Chess for Oldtimers --- Good Idea !

Yes, I sure do, badenwurtca, that was before cable and VHS tapes.  Now we can stream movies or slip in a DVD or Blu-ray, but the joy of anticipation is gone.  As a pool player and lover of well directed and acted character studies, I remember thumbing through the TV Guide weekly for the next broadcast of The Hustler, which took years to make the rounds.  Now I can grab it off my shelf.

We have one local station in Denver, Channel 2, that has been around forever and used to show afternoon as well as late night movies.  Though they're still broadcasting, that practice disappeared in the late 1970s or early 1980s.  Unfortunately, they butchered the movies by censoring and shortening them for commercials.  I remember the station running Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt and abruptly clipping a scene in mid-sentence right to a fellow using a chainsaw to cut a couch in half; I think some rental furniture commercial.  Wow, I thought, the man who took scissors to film is handy with a chainsaw too. (ha ha)

Funny observation, fb -- and I'm totally with you on commercials and clumsy editing!  Do you get the Turner Classic Movies Channel?  That's where we keep running across old favorites we can record and watch later -- with No commercials.

I sure do have TCM, motherinlaw, and I've recorded loads of films -- I bet nearly a thousand since 2004 -- using my DVD recorder, though I haven't recorded many lately.  Quite a few of the films aren't available on DVD or are no longer available.  Naturally, I've purchased many commercial DVDs too, but the cost can add up and take up a lot of space in those keep cases.
Actually, mil, one of the few reasons I still have satellite TV is because of Turner Classic Movies.  With all the promise of narrow-casting in early 1980s cable TV with A&E, Bravo, Discover, The Learning Channel and what I hoped would be a channel with symphony, opera and jazz venues from around the world turned out after 37 years to be nearly 250 channels of rubbish.  It has all been dumbed down except TCM.

we know.

I don't know you, but I know Al and he's pretty smart, so if Al agrees that you're retarded, it must be true.  So sorry to hear that.  You hang in there, OK?

Thanks for the posts.

You are such a gracious host.  (seriously!)

Thanks for the very nice post Motherinlaw. However I'm quite serious when I say that it is the visitors to this thread that have kept it going and now we are beyond 2,000 posts, very nice.

Two thousand posts for the 2,000 Year Old Man, which I sometimes feel like.  I guess there are a lot of us old farts around, and I'm referring only to the men who post.  The ladies here are strictly grandes dames.

Flattery works for this grande dame! lol

My, what a charmin' thing to say!  

And so true!  We South'n Belles  and British ladies nevah do anythin' that could justify our bein' described by such an indelicate sobriquet as "old farts."  

Occasionally, of course, one of us might, momentarily, "have the vapors."  But no person of refinement would ever describe such a thing as "a fart." 

(No offense to the men described by fightingbob as "old farts."  I'm sure most of you are lovely people.)

Thanks for the new posts.  

   ---   I like the way you put that Fightingbob, very nice.

On the previous page we covered some nice old films. A few months ago I got a DVD of an old old movie that was released again after many years. This film won the Oscar for best picture back in 1932, it is " Grand Hotel " with the Barrymore brothers, Greta Garbo and a very young Joan Crawford. I had seen short clips from the movie but it was very nice to see the whole picture in one setting. Also included on the disc is a documentary about the making of the film.

So, badenwurtca, did you just "want to be alone" while watching Grand Hotel?

Though the film had some low key comedic moments, I found it a rather lugubrious story of desperate, unfulfilled lives.  I feel it retained more than a little of the German Weimar original when it was adapted from the 1929 novel Menschen im Hotel by Vicki Baum and the 1930 play of the same name by William A. Drake.  So too the musical soundtrack, which succeeded in creating a melancholy mood beneath the apparent gaiety.

Perhaps others have a different impression of the film.

Heck, fb -- who in their right mind would jump in with an opinion on that film, after the level of erudition you packed into that paragraph!  Seriously, man, we are not worthy!   -- or at least, for sure, I am not worthy!   ;-D

Thanks for the posts.

   ---   In my case I feel that a lot of what was captured on film prior to World War II was from the " School Of Over-acting ". Mind you this was understandable as all early films up to the late 1920's were silent-films of course. Film stars had to really show a lot of emotion in the silent-films to carry off a scene. To me the comedies worked the best in the days before sound ( ie among the pre-sound movies that were made ).