Among the many, many cuts made to operations following the regime change at Warner Bros. Discovery is one where another of the bodies - in this instance a programming change - is only now just falling at Turner Classic Movies. A virtual bloodbath of firings happened late last year, among them it turns out was Millie De Chirico. De Chirico had overseen TCM Underground since 2007, curating a mix of cult classics and often underseen films in the wee hours of Saturday or Sunday morning. The spot had been developed and launched by Eric Weber in 2006, in part as an attempt to expand the TCM brand, which had skewed ever-older and stuffier, aiming to attract younger and fringier viewers. Initially it was hosted by Rob Zombie, in a nod to classic tv horror hosts, but before long it let the host aspect fold. Still, it was quietly curated by De Chirico.
She got the axe three days before this past Christmas, but unless one was plugged into the right places back then this happened off-camera, as it were. It's only just now, approximately two months later, that this programming block has reached the end of the road.
As TCM's official daily schedule runs an odd 24 hours from 6am to 5:59am the following day, this is part of their Friday schedule, but it'll actually be Saturday morning, 2AM Eastern. They'll be ending it with the film that kicked it off in 2006, Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959). A fun enough, so-bad-it's-good classic, but not really representative of the best that this programming block brought us over the years. This is a well-known, often and fairly easily seen film in a modern media context.
Another case of not really appreciating something until it's gone.
Warner Discovery CEO David Zaslov's cost-cutting frenzy, originally targeting something in the 2 to 2.5 $ billion range, has reportedly gone a billion or so beyond that.
Even now it's not clear in detail what this will really mean in terms of films disappearing from the inventory. In the eyes of those ultimately in charge now, they're simply line items. "Content" with associated costs.
Knowledgeable curation of content is among the losses, apparently increasingly replaced with algorithms. One of the big problem with these algorithms is that they're intended to key off what people are already watching, and so focus on delivering more of the same. If left to itself, the path and selection will grow narrower and narrower.
On many occasions I've noted that TCM has remained my "desert island" scenario fall-back choice, as in what single channel would one choose if the tv had to be stuck on one forever. From time to time it would cross my mind that once I retire -- not that I'd intend to just sit and watch tv all the time, but that I'd have the option of watching whenever I want -- I could conceivably leave it on one of the screens for much of a day, knowing that some future favorites were lurking for me in any random day's programming. Now I'm wondering what will be left of this by the time I reach that viewing option in a hopeful few years.
Moving on.
As for new programming, I've been continuing to enjoy a few, well-mentionend, series of late. The final season of Star Trek: Picard (Paramount +) had its second episode this week, with a combination of revelations and the steps continuing of getting the NextGen band back together some twentyish years since the last time many of them saw each other.
One of the new characters we've met this season is Jack Crusher, a hitherto unknown to us son of Dr. Beverly Crusher. I took a screenshot of part of his conversation with Picard that I found quite telling just in general - for any of us as we contemplate people we once knew so well, but have not seen for many years.
Among the other, ongoing shows I'm following week to week, I still have this week's Poker Face (Peacock) to get to, which I believe is one of three episodes remaining in this season. Last week's, with the car racing theme, was another good one; I particularly liked the off-the-books, impending justice of the ending.
As of this past Sunday we're six episodes into the fungal apocalypse series The Last of Us (HBO), and so two thirds through this nine-episode first season. It left us with a bit of a cliffhanger, which they may tantalizingly extend in this upcoming Sunday's episode, which will be written by the game's writer and creative director Neil Druckmann. While I will be interested to see it, I'm in no rush to get to Sunday night. It'll keep.
Pedro Pascal's other series, where he also plays a hard-ass accompanying and protecting a magical child - The Mandalorian - returns to Disney+ next Wednesday to begin its third season, btw.
Via a friend, I recently got to see the theatrical cut of last year's AI horror film M3GAN. Following a successful theatrical run, I see it's hitting the Peacock streaming platform today. I don't know if they're offering it in more than one format, but I know that they'll be streaming the unrated version, so it'll be gorier than the relatively sanitized version I saw. In the era of increased content aggregation, Peacock's almost certainly going to be the only place to see it online where one isn't either specifically renting it or outright buying it, at least for a while.
In the film, a cybernetics developer at a toy company finds herself taking in her young niece following the death of both her parents. Going from being a nerdy, somewhat fastidious loner to trying to make space and time for a child... all while working against grueling development deadlines at work... something has to give. When she joins the two problems by throwing her efforts into a very special, high-end, robotic toy, and forging a special bond between it and her niece as part of the product development process, the results are striking. Initially a substantial win on both fronts, you know something is soon going to go very wrong. It's M3GAN (2022 R 102 m) On the whole it's an interesting and almost inevitable proposition, all the more so as seemingly each day brings us new developments in AI convincingly mimicking human activity - as in the recently-reported seeming floodgates opening of computer-generated articles and even stories beginning to clog the in-boxes of potential publishers. It's wholly believable that people would turn over the stewardship of their children to automation. It's just an extension of what's been done with television for decades, and now personalized, small-screen media, and the options of the heretofore wealthy and privileged to turn over such functions to nannies or au pairs.
Produced on a budget of $12 million, it took in over $171 million at the box office, so it will come as no surprise that M3GAN 2.0 is already on the schedule for a January 2025 release.
Arrived on Netflix this past Wednesday is a British horror thriller, the directorial debut of writer and actor Nathaniel Martello-White. So far I know little more about it than the trailer and some of the reactions/reviews.The general sense is that there's a movie, perhaps about racist pressures, culturally "passing" in order to access a better life, and impostor syndrome fears of being outed - something with a firmer stand - lurking in there, but this decided to keep straddling a line, trying to sustain a sense of mystery too long.
It's The Strays (2023 100 m)
I'm going to close with a couple of mid-'70s racing-themed films by director Paul Bartel. Both are currently on Tubi, so they're available to all.
One is a satirical action comedy starring David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone, set in a then-future dystopia of the year 2000, where a totalitarian regime has ruled the U.S. since roughly 1979, and the distracting circus half of the bread and circuses cultural distraction is a homicidal, trans-continental road race, where pedestrian deaths score bonus points for the racers. It's great, low-budget fun, with pro wrestling sensibilities, and has held up surprisingly well despite being so very much of its era. It's Death Race 2000 (1975 R 80 m) The other was made the following year, and is an action crime comedy based on an actual, illegal, cross-continental race - Los Angeles to New York City - that took place over various years. Starring (again) David Carradine, along with Veronica Hamel, Bill McKinney, and "that guy" actor Dick Miller, among others, it's Cannonball (1976 93 m). (Five years later a much more mainstream, celebrity-stuffed, PG-rated film inspired by the same races, was done as Cannonball Run. Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore, Farrah Fawcett, Dom DeLouise, Dean Martin, etc., etc.)
That's it for this week.
I hope this week's wild swings of weather have been regionally kind to you, or that if they haven't you've had a way to stay home and mostly out of it. See you next Friday. - Mike
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