April 2023 Schedule Posted, WB 100th Anniversary

Discussion of programming on TCM.
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Hibi
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Re: April 2023 Schedule Posted, WB 100th Anniversary

Post by Hibi »

[quote="umop apisdn" post_id=175733 time=1678326062 user_id=349057]
Wait until next April when it's MGM's 100th Anniversary. :P

Thanks for the warning!!!! :(
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Hibi
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Re: April 2023 Schedule Posted, WB 100th Anniversary

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CinemaInternational wrote: March 8th, 2023, 5:44 pm Talk about the ultimate ego trip. This month is one Warner film after another, with no MGM, RKO, Universal, Columbia, Paramount, UA, or Fox film present. The only degrees of verisimilitude I see are four Orion/WB coproductions (Time After Time, A Little Romance, The Great Santini, and the seriously underwhelming Rollover), one WB/MGM coproduction (The Goodbye Girl), two Lorimars (Running on Empty and Cookie), one Cannon production (A Cry in the Dark), and a New Line Cinema offering (Torch Song Trilogy; New Line was completely folded into WB back in 2008.) Otherwise, all WB films for an entire month! I like WB films but this borders on craziness.
Just another month of promotional BS!!!
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Hibi
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Re: April 2023 Schedule Posted, WB 100th Anniversary

Post by Hibi »

LawrenceA wrote: March 8th, 2023, 5:58 pm
CinemaInternational wrote: March 8th, 2023, 5:52 pm At first, I just thought it was going to be a SOTM-like thing, just like one day a week. Didn't expect it to be every single thing all month. I won't get surprised again by it....and I guess there will be a similar thing next year for MGM's 100th.
I just assumed it would be all day, every day when it was announced that stuff like Noir Alley would be suspended until May.
Between Oscar month and WB month I'll be getting a lot of reading done. My cable company offered a free month of Showtime channels so I took them up on the offer. A lot of Paramount films from the 70s and 80s on recently. It's nice to have another option. I might wind up keeping it. They even had Everything Everywhere All at Once that I recorded, but I'm in no hurry to watch it.
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Intrepid37
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Re: April 2023 Schedule Posted, WB 100th Anniversary

Post by Intrepid37 »

Hibi wrote: March 9th, 2023, 10:26 amBetween Oscar month and WB month I'll be getting a lot of reading done. My cable company offered a free month of Showtime channels so I took them up on the offer. A lot of Paramount films from the 70s and 80s on recently. It's nice to have another option. I might wind up keeping it. They even had Everything Everywhere All at Once that I recorded, but I'm in no hurry to watch it.
May can't come fast enough for me. The next 7 weeks are not very interesting, TCM-wise.
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lydecker
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Re: April 2023 Schedule Posted, WB 100th Anniversary

Post by lydecker »

Thanks again for doing this. I so look forward to the advance schedule. April is going to be heaven for me since I have always loved the films and actors of classic WB.
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Re: April 2023 Schedule Posted, WB 100th Anniversary

Post by Oneeyeopen »

Warner Brothers was and still is a major studio, I'm surprised they didn't include a Batman or two from the 90's for the schedule. And I guess Angels with Dirty Faces is still untainable. I love that they included Warner Brothers musicals - they had franchise films before it was called 'franchise' - the Broadway Melody franchies to be exact.

I would have liked to see The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Malclom X, and The Bodyguard
From 1993 - Falling Down from director Joel Schumacher, Free Willy, The Fugitive, and The Pelican Brief
From 1994 - Disclosure, Interview with a Vampire, and the original Space Jam from 1996.
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CinemaInternational
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Re: April 2023 Schedule Posted, WB 100th Anniversary

Post by CinemaInternational »

I noticed some TBA slots yet. Obviously the missing "60s Musical" is that old standby known as My Fair Lady, and I'm assuming that two of the many empty slots for the "70s and 80s' are Warner's two Best picture winners of the era Chariots of Fire and Driving miss Daisy. No clue on the rest though.
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Re: April 2023 Schedule Posted, WB 100th Anniversary

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Oneeyeopen wrote: March 11th, 2023, 2:57 pm Warner Brothers was and still is a major studio, I'm surprised they didn't include a Batman or two from the 90's for the schedule. And I guess Angels with Dirty Faces is still untainable. I love that they included Warner Brothers musicals - they had franchise films before it was called 'franchise' - the Broadway Melody franchies to be exact.

I would have liked to see The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Malclom X, and The Bodyguard
From 1993 - Falling Down from director Joel Schumacher, Free Willy, The Fugitive, and The Pelican Brief
From 1994 - Disclosure, Interview with a Vampire, and the original Space Jam from 1996.
It's interesting that they just released "Angels With Dirty Faces" on Blu Ray, but seemingly can't have it air on television. I think it's been shown at the TCM Film Festival as well. I would imagine that since TCM was making money off of it being presented at the festival, they would have had to go through the proper channels for screening the film in public.

If TCM were going to show one of the 90s Batman films, I'd root for "Batman Returns." I saw that movie in the theater in the third grade and loved it. My favorite scene was when Michelle Pfeiffer flips out and sews her Catwoman catsuit together with a single leather jacket.

"Free Willy" would be good too, I have more nostalgia for the whale though than the actual film. I grew up (and still live) in Oregon. When word got out about Keiko's (aka "Free Willy") living conditions, Warner Brothers led a campaign to find him a new home. Eventually Keiko moved to a custom-built 2 million gallon tank at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport. My class (I thought it was 5th grade in 1994/1995, but in fact-checking Keiko's story, I learned it was early 1996, so 6th grade) took a field trip from Salem (where I lived) to Newport (about 1.5 hours away) to see Keiko. I ended up seeing Keiko multiple times as family members visited from Minnesota and we wanted to take them to the beach and to see something cool like a killer whale. Keiko was only at the aquarium for a few years before he was released. His tank is now the "Passages of the Deep" exhibit that takes you through three different environments on a moving sidewalk. I have more memories of the whale than the movie. I think "Free Willy" was filmed in Astoria though, if I remember correctly.
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txfilmfan
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Re: April 2023 Schedule Posted, WB 100th Anniversary

Post by txfilmfan »

speedracer5 wrote: March 11th, 2023, 9:52 pm
Oneeyeopen wrote: March 11th, 2023, 2:57 pm Warner Brothers was and still is a major studio, I'm surprised they didn't include a Batman or two from the 90's for the schedule. And I guess Angels with Dirty Faces is still untainable. I love that they included Warner Brothers musicals - they had franchise films before it was called 'franchise' - the Broadway Melody franchies to be exact.

I would have liked to see The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Malclom X, and The Bodyguard
From 1993 - Falling Down from director Joel Schumacher, Free Willy, The Fugitive, and The Pelican Brief
From 1994 - Disclosure, Interview with a Vampire, and the original Space Jam from 1996.
It's interesting that they just released "Angels With Dirty Faces" on Blu Ray, but seemingly can't have it air on television. I think it's been shown at the TCM Film Festival as well. I would imagine that since TCM was making money off of it being presented at the festival, they would have had to go through the proper channels for screening the film in public.
Looks like it's only available on iTunes (in Belgium, of all places), though reelgood reports it's not available anywhere in the US (reelgood is not always 100% accurate). Broadcast rights are certainly different from rights for public exhibition in a theater, which are different again from streaming rights, home video rights and pay-per-view rights. TCMFF definitely has to clear everything they show.

This film and the rights issue actually came up in the TCM forum a couple years ago. It seems the rights reverted back to the original author, per the forum discussion. So there are a few possibilities:
  • The heirs are unaware of the issue (unlikely)
  • The heirs are unknown (again, unlikely in this case)
  • The rights have fallen to a large group of people. The larger the number of rights holders, the more complicated it is to get agreement from them on what to do with the rights
  • The heirs want more money than the market is willing to pay
  • The heirs don't want it released, for some reason
  • A rights holder recently died, and their estate is tied up in the legal process for whatever reason, or they've sold their rights share to a new party


This last one is probably the real reason. Every time a rights holder passes away, their estate has to complete probate before the rights are available again (when the rights contract agreement expires), unless they've moved the rights to an LLC, trust or some other legal entity, instead of their personal estate. The reason I think this is the case is because, according to MovieCollectorOH's database of TCM showings, it was shown 59 times on TCM up until December 2009, the last time they aired it. This seems to point to a change in rights ownership in some manner.

The TCM forum page on this topic can be found here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20221206072 ... rty-faces/

I seem to recall that they've had to withdraw some previously announced titles at the festival because of some last-minute hitch with exhibition rights. I remember one discussion session where they brought in some of their rights lawyers, and they stated that for some titles, they can spend years getting the rights to a film.
Last edited by txfilmfan on March 12th, 2023, 10:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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CinemaInternational
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Re: April 2023 Schedule Posted, WB 100th Anniversary

Post by CinemaInternational »

It must be some rights issue that holds up TV screenings of Angels with Dirty Faces, because it is available in all home video formats. I remember there was also much talk about two WB films of the 1950s, The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees, being absent on TCM, while those two were both put on DVD. In the case of those two musicals, it definitely looks like an estate issue, since both were based on Broadway musicals produced by George Abbott.

Regarding Warner films of the 1990s, they likely didn't want to head into that decade because ownership questions of Warner films of that era are frequently convoluted.

I did notice 1988's Torch Song Trilogy on the schedule, which indicates that it they did go into the 90s, the channel would have tapped into New Line Cinema, Fine Line Features, and 1994 onward Castle Rock Entertainment titles if they had moved into the 90s. But that in itself feels like cheating as New Line/Fine Line was in its own autonomous little orbit untit the financial downturn of 2008, and most of the Castle Rock titles were originally distributed by rival studio Columbia, so none of them would be authentic WB films.

Also, in a move similar to Castle Rock's studio switch, Warner lost the rights to some of the films they distributed in the 1990s, namely the films where Morgan Creek Productions or Regency Enterprises was the majority copyright holder on the film. (Thus, WB still holds the rights to films like A Time to Kill and The Client, where Regency was a minority share-holder) This almost exclusively applied to 1990s titles, although there were a few Morgan Creek titles of the early 2000s affected, as well as one Regency offering from the 1980s: Once Upon a Time in America. The aforementioned original Free Willy is one of these titles that WB has no hold on anymore, as are the highly acclaimed Heat and LA Confidential.

With all that said, if the 90s had been included, I'd imagine it would be a small sampling of things that had already played the channel in the past (Men Don't Leave, White Hunter Black Heart, Defending Your Life, Dogfight, Until the End of the World, The Hudsucker Proxy, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Eyes Wide Shut), a smattering of Oscar winning or nominated titles (GoodFellas, Reversal of Fortune, JFK, Unforgiven, The Fugitive, The Bridges of Madison County, Shine, Boogie Nights, Wag the Dog, The Green Mile, Magnolia), a smidgen of films involving black or Latino heritage (Malcolm X, Hoop Dreams, My Family, Love Jones, Rosewood), or a soupcon of films that might have some loose tie to traditional TCM offerings, be it a period piece , a biopic, featuring a star that was in things since the 50s, 60s or 70s or some work by some big name, respected director. (Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, Presumed Innocent, The Sheltering Sky, Hamlet, Memphis Belle, The Witches, Other People's Money, Switch, Guilty by Suspicion, Fearless, A Perfect World, Heaven and Earth, The Secret Garden, Grumpy Old Men, The Pelican Brief, Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, M. Butterfly, Widows Peak, Maverick, Love Affair, A Little Princess, Se7en, Just Cause, Outbreak, Surviving Picasso, My Fellow Americans, Mad City, Contact, Liberty Heights, Any Given Sunday)
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Re: April 2023 Schedule Posted, WB 100th Anniversary

Post by Thompson »

I tuned in to watch The Dirty Dozen just now, and it ain't on.
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cmovieviewer
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Re: April 2023 Schedule Posted, WB 100th Anniversary

Post by cmovieviewer »

Thompson wrote: March 12th, 2023, 2:09 pm I tuned in to watch The Dirty Dozen just now, and it ain't on.
TCM messed up the transition to Daylight Savings Time this morning, so currently everything is starting one hour later than the posted schedule.
Oneeyeopen
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Re: April 2023 Schedule Posted, WB 100th Anniversary

Post by Oneeyeopen »

Thanks for the feedback!

They did offer a sampling of movies from the 90's. I just thought they could have done much better with the selection and included some of the ones I've mentioned. Studios don't turn 100 years old every day, let's give them a real celebration alreadyl and include as much of their 100 years as they can. Some of those 90's films will be or are already classics. In the next 20 to 30 years, the 90's will all be classic movies.
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Re: April 2023 Schedule Posted, WB 100th Anniversary

Post by Hibi »

cmovieviewer wrote: March 12th, 2023, 3:41 pm
Thompson wrote: March 12th, 2023, 2:09 pm I tuned in to watch The Dirty Dozen just now, and it ain't on.
TCM messed up the transition to Daylight Savings Time this morning, so currently everything is starting one hour later than the posted schedule.
LMREO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wondered about that!
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