Dad's Movies

One of the interests of my late father was what we would call, Classic Film.

He enjoyed revisiting older films he saw when he was younger and was fortunate enough to see new availability of many classic movies that, prior to the boom years of home video, were rarely seen. Television reintroduced a lot of classic movies to new audiences but if you were looking for titles that weren't very well known, you had to be lucky enough to catch them on the few times they aired.

Dad began collecting his favorite old movies in the 1980s when we got our first Betamax VCR which he often used to record movies when they aired on TV. He also bought a few commercial tapes but for a while, the selection was poor and the price was high. By the time DVDs came on the scene, Dad had switched to buying movies. The DVD boom years were a time that a lot of classic films were issued, many had never been released on video before. Dad liked DVDs for the same reasons we all did; the picture quality was just so much better than what we had before and every month there were new releases of movies he'd thought he would never see again.

When my father passed a few years back, I made it a point to rip/borrow/acquire the movies he had in his library. Our tastes did overlap but he had a lot of films I have never seen.

Which brings me to this post and (hopefully) a new viewing project. It might take a while...

I am going to try and watch all of the films I got from him that I haven't seen before and write something on each one. I may not have a lot to say but I'll write something. I suspect he had seen all of these titles at some point in his life and had a reason to buy them. I also suspect that some of the films on this list won't exactly be Citizen Kane. Sadly, he didn't get to every one as some of the discs were still in the shrink. I'm pretty sure that I am missing some titles but this is a good start.

So Dad, let's see what you've got!

Here's the list, in alphabetical order, of the films I'll be watching:

The Awful Truth (1937)
Battleground (1949)
Beau Geste (1939)
The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)
The Black Rose (1950)
Blood and Sand (1941)
The Blue Max (1966)
Captain From Castile (1947)
Cheyenne Autumn (1964)

The Conspirators (1944)

Decision Before Dawn (1951)
The Four Feathers (1939)
Great Expectations (1946)
Heaven Can Wait (1943)
How Green Was My Valley (1941)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
King Rat (1965)
The Ladykillers (1955)
The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
The Long, Hot Summer (1958)
The Longest Day (1962)
The Lost Patrol (1934)
Love Me or Leave Me (1955)
The Loved One (1965)
Lullaby of Broadway (1951)
Man Hunt (1941)
The Man Who Laughs (1928)
The Man Who Never Was (1956)
The Mark of Zorro (1940)
The Mask of Dimitros (1944)
Mister 880 (1950)
The Moon is Down (1943)
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)
Mr. Lucky (1943)
My Favorite Wife (1940)
The Naked Truth (1957)
A New Leaf (1971)
Night Train to Munich (1940)
None But the Lonely Heart (1944)
Northwest Passage (1940)
On The Rivera (1951)
Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)
Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Our Man in Havana (1959)
People Will Talk (1951)
Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960)
Prince of Foxes (1949)
The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)
The Prisoner of Zenda (1952)
The Purple Plain (1954)
The Rains Came (1939)
Random Harvest (1942)
The River (1951)
Road to Morocco (1942)
Run Silent, Run Deep (1958)
Scaramouche (1952)
Sea of Sand (1958)
The Secret War of Harry Frigg (1968)
Sergeant Rutledge (1960)
The Silver Fleet (1943)
Sitting Pretty (1948)
A Song is Born (1948)
A Song to Remember (1945)
Stanley and Livingstone (1939)
The Tales of Hoffman (1951)
Tales of Manhattan (1942)
The Talk of the Town (1942)
That Hamilton Woman (1941)
The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
The Thief of Bagdad (1940)
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)
Too Hot to Handle (1938)
Tunes of Glory (1960)
Unfaithfully Yours (1948)
The Uninvited (1944)
Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)
The Wolf Man (1941)


Wish me luck!

Podcast Update

Yes, I am still updating this musty old blog!

 Hello, and welcome!

 If you're reading this, you may be one of the few proud people who listen to our podcasts such as TOS Rewind. I've found a new host for the old episodes and this change allows them to be accessed in a real podcast platform, not just as file downloads (primitive!). I am posting the Star Trek review episodes in broadcast order and not in the order we recorded them in so while there may be some weird continuity, I think it works well.

 Eric, Rob, and I will be shortly resuming our recordings with reviews of Star Trek: Discovery so watch for them. 

You can subscribe to the Podcast in Apple Podcasts/iTunes at this link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ceremonial-tuskout/id1354495611

 The direct address for the podcast feed is: https://anchor.fm/ceremonial-tuskout

Tuskout Podcast 02: "Walkabout" (1971)

We're back at it with another film review, the 1971 Australian film, Walkabout.

Listen to or download the podcast here:


And here's the RSS feed:  https://anchor.fm/s/2a0b3b8/podcast/rss

If you're reading this, you may have noticed that the old podcast links no longer work. Google shut down the way of hosting the files I was using so I will need to find another hosting provider. I'll get the old pages updated as soon as possible.

Update 3/21/2018:  I've moved the podcast archive to Anchor, click here for more details.

Tuskout Podcast 01: "The Train"

Today, we begin a new chapter.

Our long-running podcast, TOS Rewind, is now called Tuskout Podcast. Now that we're done with our survey of every original Star Trek TOS episode, we wanted to continue our discussions and explore other things we're interested in. We're all pretty serious media fans and self-styled critics so we'll probably be sticking to a movie/TV show review format but don't be surprised if we veer off into other areas. At this point nothing is off the table. And yes, we will be doing more Star Trek down the road. It's a hard habit to break.

For our first podcast, we all watched the 1964 Burt Lancaster film, The Train.

The End of VHS

Some of you may have recently noted the news that the last company to manufacture VHS VCRs has ceased production as of July 30. Some of you may have been surprised that they were even being made anymore. More about this can be found here.

I have written and talked at some length over the years about home video formats so I thought it was only right that I comment on this news (I don't believe I was blogging when the last Betamax deck rolled off the assembly lines back in 2002). Wait, did VCRs actually roll?

While I can be very nostalgic for old electronics and media, I also happen to believe that I, as someone who likes movies/TV shows, have never had it better in many ways. The quality and convenience we have with digital video discs and streaming is so far beyond what we had back in the heyday of the VCR. I am a bit old-fashioned when it comes to this sometimes as I like actually owning copies of the media I care about (I've become far more choosey as to what I consider worth owning though) so that I have access to it when a particular title gets unceremoniously yanked from a service due to people fighting over money or some other equally worthy issue. I won't go on any more about this, you probably know how I feel.

As for VHS itself, I spent years of my youth resenting this format which I felt won its format war for reasons other than technical merit. The format's running time advantage I will grant you, but that's it!!! Beta was the (very) slightly better format; it looked sharper and mechanically seemed more robust. As anyone who might be reading this knows, VHS was adopted far more widely by the consumer electronics companies. And who wants two incompatible formats? I have memories of trips to the video rental store back in Rapid City where we had to browse the movies on the "Beta side" of the store. We were such a persecuted people.

In the end, VHS improved somewhat and I eventually capitulated. I purchased my first VHS deck in 1990 or so. This first deck was a Sony. I knew that when Sony, the developer and main champion of Betamax, threw in the towel that it was time to move on.

This was my first VHS VCR, the mighty SLV-555.

Yes, I actually remember the model number of this VCR and was able to find an image of it on the Web. This machine was great. It made good recordings and was built like a tank. Sony really made nice gear in those days.

As good as that VCR was, it was still crummy old VHS and I always wanted something better. For a while, that something was LaserDisc. LD was really something with its digital sound and sharper image (plus you could get movies in widescreen!) but of course never made it beyond a niche product. I am also reminded of my first LD player, which I bought at a Wal Mart in Laramie, WY. I sometimes think I bought this thing partially out of shock that such an esoteric device actually appeared at that store (and no, I don't remember the model number!). 

In the late-1990s, I adopted DVDs and finally invested in a media format that "won". Of course DVD didn't really have competition (unless you count DIVX) which turned out to be one of the rare cases where the electronics companies did the right thing. And now I have Blu-Ray. What the hell, Sony finally got a winning video format! BD is probably the last physical format I will buy into (4K not withstanding) which brings me back around to the late-great VHS.

I have VHS tapes that still play, decades later. As it turns out, magnetic tape is pretty robust. However, I don't miss the low-res image, fussy mechanics, and sheer bulk of tapes. And let's not forget that in adjusted dollars, video tape wasn't that cheap. BDs and well-rendered digital video look great (BDs can be pretty darned close to replicating actual film). I have most of my owned video from all those discs (and a few tapes that are unique) on a PC and can watch them with a few clicks. As long as I back up my hard drives, I have that content available in a manner that would have amazed me back in the old days. I sometimes miss that old cool hardware but not the experience of actually watching it.

So this got really meandering! How do I feel about the passing of VHS? 

I feel fine.

TOS Rewind Podcast: "The Devil in the Dark"

We reach the end of the road for this project. I'm pleased to say that Eric, Rob, and the rest of those who contributed reviews or sat in on podcasts, really added a lot. It's been a blast taking this deepest of possible dives into Star Trek, a show that has meant a lot to us over the years. Our little opinionated group will continue to record podcasts for as long as we enjoy doing them. We'll be back (and not only in a rerun)!

TOS Rewind Podcast: "This Side of Paradise"

Only one left to go for our re-do cycle.

 This time we go back and talk about This Side of Paradise




Our original written reviews and the early (gulp) 2007 podcast Andy and I did can be found here.