Briefs for January 23, 2024

The first big thing worth mentioning, and something that probably deserved its own post, is the passing of director Norman Jewison over the weekend at the age of 97. (The death was not announced until yesterday as far as I know.) Jewison was nominated several times for Best Director although I don't think he ever won. His most notable movies include In the Heat of the Night and Moonstruck among a host of others. He was also a producer, on works such as The Landlord that brought Hal Ashby into prominence.

In looking through the TCM schedule, it doesn't look like there are any of Jewison's movies on the TCM schedule through the end of the month. I'll have more on the February schedule as the month opens. But 31 Days of Oscar begins on Feb. 9, which actually makes sense in that the 31st day will be March 10, which is the day the Oscars are being awarded. In any case, I'd assume that a TCM tribute to Jewison wouldn't come until after 31 Days of Oscar. I don't see anything on their site, but that's not a surprise considering how badly run their site is any more. There's a post on his passing on Twitter, but no mention of a scheduled tribute yet. And as of right now no TCM Remembers short on their Youtube site.

Speaking of 31 Days of Oscar, today is the day that the Academy Award nominations were announced. And you know what? Once again I don't think I've seen any of the nominated movies. It doesn't help that in the aftermath of the lockdowns, the local movie theater no longer has early-ish weekday matinees. The last two movies I saw in the local theater were a 12:30 PM Monday matinee of Florence Foster Jenkins back in 2016, and a roughly 10:45 AM Monday matinee of 1917 in January of 2020. I just looked at tomorrow's schedule, and the earliest showtime is 1:40 PM. There do seem to be earlier matinees on the weekend. And I see they're bringing Oppenheimer back in the wake of the nominations, but it's 185 minutes.

Still nothing particularly that's newly back in the FXM rotation, although one thing I don't think I've mentioned recently is My Darling Clementine, which will be on FXM at 6:00 AM Thursday (Jan. 25). Definitely worth watching if you haven't seen it before.