Briefs for the weekend of July 5-7, 2024

With the new month having started on Monday, it's time for new programming features. I mentioned Star of the Month Eva Marie Saint getting her tribute on Thursdays, but on Fridays there's going to be a look at movies of the 1970s. It kicks off tonight at 8:00 PM with New York, New York, a movie that I had on my old DVR before we moved but never got around to watching. Unfortunately for me, the second one, Looking for Mr. Goodbar at 11:00 PM, is another of those that for whatever reason TCM seems to have rights issues involving streaming as opposed to traditional cable or satellite. (No, I don't get why those issues would be a thing, or why the most recent round of contract talks didn't solve those issues.) So for those of us with YouTube TV, Looking for Mr. Goodbar doesn't seem to be available. I had it on my old DVR ages ago but only got halfway through watching it for some reason.

Speaking of 1970s movies, Robert Towne, a screenwriter best known for some of his 1970s work like Chinatown and Shampoo, died earlier this week aged 89. As of right now, it doesn't look as though any of Towne's work is part of the salute to 1970s films. The Last Detail, I think, showed up as part of the Two for One mini-series that finished up at the end of June.

As for stuff on my DVR that's coming up on TCM, you are going to get a whole series of such posts over the next week, as there are four or five movies I haven't blogged about before that will be showing up. As for what I have previously blogged about, there's most of the FXM Retro lineup, while over on TCM, The Reluctant Debutante is on this afternoon at 4:00 PM, so there's not much time left to catch it.

I put the entire weekend in the title of the post, however, in large part because I wanted to mention that The Flag is showing up as part of Silent Sunday Nights at 12:45 AM on July 8 (that's in the Eastern time zone; further west it's still late in the evening of July 7). I mentioned it ages ago; it's a short movie that was produced by the Technicolor company as a way of trying to show off their two-strip Technicolor process. Francis X. Bushman plays George Washington, who gets Betsy Ross to make the first American flag. At the time I wrote a post on it, the movie had not yet fallen into the public domain. It should be now, but I wouldn't know who holds elements of the movie that might put it onto one of the video sites.