Friday, October 9, 2015

Shorts and TCM's schedule pages

I've commented a few times in the recent past how TCM's weekly schedule page seems no longer to be playing nicely with the browsers on my older computer. I have a feeling it's down to one or another of the things from Google that the page is trying to foist upon us. Google, after all, is trying to get everybody to switch to their Chrome browser. However, the daily schedule pages don't seem to be having nearly as much problem.

And so with that, I note a couple of shorts that are coming up on the schedule today and tomorrow. First up is Take a Cue at 9:18 PM, just after Mad Love. TCM's schedule lists it as a man demonstrating how to play billiards, but in fact it's a Pete Smith short, so you can imagine the quality of the billiards we're going to get. Well, actually, it's trick shots, which can be interesting even if they're not real pool or billiards of whatever sort we're used to. Direction is handled by Felix Feist, who never quite made it out of the second tier of directors, except possibly for when he directed Joan Crawford in This Woman is Dangerous.

Tomorrow morning at 8:08 AM, we get something called The Road to Victory, which is one I haven't seen before. The synopsis on TCM's schedule page makes it sound like it's going to be another of those all-star shorts with the stars entertaining us, of the sort the studios made to try to boost people's morale on the homefront during World War II. But the one reviewer on IMDb's page claims that it actually looks at the future, or the perceived bright future we're all going to have after we beat the Nazis and Japanese, if only you at home continue to participate in the war effort. I'm always up for studio era movies looking at the future.

No comments: