sewhite2000

Every channel is working on my cable TV except TCM. They tried to boost my signal long distance and had me unplug the cable box and plug it back in. I don't know. I get about 70 channels and 69 of them are working. TCM is not. Miraculously, they can send someone out in person tomorrow, and I'm not working because it's Presidents' Day. So we'll see what happens. I'm not very optimistic because my TV is very old, and my cable hookup is very old, and I imagine the guy is just going to tell me I need to upgrade to something I can't afford.

He/she was definitely a shortimer around here!

Ha, ha, yeah, more like forty FIVE year old movies! People coming on here and complaining about them being "new" and some desperate attempt to pander to the "younger" crowd has always bugged me.

http://www.afi.com/laa/default.aspx

Well, since no else has said it yet ... this is giving me the heebie jeebies!

I've definitely seen Irving Bacon's face a lot. I'd almost put him in the character actor than bit part category, but some of these others, wow! I suppose this is easier to do in the imdb era than it ever has been, but some of these people, my gosh, I marvel at how you folks ever became aware of their names, much less all their appearances! That is some deep old-school film knowledge that is far beyond me.

Allenex has done this multiple times in the last month or so, replying to threads that are at least 10 years old.

What I learned about plumbing from Cluny Brown is you don't even have to use a wrench properly. You just whack it upside the pipe a few times like it was a hammer, and everything is magically fixed!

On that other thread, several posters, including me, mentioned they assumed the thread, based on its title, had something to do with cord-cutting and the rise of streaming services. To which the OP didn't apologize for being misleading but informed us that jeez, all we had to was click on the thread to find out what it was all about.

Re: William Holden as SOTM. I just did a count. Looks like they're showing 31 movies, 15 of which I personally have never seen before. So, that's pretty good for me personally, although most of the ones I haven't seen are Westerns, which isn't my favorite genre to begin with. Broken down by studio, looks like we have: 11 from Columbia 5 from Warner Bros. 4 each from Paramount and MGM 3 from United Artists 2 from 20th Century Fox 1 from RKO 1 from Village Roadshow That's quite a few from outside the library, and quite a few from Columbia, especially. Overall, I'm quite pleased, but there are some omissions that I wish had been included to make it more comprehensive. Here are some I would have liked to have been added: The Dark Past (Columbia, 1948) Sabrina (Paramount, 1954) The Bridges at Toko-Ri (Paramount, 1954) The Country Girl (Paramount, 1954) The Lion (20th Century Fox, 1962) Paris When It Sizzles (Paramount, 1964) Casino Royale (Columbia, 1967) Breezy (Universal, 1973) The Towering Inferno (20th Century Fox, 1974) Boy, he had quite a year at Paramount in 1954, didn't he? But the only one of his movies from that year TCM is showing is MGM's Executive Suite. I hate they're not including either of his films with Audrey Hepburn, with whom I'm pretty sure he had a real-life affair. Sabrina could have made a nice double feature with Invisible Stripes. How many people know Holden and Bogie were in two movies together, 14 years apart? Anyway, another six or 10 movies would have really made this thing comprehensive, in my opinion. But I'm still pretty happy.

I certainly find some irony, which no one else has noted so far, of the user name Longtimer with the user status Newbie immediately underneath it ...

Yes, when Alec Baldwin interviewed Robert Osborne in 2014 for the network's 20th anniversary, he asked him about both his favorite actress and actor. For actress, Osborne said Gene Tierney, which I think was pretty well known to regular TCM watchers, and then for actor, he said Holden. I will never forget Baldwin's reaction. He giggled like a little kid. I think he was delighted, because Holden was a favorite of his as well, and he liked hearing something of an unconventional answer, given all the actors Robert could have selected. It was one of my favorite moments in TCM history.

I'm with you on this/these data, and I have a piece of paper says that I can teach English in the public schools in my state, for whatever that's worth. I guess it is "these data" because that's how I always see it (I think "datum" is singular), but like you, it grates on my ear, so I usually say it the other way, even thought it's probably wrong.

But as far as that blog goes, I couldn't get six paragraphs into it. There's probably a really good essay to be written about how TCM has changed in the post-Robert era, but this ain't it. Using character assassination as your primary writing device is not going to go very far with me. After seeing his doctored photo of Alec Baldwin, which maybe was intended solely to make him look goofy but borders uncomfortably close to some WWII-era racial caricature and then reading him saying Baldwin "knows nothing about the movies" (patently untrue) and describing Sally Field as "mentally sick", well, I refuse to give that idiot another second of my time.

Ha ha, I almost walked over to my laptop and started a thread right when he said that! But I figured several others would have already beat me to it. I am a Ben M. supporter, but I was pretty baffled by that statement. He was trying to justify why the novel Grapes of Wrath "which at times reads like a socialist manifesto" (I believe were his words) could be so popular and the failure of capitalism was his explanation. I thought this was an oversimplification. I think people more responded to it because of identification with and empathy for the characters and their situations. I mean, maybe capitalism in the form it was taking at the time wasn't going great guns, but as James said, to imply something failed usually means to say it was then done away with and replaced with something else. And in the long run capitalism has done all right by a lot of Americans.

I too would have liked some more specificity from OP, who has vanished. I am unsure the motive behind becoming a member, making one post that expresses a strong opinion and then never following up on it, but they happen periodically. My best guesses are either: 1) The poster is a troll, who just likes going to various message boards and trying to stir up trouble; or 2) The poster is actually one of us, a regular, who has created a second identity to try to make it seem as if more people support his/her point of view. I have some doubts the latter scenario applies here. Surely a regular would know it's 31 Days, not 30 (unless that's part of the plan to appear more like a newbie! Ha ha it's certainly possible to overthink these things). But yeah, I would like to know why the OP couldn't watch two movies in a row? I totally agree with James that this month always has the heaviest load of movies TCM airs regularly, which is a turnoff for many around here, but it's not like they're crummy movies! Last night in primetime was The Grapes of Wrath followed by Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. You couldn't watch those back-to-back? I did, even though I've seen both multiple times. I dug back into one of my old threads to see if I'd broken down this year's 31 days lineup by decade, but I hadn't, just by studio. The full day of documentaries, which were pretty much all from 1960 or later, probably skews the numbers more modern than most previous years. This is a very unscientific analysis, but I've watched 30 movies so far in the first 11 days, almost all of them in primetime, and here's how they break down by decade: 30s 5 40s 7 50s 3 60s 8 70s 4 80s 1 90s 1 00s 1 All those 60s movies are from James' definition of the studio era, so 23 out of 30 would be studio era films. As I say, there's probably not much statistical relevance. I've been watching 31 Days since 2001 (the year, not the movie), and every year they show more modern films in primetime. The daytime hours get more of the older movies. So the over-representation of the 60s and 70s in primetime doesn't necessarily hold up if you look at every film they're showing the entire month.

And one of Robert Osborne's favorite movie scenes ever was Marie Dressler's broad-as-a-barn reaction to Jean Harlow's revelation that she had been reading a book. He always mentioned that scene whenever introducing the film.

Guess they just don't want to show it then!

I'm not sure what you're talking about since they just hired the Game of Throne guys to write and direct a whole series of Star Wars movies. They're going to put out one or two movies a year for the rest of eternity until people stop paying to see them. There may have been a lot of online hate for Last Jedi, but it was still the highest-grossing film of the year. The franchise is not in danger in any conceivable way.

This movie has aired on TCM a handful of times, including just this past October. Bob Hope is not everyone's cup of tea, but I find especially early career Hope very funny. And I have a big crush on Paulette Goddard. I believe I've read an anecdote where Charlie Chaplin spent part of a day on the set (because of Goddard, natch) and praised Hope for his mastery of comic timing.

I've already forgotten if that line is in there (I was zoning out a bit the longer it went), but there are several derogatory references to the Japanese during the movie, including an unfortunate simian reference made by Carey.

Lorna, I just scrolled back and read your review. Your revelation that the captain was Eddie Mars hit me like a thunderbolt. I felt like I'd seen him somewhere before, but I couldn't place him. I also finished the movie feeling uncertain of all this saboteur business, which I certainly couldn't remember reading about anywhere before. Appreciate your clarification there as well.

I Just Watched 31 Days of Oscar Edition Post #4 2/6 I'm gonna skip documentary day, because I'd have to talk about An Inconvenient Truth, which will just draw snark and hate and would probably get moved to OffTopic. But yeah, I did watch that for the first time. Anyway, here's what I saw on a very long night of movie watching: Air Force (Warner Bros., 1943) - Every time this movie plays on TCM, the host mentions that the film was intentionally stocked with unknowns in the cast except for John Garfield, although I would hardly call Gig Young, Arthur Kennedy and Harry Carey "unknowns", and you might not know George Tobias by name, but his face is very recognizable. I did like how Garfield was just one of the guys in this ensemble piece. He's the resident hothead of the plane, but his story arc gets equal balance with the others. It may have been pretty early in the careers of the first two. There are some good special effects in this film of planes going down and so forth. Apparently there was a real Mary-Ann that made a grueling journey from San Francisco to the Philippines in very short order with brief stops at Hawaii and Wake Island (and then is getting ready to depart for Tokyo at the end of the film. It was part of the Dolittle raid, too?), but I feel like very little of the film probably corresponds to reality. It was a morale booster, pure and simple, and given its box office success, it clearly did its job well, while not shying away completely from the realities of war, as not all the crew members make it to the end of the movie. A little too much of it feels movie phony to me. Tobias keeps sticking his face in front of a window where sniper bullets are coming through, and somehow he never gets hit. There's a cute dog trained to bark whenever someone says "Moto", which leads to the surreal utterance of the expression "Hello, Moto" 60 years before the phone commercials. I just read on imdb scene that the (Spoiler Alert!) deathbed scene of Quincannon was written by William Faulkner to makes thing extra poignant, which to my mind, doesn't say much for Faulkner, because the captain hallucinating the plane is taking off and all the crew members playing their parts in the imaginary flight I find pretty hokey, but maybe I'm just not much of a sentimentalist. Carey's pride in his son and his his reaction to the news of his death ("He didn't even get in the air!") are pretty powerful. The Adventures of Robin Hood (Warner Bros., 1938) - Well, what can I say about this one that hasn't been said already? Errol Flynn's best movie? The best action movie of its era? Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone masterfully villain-y, and Olivia De Havilland certainly beautiful, although her substantial roles would have to wait until her departure from WB. Does anyone know the story behind the two credited directors? Certainly odd for the studio era. Even when one director filled in for another for whatever reason, usually only one director got credit. See Gone With the Wind. How the West Was Won (MGM, 1962) - My first time to make it all the way through this thing. There is a certain sameness to the vignettes, so much so, that I can't make out who directed which piece (it's in the credits, I think, but I didn't pay attention). I thought at least I'd be able to tell which were the John Ford segments. I actually sort of avoided looking at the screen during the opening credits. I wanted to see how many actors I could identify without knowing in advance who was in the movie. Though I recognized the faces of George Peppard, Russ Tamblyn and Agnes Moorehead, I couldn't think of their names until I looked them up on imdb after the movie was over. Also I didn't notice it was Raymond Massey making a cameo as Lincoln, although that was certainly appropriate. I was disappointed that (Spoiler alert!) Jimmy Stewart's character died off camera (and Karl Malden and Moorehead pretty much do, too. It was if the filmmakers didn't want any of the good guys to die on camera). It almost felt like he'd shot his scenes in the earlier segment and was already off making another movie at another studio by the time they got around to his character's death. I knew he was going to die because someone listed all the movies in which he plays characters who die (without posting any spoiler alerts, thank you very much) in another thread a couple of weeks ago. I don't know what to say. Probably worth seeing in Cinerama, but on my little TV, it wasn't that spectacular. For all the star power, none of the acting really stands out. The final vignette with the action-packed train robbery was the most classically Western of the scenes. Grand Prix (MGM, 1966) - Oh, my God, I believe this movie is actually about 10 minutes LONGER than How the West Was Won. This is a John Frankenheimer film in which I feel Frankenheimer's identity as a filmmaker is almost completely subsumed in service of the project. All those split screens and the quick cuts in the uptempo dance numbers seemed like they could have been shot by any director in any 60s movie. I wouldn't have recognized Jessica Walter from Arrested Development and Archer in a million years. Wow, she was a looker! As was Francoise Hardy, who had a big multinational hit as a singer around the same time she was in this movie. I like all the actors in this international cast, but the movie just didn't wow me in any particular way.

The network that was the home of Sesame Street has "nothing interesting for children"? I couldn't possibly disagree more. And as someone who works with kids, I can tell you they universally love present-day PBS Kids programming. Clifford the Big Red Dog. Arthur. The Magic School Bus. If you told them PBS had nothing for them, they would not agree with you. While I was intrigued by the thread topic, I too must join others on here completely baffled that of all the incredibly vast amount of garbage in TV history, the only thing you chose to attack was one of the incredibly few examples of high-minded television.

What's her name????