “Saving Private Ryan.” Many of us still can’t believe Paltrow, then 26, won Best Actress for this piece of pseudo-historical romantic fluff over a field that included better performances from Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett and Emily Watson.
My Twitter pals also reacted negatively when I broke the news (though I was wrong about TCM being a strictly “Paltrow-free” zone — there have been past GOOP incursions into “31 Days” by “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Se7en,” two movies in which Gwyneth has supporting roles).
“Every single time, the hard-core fans don’t like it when ‘31 Days of Oscar’ begins because it’s movies they’ve already seen,” says TCM’s senior vice president for programming, Charles Tabesh, with a chuckle. “They get more excited about Mary Astor being star of the month, but by definition, ‘31 Days’ is more about mainstream movies.”
“Shakespeare in Love” is being shown on March 1 along with the debuts of three other not-exactly-vintage Oscar winners: “Life Is Beautiful” (1997, Best Actor for the infamous Roberto Benigni), “Chicago” (2002, Best Picture) and “The Cider House Rules” (1999, Best Supporting Actor for Michael Caine).
If those seem kind of recent for a “classic” movie channel, prime time over the following couple of nights consists entirely of 21st-century movies, with TCM showing all three “Lord of the Rings” films for the first time as well as Best Picture winners “No Country for Old Men” (2007) and “The King’s Speech” (2010).
TCM has shown only a handful of 21st-century titles in the past, but Tabesh says this flock of newcomers fit well into this year’s “31 Days of Oscar” theme, a chronological history of the Oscars from the first Best Picture winner, “Wings”(1927), to winner for 2011 “The Artist,” the most recent film ever to debut on the network.
“Getting access to some of these movies is harder than the older titles,” Tabesh says. (The March 1 movies were acquired as part of a deal with Miramax, while in other cases TCM piggybacked on rights held by sister channels TNT and TBS.)
“And ‘The Artist’ became available to us because the other networks aren’t as interested in it as we are,” Tabesh says. A black-and-white comedy with a single line of dialogue set in 1920s Hollywood “was a perfect fit for us.”