Turner Classic Movies pays homage to Sydney Pollack

On Monday, June 2, Turner Classic Movies will present four films by Sydney Pollack, the almost unfairly talented director/producer who died Monday and who later in his career turned in some nicely wicked little performances in other people's films (his presence doesn't rescue "Made of Honor," alas). The schedule (all times PCT):

5 p.m.: "The Slender Thread," Pollack's first film, starring Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft.
7 p.m.: "Three Days of the Condor," the Oscar-nominated conspiracy thriller starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway.
9 p.m.: "Tootsie," the beloved gender-bending comedy starring Dustin Hoffman and Jessica Lange.
11 p.m.: "Jeremiah Johnson," starring Robert Redford as a mountain man who seeks revenge when he loses his family.

On July 7, TCM will introduce a new series, "Elvis Mitchell: Under the Influence" (full disclosure: Elvis is a friend of mine); its first episode will feature one of the last interviews Pollack gave, followed by "Tootsie" and then "An American in Paris," a movie Pollack said was an influence on his own work. (The show's title must be a bit of a joke, as Elvis is a teetotaler.)

* UPDATE: Oxygen's jumping on the bandwagon: It'll present Pollack's "The Way We Were" Sunday at 1 p.m. (That one, I wouldn't personally watch so much.)

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Speaking of farewells, the Washington Post's magazine columnist Peter Carlson offered this piquant insight in his farewell missive:

"In the last 12 years, there have been many changes in magazines, but some things never change. For instance, Cosmopolitan and Glamour keep running sex tips and discovering hitherto unknown sex acts pretty much every month. For all those years, I have assiduously studied approximately 2,638,419 sex advice articles, and I believe I can now boil down all their wisdom into two simple rules:

"1) Insert tab A into slot B.

"2) Season to taste."