sewhite2000

I didn't object to the Beach Boys number, though I didn't realize its inaccuracy. My objection was to every other song in the movie, which would have been three-five years old at the time they were blasting on everyone's car radios.

I have a friend who's a train enthusiast and knows all the lines and where they run, and he can barely even watch a movie in which a line that runs only on the West Coast is shown in a movie supposedly set in Kansas or Florida or Rhode Island. I think he's walked out of some movies because of that. I guess my own pet peeve is pop music, and I tend to bristle at era inaccuracies. American Graffiti is set in 1962, I think? 1963? Late enough that the specter of Vietnam is beginning to loom. While one Beach Boys song plays during the movie, the car radios for all the rest of the movie are blaring first-generation rock & roll songs from about 1956-1959. Maybe pop radio was much different then than what I remember? Instead culling 90 per cent of their playlists from songs that were in the Top 40 at that moment, the radio stations of 1962 spent 90 per cent of their time playing songs that were five years old? But I suspect they just played the music George Lucas wanted them to play, accuracy be darned.

TCM doesn't show this Universal classic every day! Airing in a few minutes for the first time in two years.

Okay, let me have it, all you super-knowledgeable message boarders. Somehow, despite her repeated appearances on TCM and any number of comments about her here on these threads, I never knew until she referenced her grandfather being in a movie with Rosalind Russell just now. While she didn't say her grandfather by name, I took an immediate guess (suppose it could have been Paul Douglas ...) and looked her up.

I only put a "Ha Ha" because I could only see one pic at a time as I was scrolling down, and I certainly wasn't thinking about that last one!

I, uh, don't remember Bugs killing too many people? Those Looney Tunes characters were pretty resilient! He did beat the crud out of a lot of them but they were usually back chasing him five seconds later. Although maybe I'm forgetting some where at the end they rose up out of their bodies with wings and harps (or tails and pitchforks)!

I would probably go with Cushing as well, although I like all of them, with the possible exception of Van Helsing. Not that I don't like Hugh Jackman. He can be a riveting actor. His upcoming portrayal of Gary Hart looks like something really off the beaten path for him, and based on the trailers, he's going to be great in the film. But I saw Van Helsing in the theater, and it was a muddled CGI mess at just that time in movie history when everyone was going CGI crazy to the point of completely forgetting about things like plot or character or interesting dialogue. (Some of the new superhero movies, certainly not all, have shown you can have both). Olivier's performance I remember very little about, been too long since I've seen that movie. That was a phase in his career (well ... the final phase) when he was going really accent-happy in Marathon Man, The Boys from Brazil, A Little Romance, etc. I can't remember know if he used one of those accents, which all sounded kind of the same, frankly, in Dracula. Hopkins, as I recall, tried to make his Van Helsing sound more Germanic or maybe German-Jew, then the straight up British accent of the earlier Van Helsings. And I found his Van Helsing kind of lusty and earthy and maybe not so one-dimensional obssesed.

Sound great! Although I do feel obliged to point out there has been a movie with sort of the same concept 2000's Shadow of the Vampire.

I wouldn't be against it, if the price was reasonable! I only watch two channels a ton (TCM and my the network my local baseball team is on) and only about eight or 10 other channels ever. If could just pay, I don't know, $15/month and only get those channels, I'd be a happy camper. For now, I seem to be stuck having to get cable to watch my baseball team. To my knowledge, I can't stream their games unless I live far enough away from them to be considered "out of area", which is probably 150 miles or more. I've heard 25-year-olds talk about ways they override that, but I don't know any of that stuff, which is probably illegal anyway.

The Devil and Miss Jones used to be a TCM staple, an is one of my favorite screwball comedies. I think it was an RKO release? But that doesn't necessarily mean it's in the Time-Warner catalog. TCM hasn't shown it for five years! Someone else mentioned this film in a another thread recently, and I believe I gave a two-word response: "Another popover!" I love Jean Arthur in pretty much everything I've ever seen her in. She could be both the Barbara Stanwyck-type cynic/manipulator whose heart gets melted by the hero and also the overly-uptight rule-follower. And I found her equally funny and equally sexy in both guises.

I periodically watch some of the titles in the Warner collection on Amazon, especially if I see they're free with my membership. Gone With the Wind was free in September, so what the heck. I watched it for the eleventy-zillionth time. And All the President's Men was free during one of the summer months. But I've also shelled out $2,99 to watch an SD movie or $3.99 for an HD one, about the same as I what used to pay to rent movies at a store. AmazonPrime, bases on my admittedly limited experience, is the most amazing treasure trove out there for fans of classic movies. I would hate for them to lose access to the Warner properties, but sadly, I fear that's the wave of the future. One day, I imagine we will all look back wistfully at this time as the glory days, before we had to pay a fee to every individual film studio, TV network and/or media outlet to stream all their product, past/present and future. (I've also used Amazon to watch some Fox/Paramount/Universal/Columbia stuff that airs on TCM less often or not at all).

Periodic threads like this have made me leery of even giving TCM On Demand a shot. Sometimes when I report that I missed a movie or am going to miss a movie, someone will point out to me that it's on On Demand, which I appreciate, but I'm sort of a risk-averse personality. If there seems to be even a small chance that trying something new (technology-wise) will only expose me to the kinds of frustrations the above posters are experiencing, I usually don't do it.

I rented Claire's Knee when I was in college. Based on the plot description, I think I was hoping for a steamier movie! Not sure how this would play in the era of Hashtag Me Too. A vacationing diplomat in his 30s spends most of the movie obsessing about touching the titular knee which belongs to a girl half his age, not because he's a pervert, you understand, but because ... well, I'm not exactly sure why, although there is endless talk about it, as sometimes happens in French movies. It's important that he do so for deep philosophical reasons, apparently.

To some extent, he's followed Liam Neeson into AARP-age action hero territory, though he still makes dramas like Fences. I would have liked to have seen him do more romances in his career, like Mississippi Masala. He would have been great at that, but that's not a genre much in favor these days (although I think the new version of A Star is Born is poised to be a big hit). It's certainly a sign of respect among those in the industry that he got an Oscar nomination for Roman J. Israel, Esq., a film that didn't do any box office at all and got only fair reviews from the critics. I would have thought a lot of Academy members might not have even heard of it.

I remember that promo! Virtually every promo/tribute TCM has ever aired features a song I've never heard before. While I have no objections to being exposed to new music, I did appreciate at least once, TCM presumably coughed up a little more and used a song from a more big-time artist and one of my favorite songs at that.

Martin played keyboards on a number of early Beatles tracks. I'm not going to remember all of them off the top of my head. "Misery" was one. I believe on "Rock and Roll Music", John, Paul and George Martin all sat on one piano bench and bashed out a little six-handed piano!

Well, speaking of walking out and of The White Album, Ringo famously quit the band for a week after Paul overdubbed Ringo's drum parts on "Back in the USSR" and "Dear Prudence" (and maybe more songs) with his own drumming! When he came back, Paul had strewn a garland of flowers across his drum kit, and all was apparently forgiven (although I think what you hear on those songs is still Paul's drumming).

I consider myself a super-knowledgeable Beatles fan, but I must confess upon hearing the news today that Mr. Emerick's was a name with which I was only marginally familiar, though if you read any of the many Beatles biographies, you're going to encounter it. His behind the scenes contributions, from what I've read today, appear to have been massive. It's probably impossible to say after all these years who exactly did what - George Martin took credit way back in The Compleat Beatles in 1982 for splicing two different recordings of "Strawberry Fields" together and slowing one down until they sounded like they were in the same key. Now, 36 years later, I read today that it was actually Emerick did that. So, who knows? I'm not going to call the great George Martin a liar. Maybe Martin first thought of it and Emerick was the one who actually made it happen. I'm sure ideas were firing fast and furious from everyone and that it was a collaborative process.

Wow, that one went very underreported, apparently! I have his big hit, "I Can't Quit You, Baby," in my iTunes collection. He was only 21 when he recorded that song, but his world-weary voice makes it sound like he could have been three times that age.

I have six Jefferson Airplane songs in my iTunes collection: "Somebody to Love", "Today", "White Rabbit", "The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil", "Wild Tyme" and "Greasy Heart". Grace Slick gets most of the attention, but Marty definitely wrote and sang a beautiful song with "Today".

I respectfully disagree. That was still 40 years ago.

Oh, dear, Goddard doing both Scarlett and Mammy's lines (and with equal enthusiasm) was probably great fun for a white actress in 1939 but today would probably end said actress' career if leaked to social media.

I'm always baffled why people don't just start a new thread instead of resurrecting one nearly 10 years old to make a completely new point! But to each his or her own ... I love how the OP didn't like the movie because it didn't make Nazis human enough! I'm sorry, what ...?

You mean it couldn't have been about Clint Howard???

TCM DID air Moonrise during 31 Days in 2010. I know, because I recorded it. Granted, according to MovieCollectorOH's database, it's the only time that movie has aired in the network's history, but that's a perfect example of what I mean by a surprise or two every year. Sands of Iwo Jima used to be a 31 Days regular, but it hasn't aired since 2010. I have some hope some the recent Republic spotlight might mean we'll see some of these movies in next February's schedule.