Mobius TV Guide - the recurring thread of doom, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly on TV

TCM is premiering GOJIRA Friday night (6/15), at 8pm EST, followed by a night of Japanese monster movies (RODAN, MOTHRA, THE H-MAN).

Finally watched it. Looks really really nice. It's a remaster of Hooper's 118-minute cut that was originally released on U.S. home video. I'll keep this on my DVR for awhile, because who knows if this will ever get a Blu-ray release.

Quite a TCM line-up today, which makes me glad I'm not going into work until 8 pm (I'm just working 8-11 pm today because this is our slooooow month and I have more vacation hours than I'll ever use and this helps payroll). Didn't get up in time for VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED or THE TIME MACHINE, but have watched THE MANSTER and SNOW DEVILS. Coming up, WAR OF THE PLANETS, WILD WILD PLANET, FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH and THE GREEN SLIME!

I guess TCM doesn't have the rights to WAR BETWEEN THE PLANETS, aka PLANET ON THE PROWL.

Never saw SNOW DEVILS before. What ludicrous looking faux-Yeti aliens! Interesting 60s take on Global Warming, though, and it sure tries to do an ambitious plot with a tiny budget.

The print of MANSTER was considerably better than my bargain bin DVD's.

Next up, WAR OF THE PLANETS. I've only sort of seen this one -- I say "sort of seen" because it was on late night TV a decade ago (TCM, I'm guessing) and I watched it right after being dumped via email by a woman in LA I'd been having a long-distance relationship with. Have no memory of it at all beyond "hey, that's Franco Nero."

I do have memories of seeing (half of) WILD, WILD PLANET the last time it was on TCM. I'm guessing it's the best of the four "Gamma" films, right?

Yes. Not even close (then again the others tend to put me to sleep).

Don't know if this would count as good,bad or ugly TV, but there's a cool documentary playing on PBS called TALES OF A GHETTO CLOWN--it's an interesting behind-the-scenes look at actor-comedian John Leguizamo's fifth attempt at his first stage show on Broadway in over a decade, titled GHETTO CLOWN. Having been a fan of his work for years, I like seeing him in anything with his self-admitted crazy, incredibly diverse & talented,charismatic, funny-as-hell self (there seems to be nothing he can't do performance-wise,seriously) and since I rarely see him on TV, this was a real treat for me and a look at how difficult it can be to build a brand new stage show from the ground up,even when you're an already proven stage box-office name, and him having to perform a show in both English & Spanish for the first time,even though he's known both since birth. It was also interesting to see JL visit his birthplace in Columbia and try the show out there in front of a Spanish-speaking only audience for the first time.

I saw him interviewed on CHARLIE ROSE about this show months ago, and I've heard that it's been pretty successful--I don't think he's brought it to Detroit yet, which he should,considering the D's sizable Latino population. (I still think he should have had the lead in LAND OF THE DEAD, but that's just IMHO.) So check your local PBS listings and all that for it---it's part of PBS "The Arts" series.

This post has been edited by Kim Greene on Jul 14 2012, 01:33 AM

A little late, but today is Johnny Weissmuller Day at Turner Classic Movies with a bunch of Tarzans and some Jungle Jims.

Graveyard viewing on TCM tonight (early am 9/2): THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN, which has become a favorite for schedulers, at 2:15am EST, followed by Richard Fleischer's gripping, but oh so downbeat, 10 RILLINGTON PLACE at 4am EST.

Late tonight on TCM: THE SID SAGA, a homemade bio-portrait that I think you'll enjoy as much as I did. (2am EST) Sunday, 4am EST, TCM: THE LOOKING GLASS WAR, a Le Carre adaptation I've never seen (I think the Sony MOD has it.)

Nice to see Jenny Agutter (WALKABOUT, LOGAN'S RUN) in CALL THE MIDWIFE, a huge hit for the BBC now playing Sunday nights on PBS. I was going to say she's been gone from American screens for a long time, but according to IMDb she was on the World Security Council in THE AVENGERS.

This post has been edited by Jim Donahue on Oct 8 2012, 06:47 AM

She is indeed, alongside Powers Boothe.

NBC has indefinitely postponed the season premiere of COMMUNITY--and also WHITNEY, but really, who cares about that one? Both were slotted for Friday of next week. The network is saying it's concentrating on the shows currently on air--a number of which are struggling, mightily. 30 ROCK, in its last season, did even worse in its season premiere than COMMUNITY used to in that time slot. 30R should wrap up its 13-ep run at some point in January, so there's speculation COMMUNITY will be held till then.

That means COMMUNITY's yearly Halloween episode--always a highlight--will probably run in Jan./Feb., and the Christmas episode around Easter.

There's also an episode already filmed that was written by Oscar-winner Jim (Dean Pelton) Rash.

(I'm pretty sure Marty had something to do with this.)

This post has been edited by Jim Donahue on Oct 10 2012, 09:24 AM

The premier of Arrow is tonight. The word has has been generally promising and from what I've read it's embracing it's comic book roots more readily than Smallville.

I may have to check this out. I liked Justin Hartley's take on the character well enough on SMALLVILLE, not that I'm willing to invest another 10 years of my life in a CW show.

The TCM premiere of Bert I. Gordon's TORMENTED (60) closes off a day and night of horror in the wee hours tonight/tomorrow.

And ARROW is pretty good. One of the characters actually said "this is sort of like HAMLET" but that's the CW for you.

Curtis Harrington's GAMES was on TCM the other night in a colorful, if soft, widescreen print. I'm assuming it's the same transfer as the DVD that came out earlier this year.

I'd seen it last year in crummy pan-and-scan transfer on Netflix streaming, and I have to say I enjoyed it much, much more in its widescreen dimensions. Worth a watch if it turns up again.

HK-made "Category III" THE STORY OF RICKY (91) aired on TCM a night ago, subtitled no less, and someone should check if hell froze over. Surely the most gonzo, rubberized splatterfest ever to air on the channel; did Robert Osborne approve? I want to see him and Drew Barrymore discuss it on The Essentials, followed by a Category III festival hosted by Simon Yam.

This post has been edited by Bob Cashill on Nov 4 2012, 01:08 PM

It was immediately followed by Kihachi Okamoto's SWORD OF DOOM (1966), but the onscreen guide only listed it by its Japanese title, "Daibosatsu Toge," which caused me to go to IMDB to see what film they were talking about. Why would they not list it by its more famous English title?

That was a little strange.

TCM is scheduled to air the rare Amicus film THE PSYCHOPATH on January 11th, I think it is. The initial blurb doesn't list it as being letterboxed, but who knows? The film was shot in Techniscope 2:35-1.

There's a new R2 DVD of THE PSYCHOPATH.