CATCH A CLASSIC
Classic movie fans can send off 2023 and welcome in 2024 with music, dance and laughs this afternoon and evening with lineups on MOVIES! and Turner Classic Movies.
Dance in the New Year With Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
MOVIES!, beginning at 1 p.m.
Kicking off New Year’s Eve afternoon on MOVIES! and running until well past the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Day, enjoy a toe-tapping six-film marathon of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ classic big-screen pairings, starting with the duo’s quintessential pairing in Top Hat (1935). Following that are Carefree (1938); 1933’s Flying Down to Rio (pictured), the first time Astaire and Rogers danced together onscreen; The Gay Divorcee (1934); Shall We Dance
(1937); and a re-airing of Top Hat.
’70s, ’80s & ’90s Comedies
TCM, beginning at 7 p.m.
This evening’s lineup on TCM, which continues well into early New Year’s Day, features several comedies from the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, some lesser-seen but all hilarious.
The lineup begins with Spaceballs (1987), cowriter/director Mel Brooks’ beloved parody of Star Wars and other sci-fi classics. Brooks also has a couple of roles in the film, starring alongside Bill Pullman, John Candy, Daphne Zuniga, Rick Moranis and Joan Rivers. After that comes Top Secret! (1984), a follow-up to the 1980 comedy hit Airplane! from cowriters/directors Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker (ZAZ). Like the ZAZ’s previous film, this one throws everything at the wall for laughs as it combines and parodies the disparate film genres of Elvis Presley musicals and Cold War/World War II spy movies. Val Kilmer, in his feature film debut, leads the cast as Nick Rivers with not only great comic timing, but also terrific singing and dancing. Next come two music mockumentaries: This Is Spinal Tap (1984), cowriter/director Rob Reiner’s legendary and uproariously funny look at the fictional heavy metal band of the title, followed by the likely lesser-known Fear of a Black Hat (1993), a mockumentary about a fictional hardcore gangsta rap group written and directed by Rusty Cundieff. The lineup concludes in the early hours of 2024 with The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), an anthology of comedy sketches written by the ZAZ team and directed by John Landis, and Murder by Death (1976), a comedic mystery written by Neil Simon and with a heavy-hitting cast including Peter Sellers, David Niven, Alec Guinness, Truman Capote, Peter Falk, Eileen Brennan and Elsa Lanchester.