NewYorkGuy

Well, if TCM has played it many times before, did they play it in letterbox or the way they showed it the other day? Because after the opening letterbox titles it reverted to flatscreen format before switching back to full letterbox only for the end titles. Really annoying.

Carole King's "Now and Forever" was unfairly treated twice. Madonna's contract for "A League of Their Own" entitled her to have the end title song, shoving "Now and Forever" out, and somewhat misused as the opening title where the soundtrack faded it out instead of allowing its last notes to fully resolve. And then Madonna's dirge "This Used to Be My Playground" was Oscar nominated while the Academy overlooked the gorgeous and wistfully uplifting Carole King number. Audio only below.

With only one exception three or four weekends ago when it was in the correct aspect ratio, the Saturday morning Popeye cartoon has been squashed (or stretched; take your pick) since they got into the mid 1950s color shorts. It might have been a programming error the first time, but how it keeps happening week after week seems to be intentional for some reason.

"Rationing," part of this afternoon's tribute to Marjorie Main, starring Wallace Beery. A comedy with a bit of an action sequence at the end, it was a fun satire of small town American life in 1944, with good fun made of the apparently endless government paperwork involved with goods rationing back on the home front to support the war effort. Most everyone dealt with it with some forbearance and a bit of carping, a bit like the social cooperation we're going through to get through today's pandemic. Donald Meek co-stars but it's mostly an underwritten role. Gloria Dickson, who I see died

Watched "Quick Money" this morning on TCM -- a 1937 comedy with only a couple of names still remembered today (Hattie McDaniel and Jack Carson, neither of whom in a lead role here), about a guy returning to his home town ostensibly to build a resort but a small group of citizens suspects something's up. This is the kind of obscure film I love discovering on TCM, this one featuring some great satire on small town American life.

Meanwhile, this morning TCM showed Droopy's "Mutts About Racing," a Cinemascope cartoon, in pan and scan. 🙄

Huh. Just relearned something I didn't remember -- that Peter Firth was in The Double Deckers. 🙂

Friends and I have been surprised that The New York Times has not run an obituary for him.

I DVR'd the 8 p.m. broadcast (eastern time zone). For some reason Jane Fonda's narration is mixed so low as to be barely audible -- none of the other episodes have been like this. Maybe it was fixed in time for the repeat, but I didn't bother recording that.

My company recently unveiled a new invoice input program. None of the administrative staff outside of the accounting department saw it beforehand -- it was just sprung on them. Everyone hates it -- too much wasted white space, too many clicks to get between certain fields and register something as saved. One of the key reasons our old system was changed was that Flash support was ending. I have little to no tech expertise, but for at least the last year every time I logged into TCM -- and I usually access it on my desktop/laptop than on my phone -- the big screen with the promotional g

It's nearing it's end in the eastern time zone. For some reason it's been stretched horizontally to fit today's flat screen TVs. Oops.

I don't understand why a 20th Century Fox film like A Hatful of Rain can't be shown in full letterbox format. But I've noticed this with a few other Fox movies on the Fox movie channel like Bernadette and A Nice Little Bank That Should Be Robbed -- oddly broadcast in pan and scan. These are not movies that have any great financial benefit to the rights holder any more. Yet we do get to see full letterbox on Fox films like Planet of the Apes, a film arguably with much broader appeal for purchase still today. It's a puzzle.

I didn't know "Devil's Playground," a ridiculous title for a movie about Navy submarine crew members. She played a deliciously bad woman, and anything with Richard Dix is a must-see for me.

The Last Picture Show is the one movie I remember going to with just my dad. And although we'd both by that point seen women's breasts in a couple of movies, yeah, it was a new experience for both of us when the guy got out of the pool. And then the girl, top and bottom visible. Interesting that TCM blew up the image the other night when the guy got out so we didn't see below his waist, but not the girl. We'll assume that's because it was still in prime time... But so much for the uncut part of "uncut and commercial free" (and, yeah, that can be a double entendre).

Sigh. This morning's Saturday morning programming opened with "Blackboard Jumble" from 1957. The opening credits and end title were in Cinemascope but the cartoon itself was shown as I've titled this topic, in pan and scan. There's a Tom & Jerry cartoon I've seen on TCM shown the same way. I don't know about others, but I consider things like this at odds with TCM's "uncut" advertising. The question is, Why? It was an MGM cartoon so I'd think there wouldn't be rights issues.