Yes, it's a perfectly cromulent phrase.
By the way, our friend Bob O. did it again last week -- twice! On Thursday night, after finishing his closing remarks about the movie Tarantula, Bob as always gave a "teaser" about the next film, which he does without mentioning the movie's title. His description of that upcoming movie was something like: "Next, a volcanic eruption in Mexico unleashes hoardes of giant spiders that attack Mexico City," and so on (approximately). Okay: the next film, whose title he obviously had to know, was The Black Scorpion. Now, when you have a movie called The Black Scorpion, it's something of a tip-off as to what the titular terror is -- in this instance...well, you know, a scorpion. (Actually, hoardes of them -- at least he got that right.) As is his practice, he didn't actually utter the name of the movie in the teaser, so as to save himself acute embarrassment, but as I said, he certainly knew what that next movie was called, and said "spiders" anyway. I waited to see what his description of TBS was when they actually began that film, but there he did finally get it right, although he started off by referring to them as "arachnids" -- which is scorpionalistically correct, but had him borderlining it for a moment until he finally said the word "scorpion".
Then the very next night, he was introducing one of my favorites, the political drama Advise & Consent, about the intrigue surrounding the President's appointment of a controversial Secretary of State. Now, in that film (as in the book), it's explicitly stated that the President, who's dying, has been in office for six years -- background for why he chose the man he did, to maintain his foreign policy legacy after he dies. But Mr. Osborne said that the film took place at the beginning of the president's term, and further exacerbated this error by going on about how such a time is extremely hectic and fraught with hurried decisions and mistaken strategies. I'm not aware that, as history, this description is particularly accurate anyway, but that aside, Osborne's dwelling on the supposed fact that this film occurs at the very start of the president's term, when it very clearly and explicitly takes place six years into it, made an obvious mistake all the more glaring. (Not to mention the bizarre notion of having a President who's dying at the beginning of his term! Although in misstating the facts of the film, Osborne made no mention of the President's being ill, but laid the controversy solely to the fact of his being new in office -- yet another error.)
I'm tellin' ya, Bob Osborne really needs to freshen up his memories of what these films are about. It may be, as others have pointed out, that it's his incompetent staff that writes these errors into his script, but he's the supposed movie expert and as a journalist presumably reviews everything he's handed before actually taping the segments. I mean, "spiders" instead of the scorpions in the title?! Bob!
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clore_2
13 years ago
In regard to The Black Scorpion, Osborne's researchers also had him claim that it was the last film on which Willis O'Brien worked.
It may look that way if you just glance at the top of the IMDb page, but he also worked on The Giant Behemoth and It's a Mad(4) World. I won't mention the 1960 The Lost World since there are claims that he really didn't do any work on the film after he was hired.
It was also claimed that Village of the Giants was an uncredited adaptation of "The Food of the Gods." It was credited, that was the second title card on screen.
For a showing of The Wolf Man they had him say him say that "Claude Rains plays a scientist who is up to no good." Obviously no one on the staff had seen that film.
But you can't bring this stuff up on the TCM message boards without an army of defenders claiming that because of his age, Osborne should be allowed to make mistakes and that "since it's all trivial info, it doesn't really matter."
So why not can the intros since they don't matter, retire Osborne and his staff and spend the money on some long unseen films?
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
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hobnob53
13 years ago
All good points. I didn't hear his mistake about O'Brien (maybe it was in his closing remarks, which I didn't see), but there too he should have known better...especially as The Giant Behemoth was a subsequent film in their June monster movie series.
I've never gotten into the TCM boards but anyone who mindlessly defends mistakes -- especially repeated mistakes -- is missing the point. If "it's all trivial info" and "doesn't really matter", then it should be just as easy to get it right. They seem to think misinformation is okay, provided it's "trivial".
Anyone can make a mistake. But the people who dismiss any Osborne error by putting it down to his age are making some really insulting remarks about him and are apparently too stupid to realize what they're saying. The fault may begin with TCM's poor staff but as I said Osborne needs to do some checking and editing himself, and he doesn't appear to be too old (= what? senile?) to do that. And frankly, if he is, he should retire.
I like having knowledgeable intros and sign-offs -- it's what makes TCM stand out from FMC, or the travesty that AMC has become. From what I saw of TCM's staff during their guest programmer stints last month they were a rather unimpressive bunch and not very well-informed on movies. There's enough blame to go around, but the first thing TCM needs to do is fire the incompetents, stop coasting on Osborne's rep, and hire people who'll develop more interesting and accurate commentary and work with Osborne to make sure it's all said well.
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clore_2
13 years ago
Anytime that you feel like reading some amusing back-and-forth on the subject, take a look at this thread. You will see that I'm not exaggerating:
http://forums.tcm.com/thread.jspa?threadID=158498&tstart=0
My new response to those who don't like it when I bring these things up is that I'm doing the researchers a favor. Since it's obvious that they don't want to work too hard, all they have to do is remove the errors from the already prepared text and give it to Osborne the next time the movie airs again.
I'm actually quite humble about it, I'm sure that Osborne has me beat on Oscar trivia, but I'll go up against him and his staff any day of the week on the "lesser" product that came out of the studio era. But when they held a Hammer fest last October and there were errors each Friday for at least one of the presentations, I was on it.
As a viewer and as one who worked in the broadcast industry for 30 years, most of it writing and delivering presentations, I know only too well that an audience had the right to doubt all my claims if they can find errors a fair amount of the time. It's called "the contamination factor" and that's why anything that I produced came with documentation for all claims made. This is what I propose TCM mandate of its staff. But the way it looks now, there is tremendous job security over there as the errors are increasing.
I saw most of the staff intros that month and I expected some of them to have to wipe their lips after all of the hero worshiping going on over there. There was one person representing the research staff who said that she's responsible for making him look perfect and he is perfect so she knows she's doing her job.
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
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The_Dying_Flutchman
13 years ago
May all of you stalwarts have a fantabulous July 4th blowing up the noisemakers of yer choice and imbibing other things less hard on yer guts.
Let it be unsaid: insignificance is the locus of true increpation.
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hobnob53
13 years ago
What got me about the staff we saw that month was that, aside from the hero-worship factor, almost none of them seemed to have any real notion of film as an art form in general, or of the films TCM shows in particular. Each had his or her own favorite but even there most of them had rather pedestrian things to say and clearly little background knowledge of anyone involved in the production of that film. And yet many of these people are the ones who put together the programming.
Bob's make-up person might, and can, be a film ignoramus, which wil have no real effect, but the people whose job it is to research, or write copy, or do anything else directly connected with the movies shown on the channel ought to be people of some depth and knowledge. Instead, most of them seem to have come to TCM from backgrounds with absolutely no tie to the film industry, film history or anything remotely connected with their present areas of responsibility.
I was trained as a journalist and worked in the profession for a time before being diverted to another field. But I was a film reviewer and have never lost my feeling for, interest in or, frankly, knowledge about films, especially "classic" films of the kind shown on TCM (or FMC, or, in the old days before the channel became junk, AMC). I run a classic movie every Thursday night at a club I belong to and I'll be entirely immodest and say that I know more facts, and have more correct information, on many if not most films than Bob Osborne seems to. Even a few people connected in some way to the industry have said such things to me, which I take as a great compliment. I certainly don't put myself in his league on all counts but I do know what I know, and like you have seen the number and degree of errors increasing...accompanied by a growing repetitiveness of the information being offered, which seems to indicate laziness as well as incompetence at the TCM staff level.
Unfortunately, clore 2, I think you're right -- job security seems to be trumping actual ability at TCM. If only people like you (or me) could have a crack at the place. We'd turn a successful channel into a really interesting one in no time: without the mistakes, the nonsense, or the same-old same-old factoids, that increasingly plague the channel...even as its popularity, paradoxically, grows. I suppose, to the powers that be, that popularity sends the message: don't tamper with success. But they may pay a price down the road for such an attitude.
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clore_2
13 years ago
At this point, I'd be happy just to have the chance to review the scripts they prepare for him. Just to edit for accuracy, even if it is the same old stuff.
And if you notice, it's getting quite apparent that they just go to the IMDb trivia page for a given title and sometimes it's repeated verbatim. The trouble is that a lot of the stuff here is in error and I've gone through a lot of effort, often futile, to get some of it removed.
I wonder how much of it is that upper management is now concentrating on the film festival, the DVD collections - anything that can promote the brand they've nurtured until now and seem to be ignoring.
There are a lot of other errors going on there, such as running the original A Star is Born with a black screen where the credits are supposed to be and then, just as March is about to take his dip in the ocean, the film went into a rapid-reverse and stopped to repeat the nine minutes just before march drops his robe.
You mean to tall me that there is no spot checking? No one even looks at the credits to make sure that they have the right film? What if it wasn't labeled correctly and they got this title by mistake:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0191494/
I ran a TV station for two years and never did we ever air a film that was not viewed in its entirety first. Apparently TCM does have some guy running in with cans of film at the last minute just as they show in the openings to the weekend daytime movies. Had they just checked the credits of A Star is Born, they would have saved themselves the other error.
Their excuse was that they were sent a bad copy by the distributor, but as that was the same excuse given for the airing of a bad copy of Le Mepris and Prisoner of Second Avenue, you think that they would initiate some sort of system to prevent such things.
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
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hobnob53
13 years ago
I remember that business with A Star is Born. That was an especially egregious example of some of the things we've been discussing here: calling a film by a title it's not being shown under; giving different dates for a film (and inaccurate explanations about their policy on such, e.g., with regard to Casablanca); even showing films in an incorrect aspect ratio and not realizing it (as was done for years with Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, for one).
TCM has also persisted in broadcasting appallingly poor prints of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series, when excellent, restored ones have long been available. These and some other titles have come from some outfit with the con-artist monker "National Film Archive", which appears simply to be a low-rent dumping ground for lousy prints of public domain films, all of which are, again, available in vastly better prints elsewhere.
Another way in which you can tell they have poor staff who make bad decisions in how they program and describe their fare is the copy regularly produced for weekend host Ben Mankiewicz. His approach is to me too sarcastic about most of the films, as if he's making a lame attempt at being "hip" with the presumed younger audience who tunes him in. (I'm not sure such demographics actually exist.) His information is extremely skimpy and has little of real interest about the films or anyone connected with them, but it's his presentation -- this sort of nudge-nudge, wink-wink approach to the films, which he insists on assuming -- that undermines any interest in him, what he's saying, or indeed, even the film. I assume this is yet another example of the attitude of many of the incompetent staff dullards working for TCM, who in formatting his program this way are too stupid to recognize that when you undermine your "product" (the movies), you're ultimately alienating your audience -- you're certainly not inducing new or younger viewers into becoming interested in what you're showing when you yourself are making fun of, even being disrespectful toward, those very films.
A good-humored yet serious approach, by someone truly knowledgeable about the films, who is at the same time a careful editor who questions the trash he's handed by inept staffers, and makes sure of what is being broadcast, is what's required, at least as a starting point. All of which brings us right back to where we started.
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clore_2
13 years ago
Did you see what happened just tonight? Thief of Bagdad was supposed to start at 1030pm. It started at 10:18pm because they didn't air a short that was listed to start at that time.
This is part of their big Race in Films feature and already they are off to a bad start.
Those Holmes movies were courtesy of The National Film Museum. Even after the outfit provided TCM with a copy of The Vampire Bat that had footage added from silent films, TCM continued to do business with them for two years. The "Museum" is a Post Office box in Maine I believe.
They might as well just go to the bargain bin at WalMart and pick up some Alpha and Mill Creek DVDs.
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
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hobnob53
13 years ago
National Film Museum, yes, thanks. A very impressive logo, if I recall, with one or two film reels rolling past what looks like the raised flags outside the United Nations. At least with something like Alpha you know what you're getting.
I didn't watch TCM last night and so missed that latest goof. I seem to recall such a thing occurring in the past. But I had earlier in the day looked at my trusty TCM Now Playing guide (which I find useful), and wondering why they planned to delay Thief until 10:30, given the evening's fares' running times. Now I know they didn't bother.
Personally, I'll bet it was an conspiracy by Arab terrorists undermining the channel's theme of the month. After all, you can't spell "terrorist", "conspiracy" or "month" without T-C-M.
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clore_2
13 years ago
One person on the TCM board suspects that it started earlier because they realized too late that the film was much longer than they had it listed for in the schedule.
They aired the Kino print, logo and all. Kino's site has it as 154 minutes long. IMDb has it at 155 minutes. The TCM schedule had it as being 129 minutes.
Last year they had the March and Rennie versions of Les Miserables back-to-back in a three hour slot. A month ahead of time I notified them that the two films won't fit. Only at the last minute did they change the schedule by cancelling one movie that came after Les Miserables, and moving everything else down by 15 minutes. Meanwhile all of the on-air between-movie lists of the next three movies had the wrong start time. That they didn't adjust.
This error went on until the 8pm feature.
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
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hobnob53
13 years ago
Their listings have often carried the incorrect running time for a film, usually due either to the film being a silent (for many of which prints of various running times exist), or its being foreign, many of which were cut for US release, but which are aired in their original form by the channel. Again, no one seems to realize the problems involved with some films, nor which print of a film they may in fact be using.
I suspect many of these inept staffers use Maltin's guide, which persists in listing films' primary running times by the length of the shortest print (either an edited silent or the US cut of a UK or other foreign film), rather than giving the actual length of the original film, and noting cut versions in their synopsis. This, plus the fact that they don't bother to actually check the movie they'll be showing, leads to problems.
I've also noticed a few instances where the star of a film is inexplicably omitted from the cast list (normally totaling three) in the TCM guide, something which yet again seems plainly the result of incompetence and ignorance.
Maybe TCM's viewers need a guide to their errors and omissions. And the pity of all this is that the channel is one of the best on television, making the sloppiness and ineptitude of its staff and its information all the more sad...and maddening.
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clore_2
13 years ago
Last night they really screwed up. After each feature film, Osborne and his guest Jack Shaheen kept introducing shorts that were to come on before the next feature. But the shorts never aired! These were to be part of the Arab Images on Film and were to be some Popeye and Porky Pig cartoons, as well as "Mummy's Dummies" with the Three Stooges, but not a one of them aired.
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
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hobnob53
13 years ago
I saw the Three Stooges screw-up too (didn't see the others). Here again, if TCM had to change the intended programming subsequent to Osborne taping his segment, why didn't they just cut off that portion of the segment where they talk about the coming short? It's a simple matter of editing. It might end up looking a bit clumsy or obvious, but it's an easy enough thing to do.
I'm sure you noticed that Bob has been out ill for many evenings beginning last week. Clearly this happened after he taped the segments about Arabs in films and some others. The first guest host, Robert Wagner, had little to say about the films he introduced, and after they ended the ones I saw either had Wagner making only very general comments unrelated to the ended or coming film, or they just jumped immediately to the coming attractions. This is reminiscent of how Osborne handles films run in honor of someone who's died: they don't usually bother with specific information on actual titles being shown, but just general comments which wind up with Osborne saying, "Here's another film starring...."
I hope Bob's okay, but they really have to clean up their increasingly incompetent act.
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george-695-323782
11 years ago
It isn't his age. Osborne was spewing misinformation long before TCM.
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monsieurzy
9 years ago
if it isn't "a delightful Judy Garland musical" or "a bubbly Doris Day comedy", I don't think Robert Osborne cares (I have an old VHS copy of Magnificent Ambersons with a younger RO doing an intro, and he's pretty much musing whether RKO did us all a big favour by chopping up the film from Welles' original downbeat version)
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The_Dying_Flutchman
13 years ago
Cromulently infactuous to be imprecise. I've written a few movie reviews here recently, but was refused print. It might be because I am not crapulous enough. Such is the way of the gaucho, I guess.
Let it be unsaid: insignificance is the locus of true increpation.
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hobnob53
13 years ago
Have you reviewed Way of a Gaucho yet?
Hope yew 4th was georgemcohanfabulist.
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The_Dying_Flutchman
13 years ago
Haven't seen it since I was a kid. But being a western semi-lover as I know U R, have you watched the western noirs lately? TCM had 2 this past week and I have commented on them elsewhere. U know there were 12 original ones and others in contention most of them made by the supreme Anthony Mann and lensed by his buddy John Alton who definitely was one of the finest cinematographers. Why don't you saunter on over to "Station West" and have a look see? Simply ubiquitous.
Let it be unsaid: insignificance is the locus of true increpation.
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