Briefs for June 7-8, 2015

Don't forget that tonight is the first night of TCM's Movie Camp. TCM will be showing Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It's been a while since I've seen it, so I can't recall how much language there is that parents of younger children would find objectionable. I'd suggest that it's probably less of a children's movie than a lot of what ran in Essentials Jr., especially adaptations of books like Treasure Island or Little Women. But don't forget that Essentials Jr. ran Lifeboat of all things. (If I wanted to introduce children to Hitchcock, I'd probably pick something more straightforward where the violence seems a bit more comic, like The Lady Vanishes, or perhaps even the dark comedy The Trouble With Harry.)

The short Sport Slant #5 is on at 12:05 AM tonight. Warner Bros. made a series of movies looking at sports of lesser interest in the early 1930s, much the way that ABC would later come up with Wide World of Sports. The commentary, from the ones I remember, is a bit strident. I don't think I've seen this particular episode in the series, which covers backgammon (yeah, it's not a sport), bowling, and wrestling.

Robert Benchley fans may enjoy My Tomato, which comes on at 12:37 PM tomorrow. This one has Benchley trying to start a Victory Garden to do his part for the war effort. I found it to be one of the more annoying Benchley shorts, but I'm sure there are going to be people who like this, just as there are people who love the Pete Smith shorts.