Classic movie alert- set your VCR or DVR

Our dismay over the fact that Three Stooges and The Marx Brothers did dismally in last week's movie fools poll only encourages us to continue to blog alerts when some of our favorite movies are airing on TCM (http://www.tcm.com/). We are big fans of old movies. Hey, you probably already have the channel on your cable system, you might as well get your money's worth from it. If you don't have TCM, Netflix seems to have every movie ever made. (http://www.netflix.com/). Or, if you want to buy one of these movies, check out our Amazon search in the left column.

On Wednesday, April 2nd, To Be of Not to Be is on at 10:00AM. This is a great combination of humor and drama with the sparkling Ft. Wayne native Carole Lombard and the very funny Jack Benny. Jack Benny often made fun of his own movie career but he is quite effective in this one as an actor working with the Polish underground as the Nazi Party occupies their country. Yes, Mel Brooks did remake this in 1983 but no, that does not mean you don't need to see the original directed by legendary Ernst Lubitsch. "So, they call me Concentration Camp Ehrhardt, eh?"

On Saturday, you really can't go wrong parking in front of TCM all day because they are celebrating Bette Davis' 100th birthday. We particularly bring to your attention The Petrified Forest at 07:30AM. You may have heard that Johnny Depp has been in Indiana filming his new movie about John Dillinger. Well, actors have been inspired by this gangster for quite a long time and, in this 1936 movie, none other than Humphrey Bogart takes his turn at it. He isn't playing Dillinger per se, but his Duke Mantee character was inspired by him. This was originally a play and you can tell because pretty much all of the movie takes place in a diner but the portrayals of the characters are so riveting that you don't even miss location changes. If you want to continue the Bette Davis-athon later in the day, Now, Voyager, All About Eve, and Dark Victory are 3 Bette Davis movies that we can watch over and over. (Dark Victory has more Bogey as an unlikely Irish stable worker).