I probably should have put up this post yesterday, since the first item deals with programming that's coming up on TCM tonight in prime time. Apparently it's been 60 years of the UCLA Film and Television Archive. If you've watched enough TCM, you'll have seem movies that have title cards mentioning preservation and/or restoration by the Archive, often together with acknowledgements of people who have helped financially or by providing the materials preserved. TCM is honoring the occasion with a full 24 hours of material that has recently been restored, including both well-known stuff -- the salute kicks off at 8:00 PM with My Darling Clementine and obscure stuff as well as some TV. I don't think I've seen the Myrna Loy version of Vanity Fair (Sept. 26, 11:30 AM), before. Mystery of the Wax Museum shows up overnight at 3:15 AM; I don't know if the restored versions of the movies are actually airing, however.
After the 24 hours of UCLA Archive stuff, Friday in prime time brings us a Guest Programmer. This month it's director Paul Thomas Anderson, who has made such films as Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood. He was also a presenter in the first season of Two for One, selecting Bugsy Malone and The Bad News Bears. He's actually presenting five movies, as the now-infrequent Guest Programmers seem to select a variable number of films:
8:00 PM Running on Empty, which earned tragic River Phoenix an Oscar nomination;
10:15 PM Midnight Run, with Robert De Niro escorting an unwilling Charles Grodin across the country;
12:30 AM The French Connection, earning Gene Hackman the Oscar;
2:30 AM The Battle of Algiers, a political docudrama about the Algerians' attempt for independence from France; and
4:45 AM The Searchers, in which John Wayne searches for a white girl abducted by Indians a good decade earlier.
As far as the obituaries go, I really have to mention Claudia Cardinale. The Italian (technically born in Tunisia to Italian parents) actress who had an international career in Italy with films like 8½ and The Leopard, along with Hollywood stuff like The Pink Panther or A Fine Pair with Ruck Hudson, died on Tuesday at the age of 87. As of right now, I don't see anything of hers on the TCM schedule. I wouldn't be surprised if TCM does put together an evening of her programming.
There's also Henry Jaglom, who died on Monday, also at the age of 87. I recognized the name immediately for some reason although not the films listed, until I realized that Jaglom was the guy who sat down for those conversations with Orson Welles at the end of Welles' life in pursuit of one final project for Welles that never got off the ground.
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