Briefs for July 5, 2014

Wesley Clark, who's presenting the TCM Friday Night Spotlight on World War I movies, wasn't exactly terrible, but it seemed clear he was reading somebody else's script, and I wonder how knowledgeable he really is about all these movies. In fact, he made a comment about being approached by TCM that made it sound as though he never would have had the idea to present the movies himself. To me, there was a marked contrast between Clark and presenters like Jacki Weaver and Anthony Bourdain who both seemed to have a lot more passion. That having been said, somebody at TCM is having every one of these presenters turn to face a different camera halfway through the scripts, because nobody seems to be hitting the mark at the same time the camera does. It's really noticeable, and rather jarring.

I don't know if TCM is going to be running a traditional Star of the Month piece for Maureen O'Hara the way we get for most months -- see Doris Day's piece last month on Rock Hudson, or the one Shirley Jones did on Burt Lancaster. Instead, I saw them run a short interview that Robert Osborne did with O'Hara at the most recent TCM Classic Film Festival this past April, in which O'Hara was as engaging as ever, delivering a couple of zingers to unsuspecting Osborne. I think this is the link, although I didn't actually watch the video at the link, and I can't find a way to embed it. I couldn't find the interview at the TCM Media Room, either.