Sean Connery, Star of the Month

It's wonderful to see TCM get the rights to some of the James Bond movies. Even though they're available on DVD due to their popularity, and the movies regularly show up on the commercial cable channels, they've never shown up on TCM before, and this is a good way to try to bring new fans to TCM. Sean Connery made seven films in which he played James Bond, and TCM will be showing six of them. (The seventh, Never Say Never Again, is generally considered not to be part of the "official" Bond canon, as it wasn't made by the same people who produced Dr. No and all the others that followed.) The six Bond movies will be airing in order, two by two, on the first three Fridays in May, starting at 8:00 PM; they'll be repeated on Saturday afternoons. The first week of May stars with Dr. No at 8:00 PM ET, followed by From Russia With Love at 10:00 PM.

The only bad thing about TCM's scheduling is that they couldn't show more of his movies. TCM have aired Murder on the Orient Express and A Bridge Too Far in the past, and made some other interesting movies that, admittedly, would be tougher for TCM to get the rights to. (Perhaps I should write a post on Zardoz some day. There's an interesting movie....)