Fedya

He could always come on the TCM Boards and shill whine.

Ace Eli and Rodger of the Skies (1973) Cliff Robertson plays Ace Eli, a self-proclaimed World War I veteran and barnstorming pilot. He gets in a plane crash that kills his wife, so he rebuilds his plane and takes off with his son Rodger (Eric Shea). They go across Kansas barnstorming, meeting flapper Pamela Franklin and hooker Bernadette Peters. The idea is interesting, but the movie is messed up in oh so many ways. Cliff Robertson seems to be replaying his character from JW Coop, which is entirely the wrong tone for the movie. Eli and Rodger have a sort of Mildred and Veda Pierce vibe about them, which is rather creepy at times. Eli treats Rodger like dirt, while Rodger tries to act more mature than his age by doing things like visiting Peters' character at the bordello. And then there's Jerry Goldsmith's jarring score and the even more jarring 70s-era theme song. 5/10 for some nice production design and aviation scenes. Not for the plot, though.

Denzel Washington and Aretha Franklin Ernest Borgnine with either Katy Jurado or Ethel Merman.

Didn't the re-release Witchcraft Throughout the Ages have narration added to it? (I haven't seen either version in a while.)

Adult.

Have you seen Sparrows?

Tyrone Power starred in Suez.

A man, a plan, a canal: Saint Lawrence Seaway

What do you have against Ada? Able was I ere I saw St. Helena.

Jamaica Inn is underrated. Although when it was on this weekend, I noticed Charles Laughton's eyebrows.

I DVRed 23 Paces to Baker Street, so I'll be looking forward to seeing it at some point in the future after I get through the other 40 or so movies on my DVR that I haven't watched. (I finally got around to watching City of God, which I recorded last October.) FXM's habit of prints that have the credits in Cinemascope but not the main action is irritating. And I don't know if the channel is in HD. Pre-Cinemascope movies are stretched out to fit the 16:9 screen, so with the Cinemascope prints, it's sometimes tough to tell whether it's been panned and scanned to 4:3 or 16:9.

My Cousin Rachel (1952). Richard Burton plays a young British man at the beginning of the Victorian era whose older cousin goes off to Italy for his health, meets Rachel, and dies. Burton has reason to believe the death was actually murder, so he goes to Italy to investigate. Then Rachel (Olivia de Havilland) shows up at the estate in England. Burton still suspects her, but almost on a dime falls hopelessly in love with her. The feeling isn't particularly mutual, as Rachel has a boy toy back in Italy. Eventually, Burton comes to suspect that Rachel is out to kill him, because that's the only way she can get full control of the estate he rather stupidly deeded her. The movie is a steaming mess, but it's never less than interesting. Burton's character's motivations are off the wall and make no sense. Rachel comes across as a jerk who, hating her sister for having won an Oscar first, decides to torment people by acting like Cary Grant in Suspicion, deliberately giving people reason to believe she's a murderess when she may or may not be. (The movie was set before electric lights, so director Henry Koster couldn't put a lightbulb in a glass of milk for Rachel to serve to Richard Burton.) Burton's lawyer has an adult daughter who really should have been written like Diane Baker's character in Marnie, but she's not given enough to do here. 7/10.

The Revolt of Mamie Stover has been running on FXM Retro recently, and is scheduled to air again on October 8. Russell is quite good as woman of loose morals who gets exiled to Hawaii just before World War II, using her looks and then people's necessity to liquidate property quickly due to the war to profit. (Yeah, she's amoral.)

In other California legal news, there's a new law that could make celebrity book signings much less common in the state.

MGM made some interesting (mostly black-and-white) programmers in the 1950s to help subsidize all those Freed Unit musicals.

Reed Hadley, who narrated those Fox docudramas of the 1940s, actually has a small role in this one, but I'd have to look it up to see which part he played. I like the narration, since it makes it easier to figure out who's who and what's going on with so many characters. Since the movie is based on real events, giving away what happened to them doesn't really make a difference.

There's age discrimination in Hollywood, so SAG leaned on state legislators to pass a law to prevent websites from publishing the dates of birth of paying subscribers. Now, IMDb has a subscription thing for those in the industry, IMDb Pro, where they presumably put up their resume. (I'm not in the industry, so I wouldn't pay to subscribe.) Apparently, at least one actress had already sued IMDb (and lost) for publishing her DOB. Obviously, this won't apply to the pages for classic stars who are long since dead, since they're not subscribing to IMDb Pro. But still, it's the thin end of a nasty wedge, and should eventually get declared unconstitutional. (Apparently, the only lawyer who would argue to the Hollywood Reporter that the law will pass constitutional muster is the SAG's lawyer. Quelle surprise.) For the record, I'm a Jack Benny 39-plus.

It's proceeded at 8:00 PM by the hilariously awful Torch Song.

You forgot Sterling Hayden as the big boss in the finale. This is the sort of film I watch and think that if Hollywood had done it in the golden age (cleaned up a lot, of course!), it would have been as a really entertaining B-movie. The plot: three secretaries discover their boss is embezzling, and decide to get back at him -- makes for good B-movie material. I can imagine Warner Bros. casting someone like Guy Kibbee in the Dabney Coleman role, with someone like Aline MacMahon as the new employee. Glenda Farrell would be one of the other two women, and then there might be somebody like Lola Lane.

Did anybody watch Wednesday night's TCM showing? The schedule said it was going to be 159 minutes with a short at about 10:44 PM, which implies that it would have omitted the overture, intermission, and exit music, and also had the one deleted scene (I think it's Phil Silvers going down the river in his car) still cut. But when I watched the first few minutes, I saw the overture. I couldn't stay up for the end since I have to get up at 4:30 AM for work, so I'm curious if it was the 159-minute version or the ~190-minute version.

He was The Thin Man.

If I get a half day off work and it's still showing at the local sixtyplex, I may go see it. I went to a matinee showing of Florence Foster Jenkins a month ago, and there was just me and an elderly couple in the theater.

I'd like to mention the 1925 Studio Tour at 1:30 AM. It's an interesting look at MGM as it was back in 1925, and a good way to put a few names to faces. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that they present their new discovery, 17-year-old Lucille LeSueur. She'd go on to big things, of course, but not under that name.

Let me rephrase it. Once the Joe E. Brown character in Elmer the Great was removed from the game, he wouldn't be allowed to come back in. Bert Wheeler in The Cowboy Quarterback could come back in. (I think back in those days there were still a lot of two-way players.)

I think he's implying he's known this about BD Hyman for a long time.