Looking Ahead (And backward) - A Distractions TCM Heads-Up for August, from Mike Norton

Remaining an excellent, fairly basic cable, commercial-free resource for films - at least unless and until their current, cash-starved owners, ATT, decide to muck about - is Turner Classic Movies.
    August will see TCM doing 31 daily star spotlights, wherein for 24 hours one star will be in every movie from 6 am (Eastern) until the same time the following morning. While a quick check finds me a little disappointed in some of the selections, it's nonetheless a 31-day opportunity to get a sampling from across a given star's career.
   The complete day-by-day spotlights, listing each day's films and times, can be found here.
They did a wonderful job clearly laying it all out, and each film is a link to more info about that film.  The information there is up to date, while the block list shown here lacks one revision.
  What's different? Presumably the

recent retro-developments concerning John Wayne's publicly-stated views (particularly going back to a 1971 Playboy interview), which already led to USC removing their John Wayne exhibit from a place of prominence, and the renewal of the call to change the name of the airport in Orange County, also resulted in his day being taken away from him and given to Natalie Wood. That's my working presumption in the absence of a public statement.
  While I don't condone Wayne's socio-political positions, I don't approve of the move. It's not as if Wayne's political views have just suddenly become abhorrent, many of us knew they stank while he was still alive, but the man's been dead for over 40 years, and the man behind the characters isn't the issue in any of his performances. Regardless, they made the decision, so I wanted to at least give you that heads-up. It's perhaps worth noting that they've still decided to include a John Wayne film for the day, giving it the main attraction 8pm slot even, with The Searchers (1956), thanks to Natalie Wood also being in the film. 

Having just a few weeks ago gotten into a discussion with fellow bloggers Garbo and Bryan concerning Bette Davis' career, when I heard that August would be a star-a-day spotlight I rightly expected that Bette would get one of the days. Sure enough, there she is on August 23rd.

 Initially I was disappointed to find none of the trio of top recommendations from Garbo (Dark Victory, The Letter, or Now, Voyager) among that day's selections, I soon saw that Now, Voyager is off on the 28th, with co-star Paul Henreid's films, so Bette gets to reach beyond her own day for the month. I wouldn't be surprised if she shows up somewhere else during the month, too. Then, off on September 18th at 8:30 am (always EST), they're planning to run Dark Victory. So, only The Letter isn't currently on their schedule. Eventually, eventually. There are only so many of these films I'm likely to watch in a small stretch of time anyway, and my DVR space is not unlimited.
  I already have reminders in on TCM's site for a few things -- they remind you one week, and then again one day, ahead of when something's set to air. A cool, free feature.
   Anyway, here's the link to their full schedule, where you can use the pull-down menu to move to August (or start with today) and then look at each full-day's offerings. For instance, you should note that next Tuesday, the 28th, starting at 8 pm they'll be running several films to honor the late Carl Reiner.
   Also, if you have TCM as part of your home entertainment package, you should be able to sign in to the site and watch a variety of movies they make accessible for a couple weeks or so at a time in their Watch TCM section.
   Anyway, this is primarily a special heads-up for August. Whether or not I do a week-to-week set of follow-up supplement posts remains to be seen, starting with whether or not I have any indication that anyone was even interested. 
  My normal, weekly post is set to appear half an hour after this, so unless you're coming by fairly early it's probably already there. -- Mike