Media Alert

Turner Classic Movies has a couple of movie marathons to fill out New Years Eve day (and night).  Currently on now, beginning at 9 AM (West Coast time, noon in the East) is A Night at the Opera, followed by Animals Crackers, Monkey Business, Horsefeathers, and Duck Soup.

Then, starting at 5 PM PST (8 PM in the East) are all six Thin Man movies with William Powell and Myrna Loy, running consecutively for almost the next 11 hours.

By the way, the movie that follows all of this at 3:45 (PST...you know the rest), is fascinating for historical reasons.  It's the 1936 movie, Things to Come, which stars Raymond Massey and Ralph Richardson (who we just had here playing Ebeneezer Scrooge in that BBC radio adaptation of A Christmas Carol).  It's based on the H.G. Wells novel.  What's so remarkable about the film is that the screenplay is written by...H.G. Wells himself!

The movie isn't wonderful, but there's enough good things in it to make it worthwhile, most particularly for seeing a movie written by H.G. Wells.  The iMDB listing describes the plot as "A decades-long second World War leaves plague and anarchy, then a rational state rebuilds civilization and attempts space travel."  (Given the timing of the film, it's anticipation of the start of a second world war isn't so far off.)  Obviously the early morning timing isn't quite ideal for most people, but then that's why God created the DVR.