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Ah, perhaps some of the films being on HBO are why they’re not on Watch TCM. Thanks for the tip.

Back to my capsule review nonsense (I should get on Letterboxed but then again no):

God forgive me for saying this, but Ronald Reagan is quite good in King’s Row (as is the rest of the cast). Apart from the oft-cited “Where’s the rest of me?” bit, I especially enjoyed this exchange between him (Drake) and Bob Cummings (Parris), friends since childhood, late in the film:

Parris: Stick your chin out, Drake.
Drake: Why?
Parris: You're going to get the worst wallop you ever had.
Drake! Yeah? Who's gonna do it?
Parris! I am.
Drake: Start swinging.

It’s not especially crackling writing here, but Drake has, at this point, lost both his legs, fallen into a deep depression, and refuses to get out of his bed. In the scene, Reagan plays him as the cocky sonofabitch he always was, even as a kid, a disbelieving smirk on his face the whole time. His timing (or maybe just the editing of the scene) is crackling

Reagan is also in Storm Warning, as are Ginger Rogers, Doris Day, and Steve Cochran. It’s an odd cast from top to bottom, almost like they just scooped up whoever was on the lot that day. None of the performances here are especially noteworthy, though Cochran (uncommonly handsome, but a poor man’s Robert Mitchum) gets to eat all the scenery as a particularly loathsome and cowardly Klan member, wife-beater, murderer, and attempted rapist. The film is grim—more grim even than I expected being familiar with the story before watching it—and the ending is very pessimistic with a dark opinion of humanity. Apart from the social message, you can see why Scorsese is such a fan.

A Michael Powell rarity, Something Always Happens from 1934, aired earlier today as part of a showcase of films made by Warner Bros, at their Teddington Studios in England. It’s on the app if anyone wants to catch up with it.

Tonight for those interested at 12:30 is The True Adventures of Raoul Walsh. It runs two hours. I love the docs programming that TCM has run for this month. I watched the Max Steiner doc from last week. It's excellent stuff

Matt wrote: Mon Apr 10, 2023 10:40 pm A Michael Powell rarity, Something Always Happens from 1934, aired earlier today as part of a showcase of films made by Warner Bros, at their Teddington Studios in England. It’s on the app if anyone wants to catch up with it.

Thanks for pointing that out! It looks like they also aired another early Powell film this morning, Crown v. Stevens.

FrauBlucher wrote:Tonight for those interested at 12:30 is The True Adventures of Raoul Walsh.

It’s on Criterion’s recent release of High Sierra as well. Definitely worth catching for anyone who doesn’t own that.

Just watched Bette Davis and Mary Astor go mano a mano so to speak in the melodrama The Great Lie (1941). Holy smokes, two of the most conniving women you'll ever see. It was hard to root for either one. Mary Astor played the heavy which was usually reserved for Bette Davis, but the Davis' character had her own psychotic issues. Of course it ended the way you may expect an old Hollywood film to end. Anyone else see this?

It’s been a few years so now I just remember Astor’s psychotic episode about food and her hatred of it.

Ha. Right. When she was pregnant

To the surprise of no one, the restored version of The Strawberry Blonde looks fantastic. As with One Way Passage which I talked about above, the image is stable, beautifully toned from pure white to pure black, and very crisp. A fine tribute to James Wong Howe’s cinematography and to the detail of the costumes and of the set design and decoration.

The many fans here of this movie should be pleased. It would have been nice to see Criterion do what they did for High Sierra and pair this with the color remake by Raoul Walsh, One Sunday Afternoon, but I’ll settle for the Warner Archive Blu-ray at half the price.

Somebody put the wrong tape in the machine for Land of the Pharaohs. After Martin Scorsese’s introduction, which showed clips of a beautiful restoration in 2.55:1, the film itself starts up with a Time Warner logo and is clearly the old SD transfer in 2.35:1 with dulled colors, dust speckles, and choppy opticals. The film is not even that good. The only reason I tuned in was to see the restoration, so it’s a real letdown.

Head to HBO Max I guess if you want to see the restoration.

Matt wrote: Sat Apr 15, 2023 12:18 am Somebody put the wrong tape in the machine for Land of the Pharaohs. After Martin Scorsese’s introduction, which showed clips of a beautiful restoration in 2.55:1, the film itself starts up with a Time Warner logo and is clearly the old SD transfer in 2.35:1 with dulled colors, dust speckles, and choppy opticals. The film is not even that good. The only reason I tuned in was to see the restoration, so it’s a real letdown.

Head to HBO Max I guess if you want to see the restoration.

That's pretty funny but thanks because I barely have any room on the DVR. Are all the new restorations up on HBO?

6 of them are available but not Rio Bravo or East of Eden (which should probably be added soon) nor Helen of Troy or One Way Passage.

Catching up on some things I missed, I watched Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet. It’s an uncharacteristically sedate performance from Edward G. Robinson, but what was so incredible about the film is that it doesn’t dumb down the science for the audience and manages to make a compelling, dramatic film out of people looking at microscopes and mixing chemicals. It’s shot by James Wong Howe who, of course, gives it a lot more style that your usual Warner Bros. “great man” biopic. It’s also got Ruth Gordon in one of her early film roles as Mrs. Ehrlich. And the usual WB bit players such as Harry Davenport, Donald Crisp, Donald Meek, and Louis Calhern all pop up. Also Asian-American actor Wilfrid Hari in a small uncredited role as Dr. Sahachiro Hata, a rare non-servant, non-stereotyped Asian character in a classic Hollywood film.

They’re not very sexy films, but it would be nice to see this, The White Angel, and The Story of Louis Pasteur, all William Dieterle films by the way, given a restoration.

Land of the Pharaohs is great if only for the final scene of Joan Collins getting everything she wanted, and not liking the result! You could argue that the entire film is only there for that blackly comic EC comics style punchline, but I'd take it over the 60s Cleopatra any day.

Matt wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 5:41 am 6 of them are available but not Rio Bravo or East of Eden (which should probably be added soon) nor Helen of Troy or One Way Passage.

The new 4K/Dolby Vision versions of Rio Bravo and East of Eden are on HBO Max now in a WB 100 collection. The latter 2 you mentioned are mysteriously absent though available through TCM on demand. I watched One Way Passage that way and it looks great.

I'm looking forward to when TCM returns to their regular programming (I miss Noir Alley) after two months of special programming. One thing I wish they'd continue to do is play the Looney Toon shorts.

Plenty of noirs on this month, just at all kinds of weird hours instead of at the same time each week! As much as I’ve enjoyed all the deep cuts this month, it will be nice to return to some regularity.

Matt wrote:Little Big Shot, a ‘30s comedy about two small-time chiselers (Robert Armstrong and Edward Everett Horton, plus Glenda Farrell) taking care of a gangster’s orphaned child. I’m normally allergic to precocious child performers, but Sybil Jason, Warner Bros. answer to Shirley Temple, is very charming. She sings, she dances, she cries on cue, she does hilarious impressions of Greta Garbo and Mae West!

I’d never heard of Sybil Jason before this month and now I’ve seen three movies she features in. It was inevitable that I would lose interest in the Warner Bros. retrospective as it moved into more recent decades, but catching up on obscurities via the app has been great. Reminds me of the very early years of TCM when they drew exclusively from the RKO/MGM/WB library.

FrauBlucher wrote: Sun Apr 23, 2023 11:20 pm One thing I wish they'd continue to do is play the Looney Toon shorts.

I'd much prefer the Looney Tunes shorts to the endless repetition of those damned videos of the hosts telling us all how wonderful they all are.

Totally agree. As much as I like the hosts their masturbatory videos are tiresome. I usually use them as bathroom breaks

Village of the Damned is currently on TCM. Why do I still find this film terrifying? Of all the sci-films I can think of I can't think of one more disturbing

On tonight is The Rains Came an atmospheric romance/disaster movie that rarely gets aired on TCM because it’s a Fox film and probably because it has Tyrone Power in brownface.

I like it too. It’s a strong film and deserves to be wider seen

I DVR’d it. I watched a few minutes. It looks impressive. Can’t wait to watch it.

It doesn’t dwell on it, but it’s got a great theme of the folly and tragedy of colonialism (the image of George Brent clinging to a partially submerged statue of Queen Victoria while struggling to make his way through roaring floodwaters), the inability of Westerners to ever understand and respect the Indian culture and people (good double feature with Black Narcissus), as well as the promise of a new, self-ruled, forward-thinking Indian society. That it can contain all this as well as a sophisticated, four-party romantic melodrama is pretty great.

And I had forgotten this is from the “miracle year” of 1939 and won the special effects Oscar over The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind. The way Nigel Bruce is summarily dispatched with is particularly impressive.