Briefs for May 18-19, 2025

Tonight's post-Mae West lineup on TCM is an interesting one: the original monthly schedule had Yasujiro Ozu's I Graduated, But.... at 12:45 AM. However, apparently only a fragment of that movie survives. TCM's online schedule now lists an Ozu movie called A Straightforward Boy kicking off Silent Sunday Nights at 12:30 AM, followed by the excerpt from I Graduated, But.... (on the TCM schedule with the Japanese title) at 12:45 which isn't the right time if the 17-minute running time TCM gives for A Straightforward Boy is correct. IMDb lists it as 38 minutes for some reason. I haven't seen either of these, so I can't comment. After the two Ozu works, TCM lists a bunch of two-reel sound movies about putting sound to film.

To have a pair of Japanese films in the Imports block is more normal. I've recommended both of tonight's films before, but one of them shows up rather rarely, which is why I'm mentioning tonight's lineup. The two films are Cruel Story of Youth at 2:30 AM, followed by Boy at 4:15 AM. I think Boy last aired when TCM was doing Mark Cousins' The Story of Film series ages ago. At least a decade, since it was before my mom died.

Monday morning and afternoon on TCM gives us a day full of movies about things that can go wrong while flying, such as the excellent Five Came Back at 10:15 AM. Not excellent at all, but a heck of a lot of fun to watch because of how bad it is, is The Crowded Sky which concludes the afternoon at 6:00 PM.

There are a couple of passings worth mentioning since the last briefs post I did. One is a name I wouldn't have recognized, Greg Cannom, a multiple Oscar-winning makeup artist. A lot of the people who work behind the camera don't get as much recognition as they deserve. Cannom's death was announced May 9; he was 73.

Directors are among the people behind the camera who absolutely do get mentioned more prominently when they die, and last week Oscar-winning director Robert Benton died aged 92. Benton won an Oscar for Kramer vs. Kramer, and also directed the terribly underrated Nobody's Fool late in the careers of Paul Newman and Jessica Tandy.