sewhite2000

Well, yeah, sort of, but in the Academy Awards, from when I first started watching them around 1977, until I don't know, 2005, they didn't tell you in advance who the presenters were going to be. You just had to wait. But for the last 10-15 years, every time they go to commercial break, they tell you every star who will appear during the next half hour or so. I guess they sort of keep the Best Picture presenter secret, and even though they didn't announce that in advance during the actual telecast, I already knew, because someone on here started a thread about it. So, it was leaked to the media in advance.

Glen Campbell, Powers Boothe, Adam West and John Mahoney among others also left out. The in memoriam segment seems to bring nothing but unhappiness about exclusions every year. Crass as it sounds, I almost feel like they should only include actors and maybe a few directors, since they're the only people the average movie fan knows. No one will ever say, "Hey, they left out so-and-so, the set director, this year!" No one will ever miss those people or complain about it, so why not drop them, so you can get all the actors in?

Yes, I said that in my original post. Still annoys me, though.

It was gone two hours ago, but it's back.

They just did it again, declaring that West Side Story was Best Picture of 1962. It's ridiculous and embarrassing for the Academy that they don't even know what the proper years are.

They've been doing this for 20 years now, maybe more. I guess they're terrified people are going to turn off their TVs unless they let us know which big stars are coming up next. At least one year, they actually announced how many minutes away the big star's appearance would be! This is a grouchy old man thing, I suppose, but I liked it better when I was a child, and most of the presenters and guests would be a surprise right up to the moment they walked on stage.

Eva Marie-Saint was just announced as having been in the Best Picture winner of 1955. Yes, the ceremony in which it received the award was in 1955, but it's considered the Best Picture for 1954, right? As anyone who's watched the movie Quiz Show should know. In the 50s, people understood the films were honored for the year in which they were released Is it too confusing for the people of today to understand the awards are for the year the winning films were released? Because when you do a Google search, if you search for "Best Picture of 1954", you're very likely to get a result of From Here to Eternity.

Dargo ... Dargo ... Dargo ... Dargo ...

I ... didn't know you could do that? Where's the button for reporting spam?

For better or worse, ABC has a vested interest in using Jimmy Kimmel, who's one of their employees, than bringing in an outsider. As long as he wants to do it, and as long as the ratings are good, I imagine the job is his indefinitely.

"And hey, how about Darth Vader in that black and evil mask? Did he scare you as much as he scared me?"

Whew. It's gone. Thank you whoever did that.

The Korean (?) spam has been back in full force the last week or so. I'm not much of a message board guy, but I guess I'm on four message boards, and TCM is the only one where this is a never-ending problem. Been a long time since I became a member. Don't you have to prove you're not a bot or something before you start posting? I wish administrators could finally after so many years find a way to end this once and for all. The other message boards I'm on seem to have done it.

I don't understand this at all. John Wayne would be in favor of women keeping their mouths shut and accepting sexual abuse from men in position of power? (Who knows, he probably would ...)

I mentioned in another thread that I was distressed to see his intros to The Great Lie and Three Faces of Eve hinging almost entirely on a description of plot developments. These are two films that are heavy on plot twists, and I felt he gave away far too much information for the first-time viewers 31 Days draws. He essentially said everything that was going to happen in those two films except for their endings. I hope he refines this approach a bit in the future.

Not at all abominable. Perhaps you only know Chan from his American career, but he's one of the greatest stunt coordinators and stuntmen-action comedy actors of all time. Since the Academy doesn't even honor Best Stunt Work, I think it was richly deserved. Look at some of his Hong Kong work when he was young and could seemingly do anything. It's truly amazing. Few people ever sacrificed themselves for their art like Jackie Chan, who's broken practically every bone in his body at least once.

Oh, man, that is a day I would go outside and take a (24-hour) walk!

You are possibly aware that Duel was directed by someone named Steven Spielberg, and the fact that he went on to the be the most commercially (and often critically) successful director of the last 50 years might have something more to do with why it was of interest to TCM's programmers than the political leanings of the actors? Your wanting to attribute everything in life to an anti-conservative bias is extremely tiresome.

Boy, I disagree strenuously with your assessment of Moonlight, which I quite liked. Best film of the year, I don't know, but definitely worth watching. Far from the worst Best Picture winner. I think a lot of people hate it because the drug dealer character (Spoiler alert!) vanishes a third of the way into the film, and his absence is never explained, though I think given his profession, we're meant to assume he came to a bad end. To me, the way this was handled was not a flaw, but quite a satisfactory plot twist. We seriously couldn't expect this guy to hang around and be a father figure for the long term (the more I type, I remember making this same argument to somebody on here when the movie was new. Maybe it was you?). Other people probably hate it because of the gay relationship. But that's another matter altogether ...

Does that mean you refuse to watch ANY movie with Tom Cruise in it based on that one film? Because he's been in a lot of really good movies.

... 31 Days is almost over!

From the thread title, I assumed this was going to be speculation on what day in TCM history actually showed the fewest different films, but other than Fedya's response, which obviously has to be the winner, the thread is actually more of a Programming Challenge. Notwithstanding that day, my guess was going to be the very first day TCM was on the air, which kicked off with Gone With the Wind two times in a row, followed by Singin' in the Rain two times in a row, and I think there were other repeats as well. Been a while since I've seen that schedule. Someone posts it on here every year or two.

I think it was just the era. Awareness of the importance of the flotation device being worn at all times on the water is a fairly recent phenomenon, as far as I can tell. Our Little League team used to have an end-of-the-season party every year at our coach's lakehouse, and he would take the entire team for spins around the lake in his speedboat, small groups at a time. This would have been right around the time of Natalie's death. None of us wore lifejackets, and none of the parents objected or forbade their children from going.

I would also like to comment on my views of Joe Gillis, perhaps tomorrow, but I'm also interested in the mutant side-topic that has developed. So, to quickly throw in my memories of milkmen before An American in Paris starts, I'm a child of the '70s, and we had milk delivery up until about 1980, I think. I'm too young to remember glass bottles - all our milk was in paper cartons, the era after glass bottles and before plastic containers. Milk was also readily available at the grocery store, so I'm not entirely sure what the attraction was for my parents. Probably because my brother and I drank so damn much of it. We were of that generation where there were four "food groups" - meat, dairy, fruits/vegetables and bread (I don't think they called it grains yet; it was bread, baby! And probably white bread). And we were a family that believed in consuming those four things at rates of roughly 25 per cent of your diet each. I drank milk at meals instead of tea or water. Of course, I had it on cereal at breakfast. I would have a glass of milk with desserts - cake, pie or cookies - or combined milk and ice cream to make a milkshake. And sometimes in the middle of the day, I'd go to the fridge and pour a big glass of milk, again instead of water or juice. So, I guess there was a great need in our household to constantly be replenishing the milk supply. Once they started selling milk in those gallon-sized plastic jugs at the grocery stores, that was probably it for the milkman. Also, by my mid-teens, I just stopped drinking it so much. I couldn't imagine drinking a glass of milk by itself now. I haven't done that for 30 years.

TCM has at least twice shown A Carol for Another Christmas, a made-for-TV movie written by Rod Serling and sponsored by Xerox to promote the UN that aired on ABC in 1964. It's a highly metaphorical update of Dickens' Christmas Carol, in which an isolationist (Sterling Hayden) is guided through time and space by three ghosts (Steve Lawrence, Pat Hingle and Robert Shaw) on Christmas Eve to be taught the importance of international cooperation. The cast also includes Eva Marie Saint, Ben Gazzara and Peter Sellers and Britt Ekland (probably a couple at the time?). I'd love to see this other film too, if TCM could ever air it.