AndyM108

My issue with Gene Kelly has nothing to do with his personal life, because anything I hear or read about his personal life is hearsay and really has no impact on what is on the screen. For me, his ego is quite apparent in his film roles, and I find it very off putting. I never like whatever character he's playing. I don't understand the critical praise of SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, for example. I like it, and find it very entertaining, but a film that is stopped dead in its tracks, for a complete vanity piece like the "Gotta Dance" sequence, is far from a perfect picture. Lots of examples of that in Kelly's films. I just don't like his screen personality. Can he dance? Of course he can dance, but that's rather beside the point. I you like him, you like him. I don't. I don't mind Kelly's screen personality, but what you're describing is exactly the same way I feel about Spencer Tracy. Everything about his screen persona gives me the creeps, even though I realize he's a terrific actor. But nearly every one of his screen characters seems to walk around with no other purpose in life other than to boss around women or pick arguments with men, and usually for absolutely no reason that would make much sense to any normal human being not afflicted with his enormously overstuffed ego. I know we're all supposed to humor him and love the Big Hearted Fella underneath the bluster, but after seeing him play about the 15th such character it really begins to wear thin.

AndyM, your post made me laugh out loud - great use of humor. Let me just point out that a large number of those SEVENTY-SIX MUSICALS are due to the fact that Fred Astaire is the star of the month, and what classic movie fan doesn't enjoy Fred Astaire's dancing? A contestant on You Bet Your Life once told Groucho that she came from a family of 17 children, and when Groucho's eyebrows nearly had their gears stripped from popping up and down in amazement, the woman said, *"Oh, my daddy loves children."* To which Groucho replied, *"Well, I love pancakes, but I haven't got closetsful of them."* Similarly, my personal quota on Fred Astaire's pancake musicals is about one a year, but from all accounts he was a good guy and the best pool player in Hollywood*, and I'm not begrudging his millions of fans his SOTM tribute. They'll get around to Ida Lupino or George Sanders one of these years to make up for it. *A clear sign of character in my book.

Whether admitted or not there has been a dramatic change. December alone will have 18 Westerns, 13 "Adventure" movies, and *SEVENTY-SIX MUSICALS.* And that's not even counting 10 straight hours of "That's Entertainment" and "That's Dancing". If TCM were programming even more mindless movies like that in The Good Old Days, I'm glad I wasn't around. But in truth I'm not complaining about Westerns or "Adventures" or *SEVENTY-SIX MUSICALS,* because I realize three things: 1. I'm not the only person in the world. 2. Plenty of other people will thrill to those *SEVENTY-SIX MUSICALS,* and their taste deserves to be catered to every bit as much as mine. 3. There will be plenty of other months with disproportionate numbers of Crime movies, noirs, pre-codes, better movies after 1970, foreign movies, silents, many TCM premieres, and adult dramas from all decades that don't involve dance routines or people breaking out in song for no particular reason. Then I'll be happy, and I hope that other people won't feel they have to begrudge me my pleasure. And a Happy Thanksgiving to all, even Mickey Rooney. God Bless America, and God Bless TCM.

And let's not forget the last line of The Hound of the Baskervilles: "...Watson! The needle!" That line was what made The Hound of the Baskervilles a college cult classic in the 60's and early 70's, but I've always loved all of the Rathbone / Bruce movies. OTOH what drives my fondness for their version of Holmes up a notch isn't Rathbone - - - as good as he is - - - but rather Bruce's lovable and clueless take on Watson, which on the observable IQ scale barely registered one step above Ballard Berkeley's "The Major" character in Fawlty Towers, and was every bit as entertaining. They can keep remaking Holmes for the next 1000 years, but Rathbone and Bruce will always hold the keys to the franchise.

At least that's only a month. This one went on 3 months...... The Story of Film has consisted of exactly 24 hours of programming, if you count repeats. That's the equivalent of one *DAY* of Oscar month, which is almost nothing *BUT* repeats. I don't know about you, but for me it's a lot easier to avoid 24 hours than it is to avoid 31 days.

TCM shows about 350 "old movies" a month. I'm not a fan of The World of Film series, either, but compared to the endless screenings of Esther Williams/Shirley Temple and Rooney/Hope/Crosby/Presley, its annoyance factor is a blip on the radar screen. At least it's only being shown once, and it's also brought along with it a couple of dozen great films that otherwise never would have been shown- - - -but then you probably don't like those, either.

One of my favorites is the 24 year old Elizabeth Taylor playing Dennis Hopper's (20 yrs old) mother in GIANT(1956) That's always been my favorite howler as well. Liz aged well before her time, but not THAT quickly.

I'll third it. It's especially nice to see a movie like this shown in prime time instead of being relegated to 4 o'clock in the morning..

I'd just assumed that Powell and Loy were made for each other all along, and anyway, since there was no way that Tracy and Loy could ever have matched up, that leaves only one possible set of pairings. Remaining single at the conclusion of a Hollywood movie in 1936 simply wasn't an option, and as we all know, *arson* has always been illegal.

My powers of intimidation obviously must be increasing, as that Google Chrome problem I mentioned has now been (after nearly 24 hours) fixed.

Stacked up thread titles are annoying, but here's what I'm getting when I try to reach the Forums on Google Chrome. This has been going on since yesterday, although I can access all the other TCM pages. (I'm now on Firefox.) *HTTP Status 500 -* *type Exception report* *message* *description The server encountered an internal error () that prevented it from fulfilling this request.* *exception* *java.lang.RuntimeException: A concrete instance of ThemeManager has not been set. To set a concrete instance of ThemeManager, use ThemeManagerFactory.setThemeManager(ThemeManager ThemeManager) or use the Jive Property 'ThemeManager.className'.* * com.jivesoftware.base.theme.ThemeManagerFactory.getInstance(ThemeManagerFactory.java:75)* * com.jivesoftware.forum.action.LocaleInterceptor.intercept(LocaleInterceptor.java:44)* * com.opensymphony.xwork.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:190)* * com.jivesoftware.forum.action.ForumsInterceptor.intercept(ForumsInterceptor.java:181)* * com.opensymphony.xwork.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:190)* * com.jivesoftware.base.action.interceptor.AuthInterceptor.intercept(AuthInterceptor.java:46)* * com.opensymphony.xwork.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:190)* * com.opensymphony.xwork.interceptor.AroundInterceptor.intercept(AroundInterceptor.java:31)* * com.opensymphony.xwork.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:190)* * com.opensymphony.xwork.interceptor.AroundInterceptor.intercept(AroundInterceptor.java:31)* * com.opensymphony.xwork.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:190)* * com.opensymphony.xwork.interceptor.AroundInterceptor.intercept(AroundInterceptor.java:31)* * com.opensymphony.xwork.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:190)* * com.opensymphony.xwork.interceptor.ExceptionMappingInterceptor.intercept(ExceptionMappingInterceptor.java:186)* * com.opensymphony.xwork.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:190)* * com.opensymphony.xwork.DefaultActionProxy.execute(DefaultActionProxy.java:116)* * com.opensymphony.webwork.dispatcher.DispatcherUtils.serviceAction(DispatcherUtils.java:225)* * com.opensymphony.webwork.dispatcher.FilterDispatcher.doFilter(FilterDispatcher.java:202)* * com.jivesoftware.base.action.util.JiveFilterDispatcher.doFilter(JiveFilterDispatcher.java:68)* * com.opensymphony.module.sitemesh.filter.PageFilter.parsePage(PageFilter.java:119)* * com.opensymphony.module.sitemesh.filter.PageFilter.doFilter(PageFilter.java:55)* * com.jivesoftware.base.theme.ThemeFilter.doFilter(ThemeFilter.java:51)* * com.jivesoftware.base.util.webwork.JiveActionContextCleanUp.doFilter(JiveActionContextCleanUp.java:41)* * com.jivesoftware.base.PresenceFilter.doFilter(PresenceFilter.java:105)* * com.jivesoftware.base.util.MaintenanceFilter.doFilter(MaintenanceFilter.java:88)* * com.jivesoftware.forum.upgrade.UpgradeFilter.doFilter(UpgradeFilter.java:56)* * com.turner.forums.sso.ffms.ContentFilter.doFilter(ContentFilter.java:75)* * com.turner.forums.web.CacheHeaderFilter.doFilter(CacheHeaderFilter.java:26)* *note The full stack trace of the root cause is available in the Apache Tomcat/6.0.35 logs.*

I can't say that I liked all of Powell's movies equally. But of the 30-odd of those I've seen, the only one where I *didn't* like his performance was in The Girl Who Had Everything, and even there it was more the script to blame than Powell. How could anyone *not* love Powell and Myrna Loy in any of the 14 movies they made together as the most perfectly matched screen couple ever?

When I looked at the title of this thread on the General Discussions page, I thought it said "*THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS is based on a Fred C Dobbs true story*", which made me wonder what ol' Fred was doing to get himself in that big steaming mess of trouble.

I think they must have hired the same firm that designed the Obamacare website to do the upgrade. My first thought was that it's getting more like yahoo mail, which now sends pop-ups about every 30 seconds when you're composing a letter, demanding to know whether you still want to stay on the page or not.

I'm not sure who was saying "Damn good actress," but it was a man's voice. That was when Alec Baldwin was co-hosting, and I always thought that's who it was. But I thought he was saying "Damn good *actors* ", not "actress". And whatever it was, I don't miss it a bit, since it was being repeated to a level of Chinese water torture, even more than some of those mini-bios they now run many times a day. It was getting to be as maddening as those GEICO commercials that run a dozen times in a row during a ballgame.

It DOES seem rather odd that we "commemorate" a day when this country lost it's president so tragically, but also a brother, father, husband, son and friend was taken suddenly and tragically. It would be more fitting if we celebrated the day they were BORN. Add Martin Luther King to that list. King's BIRTHDAY is a national holiday. The actual date that King was assassinated is barely remembered outside of major landmark anniversaries, even though most of us who were sentient on April 4, 1968 remember exactly where we were and what we were doing at the moment we heard the news, just as surely as we remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard about the Kennedy assassination.

I have forgotten the specifics, but in One Way Passage, he was trying to avoid arrest because he knew he was going to get the death penalty. I'm not sure if it's ever specified in the film what he was supposed to have done. It never was specified, and in any case Powell plays his role with such grace and acceptance that whatever crime he committed in the past is relegated strictly to the background. His attempts to avoid capture are depicted as more of a raffish cat-and-mouse game than the actions of a dangerous criminal.

I don't recall Powell ever playing a murderous villain, but I wanted to murder him myself for his role as Elizabeth Taylor's unctuous stuffed shirt father in The Girl Who Had Everything. That one was just a stinkeroo all around, but Powell gave off the worst odor.

I may be the only person alive whose favorite Orson Welles movie is Tomorrow Is Forever, but I'm glad you were thinking of me when you chose it to make a trailer of. I am impressed beyond words that anyone could mimic the style of those 1940's trailers as believably as that.

I'm not saying Kennedy doesn't deserve any place in history. I'm saying that the whole Kennedy era should be relegated from supposedly being a part of our current culture to a place in history. Tell you what: You get TCM to stop showing any more Elvis Presley or Bob Hope movies until 2063, and I'll used my pull to keep them from repeating last night's JFK documentaries until then.

I think mar be the bad films irritate us and that keeps us from sleeping. And the good films relax us and that allows us to drift off to sleep. It's the exact opposite with me. Any time I see the title credits for one of those excruciating MGM Parades with George Murphy, I'm out like a light. In fact I'm just waking up from one of them right now.

Like many classic films, it defies easy categorization - it's listed as a comedy, because it's not Birdman of Alcatraz, I guess, but I would say it was more a procedural with some comic elements and a compelling love story also in the mix. If it was a comedy, it was more along the line of You Can't Take It With You in its celebration of "characters", though in this case it was only Gwenn who fell into that category. I think your description of it as "a procedural with some comic elements and a compelling love story" pretty much nails it. One of the main redeeming factors, aside from Gwenn, was that it was based on a true story. It was an enjoyable 90 minutes, but nowhere near the level of most of Burt's other movies.

Fox should just turn over ALL of its old classic films to TCM. The Fox channel isn't worth the extra cost, since it shows so few old films and and I don't care for the newer Fox films. *Or maybe Fox could test the waters by just turning over all their noirs. Thieves' Highway, Laura, I Wake Up Screaming, etc., etc.* Andy: Careful what.you wish for.....they may test the waters, but with Osbornes tastes. If some of the Bobs Picks are any indication, Fox may loan TCM only their musicals starring Alice Faye, Betty Grable and Vivian Blaine, and then only those set in the 1890s. I'd then cue in the Alfred Newman theme to I Wake Up Screaming, cuz that's what I'd be doing at that point.

Fox should just turn over ALL of its old classic films to TCM. The Fox channel isn't worth the extra cost, since it shows so few old films and and I don't care for the newer Fox films. Or maybe Fox could test the waters by just turning over all their noirs. Thieves' Highway, Laura, I Wake Up Screaming, etc., etc.

To me the demarcation line between "old" and "new" movies is about 1967, the year of Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate. And while I'm sure there are just as many first rate movies since then as before then, I'm glad that TCM concentrates mostly on the "older" movies for the simple reason that no other channel does, or ever will. OTOH I'm glad that TCM doesn't pay attention to those who would impose an arbitrary "nothing after (insert year)" rule on what it shows. There have been hundreds of post-1967 films I've seen on TCM in the past four years that I never could have seen commercial free on any other non-premium channel. Just to take one random year, here's what I've seen on TCM from 1973 alone since September of 2009: Sweet Jesus, Preacher Man The Friends of Eddie Coyle Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me Five on the Black Hand Side Badlands Sisters Touki-Bouki Katharine Hepburn on Dick Cavett (two long interviews) Scenes From a Marriage Zanjeer The Sting Serpico Magnum Force The Way We Were Shaft in Africa Mean Streets Theatre of Blood The Outfit Enter The Dragon Obviously some of these movies are better than others, but then you can say that about any other year going back to the 19th century. I fail to see how the above list diminishes TCM's mission in any way.