Briefs for January 20-21, 2022

I wanted to mention some of the movies that are coming up on TCM as part of this week's installment of the "true crime" spotlight. Some years back I had Looking for Mr. Goodbar (midnight tonight) on my old DVR, but never did a post on it in part because it's one of those movies I was only able to get halfway through since I found it such a difficult watch in part because I didn't find any of the characters likeable. Much more interesting for me, despite the equally difficult subject nature, was Star 80, airing at 4:45 AM. The recently deceased Peter Bogdanovich, despite his relationship with Dorothy Stratten, and actually marrying Dorothy's sister, is not named in the movie.

Friday's daytime lineup on TCM is a mix of movies about people who aren't what they claim to be, putting their partners in danger. This includes the 1940 British version of Gaslight at 4:30 PM. The Ingrid Bergman version from 1944 is much better known not just because it's a Hollywood film, but because MGM's getting the rights to the play to make the 1944 version allowed them to keep the equally good British version under wraps.

I was looking at the lineup on StarzEncore Westerns, and see that tomorrow has a whole bunch of interesting films that I've already blogged about. It's been four years since I've blogged about Warlock, which kicks things off at 2:18 AM. That's followed by the 1950 version of Winchester '73 at 4:20 AM. I know there was a remake in the 1960s, but I'm not certain I've seen it. Then comes My Darling Clementine at 5:54 AM. The Return of Frank James (7:32 AM) was the subject of a post so long ago that when I did it it was still the Fox Movie Channel. Cowboy follows at 9:06 AM, and finally is Broken Lance at 10:39 AM.

No birthdays of note today, at least not that I haven't already blogged about before. But there were a couple of deaths, which is in fact part of the reason I decided to do a briefs post now. Yvette Mimieux died on Monday, a few days after her 80th birthday. Hers was one of those names that I recognized as a kid more from the slightly exotic nature of it. She was in enough MGM movies like The Time Machine and Where the Boys Are that TCM could put together a night of her films when they're making up a schedule for after 31 Days of Oscar. There's also Hardy Krüger, a German actor who I thought made more English-language movies than he apparently did. I remember him from The Flight of the Phoenix. Wikipedia says he was in The Secret of Santa Vittoria, which I think I have on my DVR. Krüger, who died yesterday, was 93.