AndyM108

I only watched "A Story of Floating Weeds" (1934) silent last night because I wanted to see a true Japanese film made for their movie goers and not a bit concerned if the west likes or cares for it or not. All Japanese movies I've seen so far is post World War II films like "Godzilla" and this movie showed us their old way of living. There was not a single English word anywhere . Criterion has released several *very* good pre-war Japanese films, including two which will be revelations to anyone who hasn't seen them: Kenji Mizoguchi's Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion , both from the mid-1930's. And not only did Kurosawa's early career also predate the end of the war, but some of his first postwar films like Drunken Angel and Stray Dog hold their own with any American noir or (IMO) any of Kurosawa's more celebrated Samurai films. There are many others, too, which you can view at http://www.criterion.com/library/expanded_view?c=Japan&f=3&p=1&pp=25

Like you, I'm amazed that this movie doesn't get more play and more notice than it does. In another thread I mentioned Ralph Ellison's comment that Intruder In The Dust was the only "race" movie of its time that wouldn't have been hooted at by an all-black audience. Thank God that my DVD recorder was working, because I plan on showing it to everyone I know. Juano Hernandez's performance was beyond mere superlatives, and I can only imagine what the reaction must have been in Oxford, Mississippi when the movie made its debut there. Here's the full 1949 review from The New York Times , which instantly recognized its greatness: Out of the mordant material of William Faulkner's "Intruder in the Dust," which told a savage story of an averted lynching in a sleepy Southern town, Producer-Director Clarence Brown has made a brilliant stirring film. Under the title of the novel, it opened at the Mayfair yesterday. And without one moment's hesitation, this corner, still shaking, proclaims that it is probably this year's pre-eminent picture and one of the great cinema dramas of our times. For here, at last, is a picture that slashes right down to the core of the complex of racial resentments and social divisions in the South—which cosmically mocks the hollow pretense of "white supremacy"—and does it in terms of visual action and realistic drama at its best. As a matter of fact, the deeper meanings might be utterly missed by some who should still find this film a creeping "thriller" that will turn them, temporarily, to stone. And this is because the story Ben Maddow has expertly derived from Mr. Faulkner's novel and which Mr. Brown has put upon the screen is as solemn and spooky a mystery as you'll ever want to see, powerfully pieced together out of incidents of the most electric sort. On the surface, it is a story of a desperate and courageous attempt to save an innocent Negro from lynching at the hands of a mob—a story of how three people, an old lady and two frightened boys, open a grave at midnight and find the evidence that helps to save the man. And it is also, strictly on the surface, a story of shrewd detective work by a young Southern lawyer and a Sheriff in tracing a callous murderer. But, essentially, this is a drama of the merciless wrench and strain of attitudes and emotions in a handful of people in a Southern town who react to the terrible dilemma that the crisis of the Negro presents. It is a drama of the torturing tensions within a 16-year-old white boy who hates, yet admires, the doughty Negro whose innocent life is at stake. It is a drama of fateful decisions by a young lawyer in the town, a drama of the quiet determination of an old lady who believes in doing "right." And particularly, it is the drama of a proud, noble, arrogant Negro man who would rather be lynched in fiery torture than surrender his stolid dignity. If these sound like large illuminations to be accomplished upon the screen in the course of a ninety-minute picture that is also action-crammed, you may find the attesting explanation in Mr. Brown's brilliant techniques. Taking his cast and his cameras down to Oxford, Miss., itself—the town frankly acknowledged as the "Jefferson" of Mr. Faulkner's book—he has photographed most of his picture right there in that genuine locale with a sharpness of realistic detail that has staggering fidelity. He has placed his principal characters in stunning relation to crowds, and he has searched their expressive faces in striking close-ups for key effects. Most conspicuously, the director has shunned "mood music" throughout his films. The sounds, which are full of minor drama, are intrinsic to the action and the place. The effect in such eerie moments as the opening of the grave or the passage of whispered conversation between the boy and the Negro in the jail cannot be expressed in mere language. There is a virtue in the realism of sound to which this remarkable picture will stand as a monument. And the shocking explosion of tinny music from loudspeakers in the crowded square when the mob is gathering for the lynching is as vivid as the vulgar scene itself. With his cast, Mr. Brown has also accomplished some real creative art, especially with Juano Hernandez, who plays the condemned Negro. The stanch and magnificent integrity that Mr. Hernandez displays in his carriage, his manner and expression, with never a flinch in his great self-command, is the bulwark of all the deep compassion and ironic comment in this film. Excellent, too, are David Brian as the lawyer who involves him-self and Claude Jarman Jr. as the youngster who first inspires a defense of the innocent man. Likewise, Elizabeth Patterson is a moving symbol of Southern delicacy and strength as the elderly, insignificant lady who coolly defies a lynch mob. Charles Kemper is porcine and brutal as the stubborn leader of the mob, Porter Hall is stark as his old father and Will Geer plays the sheriff manfully. The crowds and flavor of this picture are as Southern as side-meat and greens. Mr. Brown has truly created for M-G-M a triumphantly honest, adult film. I first saw this magnificent film at the AFI nearly 40 years ago and I've been waiting ever since to see it again. It was well worth the wait.

I recorded Lost Boundaries and I'm sure I'll watch it at some point, but I have a strong suspicion that a drama based on "passing" might be better done by a black director who was being protected by a private army while he slept. To say it's a touchy subject is an understatement. But meanwhile, did anyone catch Intruder in the Dust ? I hadn't seen that movie for nearly 40 years, and it didn't let me down. If prior to 1949 there ever was a better role written for a black actor than the Lucas Beauchamp character played by Juano Hernandez, I'd sure like to know about it. What a performance he gave, and in a more enlightened era he would have easily won an Oscar. Hard to believe that this was an MGM film, given the history of cotton candy fluff that they were famous for, though I guess by this point Schary's influence was starting to overtake that of the Master of the Fluff, Louis B. Mayer. *EDIT:* A review in Rotten Tomatoes makes an interesting and valid point that Ralph Ellison said that although other post-War films did make strides in portraying black folks sympathetically, this was the first that would *not* have been hooted at by any all-black audience.

Gabin, Mifune and Stanwyck. No other actors or actresses are even close.

FWIW Ronald Reagan was given SOTM treatment in March of 2009, less than three years ago, and when TCM was launched in 1994, he made it onto SOTM *before* Bogart, Cagney, Gable, Tracy, Hepburn, Harlow, Crawford, and about eleventy gazillion other better actors. King's Row and Knute Rockne, All-American , his only two films of any real note, are played at least once or twice every year. How Reagan would ever rate a SOTM is totally beyond me, though I guess it's no more perplexing than the SOTM given to the likes of Mickey Rooney or Esther Williams (also twice each). If they're going to have a month's worth of B-movie stars and character actor stars, they should at least go for someone with first class talent and a real repertory. Edward Arnold or Joan Blondell, for instance.

Well Andy at least you give some hints about what the criteria should be or not be for someone to be SOTM. Well, far and away the most important criterion is whether or not I like their movies. That's a given. Beyond that, it gets to be subjective, but these are the main factors I'd consider if I were running the show (for about three months before I got fired): *Factor # 1: How many films of any given star are available to TCM, and of those, how many are shown over and over during the course of TCM's regular programing? IMO the higher the ratio of generally unknown films to Big Name films, the better.* Having said that: *Top priority:* Stars who routinely got top billing, and who had long careers. Grant, Tracy, Stanwyck, Crawford, etc. IOW the true icons whose names are still recognizable even to many younger moviegoers. The ideal SOTM would be someone like Bogart or Stanwyck, with a repertory that has a fair number of iconic films but an even larger number of earlier and somewhat more obscure movies that gives us a chance to see the evolution of their screen personae. Another obvious choice at that same high level, IF enough of their films were available (admittedly a probable concern), would be foreign icons like Jean Gabin and Toshiro Mifune---those two would be a revelation even to many of our relatively sophisticated TCM fans, and there are others whom I'm sure others here might suggest. *Next level:* Stars with regular top billing, but with shorter careers at the top. Glenn Ford, Ray Milland, Frank Sinatra (why not?), Jean Simmons, Lauren Bacall, etc. Filling a month with their films is possible, but there's usually less to choose from, and as a result you get either lower quality or too many warhorses. *Next level* (now here it gets subjective): More obscure stars, often from the silent or early sound era, or with shorter careers, who nevertheless have many great, if not "iconic" movies to choose among: Lon Chaney, Richard Barthelmess and Warren William would be three who come to mind here. *Below that:* High level character actors such as Edward Arnold or Joan Blondell, with countless numbers of readily available films that demonstrate just how important such actors and actresses are to sustaining a high quality product. Could be incorporated into a SOTM of character actors as a group, with an emphasis on their earlier and lesser-known films. *Below that:* Long lives, long careers, respectable number of films with or without top billing, but never considered to have any real star quality comparable to those in the first three categories: Here we get into the Angela Lansburies of the world. Worthy of the honor, but nothing to write home about. *Below that:* Long lives, varied career lengths, but with films whose appeal is 99.99% nostalgia rather than any demonstrable acting talent brought to anything but purely genre movies: Mickey Rooney, Esther Williams and Roy Rogers would be good examples of this. And *just* below that last category you'd have Rin Tin Tin, Trigger, and Francis the Talking Mule. Although I don't think I'd want to see a SOTM consisting of stars who walk on four legs. Oh, and even for the top category: Please, no repeats more than every 7 or 8 years. Spread the love around a bit. What I find funny is how much traction this topic gets. Picking SOTM is a no win situation for the TCM programmers. But I wish I had their job! Well, give me a bodyguard or two and tell me where to report. B-)

> *{quote:title=AndyM108 wrote:}{quote} (Leslie) Howard made only 34 films, and the great majority of them are either played all the time anyway or aren't really all that special* . A couple of years ago Grace Kelly was SOTM. She made somewhere between 12-14 films, one of which ( Fourteen Hours ) features her for less than five minutes . That seems to me to be less of an argument for Howard than it is an argument against Kelly, who's much more of a SUTS candidate than she was for a SOTM. It's not that Kelly or Howard didn't make some very good films, but those are the same films that get shown all the time anyway.

I enjoy Lansbury as well as Williams but I'm still not sure they should get one of the 10 slots in a year when I see all the others that have never been SOTM, like Leslie Howard or Joel McCrea (just two that come to mind as being a higher priority in my opinion) . I can see McCrea, but Howard made only 34 films, and the great majority of them are either played all the time anyway or aren't really all that special. McCrea makes much more sense, since there are many more movies of his that don't get much TCM play. But OTOH if you had to rate the three of them on a scale of fascinating characters, Howard would be down at the bottom, McCrea would be stuck in the middle somewhere, while William would be off the charts. Howard's most widely known roles---let's be real, folks---were basically playing pantsywaists. Whereas with a few exceptions like Gold Diggers of 1933 and Three on a Match , William played nothing but characters with tricks up their sleeves and / or larceny in their hearts. You can't help but love the man.

I remember AMC back before TCM came along, and while it was never even close to being on the same level as TCM is today, compared to everything that had gone before it seemed like heaven on Earth. As to the cause of its decline, I'd venture a guess that as soon as TCM showed up and started getting rave notices from all over**, AMC saw the writing on the wall and decided that rather to try to compete with TCM, it would go another route. I definitely noticed a drop in the quality of AMC's selection as soon as TCM started adding more cable providers, though even then it was still several years down the road before they began the commercials and really piled on the schlock. I haven't watched it for nearly 10 years, and every time I look at their schedule and think of those commercials, I know I'm not missing a thing. **There was one article in the New York Times in the 90's that practically drooled over a typical week's TCM lineup, noted the distinct inferiority of the AMC selection, and lamented the fact thatTCM was still unavailable in New York City. I personally switched from Comcast to DirectTV solely because of the fact that at that time (early 2002) Comcast still didn't carry TCM. (Of course about two months after I'd switched, Comcast added it.)

Just curious, does anyone know the types of arguments would be made against the career of Warren William if he were Star of the Month? I have to ask because I would really like to see him get a month and I just wonder where and why some would object. I'd love to see a Warren William month, but here are the sort of objections I think he'd encounter: ---Died too long ago and no cult ever developed around him the way it did around Valentino. To be a SOTM it helps to have one or the other of those two attributes. ---With the exception of his Lone Wolf series, his best work was all made within a very short period of just over three years before the Breen code hit with full force and took the edge off his screen persona. ---And unlike many of the SOTM, his character roles were relatively limited: Cad; good but boring husband; raffish detective. There were a few movies of his that didn't fall into these categories, but not a whole lot of them. That doesn't mean I wouldn't love to see William as a SOTM. It'd sure be a lot better than Doris Day, if only for a break from all this wholesomeness. But I'm not sure how many of the TCM suits would agree. Maybe if we added George Sanders and Ricardo Cortez we could supplement *"The Battle of the Blondes"* with *"The Clash of the Cads"* . I'd *LOVE* to see a month like that, and I suspect so would a lot of other people.

And desks, of course. Let's not forget the power of a desk against an atom bomb. Hey, don't laugh. My John Eaton elementary school classmates and I ducked under many a desk in our day, and nary a bomb even grazed us. The turqoise ink in the inkwells might have scared off the bombs the way that the sight of a Yankee uniform used to put the fear of God in the Brooklyn Dodgers. OTOH the hard candy in some of those public fallout shelters could get pretty rancid. But that may have been part of a much subtler Communist master plan-----they get you when you least expect it.

This is like trying to pick the 10 most beautiful women in the world, but WTH.... My *favorite* 10: Angi Vera (far and away---I'd pay a hundred bucks to see it on TCM) Pixote Come and See Open City Kapo The Battle of Algiers Pandora's Box High and Low The Blue Kite Scars of Womanhood My *favorite* 10 Hollywoods, no particular order: The Killers Out of the Past All About Eve The Lady Eve So Big (Stanwyck version) It's a Wonderful Life Time Limit A Star Is Born (Garland version) Short Cuts 42nd Street And my *favorite* 10 comedies (not counting The Lady Eve ): The Sheep Has Five Legs Animal House Bombshell Libeled Lady Reefer Madness (unintentional category) Children of the Revolution The Women Easy Living (Sturges version) The Producers Bringing Up Baby And an honorable mention to the W.C. Fields segment of If I Had a Million , which may be the best of them all, even if it's barely over 11 minutes long.

However, I think my favorite has to be Them! . Absolutely. That movie had the whole nine yards: Impossible plot, cold war paranoia, and great special effects. The only invasion movie I'd put up there with it would be the 1953 version of The War of the Worlds . And between those two, if I had to go before my time, I'd much rather tell the children of my reincarnated existence that my ancestral soul's body had been eaten by giant irradiated ants than zapped by some run-of-the-mill Martian. Wouldn't you?

Actually they do have the monthly schedules in a scroll-down format that you can access from this page: http://www.classicfilmpreview.com/tcm-monthly-schedules/ The problem is that while these new monthly schedules bear a superficial resemblance to the "classic" format of pre-June 2011, it's impossible to copy them onto a Word document that lets you edit it without the font sizes jumping all over the place. Under the old format you could create a personalized schedule for the entire month within less than an hour, complete with links to each film's individual page, and without the need to use any function on your keyboard other than the delete key---you'd just select and delete the films you didn't want to see, with the great bulk of the time consisting of thinking about which films you wanted or didn't want to watch. Now it takes so long to do this that I don't even bother attempting to do more than a few days at a time. You have to copy the title and the description separately, and then type in the actors and the directors manually, unless you want to have to keep adjusting the font size over and over. And when you delete one film, there's a big blank space in its place that can't be deleted, which means that if you have a personalized schedule that would have been 7 pages under the old format, it's now closer to 77 pages. It's an absolute disaster of a format, and there's still never been any explanation as to why it was necessary to destroy a perfectly good existing format. It's the TCM version of those Pentagon wizards who "won" the Iraq war with their spreadsheets and power point presentations: They never bothered to see how their plans might actually work out in practice.

Okay, Tomboy, whaddya want? Wild Boys of the Road? Sylvia Scarlett? We should be able to arrange that.

And while I tried a quick search, I couldn't find a list of past SOTMs. If anybody's got a link to one, it'd be interesting to see who has been chosen SOTM, how long ago, who hasn't, who's been chosen more than once, etc. *Complete list of SOTM from the beginning up through 2011, plus the first two lists of SUTS:* *STAR OF THE MONTH:* May 1994: Greta Garbo June 1994: Glenn Ford July 1994: Greer Garson Aug.1994: Edward G. Robinson Sept.1994: Barbara Stanwyck Oct.1994: Angela Lansbury Nov.1994 John Garfield Dec.1994: Best of ‘94 Jan.1995: Esther Williams Feb.1995: Ronald Reagan Mar.1995: TCM Salutes the Oscars Apr.1995: Doris Day May 1995: Myrna Loy June 1995: Errol Flynn July 1995: Gene Kelly Aug.1995: Paul Muni Sept.1995: Jane Powell Oct.1995: Clark Gable Nov.1995: Barrymores Dec.1995: Best of ‘95 Jan.1996: Deborah Kerr Feb.1996: Robert Young Mar.1996: 31 Days of Oscar April 1996: Irene Dunne May 1996: James Stewart June 1996: Rosalind Russell July 1996: Fred Astaire Aug.1996: Ann Sheridan Sept.1996: Van Johnson Oct.1996: Kathryn Grayson Nov.1996: Robert Mitchum Dec.1996: Best of ‘96 Jan.97: Humphrey Bogart Feb.97: Eleanor Parker Mar.97: 31 Days of Oscar Apr.97: Ava Gardner May 97: George Brent June 97: June Allyson July 97: John and Walter Huston (also Director of the Month) Aug.97: Cary Grant Sept.97: Ida Lupino Oct.97: Walter Pidgeon Nov.97: Katharine Hepburn Dec.97: Best of ‘97 Jan.1998: Lana Turner Feb.1998: Charlton Heston Mar.1998:31 Days of Oscar April 1998: Red Skelton May 1998: Olivia de Havilland June 1998: James Cagney July 1998: Lucille Ball August 1998: Joan Crawford Sept.1998: John Wayne Oct.1998: Cyd Charisse Nov.1998: Claude Rains Dec.1998: Best of ‘98 Jan.1999: Elizabeth Taylor Feb.1999: William Powell March 1999: 31 Days of Oscar (probably) April 1999: Dennis Morgan May 1999: Bette Davis June 1999: Mickey Rooney July1999: Natalie Wood August 1999: Peter Sellers Sept.1999: Norma Shearer Oct. 1999: Gregory Peck Nov. 1999: Ginger Rogers Dec. 1999: Burt Lancaster Jan. 2000: Debbie Reynolds Feb. 2000: Robert Ryan March 2000: 31 Days of Oscars (probably) April 2000: Spencer Tracy May 2000: Alexis Smith June 2000:Wallace Beery July 2000: Judy Garland August 2000: film debuts Sept 2000: Jane Wyman October 2000: Dick Powell Nov 2000: Frank Sinatra Dec. 2000: Lauren Bacall Jan. 2001: Elvis Presley Feb.2001: Jean Hagen March 2001: 31 Days of Oscar (probably) Apr.2001: Knighted Actors May 2001: Jean Harlow June 2001: W.C. Fields July 2001: Ann Sothern Aug.2001: James Garner Sept. 2001: Robert Taylor Oct. 2001: Lana Turner Nov.2001: Glenn Ford Dec.2001: The Marx Brothers Jan. 2002: Marlene Dietrich Feb. 2002: Kirk Douglas March 2002: 31 Days of Oscar April 2002: Barbara Stanwyck May 2002: Edward G. Robinson June 2002: Greta Garbo July 2002: Sidney Poitier Aug. 2002: Joan Crawford Sept. 2002: Van Heflin Oct. 2002: Final films Nov. 2002: Shelly Winters Dec. 2002: Montgomery Clift Jan. 2003: Doris Day Feb. 2003: John Garfield Mar. 2003: 31 Days of Oscar Apr. 2003: Harold Lloyd May 2003: Olivia de Havilland June 2003: TV Actors in Films July 2003: Lee Marvin Aug. 2003: 1st Summer Under the Stars James Stewart, Clint Eastwood, Peter O'Toole, Joan Crawford, Fred Astaire, Robert Mitchum, James Cagney, Elizabeth Taylor, Cary Grant, Jack Lemmon, Frank Sinatra, Greta Garbo, Gary Cooper, Charlton Heston, Katherine Hepburn, Steve McQueen, Gene Kelly, Marlene Dietrich, Gregory Peck, Humphrey Bogart, Judy Garland, Clark Gable, John Wayne, Myrna Loy, Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Bette Davis, Spencer Tracy, Paul Newman, Doris Day, William Holden. Sept. 2003: James Mason Oct. 2003: Boris Karloff Nov. 2003: Shirley MacLaine Dec. 2003: David Niven Jan. 2004: Katherine Hepburn Feb.2004: 31 Days of Oscar Mar.2004: Charles Chaplin Apr. 2004: Judy Garland May 2004: Greer Garson June 2004: Cary Grant July 2004: Stars That Died Before Their Time Aug.2004: 2nd Summer Under the Stars John Wayne, Barbara Stanwyck, Bob Hope, Debbie Reynolds, Sidney Poitier, Lucille Ball, Katherine Hepburn, Clint Eastwood, Ava Gardner, Henry Fonda, Jean Harlow, Laurence Olivier, Doris Day, Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lancaster, Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor, Edward G. Robinson, Bette Davis, Peter Sellers, James Stewart, Olivia de Havilland, Ginger Rogers, Charles Chaplin, Shirley MacLaine, Claudette Colbert, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck, Esther Williams, Kirk Douglas. Sept.2004: Myrna Loy Oct. 2004: Peter Lorre Nov.2004: Clark Gable Dec. 2004: James Stewart Jan.2005: Canadian Actors Feb. 2005: 31 Days of Oscar Mar. 2005: Claudette Colbert Apr. 2005: Errol Flynn May 2005: Orson Welles June 2005: Ingrid Bergman July 2005: Audrey Hepburn Aug. 2005: 3rd Summer Under the Stars Sept.2005: Greta Garbo Oct.2005: Robert Mitchum Nov.2005: Joan Fontaine Dec. 2005: Bing Crosby Jan. 2006: Robert Montgomery Feb.2006: 31 Days of Oscar Mar.2006: Nelson Eddy & Jeanette MacDonald Apr.2006: Deborah Kerr May 2006: Bette Davis June 2006: Anthony Quinn July 2006: Elizabeth Taylor Aug.2006: 4th Summer Under the Stars Sept.2006: William Holden Oct.2006: Child Stars Nov.2006: Lucille Ball Dec. 2006: Gary Cooper Jan.2007: Jean Arthur Feb.2007: 31 Days of Oscar Mar.2007: Gene Kelly Apr.2007: Rita Hayworth May 2007: John Wayne and Katherine Hepburn June 2007: Ida Lupino July 2007: Randolph Scott Aug.2007: 5th Summer Under the Stars Sept.2007: A Star is Born (starmaking/breakthrough performances) Oct.2007: Henry Fonda Nov.2007: Guest Programmer Month Dec.2007: Irene Dunne Jan.2008: James Cagney Feb.2008: 31 Days of Oscar Mar.2008: Acting Dynasties Apr.2008: Hedy Lamarr May 2008: Frank Sinatra June 2008: Sophia Loren July 2008: Rosalind Russell Aug.2008: 6th annual Summer Under the Stars Sept.2008: Kay Francis Oct.2008: Carole Lombard Nov.2008: Charles Laughton Dec. 2008: Joseph Cotton Jan. 2009: Jack Lemmon Feb. 2009: 31 Days of Oscar Mar. 2009: Ronald Reagan April 2009: Funny Ladies and 15th Anniversary May 2009: Sean Connery June 2009: Great Directors July 2009: Stewart Granger August 2009: Summer Under the Stars Sept. 2009: Claude Rains Oct. 2009: Leslie Caron Nov. 2009: Grace Kelly Dec. 2009: Humphrey Bogart Jan. 2010: “The Method” Feb. 2010: 31 Days of Oscar March 2010: Ginger Rogers April 2010: Robert Taylor May 2010: Donna Reed June 2010: Natalie Wood July 2010: Gregory Peck August 2010: Summer Under The Stars September 2010: Vivien Leigh Oct. 2010: Fredric March Nov. 2010: Ava Gardner Dec. 2010: Mickey Rooney Jan. 2011: Peter Sellers Feb. 2011: 31 Days of Oscar March 2011: Jean Harlow April 2011: Ray Milland May 2011: Esther Williams June 2011: Jean Simmons July 2011: Singing Cowboys August 2011: Summer Under The Stars Sept. 2011: Kirk Douglas Oct. 2011: Buster Keaton Nov. 2011: Battle of the Blonds Dec. 2011: William Powell Now if anyone can tell me where to find pre-2009 issues of Now Playing , I'd be extremely grateful.

Sepiatone, you might want to consider that your description of Ted Turner as some sort of right wing wingnut is several decades out of date. How many "right leaning moguls" would have ---consisistenly supported a woman's right to choose abortion, at one point calling right-to-lifers "bozos" ---spoken out repeatedly on global warming, and against offshore oil drilling and strip mining ---spoken out in favor of Obama's health care plan, saying "“We’re the only first world country that doesn’t have universal healthcare and it’s a disgrace" ---donated over $1 *BILLION* to United Nations causes ---and married *Jane Fonda* ? (Now that last bit may have been due mostly to testosetrone and / or temporary insanity, but it's still hard to imagine any hard core wingnut going *that* far in the service of either of those imperatives) I think you're confusing the old Ted Turner with the one who's been around for the last 20 or 30 years. The truth is that he's one of the not so few public figures who's shed his political rigidity as he's grown older and more exposed to reality, and even if he hadn't produced TCM as his (to us folks here) crowning achievement, he'd still deserve a bit more credit than you're giving him.

Since most everything that I liked on TCM during the holidays has been movies I've seen many times before, I didn't watch all that many. The best (or at least the ones I enjoyed the most): Evelyn Prentice, Shaft (about time they showed this classic), and Panic In The Streets , as good a medical thriller as there is. The least of the lot: Fail-Safe BTW a *BIG* vote for many more foreign classics from all decades, and many fewer bubble gum and other sickenly "wholesome" movies from the 40's through the early 60's: Mickey Rooney, Doris Day, Annette Funicello, Sandra Dee, etc. Those films were the Cheez-Whiz of the Hollywood production line, as bland as a baloney sandwich on Wonder Bread, and the one real gripe I have about TCM is that we keep getting flooded with *WAY* too many of them.

TCM could resolve this whole "star" question quite easily by expanding the definition to include the major character actors and actresses whose presence often contributes far more to a movie than all but a handful of Big Name "stars". AFAIC a month that featured Nat Pendleton or Joan Blondell would be infinitely more enjoyable than another set of endlessly recycled Rock Hudson or Doris Day movies. This is especially true when the "star" in question has a body of work that's so slim that you have to dig down to the very bottom of the barrel to fill out the normal quota of the SOTM's films on the schedule.

Robert Osborne mentioned last night that the SOTM for April will be Doris Day.... I sure hope that this was some kind of an early April Fools' Day joke. Please someone tell me that it was. What's next, Pat Boone or Ricky Nelson? EDIT: She was SOTM in 1995 and 2003, and part of SUTS in 2003 and 2004. I have to assume that 2003 was her 100th birthday or something. Edited by: AndyM108 on Jan 2, 2012 1:49 PM

March 6 looks like a celebration of Guy Kibbee's birthday with a day full of his films. I have just officially died and gone to heaven. It starts out with *TEN* straight pre-codes I've never seen, and even when the Kibbee movies end at 8:00 PM, in the ten subsequent hours it serves up only *THREE* old chestnuts. It's got to be the best day on TCM since the all-Gabin day last August.

Karl Malden is the SOTM, and is *that* ever an improvement over January and February!

OTOH Panic In The Streets had a rather heartwarming ending, and it was over just before the stroke of midnight.

Personally my ideal Easter Sunday would consist of 100% film noir with an Easter bunny or an Easter egg worked into each and every plot.

What always fascinates me about the music used in films of the 30's and 40's is that so many of the background melodies were previously used in other movies from the same studio. I've lost count of the number of Warner Brothers' films from that period that had "You're Getting to Be a Habit With Me" casually playing in the background, either in nightclub scenes or on a radio in someone's living room. Alex North's theme that was first used in the 1931 Street Scene (at the 00:01:00 mark) was recycled so many times (most prominently in I Wake Up Screaming ) that it became unofficially known as "the Fox Anthem". And if I had a dollar for every time I've heard "La Marseillaise" or "The Volga Boat Song", or "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" in movies between 1939 and 1949, I'd be a rich man today.