Fedya

15 years ago, Virginia Postrel over at Reason wrote an interesting piece on how the government requirements stunted cable development. Basically, back then the cable companies had limited bandwidth, and being forced to carry all that local stuff prevented them from carrying that many interesting channels, so they carried stuff that made more money for them like shopping channels. I didn't re-read the article just now, only having googled it for the purposes of being able to post the link, so I don't recall if it mentions the interesting story of DirecTV and over-the-air channels. Initially, the local cable providers tried to use the government to prevent DirecTV from having access to the over-the-air channels, so that local cable could use their carrying those channels (which they were forced by regulation to do) as a marketing point. At some point, they figured out that DirecTV had limited bandwith too, so why not use the government to force DirecTV to carry those over-the-air channels too and use up some of that precious bandwidth? Oh, and the National Association of Broadcasters (representing the over-the-air channels) are, along with the cable channels and the cable/satellite companies, the third leg of this unholy triangle.

Look into the cost of foreign channels. (I pick that as an example because it's probably the ultimate in niche programming) You can get this package of two Brazilian TV channels for the low low price of only $29.95! A la carte pricing of regular cable channels won't be quite so severe, but it won't be pretty. (The foreign channels, of course, won't go defunct since they're really designed for a home market overseas, but that's not true of the English-language channels.) Sadly, there are a lot of William Ropers out there who see the cable providers as having big piles of money, and it therefore being virtuous when the government shafts them.

The numbers in The Gang's All Here (Fox, 1943), are particularly surreal, such as "The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat" and the finale with the disembodied heads.

I believe Annie Was a Wonder was Oscar-nominated. The Magnetic Monster, however, was not, so TCM couldn't show that on her birthday.

As if Claude Rains sounded like an authentic Noo Yawker in They Made Me a Criminal.

OK, when it comes to movies, how about Walter Matthau in The Laughing Policeman? Not much to laugh about is he investigates a brutal massacre on a San Francisco city bus.

Arabesque has a plot? I didn't watch the recent airing, because the first time I watched it I found it a bit baffling and never had any desire to watch it again.

Did you have the Descriptive Video Service on by any chance? I can't imagine the actors' lips matching that.

Dave's not here, man.

Michael Caine tries to find some money in Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, but that's probably not legal. (Whether looking for treasure from shipwrecks is legal depends on the jurisdiction; some jurisdictions claim ownership over all the shipwrecks in their waters while others such as the US don't. There have actually been quite a few legal cases in which governments try to extract money from shipwreck searchers who find centuries-old shipwreck.)

Now if somebody could just take the Korean spam and run.

Like the Channel Islands, it also has an odd legal status with respect to the UK in that it's not independent, but not actually part of the UK either.

I didn't realize Thomas Mann had an island all to himself! Alfred Hitchcock's The Manxman, as well as Norman Wisdom (who died there) could have told you there's only one N in the name of the island, and that it has one of the oldest legislatures in the world.

The characters in The Great Rupert come across their money in a rather different way. And then there are the characters who try to find money in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, but somehow I don't think that's what you had in mind. Also Ray is also looking for $350,000 buried under the Big W in Nightfall, but here the Big W is Wyoming, and he's waiting for the snow to melt so he can get at that $350K.

Would that someone be Clifton Webb?

Negulesco and Crawford were, of course, doing the Burt Lancaster/Deborah Kerr beach scene from From Here to Eternity several years before Lancaster and Kerr.

Have you seen Broadminded by any chance? Lugosi plays South American in this one, and is the foil for Joe E. Brown. It's a bizarre little movie, with an opening scene that's either hilarious or disturbing depending upon your point of view, of a baby party in which all the spoiled rich adults dress up as babies, including Brown in a baby carriage.

No; it's just a different set of things that drive Canadians to hysterics. Tell them, for example, that Canada needs less government management of the health-care sector and watch what happens. I like to joke that the #1 national sport of Canadians is hockey; the #2 national sport is America-bashing.

I think Timothy Hutton would prefer the walnut.

Tell that the W.C. Fields and Allison Skipworth in If I Had a Million.

Joan Fontaine was Asian. I think Vivian Leigh was too.

That's because of his posterior. Oh wait; that was George Brent. I always found both of them wooden. John Lund too.

I'm partial to the second one, but that's mostly because it's got James Stewart and Elissa Landi. I think I've mentioned it before, but after Landi left Hollywood, she settled in my home town of Kingston, NY, where she died in 1949. There's a street named after her, although the street name is misspelled "Elisa Landi Drive" with only one S. I love Landi in The Sign of the Cross.

I think what they really want isn't diversity, but LETELU -- Looks Exotic, Thinks Exactly Like Us.

I think that's on the schedule for this coming Thursday (January 28) as part of the William Cameron Menzies spotlight. That and the strange The Whip Hand which is notable for having Howard Hughes change the bad guys from Nazis to Communists after principal photography was done.