February is coming up again

February on TCM means the annual 31 Days of Oscar programming feature, a title that takes it name from the days when the Oscars were still handed out in March and it made sense to have a full 31 days given over to such a programming theme. Presumably it must have been cheaper to keep the title 31 Days of Oscar than to have to pay rights fees to the Academy to change the title. That, and once every four years you'd have to change the title from 28 Days of Oscar to 29 Days of Oscar anyhow.

I finally got the chance to see the end of a movie as it aired on TCM (as opposed to off my DVR) and noticed that they're using the same music and graphics package that they've used for the past couple of years. They even repackaged the "Word of Mouth" piece that Liza Minnelli did on her father Vincente, although the editing seemed a bit odd in that it didn't look properly cropped for 16:9; the pastel bit at the bottom that TCM uses to display graphics seemed almost a bit cut off.

Anyhow, I was really posting about the beginning of February so as to point out that the Rusty movies as well as the Bowery Boys movies are going to be taking a four-week break from their usualy Saturday morning time slots for the Oscar programming, but will both be returning at the beginning of March. I think there are two more Rusty movies, and I don't know how many Bowery Boys movies. There were close to four dozen Bowery Boys movies, but I don't know if TCM will be showing every one of them.

Tonight is also the final night of the current season of The Essentials. That, too, will be returning on the first Saturday of March, and as far as I am aware Sally Field is also going to be returning to present the movies along with Robert Osborne. I know there are a lot of people who don't really like The Essentials, but I've always thought of it more as something that's not particularly geared to those of us who are big enough fans of the old movies to read or even write a movie blog; instead it's for the more casual viewers who might not realize that yes, they can be fans of classic cinema too.

Finally, there are going to be some movies returning to FXM Retro in February after a substantial absence. I think I noticed two coming up next week; I don't know how many will be coming back in the weeks following if only because I didn't look at the schedule past the 7th and don't know how far out the FXM schedule is available anyway.