In Praise of Turner Classic Movies
It might just be the best channel on cable. Not all the films it shows are good but many are great. A few are worth watching many times repeatedly. I particularly enjoy early twentieth century films that are relatively unknown — and I don't much care whether they might be forgettable — for their lens on the culture of the time. I also enjoy good junk films from the fifties through the seventies. The thing is, irony hadn't yet become the default reaction to events: people could be passionate without being ridiculed. The culture, it seems to me, was more alive.
Comcast is so horrible about cable packages that I don't actually subscribe to Turner Classic Movies. Due to some fluke of Comcast's service, however, it shows up as a digital channel on one — but only one — of the three televisions I've got hooked up to cable. Something to do, I suspect, with that particular television's internal decoder. And on the Comcast side of things it's probably cheaper to ignore such leakage than to control for it. So this evening it's a big bowl of popcorn for me, and The Guns of Navarone.
Posted by George Kenney on February 13, 2010 7:35 PM 
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Comments
Maybe not on Comcast but "The Victors" by Carl Foreman is out there if you look for it.
Made in 1963 it is the most significant anti-war film I've seen — to this day.
[Sharon was a school chum of one of his daughters, Katie/Carla, in London. g.]
Posted by: Lon C Ponschock | February 14, 2010 7:45 PM
Thank you for the lovely tribute.
TCM has long been my favorite TV spot. They show such respect and adoration toward their movies: full screen, correct speed, great prints, no idiot corporate logo at the bottom right(except for a few seconds every 15 minutes). And their library! Where else can you find an all-day tribute to Charles McGraw or a festival of movies with blue in the title?
Bravo! (Now there's a rotten station.)
Posted by: EJK | February 18, 2010 12:00 PM