Here's a great little movie trivia quiz: Can you recognize the letter from the movie poster? Thanks to Steve Horton for the link. I only got 14 out of 46.
We very much enjoyed the Laurel and Hardy marathon that Turner Classic Movies offered us yesterday. We would have enjoyed it even more if some of the prints they aired hadn't been truncated or otherwise flawed...but as we always say here, some Laurel and Hardy is always better than no Laurel and Hardy.
A couple of TCM staffers read this site so let me ask them, pretty please, to find a print of Pardon Us with a clearer soundtrack, preferably one of the British release prints that's actually a little longer. I didn't watch everything but I have a couple of e-mails from L&H buffs saying that edited TV prints were used for Swiss Miss, Way Out West and Pack Up Your Troubles. This may not be TCM's fault. It may be a matter of what the distributor is supplying. Still, better copies of these films are around and there oughta be some way to get them on the air.
If you've a hankering to see a Laurel and Hardy movie, let me remind you that the TCM website will allow you to watch one of their better features, A Chump at Oxford, absolutely free and at any time you like.
Which reminds me! You can now advance-order a forthcoming (in October) boxed DVD set that contains all eighty of the Our Gang talkies that were made by the Hal Roach Studio between 1929 and 1938. These are supposedly good, "restored" prints and there are some special features, including a few commentary tracks and such, plus some silent shorts. The pre-order price is $55.00 from Amazon. Sounds great to me...and maybe it'll sell well enough to inspire a similar set of the movies that Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy made on that same lot.
Barack Obama is giving his acceptance speech on Thursday night in front of 76,000 people at an outdoor stadium in Denver. Leaving matters of content aside, it sounds like Great Television: A huge crowd seeing a black man nominated for President on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. As a display of party unity, and because they want the face time, all the major Democratic leaders will be up there, and there are rumors that Muhammad Ali will join them on the podium. Ted Kennedy, who is ailing, is currently scheduled to address the convention via a taped message on Monday night...but I'll betcha someone's trying to engineer a live appearance by him on Thursday.
A little while ago, a gent named Stuart Shepard — who does video commentaries for James Dobson's Focus on the Family group — had one up suggesting that people should pray for torrential rain that evening. What he wanted was precipitation so strong that the TV cameras could not make out the podium.
It was a joke — not a particularly good one but a joke. But it was also a joke that was obviously laying the groundwork for an assertion that would be made if it did rain..."God heard our prayers and cast His vote on Obama." Something like that. Of course in the video, Shepard also set up the notion that if it didn't rain, that would not prove that God didn't curse the Democratic ticket. That's one of the maddening cheats of the televangelist crowd. You know, the Lord works in mysterious ways so whatever he does, that's proof he's on their side.
Shepard's video didn't go over well. It brought so many condemnations, even from folks who oppose Obama, that Focus on the Family has been yanking it all over the 'net, taking it off all the sites where they posted it and threatening legal action to get it yanked when someone reposts it. (But they can't catch 'em all. Here's a link to a gay-themed blog that has it up at the moment.)
So...what are the chances that this gala campaign event will get rained on? The National Weather Service is currently pegging a 10% chance of thunderstorms in Denver on Wednesday and Thursday, but it seems pretty remote for Thursday night. The "discussion" that accompanies that forecast says, in part...
Wednesday through Saturday...models still show the upper trough to our north on Wednesday with a flat ridge over us. From Thursday onward the upper ridge moves back in from the west with pretty dry conditions prognosticated.
It doesn't look like Mr. Shepard is going to get his torrential downpour. I think I'd like to see it rain that night...but only on him.
This runs a little over twenty minutes. It's an interview that Jack Paar did in the early nineties, discussing his career. He was apparently on board the QE2 and it was taped and nicely intercut with clips from his old shows. It's in three parts which should play in sequence in the little player I've embedded below.
I always found Mr. Paar fascinating — an opinion shared by much of America back when he hosted The Tonight Show and his subsequent prime-time series. There was a catch phrase at the time — "What is Jack Paar really like?" People all over America wondered about that. One time, I put it to his frequent guest, Jonathan Winters. I asked Mr. Winters, "What is Jack Paar really like?" and he said, "Just as weird as he appears on television." I suspect if you'd asked Paar that about Winters, you would have gotten the same answer.
August 25, 2008
