Briefs for January 22-23, 2019

Singer and actress Kaye Ballard died yesterday at the age of 93. I happen to be a game show fan, so on the game show forum where I saw another mention of her death, it was mentioned that she did a whole host of game shows back in the 70s. Movies were rather less frequent, although I really enjoyed The Ritz where she plays the wife of Jack Weston, who gets away from his murderous brother-in-law (Jerry Stiller) by escaping to a gay bathhouse.

The Oscar nominations were announced today. I didn't pay attention because I haven't seen any of the movies and am not planning to watch the awards ceremony. I've also always wondered why they release the announcements so early in the morning Los Angeles time. I'd guess it's to be the right time in some time zone, but I don't know which one.

Hangover Square is going to be on FXM tomorrow morning at 4:35 AM. This one, Laird Cregar's final film before his untimely death, is a pretty good movie about a composer who has blackouts and does things he can't remember during them. The movie got a Blu-ray at the end of 2017, and isn't that much more expensive than the MOD DVD. If you haven't seen it before, it's well worth a watch.

I actually have a couple of movies queued up that I've watched and am going to be doing full-length reviews on, but with working the early shift and consistently waking up way early, it's thrown my whole schedule out of whack. I'm hoping to get the two done tomorrow and Friday, with Thursday being the Movie Picks blogathon.