Sunday Matinee (Sept. 21 - Sept. 27)

Not half the price ... just half the work.

I would be remiss to begin with anything other than the news that Paul Newman died this weekend at 83. Manohla Dargis says his baby blues came in many shades of gray. Roger Ebert also has an in memoriam.

I have only this to say: Newman was a consummate Actor – intentionally with a capital A – whose instant familiarity in both his dashing appearance and his clear, crisp talent contributed to making him one of the last great film stars of the 20th century. We often prematurely canonize the celebrities we love in their deaths, but I think long ago we were able to see Newman was a fundamentally good man worthy of our kind words. In an age of the musical chairs of celebrity romance, he and his second wife, actress Joanne Woodward, celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in January. He led a prolific and astounding film career, but he had a second career of sorts with his equally impressive humanitarian work, starting with the Newman's Own natural food company. After taxes, his foundation distributed all of the proceeds to charitable organizations; in his lifetime, that amounted to more than $250 million worldwide. He will be missed.

• YDKS Movies counts down the top five favorite jet-propelled characters.

• James Whale's Frankenstein and Ernst Lubitsch's Design For Living get a thorough review at The Stop Button.

• Daniel at Getafilm calls In Search of a Midnight Kiss "frankly, the kind of old-school independent film that has been noticeably absent from movie theater screens in recent years."

• The Dancing Image, who began a 12 "holy grail" movie meme last month, assembles a master list of the participants' 332 would-love-to-see films

• Novelist Jonathan Lethem, writing in The New York Times, puts The Dark Knight under a cultural microscope. (Hat-tip: The Film Doctor.)

• CageFest ends at Blog Cabins with the film that won Nicolas an Academy Award for acting, Leaving Las Vegas.

• Farzan reviews United 93, a film I haven't had the courage or stomach to bring myself to watch. (Yet I still will probably try to watch it before assembling a Best-Since-2000 list for November.)

• A.O. Scott declares Miracle at St. Anna is "the movie someone should have had the guts or the vision to make" back in the '50s.

• Finally, my look into the filmography of Alfred Hitchcock begins this Wednesday. Noirish City interviewed me about the project and my admiration for the director. It might be a way to whet your palate for what's to come over the course of 31 frenetic days.

And if you haven't seen them already...

This week on Turner Classic Movies:
• Rebecca (1940), Sept 28
• The African Queen (1950), Sept 28
• In the Heat of the Night (1967), Sept 29
• West Side Story (1961), Sept 30
• The Apartment (1960), Sept 30
• Rio Grande (1950), Sept 30
• The Quiet Man (1952), Sept 30
• High Noon (1952), Oct 1 and Oct 4
• Psycho (1960), Oct 1
• King Kong (1933), Oct 2
• A Night at the Opera (1935), Oct 2
• Vertigo (1958), Oct 2
• Brute Force (1947), Oct 3
• The Awful Truth (1937), Oct 3
• Force of Evil (1948), Oct 3
• White Heat (1949), Oct 4
• Touch of Evil (1958), Oct 4
• Casablanca (1942), Oct 5