Briefs for August 30, 2015

Has anybody else noticed that the TCM schedule pages seem to be more of a memory hog? I often use the weekly schedule, and it seems to be trying to load a whole bunch of Google stuff before I can use the page, and if I try to stop that stuff from loading, it'll freeze the page for quite some time before I can even do simple things like scroll up/down or use the "expand" links.

As for the shorts coming up on TCM, there seem to be a lot of "making of" shorts, or at least ones focussing on movies that were coming out at the time the shorts were being made. As for the more traditional shorts, there's an AMPAS-produced short on The Art Director coming up at 5:50 PM today, and then forgotte bandleader Glen Gray showing up a little after 10:00 PM following Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Warner Bros. really liked to make one-reelers featuring bandleaders, didn't they.

Oliver Sacks died overnight. Sacks was a neurologist, not a filmmaker, but one of his books was the basis for the 1990 film Awakenings, starring Robin Wiliams as the doctor (name changed) dealing with encephalitis patients who have been made catatonic.