markfp2
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Posts posted by markfp2
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If it's obvious that a movie will fit into a time slot with time to spare, say a 100 minute movie in a 120 minute slot, I record the entire 120 minutes. If It looks close, like 117 minutes in a 120 minute slot, I'll pad out my record time by 10 mnutes to be safe. Never usually have a problem.
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Just about all channels do that now. I guess the theory is that most folks are too stupid to know what channel they're watching. As these things go, TCM's logo is the least obtrusive and normally up for the shortest time of any of them. Many other channels use large aninmated popups which are totally annoying. I'd prefer no logos at all, but if this is the worst TCM does I can live with it.
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I'm also big fan of the "Carry On" films, but I believe there is a problem with the American TV rights so that's why you don't see them here. As much as I love 'em I have to admit that they are pretty low-brow and will never be mistaken for an Ealing comedy. I also find that people either love them or hate them.
If you are really interested, Anchor Bay Entertainment has released "The Carry On Collection" which includes the first twelve films and a documentary. The quality is great.
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Boy, have you come to the wrong place. TCM is the only channel that shows films unedited, uncolorized, without commercials and in their original screen format. Judging from previous discusssions on these boards, the vaste majority of viewers prefer it that way. By all means, enjoy what you like, but let us have one channel out of a couple of hundred that does it the right way.
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I don't know what that feature is called, but I had it on both Toshiba and Panasonic tvs and vcrs over the years. Don't know if every model has it, but if its important to you ask before you buy. The kids at the local discount store won't know so try one of the big stores like Best Buy of Circuit City or a local appliance store. If you're looking to buy something new, by all means either go DVD or get a DVD/VHS combo. It won't be long before stand-alone vcrs will be hard to come by. Even now, most stores only carry a couple of really low priced ones.
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Thanks, but no thanks. I'll stick with the VHS I recorded from AMC before they went over to the dark side. That will do me until the DVD eventually comes out.
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Another great actor gone, what a pity. As some folks know, I work at a tv station. Well, I happened to be working saturday and on our early news we had a well-deserved obit for Don Knotts. Later on I asked the producer if he was going to do one for Darren McGavin, on the late show, and his response was "who's that?" I named a number of his movies and of course I mentioned "Kolchak: The Night Stalker and still nothing. Finally, I said well you must remember him as the father in "A Christmas Story". Nope, he hadn't seen it. I know he's young and just out of college, and claims to be a movie buff, but geez the lad must have grown up in a bottle.
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I wouldn't blame TCM. The cable company has the say about these things. Just another way to make the customer pay more.
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Johnny, I've never been a real fan of Elvis, but the three you mentioned are about the only ones I'll watch. Much as I like musicals, I could never get interested in his.
Just an interesting note about Elvis movies. For more years than I'll admit, I've been working at a TV station. Back in the '80s we would run a double feature every Sunday afternoon. The program director got a number of Elvis movies from MGM and every Sunday during the rating "sweeps" he'd schedule an Elvis film and a John Wayne film. One week Wayne would go first and the next week Elvis would. When he first proposed the idea I thought it was the oddest double feature I'd every heard of and that he was nuts, but it worked. We got the highest ratings in years.
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I think you've got "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" confused with something else. "Tree" was produced and released by Fox and has been shown on The Fox Movie Channel a number of times, although not recently. Fox had announced that it was being restored and was scheduled to be released on DVD last fall, but it was postponed. Perhaps the restoration is taking longer than expected or maybe in will be included in a Elia Kazan set. Considering the quality of most of Fox's classic DVDs it should be well worth the wait.
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Don't worry about it. There's been a lot of our northern neighbors making that mistake. Since the default schedule is the U.S. one, perhaps it should say so and have the link to the Canadian one more noticable. Anyway, we're glad you're here with us and I hope you enjoy TCM.
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Well, Fred is corect about the 3-strip Technicolor films, but I think another problem , if your talking about movies in a theatre, is simply enough that the projection lamps used are not bright enough to properly light the screen. Up until about twenty-five or thirty years ago all projectors had carbon arc lamps which made light by burning a positive and a negative rod of carbon which created a brilliant light which made the picture sparkle on the screen. Today, they use a Xenon lamp which is like a giant light bulb. They are very expensive and the brighter the lamp the more expensive it is. Lots of times theatres will skimp on the size of the lamp in order to save money. When I go to a theatre that's underlit, I always complain because for my money I expect to see what's on the screen.
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Universal owns all the Paramount films made prior to 1948. So that includes all the titles you mentioned. Universal has been very slow in releasing most of the Paramounts, but perhaps that's changing. "The Cecil B. DeMille Collection" comes out on May 23 and includes "Sign of the Cross", Four Frightened People, "Cleopatra", "The Crusades" and "Union Pacific". Perhaps if this set sells well, they'll release more DeMille films.
I'm looking forward to "Union Pacific" which is my favorite DeMille western.
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I don't believe it's ever been released on DVD. Just one of many that haven't been.
Won't help you with this one, but may I suggest that next time you try TCM's shopping link. They have a partnership with a company called Movies Unlimited which is the largest mailorder and on-line movie retailer in the U.S. You can search on-line or for $10 you can order their fabulous 800 page catalog. Even if you don't order movies from them it makes a great reference as to what's out there. Just go to the top of this page and click on "shopping".
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Another terrific film on the subject is "Come Fill The Cup" (1951) in with Jimmy Cagney was an alcoholic newspaper reporter. Might be tough to find. I haven't seen it around in years.
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Maybe they were a gift from Ed Wood, Jr.
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I think TCM has run this before. It's not in their library, they leased it from Universal. Perhaps they still have the rights or can get them again. Anyway, I'd enjoy seeing it again. Good movie.
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I think you're all missing the point. The question is "What movie can NEVER be re-made? Well, that's easy. Any film can be re-made. It doesn't mean that it will be as good or even better, or even that it should be, just technically speaking any film can be remade.The question really should be "What movie SHOULD NEVER be made? As you all have pointed out that list would be endless.
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Movies can become public domain in several ways. If a film was produced by a big studio, say M-G-M, it was possible that through oversight a copyright just wasn't renewed. Now this sounds strange, but you have to remember that back then, there wasn't any real secondary market for movies. No TV. No DVD. No cable. Other than a rerelease from time-to-time of popular films, most older films weren't often shown and were thought to have little commercial value. In fact, many of today's "lost" films were a result of the studios destroying them just to save the storage costs. Today, of course, the film libraries have tremendous value and the studios have entire departments to look after copyrights.
Many times, while a major studio released a film, it was really produced by an independent producer who perhaps went out of business and his films passed through many different hands and nobody ever bothered to renew the copyrights.
And there could have been "technical" reasons a film wasn't copyrighted. If the film didn't have a proper copyright notice on the credits then it wasn't considered to have a copyright. Likewise, it was a requirement that the producer must deposit a print of the film in the Library of Congress. Many of the smaller studios never bothered to do that because they didn't want the expense of having an extra print made. And sometimes a film would be copyrighted in one country, but not in another.
There are other reasons, but these seem to be the most common.
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"Hondo" had an intermission because it was released in 3-D which required both projectors to be running in sync at the same time. The large reels only held about 45 minutes of film so there had to be an intermission to allow the projectionist to change reels. All the early 3-D films had intermissions and that's why most of than ran less than 90 minutes.
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The simple answer is no. The database is simply a reference tool, and is not a list of what's in the TCM library. If that were the case, TCM would have just about every film ever made.
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While I can't be 100% sure, with a running time of around three hours, it's highly likely that it had an intermission. Certainly in it's 70mm roadshow engagements. As with any of these big films once it got down to it's normal 35mm run and especially in second-run neighborhood houses the option of having an intermission or not was up to the management of the theatre. I once saw "Gone With The Wind" shown straight through without one and that was really a bladder-buster.
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No, if you're watching satellite "rain fade", as they call it , would cause the picture to freeze up and you'd get a message on your screen "searching for satellite". If you are watching on cable, they don't have that problem since their receiving dishes are far bigger than the home ones and would not be affected by rain or snow.
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It has to be at your cable company's end. If the signal was bad when it left TCM everyone would be having the problems you describe. That said, I'll bet if you call your cable company they'll swear everything is ok and will blame TCM. I had that happen to me with another channel. After weeks of being given the brush off by the cable system, I went down to their office and looked at the channel on the TV in the lobby and the picture was just as bad at home. That was the day I ordered satellite service and have never regretted it.
Where is the May Schedule
in Information, Please!
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What ever happen to having a little patience? Believe me guys, life will go on even if the May schedule is a few days late. Perhaps they have so many great films coming up that they're having trouble fitting them all in.