[A question for people who put images in their posts]

46 minutes ago, shutoo said:

I don't see how it could be, unless they actually had every picture copyrighted...I would think the people in the museums would see it as expanding the interest in their exhibits--they know everyone can't come to LA to see it, and this gives the whole world a chance to view the museum's work.  Think of how many photographs of great artwork there are.. obviously, we can't all own them, and to me it's just a way of sharing...as long as the person isn't making a profit from another's work, what's the harm?

Only copyright infringement if it is a copyrighted/published work.  Otherwise infringement of one's privacy or unpublished work - a less punishable offense, as we see using the Google example.  They harvest images out of anything that can be crawled (ie. everything that has a publicly accessible link).  It is up to the owner to take recourse at that point.  That creates problems for many people, the only real way around it is for websites to bury assets on password protected pages, so they can't be harvested by search engines.  The Facebook example presents a systemic problem for personal privacy.

P.S. Didn't mean to go off on a privacy tangent, but that is where all this eventually leads.

[A question for people who put images in their posts]

I don't think there is any issue, as long as you are not creating a product to sell or using it for marketing purposes.  In general, the Fair Use Doctrine covers small portions of published items for educational, critical, and commentary uses.  If you are finding images that are from personal collections and are unpublished, then that wouldn't be covered. 
http://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/intellectual-property/fair-use-law.html

In the radio world, Fair Use has historically allowed for small samples.   For instance the occasional 20 second or so segment, chosen among a pool of various other segments, for bumper music rotation would be ok.  Or as an included sound byte in a news segment or otherwise informative piece would be ok.  On the other hand, a repeated use every day such as for theme music or product placement would require a royalty fee, or playing a song in its entirety would require a royalty fee.

There are a few websites which host vintage pictures, one of which is owned and operated by a lawyer.  As a hobby he basically scans in advertisements from old magazines and other published works, and calls the scan and cleanup work his.  If I am not mistaken, I think he sells prints of these as a side venture.  He says he probably wouldn't have a problem if others used his scans, but at least communicate with him first.  I messaged him but he didn't reply back to me in a timely manner,  so I kept looking, and with just a little effort I managed to locate even higher resolution pics elsewhere and without stipulation (it was obvious to me they came from different sources because they had source material flaws which were located on different areas of the same image).

In the broader scheme of things and unrelated, once something gets released out onto the Internet, it will always be out there.  The cat has been let out of the bag.  There is no undoing it, and people do need to be careful about what they put out there.

[New TCM Hosts]

I'm telling you, these little uncontrollable IBS-like rants and raves people have around here do get seen...

By whom, I don't even know where to start, and neither does anyone else.

[Ignored Movies (I'd/We'd?) Like to See Again!]

On 1/20/2018 at 9:27 PM, Stephan55 said:

Thanks MCOH for that confirmation. I know of some avid movie collectors that have over 10,000 different titles in their personal collections, that is why I somehow imagined that with TCM the individual count would be so much higher after almost 24 years being on the air.

Regarding the other. Some databases, spreadsheets, etc. can be set-up so that the columns can be arranged in ascending or descending, chronological or numeric order, allowing a simple adjustment if one chose to view the list by title, date, or number, etc. If your massive list doesn't have that ability then I can imagine it would almost be like rebuilding the entire work again to make it function in those ways. That would be a herculean time consuming effort, and entirely unnecessary since this was something that you essentially just did for yourself and then chose to share with the rest of us here. I/"we" are very grateful for the massive work that you've already done so please do not press yourself to do more. It is enough. Thank you.

http://moviecollector.us/reports/TCM_SCHEDULES_SUMMARY_alpha.htm

It's not that big a thing, just need to look into it.  My day job (and the flu) have been keeping me out of circulation.

[Rex Reed would be a great TCM Host]

14 hours ago, TheGayDivorcee said:

Would very much enjoy seeing Rex Reed as a host, or hosting various segments on TCM.  He was on the talk shows a lot when I was growing up, and my mother and I got a kick out of watching his witty, bitchy, wise comments from Merv or Johnny's couch on movies and movie stars, or better yet, his own life.  Maybe he's said a few undiplomatic things in recent years, but as the decades march on, don't we all?  I'd be happy just to hear him talk about life at the Dakota.

For me he will always be relevant.  I can imagine him discussing The Women, various Mitchell Leisen movies, or his 70s favorites in that wonderful voice, waiting for that zinger sure to offend the weak of heart.

I wonder if "he'd" be interested, after some of these crappy replies.

[Ignored Movies (I'd/We'd?) Like to See Again!]

4 hours ago, Stephan55 said:

i was going to ask you if you had a total. So is that it? Has TCM aired a total of 9,368 different feature films since 1994, according to your TCM 20 plus year schedule?
If so, I would have thought that there would have been greater variety than that.

That's going to be pretty close to an actual number, as I described above.

 

4 hours ago, Stephan55 said:

I wonder do you have the ability with your database to arrange the entire list by order of from fewest to the most number of viewings (broadcasts) by feature?
That would be really helpful for those of us looking for films that TCM has aired, but only once or very rarely in the last 23 plus years.

That would require a bit more work.  I'm busy so I can't promise anything right now.

[Ignored Movies (I'd/We'd?) Like to See Again!]

44 minutes ago, TopBilled said:

Are you asking about the Republic titles? The MoMA screening occurs in February (part 1) and in August (part 2). So hopefully that will prompt TCM to air a few of the restored titles later in the year or in 2019. I feel confident CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS will turn up, since Scorsese really likes it; it has a strong reputation due to its unique story and outstanding cinematography; plus it's a noir and TCM can make a big deal premiering a noteworthy classic film noir.

Scorsese is also a huge fan of Republic's action adventure tale FAIR WIND TO JAVA. I love it too. So my guess is that will be the one he gives a lecture on in August. And I can see that one also getting a TCM premiere at some point.

Here are notes for the February titles at MoMA:

http://press.moma.org/wp-content/files_mf/republicrediscovered_screeningschedule.pdf

Yeah, that and the 800 or so that you mentioned which were said to be restored.  I have 9,368 items in my list, previously shown on TCM, which correlate to non-TV series, non-TV special, non-short (by Genre), and non-short (duration < 45 min) as per IMDB.  So comparatively speaking 800 items, even if that includes a substantial amount of shorts, is quite a bit.  It would be nice to displace some of those repeats.

[Ignored Movies (I'd/We'd?) Like to See Again!]

Any speculation on what rate TCM might show those?

[tcm not working in opera]

As far as I know, the current version of Opera runs on top of Webkit/Blink, which is an open-source browser engine provided by Google.  So this should be similar in ways to the Chrome browser.  Opera used to have its own engine about 7 years ago, called "Presto".  Now things have changed and they are owned by the Chinese, and the original CEO and developers of Opera are now working at Vivaldi.  That is another browser which also uses the open-source Webkit/Blink engine from Google.

So all that just to say maybe your browser needs upgrading, and if that doesn't help, maybe try switching over to the Vivaldi browser.  It is the same open-source engine, but all the features are designed by the original people who worked on Opera.

[Ignored Movies (I'd/We'd?) Like to See Again!]

9 hours ago, limey said:

Heh, I can see them picking movies russian roulette style by spinning the cards round & selecting whatever is left showing. Wouldn't be surprised if a few cards tend to stick...

At least the only database crash they'll ever suffer, is if someone knocks the Rolodex off the desk.

Love it!!

[Ignored Movies (I'd/We'd?) Like to See Again!]

14 hours ago, Dargo said:

AH! Then I believe I might have gleaned the answer to this mystery here, MCOH!

Ya see, a friend of a friend of mine who lives in Atlanta was recently granted access into the TCM Programming Scheduling Dept., and he told my friend who in turn told ME that he found their process in this regard was really really antiquated!

Yep! Seems those TCM employees there actually DON'T have a "database" per se, but in fact are STILL usin' one of THESE things here...

 

 

(...guess those recent budget cuts of theirs were far worse than we thought, huh)

Now that is a nice Rolodex, I wouldn't mind having one like that on my desk in fact.  It would just need to have more cards.

I would imagine they probably have a custom desktop application for a front end, written decades ago yet still used because "it just works" (mainly to put a degree of isolation between the data entry employees and the actual database so the whole thing isn't vulnerable to any one person, and also  so that the users don't have to be computer experts to use it).  The actual database would be running on a server somewhere else.  Most companies I have worked do something like this.  So think of a rather mundane-looking computer program that looks like it was written in the 1990s, and you probably wouldn't be that far off.

P.S. Newer systems often use a web browser interface instead of a custom application, and the DB server also runs a mini web server.  I don't think they would have upgraded to something like that unless there was some driving need.  You see this in hospital systems for instance, the driving need was emerging HIPAA regulations for patient records.

[Ignored Movies (I'd/We'd?) Like to See Again!]

12 hours ago, sewhite2000 said:

Well, I may have never said it out loud, but I definitely roll my eyes whenever On the Town is on.

I can't help but wonder if anyone at TCM is aware of MovieCollectorOH's database and made any programming decisions accordingly. My guess is maybe to the first question and no to the second, but who knows?

There was one time that I noticed Ben M. say something about the viewers "having some very impressive movie databases."  Or something to that effect.  I doubt he was singling me out though.  There are plenty of other viewers who actually do a decent job, and by doing their own research.

I have wondered here or there about are what kind of access they might have to their own historical transmission log info, and how it might factor in to their scheduling.  Mostly though I am trying to raise the bar for myself some, as well as what appears to be maybe a handful of others.

http://moviecollector.us/reports.htm

[Really bad but classic movies.]

I refer to them as "So Bad It's Good", a term I adopted from the old IMDB message board.  For me they "are" and always have been essential.  Not to be confused with TCM's brand "The Essentials", hence "So Bad It's Good" in order to circumvent any misunderstandings, which would be completely understandable.

[Ignored Movies (I'd/We'd?) Like to See Again!]

9 minutes ago, limey said:

Not sure if that was a gentle poke at something I wrote, but internet forums are the world of the pedant where anything can be discussed/prodded/poked until quantum singularity is achieved.

Sure, I'd love TCM to be the obscure, rarities, never released-to-any-home-media channel, but the reality is that it's unlikely to fully do that, or survive if it did.

Not at all.  Just can't believe some are finding this so interesting.  If you take it personally, that is up to you, but not coming from me. 

P.S. I'm just in it for the rarities at this point.

[Singer-songwriter Dolores O'Riordan (1971-2018)]

Much too young.

RIP

 

[Ignored Movies (I'd/We'd?) Like to See Again!]

1 hour ago, limey said:

In modern context, no. But, I'd like to. That unrealistic escapist element is something that future audiences may increasingly crave, as relief from their own complex, un-sugar-coated existences.

From a rabid collector perspective, it'd be nice if TCM deliberately scheduled the rare & obscure, so that these films  would lose that status - but, given it's also aiming to entertain a more casual audience (and keep it's ratings high enough to economically continue serving the media networks carrying it), the schedule is always going to be a compromise.

This thread is a great place to nominate your rarely/never seens against the data established by the likes of yourself & MCOH. Hopefully the great unseen scheduler deity will peer at this thread for periodic inspiration.

That's kind of the whole point I would think.  The rest of this just seems pedantic to me.

[New TCM Hosts]

59 minutes ago, jamesjazzguitar said:

The poster is likely some old coot that believes one has to have lived during the times to 'know something' about said times.  

So I guess for TCM the minimum age for a host is 90.   

And still breathing.

Though 70s to 80s would do.

[Nitrate, Negatives and Fire]

On 1/11/2018 at 11:48 PM, hamradio said:

Think they discovered more are lost than originally thought.  What I've seen, can believe it.

If I were to take both of those numbers literally, then that would mean about a 58% loss of unpreserved/unrestored silent film stock over a period of about 10 years.  *Recent doomed discoveries notwithstanding - but how much previously undiscovered unkept stock might they find.

[Ignored Movies (I'd/We'd?) Like to See Again!]

On 1/12/2018 at 6:59 PM, Stephan55 said:

This is great MCOH, and what a labor of "love" (or do you have just way to much spare time on your hands?)

When I was perusing your work I did notice that the movies listed to be shown tonight (for the first time) have already been added into your file.
However, sometimes scheduling is preempted, or changed at near the last minute for us viewers, so just wanted to know whether you go back and amend your most recent additions when that happens?

Hi Stephan, thanks for the kind words.  This was a big amount of work for me up front, but now I spend about a couple hours a month at it.  It is a routine that is mostly scripted.  It actually takes a few more hours than that, but I step away or go to bed and come back later.  So two hours (if that) of my time in preparation, then it does its own thing for a few more hours.

I figured if I didn't do it, then it probably wouldn't happen.  That and I wanted to have a resource like this.

I update it once a month, usually following the initial release of the latest tentative schedule.

They tend to stick to their schedule within one month's time, so I have found that it doesn't really pay for me to stay right on top of it.  The exceptions would be last minute cancellations or last minute additions.  These changes eventually do appear on the monthly schedule (for sure by the end of the month), and then I just get it at the end of the month.

Each time this gets updated, up to 5 months (month-ending, current, and up to three future months) of schedules get parsed, imported, resolved, added into the main tables, and then integrity tested.  It is mostly automated, but there are usually about 30 or so records that I actually need to look at and manually resolve.  Then the older obsolete versions of the same months get deleted.  The month-ending month going in this one last time is never touched again (considered permanent at this point).

The features you asked about appeared on this month's reports because they were there when I ran my updates - I didn't do anything special in that case, that is just my system working (you can see they also appeared in cmovieviewer's earlier Premieres thread post, based on my previous Dec 2 updates).  Usually premieres appear months ahead, sometimes not.

P.S. It looks like TBAs, which are used as placeholders, get peoples attention for last-minute additions.  So people at least know to look for those.

[Rex Reed would be a great TCM Host]

20 minutes ago, SullivansTravels said:

That New York Times profile raises some concerns.  He moved into the Dakota in 1969 and his neighbors included Judy Holliday (1921-1965) and Zachary Scott (1914-1965)?  Cutting it awfully close with Judy Garland (June 22, 1969, England) and Boris Karloff (February 2, 1969, England), too.  

Wow.  I don't get everyone's concern.  My thoughts after reading the article were that he might add some texture to TCM, but you all are making it sound like sitting-on-the-toilet-the-next-day-after-eating-corn-on-the-cob texture.  Are you thinking he might have been a "cleaner" as well?

[The Post an Interesting Pic thread]

7 hours ago, hamradio said:

1967 MGM Film Vault Fire

 

 

 

 

Remains of films that caught fire at the Cinematheque Francaise in 1959. They were going to be transported but had been left too long in a courtyard on a hot summer day.

 

All of those movies....gone!

It must have sucked to be them.  I hope it did, anyway.

[is tcm pet movie ThE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL in danger of being lost?]

PPS  As per above questions and from the same data,

Doctor Zhivago (1965) ~ 79x
and
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) ~ 88x

[is tcm pet movie ThE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL in danger of being lost?]

24 minutes ago, LawrenceA said:

Yeah, I found TopBilled's old thread about overplayed movies, not realizing that he had stopped updating it more than a year ago. The #1 most shown title at that time was actually The Philadelphia Story, followed by Meet Me in St. Louis and then North By Northwest. Surprisingly, Dr. Zhivago wasn't even listed.

Okay I am only going to do this once. (This is just based on the raw numbers I have from 1994-2018, which only excludes about a year and a half worth of info - mostly from 1998 and 1999 I think, and may not be indicative of current trends)

Casablanca ~ 125x
Meet Me In St. Louis (1944) ~ 121x
The Adventures Of Robin Hood (1938) ~ 120x
The Philadelphia Story (1940) ~ 118x
Citizen Kane (1941) ~ 113x
Gaslight (1944) ~ 112x
Singin' In The Rain (1952) ~ 110x
Meet John Doe (1941), On The Town (1949), North By Northwest ~ 108x [tie]
The Maltese Falcon (1941) ~ 105x
Mildred Pierce (1945) - 102x
Father Of The Bride (1950), An American In Paris (1951) ~ 98x [tie]
Adam’s Rib (1949) ~ 97x

P.S. Nothing you didn't already know

[Have you seen someone you know in a movie?]

Yes.

[is tcm pet movie ThE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL in danger of being lost?]

1 hour ago, LawrenceA said:

Someone around here actually keeps track of that, and I think the leaders for most showings are North by Northwest and Meet Me in St. Louis.

It was one of the first things I posted, mainly for observational purposes back when I was trying to think of something contructive to do with schedule data I had put together, and was quickly met by fury from a handful of (then) regulars. as well as a nominal amount of interest from another handful.  This was also picked up by another poster who finds keeping score on movie replays more interesting than I do.

BTW I initially had North By Northwest labeled at the top as the most played, but dropped it back some after I realized I had also been including counts of an alias for another movie.  So no, it is not actually the most shown, but close.  (Since then I have added safeguards to prevent that from happening)