So TCM's annual 31 Days of Oscar this year is running the features in alphabetical order by title, something I don't think they've done in the past. We're up to the letter G, which will be continuing until Saturday afternoon. One thing that doesn't seem to be original, however, is the shorts programming.
Tomorrow morning at 7:00 AM, TCM is running The Green Goddess, a lesser George Arliss movie, or at least one I consider lesser just becuase Arliss is miscast as an Indian raja. I was thinking of doing a full-length post on it even though I haven't seen it in quite some time. But a search of the blog reveals that I did one of those one-paragraph summaries of it a year ago. I'm guessing that's the airing I DVRed and then watched.
But note that in that post I mentioned how following it is the short Romance of Radium, a Pete Smith short on the discovery of radioactive elements. Tomorrow morning at 8:19 AM, following The Green Goddess, is... Romance of Radium! Don't they have any other Pete Smith one-reelers to show?
Why yes, yes they do. At about 10:19 PM tonight, following The Grapes of Wrath, is Quicker'n a Wink, looking at slow-motion photography, specifically the work of Harold Edgerton, an MIT professor who pioneered the use of stroboscopic photography. As you can see, I've mentioned that one already. And at about 3:50 AM, following The Great Waltz, there's Audioscopiks, which is Pete Smith's first look at 3-D movies, all the way back in 1935. There was a sequel, The New Audioscopiks, a few years later, but I don't think that one was Oscar-nominated.
John Williams
15 minutes ago
1 comment:
With the repeated shorts it might be a scheduling thing, those particular shorts fit the proper space available to keep them on track and have the necessary Oscar nom.
I don't like to bust on the station because I love TCM but 31 Days of Oscar is my least favorite one on their schedule. Since I've seen most of the films they're showing, though I do manage an occasional find like this year's Au Revoir, Les Enfants, it makes for thin viewing. I realize this is a more singular problem and I'd never want them to discontinue doing it since it does provide exposure to many films others haven't seen.
My personal fave of their features is Summer Under the Stars. Now that's usually a gold mine of unseen treasures.
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