Briefs for October 14, 2014

TCM's forums finally came back yesterday afternoon. I think once I found out that I wasn't the only one having problems, the fairly obvious conclusion was some sort of major problem at TCM's end, although I still think it mildly odd that the error message only read, "This account has been suspended." Another board where I post was undergoing a bit of maintenance yesterday afternoon, and the board owner notified us a good week before of the possible outage time. Sure enough, there was a brief outage, but there was an error message that had a drawing reminiscent of the robot from Forbidden Planet and a message that something's gone wrong and either try again or contact the people who make the board software with a link to their web-site. I also have to admit that I don't do Facebook, which is why I wouldn't have seen any message from TCM there about problems with the boards. I find it a memory hog and I don't care about a bunch of middle-aged gossips playing Candy Crush Saga.



I should probably apologize for not blogging about Tycoon, which aired yesterday at 5:45 PM as part of TCM's birthday salute to the late Laraine Day. I had seen it on the schedule and intended to do a post, but with everything going on over the weekend I totally forgot. There was a little "Buy This" icon next to the movie in the TCM schedule, but the DVD is actually out of print. On the TCM Shop, it says that the DVD is "on order", while over at Amazon they say they only have a limited number available, which is a sure sign that the DVD is out of print. Tycoon isn't exactly a great movie, but it's one that's certainly worth at least one viewing.

As for another short, I can recommend Primitive Pitcairn, which TCM lists as beginning at 4:59 AM, or just after the 1935 Mutiny on the Bounty at 2:45 AM. The short is an early 1935 look at Pitcairn Island, where the Bounty mutineers ended up because it seemed suitably remote. It was still remote even in 1935, and the lives that the descendants of the mutinners were leading was exceedingly harsh. There's apparently no good harbor on the island, so ships didn't stop by very often, which led to a great deal of isolation. The island also doesn't offer a very bounteous (no pun intended) harvest. It's on Youtube, but I'm not certain if it's in the coorect aspect ratio. (I didn't actually watch the Youtube version.)