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That's a good question. I wonder if http://www.tcmdb.com/ will have this information once it goes live next year?

It looks like Amazon's third party dealers only have it on VHS. There is a DVD on Ebay right now, though. $15+$7 s&h and no bids, ends on Thursday night.

The Dogville shorts were popular at the time, but haven't aged very well. I think their timing was a little off, which is understandable considering who their stars were Besides, you really need to be familiar with the source material (like "Trader Horn") to appreciate some of the jokes.

Hm, what was that "I've got something to sing about now (?)" song that James Cagney lip-synchs at the beginning of one of his minor 1935-1936 movies? The one where he goes to Hollywood? For some reason it comes back to me often, but then nobody has ever accused me of having good taste Never mind, found it. It was "Something to Sing About" (1937), not surprisingly Message was edited by: AlexM

> Had they filmed 2 versions : a silent and a talkie, > such as with Hitchcock's Blackmail ? That wasn't uncommon in the early days of the talkies. In other countries, where modern equipment was harder to come by, the transition process took even longer. For example, the Soviet Union still had more silent systems than sound-enabled ones as late as 1934 and had to make two versions of each movie.

> But we do make mistakes and there are tens > of thousands of shorts, cartoons, trailers, features, > etc. and sometimes the wrong versions are played. While we are on the subject, is there some way to double check that the versions that you show have the same running time as the versions listed in the schedule? It makes it hard to record movies shown at 3am if you don't know how long they will be or whether they may bump into other movies. The most common causes of these errors appear to be: 1. Early and rare silent shorts, especially when a bunch is strung together with no margin for error. I assume they are probably just poorly documented. 2. Restored movies like the 1934 Tarzan mentioned below or the Testament of Dr. Mabuse, which include additional, undocumented, footage. 3. Movies shown with the original theatrical "introductions", "interludes", "entre'acts" etc included, which can add anywhere from 3 to 10+ minutes to the print. 4. More recent, 1980+ movies that TCM shows from time to time (esp. in February), when "director's cuts" began to proliferate. 5. British/European versions vs. US versions of the same movies, although so far I have seen surprisingly few problems with this notorious problem. I realize that it must be a lot of work to keep these things straight, though. > for Cartoon Alley being aimed at children or adults, honestly it's aimed at both. I figured there must be a reason why they are shown on Saturday mornings

> I must agree, this excellet movie is probably my > favorite of all Bud and Lou's films too! If I remember correctly, the movie was "an experiment that failed" -- at the box office, that is -- and the boys had to go back to the formula. They did much better a couple of years with their excellent Frankenstein movie, which spawned the "Abbott and Costello Meet ..." series.

> I'm 20 years old and in college, I love film of all > kinds of film. Silents, hollywood classics, foreign > movies going back to the 20s, even trash and > underground movies. I want to experience the entire > tapestry of film history. Enjoy while you can -- I was the same way when I was 20, I even went back to school after college taking film history classes just because I loved it so much. Unfortunately, the spongelike ability and, even more importantly, desire to absorb new things does diminish with age That was the biggest surprise of my mid-thirties, I never thought it would happen to me... > So I applaud the decision > by TCM to air the friday night cult and underground > movies, I think it can prove to be a real fun experience for movie fans. I doubt many TCM regulars would be interested in the outer fringes of the underground. Troma or early Greenaway on TCM? I think not On the other hand, TCM already shows a wide variety of genre movies that are not exactly "classic" in any but the cult sense of the word, from occasional "C" westerns to Edgar G. Ulmer to "The Blob". The latest SF/horror schlock extravanganza was even more "non-classic" yet hardly caused a ripple. If TCM were to throw in occasional cult favorites like the 1960 "The Little Shop of Horrors" (or other cheesy Corman quickies) or the odd Republic serial (hey, there is an idea!) into the mix, I doubt it would be terribly controversial.

> Well that's certain;y interesting.... then why are > these 3 films lists as being in the TCM Library? > Partial films? Trailer? Cans of nitrate dust? If I remember correctly, they list everything that they own the rights to regardless of how much of the movie is still around.

Sometimes it's simply a case of TCM ordering one print and getting another one. I think they had this problem in the summer of 2004 when they announced that they would show a complete unedited version of the famous Tarzan movie that contributed to the crackdown in 1934, but they were sent the edited version, so they ended up with a little oops on their hands. They corrected the problem when they ran the full version a few months later. Also, wasn't the version of the movie "Reds" that was shown early this year edited for language due to another ordering screwup?

> > By reading the boards, one would get the > > feeling that the majority of TCM's audience is at > > least 45 and older. > > Maybe younger people are watching, but can't be > bothered to post in the forum... who knows? I'm 27, > for the record. I don't know what the average age of the TCM audience is, but last Sunday I was changing my cable provider and the technician expressed mild surprise that I was interested exclusively in TCM and FMC. He said that in his experience TCM fans were much older folks. And I am 40, so that gives you an idea As far as the brouhaha over the skin flicks of yesteryear go, I doubt they would attract those who are looking for sex in their movies any more than vintage 1960s no-stars Italian SF would attract the special effects crowd I am yet to see a Meyer movie, but supposedly they have all kinds of other, non-sexual outre stuff in them, so they may be worth a look see for their oddity value. Not a big deal either way, I gather.

> Just reviewed the line up for FMC in the next couple > of days and I have to say it doesn't hold a candle to > TCM. I saw only two or three movies that that were > made before 1960. I love movies made in the 30's > especially the pre-code era. Well, it's certainly true that FMC has many more 1960s-1990s movies than TCM and some of them are quite bad. However, if you check their monthly schedule at http://www.thefoxmoviechannel.com/schedmomprint.asp (a slow and poorly designed Web site, may take some time to load), you'll see quite a few movies from the 1930s-1950s. Some of them are quite good, for example: "Cluny Brown" (1946) (Boyer/Jennifer Jones) "Dante's Inferno" (1935) (Spencer Tracy before he left Fox) "The Left Hand of God" (1955) (Bogart, both in pan and scan and LB) "Call Me Mister" (1951) (Betty Grable) "The Magnificent Dope" (1942) (Henry Fonda) "Unfaithfully Yours" (1948) (Rex Harrison and Preston Sturges) "In Old Chicago" (1937) (Ty Power and Co) and a bunch more -- and that's just the first week! Of course, I fully expect them to start repeating in a few months, but it's busy time for my DVD recorder until then Besides, I don't mind quite a few post-1960 movies, so I get to record a bunch of other things too.

> Nevah!! FMC will never be as good as TCM - however, > I did just purchase it a couple of months ago and am > currently absorbed with it! ... But it certainly doesn't > have the variety - and never will have - that TCM has. That's what I figure too. I downloaded FMC's August schedule and there was a lot of overlap with the November schedule, so I am guessing that they repeat their movies more often than TCM. But I just changed my cable company earlier today, and now that I have both TCM and FMC, I feel like a kid in a candy store. My DVD recorder will be working overtime all month burning all those yummy 3-4 star movies that I don't have

> Tomagain, unbelievable that tcm airs only 100 of the > 5000 titles it has, as you stated. That's been my > contention. Checking my collection of DVDs that I have recorded over the last 16 months from TCM (excluding non-TCM DVDs), I count 2,235 DVDs. Comparing my DVD database with the posted November 2005 schedule, I count 124 movies that I don't have out of the 377 unique movies scheduled. For the December schedule, the number is 125 out of 375. In January, it jumps to 170 out of 423. In February in declines to 88 out of 326. The numbers are a little off due to the non-feature movies in the schedule (cartoons, festivals of shorts, etc), but overall the key word is "unbelivable"

It would only be a "con job" if they had made specific promises and then broke them. As it is, these boards are just an additional way for TCM to gather feedbak and build viewer loyalty. A nice value added feature, but not that big a deal.

That's funny, I was contemplating the fact that Comcast doesn't carry FMC as part of its basic package and ildly wondering whether I should switch to RCN just earlier this evening. I then proceeded to download FMC's schedule in PDF format and it had a number of decent movies that I don't recall seeing on TCM. Nothing earthshattering, but you can never have too many old movies, so it sounds like I should switch to RCN just to have more choices plus save a few bucks in the process. Anything that I should know about FMC before switching? It sounds like they show a higher proportion of their movies in pan and scan than TCM and they don't do previews, cartoons, and so on, but I can live with that as long as there are no commercials. Any other gotchas?

> Unfortunatly,if I edited my thread any shorter it > would make no sense. I cant edit a 17 minute chapter > to two or three sentences. You can compose your message off-line and then cut-and-paste. Not the greatest solution, but it should work for now.

I am looking for a Western movie that I saw in 1981. It probably wasn't one of the greatest movies ever made, but my standards were lower back then and I would like to find it and watch it again one of these days. The plot was as follows. There is a small Western town run by a seedy character whom we will call The Boss. He has some kind of protection racket going, a bunch of gunmen at his disposal, perhaps a saloon, etc. The usual. Some 20+ years prior to the events in the movie The Boss has a son. The son winds up on the East Coast, gets an education, becomes a "gentleman" and a lawman. This may be told in a flashbak or as a prologue, I am not sure. The movie really starts when the son, still young and green, arrives in town and tries to clean it up. The Boss discovers (family heirloom?) that the new marshal (? think that's what he was) is his son and finds himself in a tricky situation. He doesn't want to hurt, much less kill, his son, but he is not eager to see his organization destroyed either. He volunteers to help the marshal hoping to find some sort of compromise. The son, who is a naive eager beaver, accepts the offer, not realizing that he is dealing with the town's main bad guy, much less his father. There is a fair amount of comedy in the movie as The Boss finds himself in one uncomfortable situation after another, slowly forced to help dismantle his own organization. In the end what's left of his gang finds out about his secret. His right hand man (a stereotypical Italian, I think) joins The Boss and the marshal while the rest of the gang turns on them. The Italian and the baddies buy it during the final shootout. The son completes the cleanup process and marries the girl of his dreams. The Boss, presumably mostly reformed by now, watches the wedding teary eyed when another marshal (?) arrests him and takes him to jail. That's it. The film's production values were OK for the period (late 1930s-early 1940s, I think), so I would guess that it wasn't a poverty row quickie, but my memory may be playing tricks on me. Any ideas? Thanks in advance! Alex

There is a list at http://www.imdb.com/keyword/french-revolution/ Off the top of my head, "Napoleon" (1927), "Danton" (1983), "The Scarlet Pimpernel" (1934) and "Scaramouche" (the 1952 version) were good, roughly in that order. "Marie Antoinette" (1938) was OK, as I recall. Then there is "Start the Revolution Without Me" (1970), although it was more of a spoof than anything else.

> I had a feeling this may occur-(AGAIN) After, we > reply & or write an article, we must re-register & by > that time, said post has gone bye, bye??? Basically, when you log in, the board software records the time when it happened. It then updates that record every time you do anything, e.g. go to another message or thread. If you spend 10 or 15 minutes composing your message, then you haven't communicated with the board for that period of time. When you hit "Post", the board software checks the current time versus the time of your last activity and says, "Hm, it's been 15 minutes. To make sure that it's still the same person, let me ask him to sign on again". You get the sign on screen again and after you sign on, the board software takes you back to message list, completely discarding the message that you just submitted. There are two problems with this. First, 10-15 minutes is a reasonable timeout value for financial applications -- banks, credit cards, and so forth. That helps ensure that a malicious co-worker or a clueless child does something nasty to your bank account while you are away from the keyboard. But 10-15 minutes is NOT a reasonable timeout value for a message board. Typically, message boards either don't time out at all or ask you to sign on every couple of weeks. Most boards will ask you how long you want to stay logged and whether you want your sessions to time out. Second, even if you are asked to sign on again, the board software should remember the contents of the message that you were trying to post. If the sign-on is successful, it shoudl post the message on your behalf. All of this is very basic stuff that any user interface designer should know about. For now, the smart thing to do is to copy the contents of your message to the Windows buffer -- Ctrl-A to select the whole message, Ctrl-C to copy it. Then, if you are forced to re-login and the message is lost, you can simply paste the contents of the lost message by creating a new message and hitting Ctrl-V. Still, this needs to be fixed promptly.

Um, font settings that can't be adjusted on the client side? Sessions that expire within minutes and zap form content, forcing the user to either use cut-and-paste or re-enter manually? Sorry, folks, that wouldn't have been professional quality messageboard software even 10 years ago, at the dawn of the Web.

The 1930s and the 1940s are considered the Golden Age of Hollywood, so it's not surprising that many people like the period. Besides, it's a free country, you can live wherever you want!

Doc Savage and Judex (the anti-Fantomas of his era) are all good and well, but there is a reason that their genre was called "hero pulps", not "superhero pulps". Superheroes like Superman and Captain Marvel had superpowers while 'heroes' like Doc Savage, the Spider and the Phantom had brains, muscle and gadgets. I don't know what the original poster had in mind (perhaps he was including hero pulps in the question?), but that's the usual distinction. If the question was about comic books as suggested by the reference to Superman, then there is a brief overview at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8580/Hist1.html I don't know much about that medium, but it looks like Superman was the first 'super'hero there.

I am slowly learning not to take the TCM schedule when it is posted on the Web 3 months ahead of time as gospel. My latest discovery is that Glenn Ford's 1958 "Imitation General" scheduled for April was actually supposed to be Danny Kaye's 1949 "The Inspector General" My current client is one of America's largest corporate behemoths, so I know how difficult even the most basic actions can be in a bureaucratic environment of that size, but it's still irritating that you have to waste time checking and double checking information multiple times. And still getting the wrong answer sometimes

Don't think I can edit here, so replying to my own post. Just checked the Web page again and the running time is listed as 121 minutes and not 111 minutes as it was on my printout. I guess they recognized the error and corrected it some time after I printed it. Oh well