Wednesday, May 24, 2017

TCM Guest Programmer May 2017, and a short

Tonight sees this month's TCM Guest Programmer: Humberto Martinez. You've probably not heard of him, because he's the winner of a TCM Backlot contest to select a Guest Programmer. I suppose it's nice that the Backlot members can have the chance to appear on TCM, but the Backlot is still overpriced. Unless they get some free wine from the Wine Club, I suppose.

Anyhow, Martinez will be presenting three movies; I don't know if this had to do with rights issues or scheduling or what since normal guest programmers generally get to show four movies. Martinez prefers musicals (not my genre), and has selected:

Pal Joey at 8:00 PM;
The Eddy Duchin Story at 10:15 PM; and
Bye Bye Birdie at 12:30 AM.

In between Pal Joey and The Eddy Duchin Story, there's a short of the actual Eddy Duchin, but that's not the one I was thinking about mentioning today. The one I'd like to mention comes just before prime time: The Forest Commandos, at about 7:38 PM. This one looks at the firefighters who fight forest fires in Ontario. It was originally filmed in Technicolor, although apparently accoring to IMDb the only surviving prints are in black-and-white, which is a shame, because I'd bet a subject like this would really benefit from color photography. There is a Youtube version, but it's watermarked and I don't know if it's been colorized or not; the uploaders don't mention.

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