Briefs for December 16-17, 2022

I had been wondering when the Library of Congress was going to announce which films were selected to the National Film Registry, not having heard anything about it. It turns out the announcement was made on Wednesday. A few vintage films from the studio era got picked, notably Cyrano de Bergerac and Charade. There are a lot of selections that tick off one demographic box or another, and at least one that amounts to somebody's home movies, in this case jazz great Cab Calloway. There's also footage from the Mardi Gras of... 1898, which was found in a Dutch museum and restored:

I haven't seen TCM's annual parade of the dead, better known as TCM Remembers (2022). I'll also admit to not really having looked to see when there's most likely a suitable break between movies for TCM to run it. I did look on Youtube, and I don't see it there; nor do I see it on the TCM site. I assume it'll show up in the relatively near future.

Among the people who would be a last-minute addition to it would be Stuart Margolin, a prolific supporting actor on TV and in film, who died on Monday aged 82. He played Little Joe opposite Telly Savalas' Big Joe in Kelly's Heroes and, if I read the Hollywood Reporter article correctly, was the mill foreman who gets killed by Richard Gere at the beginning of Days of Heaven.

And in something that's not quite film-related, but still of interest to those of us who like old movies, I was somewhat surprised to hear a report on Radio Prague's English service last month, and repeated again the other day, about a book that has enduring popularity in the Czech Republic than it does in America, where the author is from: The Egg and I. The report does mention the movie version, including a brief audio clip from the trailer. The link above is a rough transcript of the report and has the option to stream the audio there. If you'd rather listen to the 10-minute piece, a direct audio link is here.