Summer Under the Stars continues; as I mentioned yesterday, today is the day for Shirley MacLaine, which unfortunately does not include What a Way to Go!. I didn't realize it, but apparently TCM is inflicting Mario Cantone on us in prime time tonight and next Wednesday. I found him obnoxious 20 years ago when he was one of the celebrities on Pyramid, constantly stepping over then-host Donny Osmond's lines; obnoxious when he was a Guest Programmer, treating Robert Osborne the same way; and still obnoxious during his guest hosting duties last October (or was it October 2023?). Sorry, but that's the way I see Mario Cantone.
Thursday brings Sterling Hayden. I recently watched a movie of his that's not part of his day, Naked Alibi which Eddie Muller selected for Noir Alley. But there are several interesting films including Zero Hour! at 4:00 PM; The Asphalt Jungle at 6:00 PM; and Five Steps to Danger at 11:15 PM. I actually have the latter on my DVR and have mentioned it briefly a couple of times a decade or so ago, but I've never done a full-length post on it. It last aired as part of Ruth Roman's turn as Star of the Month, and I've got some other of her movies with posts coming up, which is part of why I decided to wait on doing a full-length post on it.
And now for a couple of stories that I heard on some of the international broadcasters I listen to. The first one is interesting for several reasons, one having to do with Oscar scheduling. Apparently there was a fair bit of controversy over the way the Czech film academy was handling its selection for Best International (formerly foreign-language) film. I knew each country submitted one film to the (US) Academy which then picked the nominees from among those movies, but apparently when those submissions has to be made disadvantages some films, which made me think that perhaps AMPAS should set a specific 12-month period for when would-be nominees have to be released, as this doesn't seem to be the case. In any case, the Czechs are going with a documentary instead of a narrative film. The photographer at the heart of that documentary did a longer-form interview with Radio Prague three years ago if you want to learn more about her.
From KBS World Radio out of Korea, I heard a story about Oldboy director Park Chan-wook getting expelled from the WGA for continuing to work during the last strike. Now, while I understand not actually working on any productions, the question of how you can expect a writer not to write is one that doesn't really get answered. And there's also for me the issue of any number of great stories turned into movies being labors of love for the people who wrote them: Sylvester Stallone, after all, wrote Rocky before becoming famous. Why should he be punished simply for not paying the protection racket? I also wonder when somebody is going to break the closed-shop blacklist the way Kirk Douglas broke the 1950s blacklist by putting Dalton Trumbo's name on the screen for Spartacus.
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