Coming Up on TCM

[Ollie]

This just gets worser and worser.

[Birdy]

Here's what I'm planning on watching (or should I say recording) soon:

Sat. May 9 starting at 12:45 a.m.
Rich and Strange, '32, directed by Hitchcock
The Tunnell '35, with Richard Dix and Madge Evans
Mystery Lover '34
and the short film ...Greater Talkie Season '28

12th Katherine Hepburn day (Have seen most of them but want to record them on DVD)

13 I Dream Too Much '35 with Lily Pons, Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball (I can't remember if I have this one)

The 14th also has some favorite pre-code titles

B

[Ollie]

I am just starting a LILY PONS education process. Thanks to TCM, she's yet another "collectible" I'm forced into! argh...

[jdb1]

Why didn't somebody tell me about the RO bobblehead doll!!?? I must have one! And I can't stop laughing, either. Who thinks these things up?

Check out the bobbing Mr. O at the TCM website. (Does it talk?)

[moira finnie]

Why didn't somebody tell me about the RO bobblehead doll!!?? I must have one! And I can't stop laughing, either. Who thinks these things up?

Check out the bobbing Mr. O at the TCM website. (Does it talk?)

I don't believe it talks, though I think the marketing department at Turner could use your ideas, Judith. I think it's pretty funny, but wonder what RO thinks of it. I can't say that it really looks like him, can you guys? I like the movies tucked under the arm of the bobble-head. You can read all the details about this "limited edition collectible" here.

I wonder if the secondary market for this one on ebay and the like will make it worth more than $16.99 soon?

[vallo]

Oh that's Robert Osborne.I thought it was "George Grizzard" With that nose it looks like Bob's been hitting the bottle..and the hair is that the "Joe Biden" look...


Bill

[jdb1]

Oh that's Robert Osborne.I thought it was "George Grizzard" With that nose it looks like Bob's been hitting the bottle..and the hair is that the "Joe Biden" look...


Bill

I don't think it looks much like RO, either. My first impression was Monty Hall.

But I just don't get it -- I'd be more amenable to an RO t shirt or coffee mug. Are we supposed to put it up on the wet bar in our rec rooms, like those plaster Frank Sinatras?

[movieman1957]

It might be too late but tomorrow morning an interesting sounding Budd Boetticher film is up at 10am ET. It is "Killer Is Loose." It sounds like a crime drama where a man gets out of jail to go after the prosecutor who put him there and his family.

I know some folks here like Bud and it might be a chance to see a picture of his that is not a western. In Bud style it clocks in at 73 minutes.

[jdb1]

Hey, everyone. I was just going over TCM's July schedule to set up reminders, and I saw that on July 26, Essentials, Jr. has the following lineup:

High Noon
The Setup
Rope

The theme is "in real time."

Am I missing something? Is there a new audience Essentials, Jr. is aiming for? Maybe Essentials, Jr. Sophisticates and LIttle Jaded Cinephiles?

Maybe it's just me, but if my kid were still a kid, I'd hesitate to introduce her to Classic Hollywood using such examples. Well, maybe High Noon, but the others???? What gives?

[moira finnie]

Am I missing something? Is there a new audience Essentials, Jr. is aiming for? Maybe Essentials, Jr. Sophisticates and LIttle Jaded Cinephiles?

Lol. You left out, Junior cigarette-smoking, gun-running dissolutes, who appeared all over the first choice of this season's Essentials, Jr. in To Have and To Have Not (1944).

Now, call me crazy, and I know that Bacall was very young when this movie was made, so maybe the then teenage "wise beyond her years" siren was intended to appeal to the kiddie crowd, but the sexual innuendo and geopolitical hijinks that liven this one up seem to be rather more adult than this TCM series was intended for originally. I'm not sure if I'd ever have trotted out the Hawks movie for anyone under 12 in 1944 or now. It would be pretty confusing for them and downright boring for most of it. Odd choices indeed.

The theme is "in real time."

I prefer unreal time at the movies for the chillun, myself, but what do I know?

Here are a few movies that might find a kid audience, even in this world, but I'm sure that they are unobtainable for broadcast for some reason, even though they could use re-discovery. I was thinking along the lines of the wonderful family movie, Sounder as a good choice for Essentials, Jr.

...I think I'll call it "in animal time":

The Voice of Bugle Ann (1936): A great cast in a sentimental but good dog story, led by Lionel Barrymore & Spring Byington. Based on a MacKinlay Kantor story, it is still pretty effective.

Sequoia (1934): Jean Parker and Samuel Hinds play daughter and father living on the edge of a wilderness. They adopt a cougar and a fawn, raise them together, and some remarkable animal scenes (with the requisite human villains thrown in, personified perfectly by Paul Hurst...psst, you remember him. He was the deserter who gets it right between the eyes in GWTW).

The Three Lives of Thomasina (1964): with Patrick McGoohan as an inarticulate scientifically minded veterinarian, Susan Hampshire as a woman who may be a witch, and Finlay Currie thrown into the Scottish mix, who but a mystical Siamese cat could bring all these disparate elements together?

Black Beauty (1994): yeah, it's relatively recent, but it may be the best version of Anna Sewell's novel that I've ever seen. None of the good human actors (Sean Bean, Eleanor Bron and John McEnery among them, with Alan Cumming providing Beauty's voice) overshadow the essential story of Black Beauty's tough life and heart-swelling triumph.

I'm sure there are more, but maybe others have some to suggest too.

[vallo]

>Maybe it's just me, but if my kid were still a kid, I'd hesitate to introduce her to Classic Hollywood using such examples.<


While I agree these aren't the type of classics to get kids to watch. Most of these films are the ones that were shown when we were kids. And look how we turned out. (or maybe that IS a bad Example)

[jdb1]

>Maybe it's just me, but if my kid were still a kid, I'd hesitate to introduce her to Classic Hollywood using such examples.<


While I agree these aren't the type of classics to get kids to watch. Most of these films are the ones that were shown when we were kids. And look how we turned out. (or maybe that IS a bad Example)

I don't know if it's quite the same, Bill. Sure, I saw all of these on TV when I was a lass, but they, for the most part, went right over my head, and nobody then was telling me that these were "essentials."

What bothers me is showing movies with "adult" themes, in some cases quite lurid, as "family films" under the direction of kindly Old Uncle John Lithgow. There's an uncomfortably mixed message in there somewhere. There are so many other, better choices which are good for adults and kids. Come on -- how does it look for a twinkly host to tell a 10-year-old "Now I'm going to show you a really nifty Hollywood movie that every kid should know," and then screen Rope? Forget the gay element, which certainly isn't much of a big deal these days; how about the murder victim in a trunk during a cocktail party? How about the gloating hosts? What on earth is that supposed to teach our kids?

I think a lot of bad judgment is in evidence here. I suppose I'll have to put in my two cents to the programmers over at TCM.

[vallo]

I guess you're right , Alot of this stuff DID go over our heads. Even some Bugs Bunny cartoons, I get them now but as a kid I just smiled ???? and waited for the next scene. (Not even knowing what it meant) It is kind of sad the differences of the kids today compaired to the kids of the 50/60's. Were we that Naive? Maybe, and that was a good thing. I do monitor what my son watches. But back then our parents didn't have to worry, which is kind of sad... with cable,porn and the internet available today..


Bill

[ChiO]

Even I was somewhat taken aback by ROPE as a "Kids" movie, so I checked out TCM's press release for Essentials, Jr.

Lo and behold, there appears to be a lack of clarity with the on-line schedule. When one looks at the Sunday night line-ups on the on-line schedule, there are two or three movies in orange that appear to be the Essentials, Jr; however, the press release, which includes the complete Essentials, Jr schedule, has only the first movie listed on the on-line schedule as part of the Essentials, Jr.

My conclusion: On July 26, all three movies are "In Real Time", but only HIGH NOON is Essentials, Jr.

[Ollie]

A lot of Lithgow's claimed E-JR films are loaded up with soap-operas among adults. Sometimes it's merely the benign Mushy Times, but others it's the chain-smoking ciggies with characters getting the bejeepers beaten out of them, and then having retribution time to beat up the others. I know SINBAD and Ray Harryhausen films had mushy moments ("Just show the monsters, c'mon-!") but the soap operas weren't about fixing boxing matches and having one hoodlum lord kill another and take other their numbers territory. I keep thinking, "What kind of educational questions are my kids gonna ask after THAT film?!!"

Daddy, what's a numbers runner? I'm fast - can I be a numbers runner, too?

Yeah. Right. Thanks, Lithgow. Don't worry, John, I'd never put my kids in YOUR proximity. I'd prefer Harry The Big Foot to your house.

I was really interested to hear him justify his choices. The closest he came was, "I was a child, I'm a father and a grandfather - I know these are films kids will like."

Yeah, well, the kids might also watch porn, too.

I like the films he chose, but "for kids"? I'm still amazed. I guess the tobacco industry can always count on the Lithgows to be their target market. Brass knuckle salesmen, too.