Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Another night of National Film Registry movies

Last year around this time, there was a blank night on the TCM schedule, and there wasn't much information on what was going to be in that slot until not long before the night. It turned out that was the day the Library of Congress was announcing the new selections to the National Film Registry, and Ben Mankiewicz was sitting down with the representative from the Library to present some of the selected movies.

Obviously, they can't release such a lineup too long before the movies are supposed to air, although I assume TCM knew far enough in advance to be able to deal with the rights issues (or perhaps the federal government representatives handled that). But we've reached that time of the year when another batch of movies are being named, and it's tonight that those movies are going to be shown, which is why there's another blank night in the TCM schedule. I haven't come across any lineup of the actual movies.

At least this year, TCM announced that this is what they'd be doing. The bad news, of course, is that trying to DVR these movies is going to be a pain in the butt. Not that I've got room on my DVR anyway.

Update:

One of the commenters on the TCM boards has posted tonight's schedule:

8:00 PM Hair Piece (1984)
8:30 PM My Fair Lady (1964)
11:30 PM The Informer (1935)
1:15 AM Monterey Pop (1968)
2:45 AM Hearts and Minds (1975)
4:45 AM The Lady From Shanghai (1948)

Personally, I'm surprised with this years selections, more by the fact that some of the movies on the list hadn't already been selected. In addition to My Fair Lady, there's On the Town and Disney's Cinderella, as well as several that are only slightly less well known but very much of Hollywood like Bad Day at Black Rock and Leave Her to Heaven.

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