Vigilantes for Kids

TCM's selection for Essentials, Jr. this week is The Magnificent Seven, at 8:00 PM. I must say I'm pleased to see them trying to think outside the box to come up with good movies for the whole family. I would have thought that some people might object on the grounds of the violent gunfights in the movie, although if I were going to make a complaint about its being in Essentials, Jr., the complaint would be that the movie runs just over two hours. For the kids, if I were trying to get them interested in Westerns, I think I'd start with something rather shorter, like High Noon, which has obvious themes of good and bad for the kids, and is also a good 40 minutes shorter. Then again, I think High Noon has already been used in a previous season of Essentials, Jr.

The rest of the evening is an excuse to program movies with "Seven" in the title. That ends with this week's TCM Import, The Seven Samurai at 2:15 AM, which is of course the original version of The Magnificent Seven. That one is even less worthy of ever being an Essentials, Jr. selection, what with the subtitles that kids would have to read for three and a half hours.

In between are Seven Angry Men, which is not about a smallish jury, but another telling of John Brown and his raid on Harpers Ferry; that's on at 10:15 PM. There are two shortish features for Silent Sunday Nights: Seven Years Bad Luck at midnight, which is about the consequences of breaking a mirror; and Seven Chances, in which Buster Keaton tries to find a bride to earn an inheritance.