TCM remembers

Every year when we review so many people in the entertainment business that pass on, it's telling on the impact their performances have had in our lives.

RIP Harry Belafonte, and thank you for having made such a difference.

TCM's year end tributes always make me sad... and yet, I always look forward to them.

They're so well done.

Man, that gutted me.

SO many this year.

Great job, TCM.

I'm glad they remembered Tina Turner. Ain't we a pair.

Also, that's a great, great cover of "Learning to Fly."

R4 I noticed that too. Do you know who covered it?

I forgot Lance Reddick died.

Not impressed--Glenda Jackson and Piper Laurie were given only a couple of seconds each while Raquel Welch, Tina Turner, Stella Stevens and Jim Brown were singled out. Whoever put this together isn't much of a film historian.

Alan Hamel must have paid to have that slut of a wife included.

[quote][R4] I noticed that too. Do you know who covered it?

Her name is Christina Perri. She did a theme for one of the Twilight movies, but I think what really impressed me is the arrangement of it.

[quote]Whoever put this together isn't much of a film historian.

They're also not much of a Datalounger, or the audio clip of Stella Stevens would have been "Panties!"

I did really love the use of the clip of Cindy Williams from American Graffitti.

Tina Turner & Glenda Jackson are both dead, while Trump still chugs along.

Yeah, life is fair...

I was surprised for a minute as to why Robbie Robertson was on the list and then I remembered The Last Waltz.

Well done. Great editing

Thank you for posting this OP.

I had no idea both William O'Malley and Billy Friedkin died this year.

RIP to all of them.

Damn, I've met 9 stars on that list. Soon we'll only be left with Kardasians and Real Housewives.

I admire the dedication it takes to edit all that and still manage to include people who have died in the last week.

TCM would make a killing by hiring out whoever does them to the Oscars.

R11 Robbie Robertson of The Band did some soundtrack projects for films

Nice glutes on the aerialist.

Robertson also played a lead role in "Carny" and a supporting role in "The Crossing Guard."

sad

I had forgotten we lost so many this year.

Sigh! I remember watching sadly as every year the number of those honored from silent movies dwindled down to nothing... Now I see the number of people from the black and white era is dwindling.

I have to say I admire how even-handed it is, with no one really given much more prominence than anyone else, even the bigger stars.

And I always wonder who will die now before the year is over. Those last couple of weeks always seem to bring more sadness.

It's not even handed. Glenda Jackson was as much of an activist powerhouse as Harry Belafonte and others named in writing as "Civil Rights Activists" as well as "actors". She was one of the few MPs to acknowledge the damage of Thatcher. She is named only "actress". Seems diminishing, especially since she was an elected official so it wasn't much of a private passion or secret.

Sharon Farrell made it. Sally Kellerman didn't.

Beautiful. And they do it so much better than the Academy.

They didn't even mention that I invented the Thighmaster!

[quote] ... and I can't stop crying!

[quote] Man, that gutted me.

MARY!

Nicely done, but how come they don't wait until the end of 2023 in case there are a few more deaths in the last 2 weeks of December?

[quote]Nice glutes on the aerialist.

There's the DL I know and love! Bravo, r17!

Glad they didn't give the final spot to Raquel Welch like the Oscars did earlier this year.

Can we have an edit without the fag dangling between the drapes. So unnecessary and distracts from the achievements of the REAL ARTISTS the clip is meant to celebrate.

Ricou Browning BDF forever

R30 here again. Let's take a few minutes to enjoy the sublime beauty of Helmut Berger-the perfect mix of pretty and handsome.

And forget we had to watch that fag dangling from the drapes.

[quote]Sharon Farrell made it. Sally Kellerman didn't

Sally Kellerman died February 4, 2022.

R23 apparently took a Valium and is a year behind.

What is this song?

With TCM likely to shut down within the next year, this annual grief orgy is one of the things I won't miss.

LOL what will be the song used for "TCM Remembers... TCM"?

IIRC TCM has the capacity to add newly dead actors and others to the film if necessary in the coming weeks.

fyi I am absolutely serious that this is going to be the last year for TCM

this is the reason why

universal has apparently been quietly buying up property for months in England

they are going to open a park there. why is that important?

universal, as they are currently, doesn't have enough intellectual property to open all these new parks (including a new children's park in Dallas) and universal's blockbuster ip is showing signs of age (the jurassic franchise, F&F) and overextended over the Florida, LA, Osaka and Beijing parks.

but, if they were suddenly to acquire a huge library of intellectual property, then they could build new attractions in these parks based on new characters and movies. they're buying Warner brothers. everyone has known about this for a year. dc comics, dune, barbie, mad max fury road coming soon to a universal park near you.

so how does this impact TCM?

Because of the mistakes Disney made with the 21st Century Fox acquisition, Comcast will likely buy ONLY Warner Bros. from WBDiscovery. That will include Warner Bros. film and television studios, the libraries, and the physical studio in Burbank. They will not buy HBO (I suspect that will be sold to Apple, hence the removal of the hbo name from Max) and they will probably keep the ted turner legacy channels because after all, David Zaslav is from cable.

So tcm will be divested from the library which provides all its programming. tcm will no longer be able to exist. David Zaslav said as much when he butchered the network earlier this year, but Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese stepped in and he allowed them to keep it on life support until they finally pull the plug.

So if you sensed an extra bittersweetness in the in memorium tribute you just watched, it's because the people who created it know it's going to be the last one. tcm will not be here by the end of next year.

and I hadn't even watched the tribute when I wrote r39

I have now

look what they did

the dancer in white represents tcm itself, ascending into heaven. that's the concept they were given and how they executed it.

TCM does a great job of this every year but always considered this one, in the closed Drive In as their peak.

[quote]but, if they were suddenly to acquire a huge library of intellectual property, then they could build new attractions in these parks based on new characters and movies. they're buying Warner brothers. everyone has known about this for a year. dc comics, dune, barbie, mad max fury road coming soon to a universal park near you.

I wonder how they're going to deal with Six Flags which has Looney Tunes and DC licenses even though they're owned by Cedar Fair now.

r42 they will have to buy them out.

[quote]I wonder how they're going to deal with Six Flags which has Looney Tunes and DC licenses even though they're owned by Cedar Fair now.

And they can pay for it by allowing Disney to buy back the Marvel rights.

It's all coming together.

This has been in the works for years. That’s why they’re building Epic Universe not contiguous with the Orlando parks, with new hotels on it.

Once Universal acquires Warner Brothers, it will begin overhauling Universal Florida and Islands of Adventure. I was there this summer, some of the attractions are in terrible shape. They still have the goddamn ET Adventure, of which the youtube videos of its poor state are amusing. If they have a third offsite park, they can shut down huge areas of the other two parks to rebrand and build new Warner Bros. IP attractions, which may take years to complete (Marvel-themed lands and Simpsons-themed lands need to be completely replaced.) So they need this third park to maintain interest in the resort while its original parks are pretty much reconstructed.

[quote]They still have the goddamn ET Adventure, of which the youtube videos of its poor state are amusing.

People are going to riot if they close that. I think it's the only Day 1 ride still left.

Although I question how in the works, because Universal Studios Florida just closed its kids section to redo with Dreamworks characters. If they thought they'd have Warner IP soon, I wonder if they'd have waited.

I was surprised Matthew Perry was on the list (for a nanosecond) since he was in tv, not movies.

Check his IMDb, r47.

I found the aerialist edits extremely distracting. Our eyes naturally gravitate toward movement. Our eyes also gravitate toward light. When an aerialist dressed in all white is spinning on the screen, our focus naturally shifts away from the artists who are being honored.

r41, Yikes! I found that year's film to be particularly sluggish and gruesome including the choice of music.

That’s the POINT R49, I done told you

The dancer represents TCM! This is the last tribute it will ever make! Don’t you remember, TCM used to call itself “movie heaven?” This is a depiction of TCM itself ascending into movie heaven!

You don’t think these filmmaking professionals know about basic optics? Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorcese probably pitched the concept!

To each his own, R50, but it is about people who have died.

It seemed more about a deserted drive-in, r52, with the same dreary images repeated over and over and over......

Use some imagination, and actually watch it carefully. The drive-in is brought back to life for a last showing of their films. Their images are actually projeccted on the screen. They are all a bit aglow in the lighting which shoots toward the stars as the drive in shuts down again. M83’s Wait is a moody backdrop. Again, to each their own, but I find it quite moving and poetic.

Kind of odd that you have just seen the VERY LAST TCM IN MEMORIAM EVER MADE and some of you are bitching about the one from 2012.

You will NEVER see this kind of thing assembled with this kind of care again. Even if a classic movie streaming channel is created out of the combined Universal-Warner Bros. (and I doubt that will happen because it would be cheaper to rent titles out), they don't need to create these little films to play on interludes because there are no interludes in streaming.

DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY PEOPLE, INCLUDING PEOPLE WHO WENT ON TO BECOME THE BIGGEST MOST ACCOMPLISHED ARTISTS IN HOLLYWOOD, BEGAN THEIR FILM EDUCATIONS FROM THESE LITTLE FILMS? Do you know that they were the last tangible link to a Hollywood that grows dimmer and dimmer from public memory? TCM was practically the closest modern equivalent to the oral tradition of the ancient Greeks that kept their heroes alive! And it will never happen like this again. This will never be replicated.

So maybe instead of bitching, "I don't like the music, I don't like the editing" maybe just be grateful that you got to see it while it existed.

Calm down, r55.

I wish they had included Julian Sands's nude scene from "A Room With A View" in his montage.

"The dancer represents TCM! This is the last tribute it will ever make! Don’t you remember, TCM used to call itself “movie heaven?” This is a depiction of TCM itself ascending into movie heaven!"

Reads too much into the most basic things.

R58 = thinks 2001 a space odyssey is actually about aliens

Which brings me to the irony of people who claim to enjoy watching movies yet fail to understand them. They think Chekov’s gun is a cocktail.

See even r49 gets it. They didn’t understand it, but they got. They understood something was different about the white aerialist, and that it was taking attention away from the montage of the artists.

The man who directed this is giving notes to the network and they don’t think this in memoriam segment had any symbolism

See what I love about this scene and why it’s so effective is that it says, literally and subliminally, everything you need to know about filmmaking.

Everything has been selected for you. Millions of dollars and countless jobs have gone into creating this.

Look at the tree photographs behind Miranda. The colors match her jacket. The thick black frames match the blacks on the assistants. The hair on the assistant holding the dress blends into the photograph. Miranda’s hair blends into the walls. Miranda’s lipstick matches the color of the pink dress. When the other assistant goes to pull the green belts out from behind the rack, there are green handbags on the windowsill. Red and green are complementary colors. The rack of clothes behind Emily match her own auburn hair and black outfit. Everyone blends into the office.

Red, green, and blue are the primary colors of optics. But red and green are also complementary colors in color pigment theory. Blue is the outlier. Blue will always stand out.

Everything, starting with the script and filtering down (just like cerulean filtered down) through costumes, hair and makeup, cinematography, art direction, set decoration, and casting has gone into communicating a single thought: Andie doesn’t fit in.

So it’s sort of comical how you think your cynicism exempts you from understanding the montage on a deeper level, while every emotion you have ever felt watching a movie has been selected for you, by a group of people in a room, from a pile of “the most basic things.”

And one more thing while I'm ranting so you know I'm not pulling this out of my ass

The character of Nigel in the novel of Devil Wears Prada is an enormous flamboyant black man based on Andre Leon Talley. Do you know why they cast Stanley Tucci?

For this single shot. They needed him to blend in like everyone else, but even more so, down to his bald head.

And don't even get me started on subliminal imagery and Freud.

I haven't heard of a lot of those named. and yes that gyrating dancing is unnecessary. I also prefer music without a vocal.

r55 You seem awfully sure of yourself. Apparently you haven't heard that Paramount is interested in acquiring WB now.

And r66 apparently you haven't heard that not only would a Paramount Global/WarnerBros Discovery merger violate every antitrust rule known to man, but the idea that two debt-laden companies struggling with the transition from linear distribution to a direct to consumer model and burdened with legacy assets would actually COMBINE makes about as much sense as Venezuela merging with Cuba.

I swear, they let children post here.

And Paramount acquiring WBD would be the equivalent of CUBA purchasing Venezuela.

My God.

Suzanne Somers saying I love you to Treat Williams as they set out on their journeys. 😥

I don’t understand why the editors chose to make the aerialist share the screen with some of the honorees (I.e. Tony Bennett). I appreciate the message they were trying to convey. I really do. I just found it challenging to process everything they had going on all at the same time.

I’m one who would prefer preservation of and access to films over global amusement parks. I send gratitude out to those who have dedicated themselves to creating and or preserving the art of cinema.

They didn't include ACTOR for Tony Bennett. Apparently someone at TCM did see "The Oscar."

[quote]I don’t understand why the editors chose to make the aerialist share the screen with some of the honorees

“I don’t understand why the Godfather is always eating oranges!”

I didn't know Murray Melvin and Shirley Anne Field had died. RIP.

I notice that Margia Dean died at 101 -- she was the female lead in the first Hammer horror film in 1955, "The Quatermass Xperiment".

Worst TCM Remembers ever. If I wanted to watch The Man on the Man on the Flying Trapeze I'd unblock ESPN.

[quote]Worst TCM Remembers ever.

Well good news, then, because you won't have to watch them anymore.

These are always so well done.

They should have closed with a pinata of Robert Osbore that Ben Mankiewicz could whack with his baseball bat.

Will there be an addendum to add Tom Wilkinson?

The philistines at TCM should have used some of the time they wasted on the acrobatics to include Bob Barker

They didn't include Thelma Todd.

I don’t get it, [R78]. Genuinely curious about your remark.

Aerial artist and theme music were first rate. Very nicely done.

Pepperidge Farm remembers.