TCM Guest Programmer November 2013: Simon Helberg

Those of you who, unlike me, watch a lot of episodic television, may recognize the name Simon Helberg as one of the stars of the sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Helberg sat down with TCM host Robert Osborne to present four of his favorite movies, and those movies will be airing tonight. It's an interesting set of movies, even if none of them are particular favorites of mine.

First, at 8:00 PM, is Peter Sellers playing an Indian actor who mistakenly gets an invite to The Party; comic complications ensue.
Peter Sellers returns for a triple role at 9:45 in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. This is another one that I have problems with, mostly because I find the Dr. Strangelove character so intensely irritating with his physical mannerisms.
Then, at 11:30 PM is Brief Encounter, a little British movie from 1945 in which housewife Celia Johnson meets doctor Trevor Howard in a train station, and proceeds to have a brief but intense love affair with him. It's a well-made and high quality movie, but I find it veering into chick flick territory. (In looking to see whether I'd blogged about Brief Encounter before, I see that I made more or less the same comments about it back in January 2012, although I haven't done a full-length post on the film.)
Finally is Modern Romance at 1:15 AM, with Albert Brooks as a film editor with a complicated love life.

TCM says Dr. Strangelove and Brief Encounter are available for purchase from the TCM Shop; I didn't check the Amazon availability of the other two.