End of year briefs

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve, and it's unsurprising that TCM has special programming for the day. Two things that TCM has commonly done to ring in the new year are to play all six of the Thin Man movies, or to show That's Entertainment! and the spinoffs of decreasing quality since the first one used all the good MGM musical material. And wouldn't you know it, but this time the daytime lineup for TCM on December 31 has the Thin Man movies. The Times Square ball drop, however, does not coincide this year with the middle of That's Entertainment! II. Instead, prime time on December 31 has each of the TCM hosts selecting a film that has a prominent scene set at New Year's.

Another thing TCM has done in the past on New Year's Eve is to present a night of concert films. In fact, that's where I first saw ABBA: The Movie, I think 20 years ago when TCM was ringing in 2005. I bring all this up because TCM has decided to give us some concert movies, but during the morning and afternoon of January 1, 2025, rather than prime time. And at 8:00 PM on January 1? Oh, there's That's Entertainment! again. And you can guess the following two movies. This time, however, instead of something like That's Dancing!, the fourth movie, at 3:15 AM, is Soundies: A Musical History. Note, however, that TCM lists this as a 76-minute movie in a 75-minute slot, while That's Entertainment! III is a 113-minute movie in a 135-minute slot.

Posting picked up a bit this year from the past two years, as I'm fully enough ensconced in the new digs Dad and I moved to in March 2023. A new Blu-ray player and larger TV -- yeah, I know 40 inches isn't particularly large any more when it comes to TVs, but that's what fits against the sloping ceiling upstairs where I do my movie viewing -- have made it a lot more convenient for me to watch movies. Indeed, I'm getting close to three weeks ahead in terms of posting. If I get posting back to the slightly higher levels I had throughout the 2010s, post #8000 should come by the end of 2026.

Unsurprisingly, since I put up the post on the night of TCM Remembers movies, a couple of people worth noting died. Foremost among them would be Olivia Hussey, who played Juliet in the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet that got shown to high schoolers for decades when they studied the Shakespeare play. I mean, I saw it in high school 20 years after it was released. Hussey died on Friday aged 73.

Also dying on Friday was Oscar-nominated screenwriter Charles Shyer. He picked up his nomination for Private Benjamin, which I'll be getting to sometime in 2025 since I recorded it when TCM ran it last Veteran's Day. He also directed, with several remakes among his films: the 1990s Father of the Bride, as well as the 200sremake of Alfie. Shyer was 83.