Just checked the listings for TCM and there are some interesting things on the schedule.

Abel Gance's J'Accuse is coming up on Sunday. It's a silent anti-war film, notable for using wounded WWI veterans. Infamous might be the better word than notable since battlefield surgery had progressed enough by then to save soldiers who had their faces and jaws blown off. In France such veterans were known as (some idiomatic French expression meaning) "broken teacups." I've never seen the movie but I have seen some stills and it's riveting and ghastly and a potent anti-war statement.

Also, the silent version of Hunchback of Notre Dame with Lon Chaney is playing this week. It's (I think) by far the best version ever done and much truer to the feel of Hugo's novel. Really does a good job of capturing the romance of that book, spending much more time on the King of Thieves gypsy culture than the later Laughton version.

Saturday, May 3rd, they're showing a slate of movies based on Daphne du Maurier. Rebecca, of course, but also Jamaica Inn and the fairly rarely shown Hungry Hills.

For 40s music fans, I highly recommend Reveille With Beverly which is an Ann Miller vehicle very loosely plotted around what amounts to 40s music videos starring: Frank Sinatra (young, skinny, in a tux, surrounded by an orchestra of women), Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ella Mae Morse, The Mills Brothers (in their cool early days) and many more. There's a production number every eight minutes and it's all swing.

It looks like they're running a special Silent Film festival this month on TCM, so there are a lot of interesting films to check out. Lots of Valentino, silent Swanson and the Nazimova Camille.

Jamaica Inn

Not one of Hitchcock's prouder moments, by a long stretch, but you've got Laughton camping it up and Robert Newton as the good guy in a pirate movie. Hitchcock knew he was coming to America by this point, so he just plowed through it and got out of England.

TCM is actually showing J'Accuse twice. In between is another Gance, La Roue. Which looks like a more standard drama. But our Tivo is set to get both.

And I'll second the rec on Reveille with Beverly. But don't watch it for the plot.

I'm slowly working my way through The Shining. With about half an hour to go (Wendy just hit Jack with the baseball bat). I'm pretty disappointed. Largely because Jack and Wendy suffer compared to the versions in the novel. I'll be fair -- I don't like Jack Nicholson -- I don't know why, I just have an irrational dislike for him. But Jack and Wendy in the movie come across as a garden variety abusive relationship. As opposed to the novel, where we got a lot more backstory (and again, to be fair, a lot of internal character development that it would be hard to translate to the screen) that made the supernatural angle so much clearer. Don't get me wrong -- there's some great camerawork there. But the novel has something of the tragedy about it. The movie is about what an abusive husband does when he gets his family isolated for a long period.

But the novel has something of the tragedy about it. The movie is about what an abusive husband does when he gets his family isolated for a long period.

Kubrick's not big with the tragic. Once I stopped thinking about the movie in conjunction with the book, and as one of Kubrick's pitch-black satirical comedies, I liked it a whole lot better.

With about half an hour to go (Wendy just hit Jack with the baseball bat). I'm pretty disappointed. Largely because Jack and Wendy suffer compared to the versions in the novel.

Totally. I find the movie to be totally overrated. I really don't need to watch Danny ride his tricycle round and round and round for five minutes.

But the novel has something of the tragedy about it. The movie is about what an abusive husband does when he gets his family isolated for a long period.

The book shows Jack slowly unraveling. In the movie, Jack goes from zero to crazy in ONE SCENE. It's fucking ridiculous. I'm not even kidding; from what I remember, he's perfectly normal in one scene, and then the next time you see him, he's already going batshit on his typewriter.

I prefer the ABC miniseries, myself.

Actually, I don't think either Jack or Wendy in the movie are remotely normal from scene one, which I think was part of the point on Kubrick's part.

I prefer the Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror version myself (The Shinning).

That's also a good point. Jack starts out pretty unhinged.

That's also a good point. Jack starts out pretty unhinged.

And Wendy's so deep in denial that she seems pretty out there too.

The book shows Jack slowly unraveling.

I don't know about slowly unraveling -- he'd already unraveled before the novel began. He'd broken Danny's arm, been very lucky to avoid killing someone while driving drunk, and got fired from teaching at a prestigious school for beating up a student (who admittedly had vandalized his car). But King makes it very clear that Jack is trying to re-ravel. The Overlook is Jack's chance to get his life back on track -- and Jack knows it. He wants to succeed, not just for himself but also for the family that he very clearly loves.

The movie also pretty much wipes out Danny's part of the story. We don't get any sense of his fear outside the events in Room 237. Also, one scene with the tricycle would have given a nice Danny's-eye view of the place. Twice, a bit much.

And Wendy in the book is a caring wife and mother who a little too often puts two and two together and not unreasonably comes up with five. In the movie, I at least was happy when she took a swing at Jack. Because at least she stopped sniveling.