It's all we can do here at TVWW not to turn into a nonstop Turner Classic Movies website. The film-focused and ad-free channel continues to be that good. (See BIanculli's current hosanna.)
And on Tuesday and Thursday nights in July, TCM digs deep into the archives of cinema for another of its fun and fascinating Race and Hollywood festivals -- Arab Images on Film.
From silent-era Rudolph Valentino to 1999's George Clooney movie Three Kings, TCM spans an entire century and a panoply of impressions -- sex-crazed sheiks, exotic evil, desert epics, colonial wars. We get Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, Humphrey Bogart, Anthony Quinn, Sean Connery, Marlene Dietrich, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Jr., Josephine Baker, Elvis Presley, Abbott & Costello and Jerry Lewis.
Here's a look at the Arab themes explored throughout July by TCM host Robert Osborne and guest expert Jack Shaheen (author of Reel Bad Arabs), each Tuesday-Thursday starting at 8 p.m. ET:
July 5 - Early Images - Silent films include Fairbanks' robust actioner The Thief of Bagdad (10:30 p.m. ET) and Valentino's swoon-inducing turn in The Sheik (1 a.m. ET).
July 7 - Arabs as Villains - Bogie tangles with gunrunners in Syria in 1951's Sirocco (11 p.m. ET).
July 12 - Epics - Gems here include David Lean's magnificent Lawrence of Arabia (8 p.m. ET).
July 14 - Arabs Ridiculed - What else would you expect from Eddie Cantor, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, Abbott & Costello, Charley Chase, Jerry Lewis and the Bowery Boys?
July 19 - Arab Women - Such as Vivien Leigh (Caesar and Cleopatra at 8 p.m. ET) and Marlene Dietrich (Kismet at 12:15 a.m. ET)?
July 21 - Arabs as Sheiks - There's music (Presley's Harum Scarum at 8 p.m. ET), comedy adventure (1985's Jewel of the Nile with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner at midnight ET), classic romance (Valentino's The Son of the Sheik at 2 a.m. ET), and historical action (1975's The Wind and the Lion at 3:30 a.m. ET).
July 26 - Evenhanded Portrayals - Some older, like 1943's Five Graves to Cairo (8 p.m. ET), and some newer, like the Gulf War-set Three Kings (midnight ET).
July 28 - Non-Hollywood Films - Be sure to catch Josephine Baker's 1935 French film Princess Tam Tam (8 p.m. ET), along with films from Algeria, Israel and Palestine. There's even a nod to Persians with Iran's Taste of Cherry.
Check out TCM's entire July lineup of Arab Images on Film here.