Briefs for December 16, 2025

One of the bigger and more surprising obituaries is that of actor/director Rob Reiner, who was murdered over the weekend at the age of 78. It sounds like his son had some tragic mental health issues that led to self-medication and everything that follows from that. TCM just aired This Is Spinal Tap this past weekend before the news came out; as of now I don't know that there's been any further tribute scheduled.

However, looking at TCM's YouTube page, I see that there's already a TCM Remembers video for Reiner. I was there looking to see if TCM's year-end TCM Remembers piece has been aired yet. To be honest, I haven't been watching much live TCM, which would be why I haven't been paying close enough attention to whether the Parade of the Dead as I like to call it has gotten its release. So far, the piece is not on TCM's YouTube page.

I was going to do a briefs post for Dick Van Dyke's 100th birthday over the weekend, since I though the premiere of Mary Poppins was in prime time. It wasn't until lunchtime on Saturday that I noticed the centenary salute was during the afternoon, so my posting on it would have been too late. I did, however, record Mary Poppins, and, I think Bye Bye Birdie. I just have to check and make certain that they're both on my DVR since Mary Poppins especially is the sort of movie that I could see Disney wanting to screw around with the streaming rights.

In a similar matter, there's the question of the Netflix attempt to by Warner Bros./Discovery and what that's going to mean for TCM. I've been thinking some about it but never really wrote up any post, largely becuase I'm just not certain. There's been a fair bit of confusion as to where TCM is going to wind up. Apparently, WB/Discovery is splitting up with most of the cable channels not necessarily being part of the division that Netflix would be getting. And that's even if the deal goes through. Not only are there regulators who might want their say, there's also Paramount who put in a bid. Watch this space, as they might say. The one thing I would add is that I could foresee a problem if the WB film library (well, the Turner library that forms the backbone of TCM programming plus whatever else WB has added on in the past 30 years) and the TCM channel wind up in separate divisions.