Wednesday’s sticky note

I’ve got a “Coming Distractions” post in the works that will highlight some of the goodies headed our way in January 2013 on The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™…but until that’s done, I thought I’d bring a few odds and ends to your attention.

Ben Model e-mailed all the backers for his “Accidentally Preserved” Kickstarter pledge drive yesterday to let them know…that the project has been 102% funded!  (Golf clap) As of this post, $4,165 has been raised (the goal was $3,600) so if you were able to drop a few shekels into Ben’s tambourine—good on ya.  But if you haven’t contributed yet, you can still do so—there’s six days left in the drive and every little bit helps; excess fundage will go towards future AP projects, don’t ya know.

My BBFF Stacia almost made me choke on a cream-cheese-and-jelly bagel this morning when she gave me a shout-outregarding the Dick Tracy: The Complete Serials Collection giveaway currently underway here at TDOY.  (By the way—the response to this has been tremendous: this post has the details on how to enter.)  Here’s the part of her post that made me break out in giggles:

Meanwhile, at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, Ivan is asking readers to help decide which serial he’s going to do next for Serial Saturdays! See, he is a normal human being, which is why in the time it’s taken me to finish Phantom Creeps, he’s done three serials, maybe four, plus wallpapered the hallway and dug up a few old stumps in the back yard. Braggart.

In my defense, part of the reason why this is so is because I have abandoned all serious pursuits of cinema, preferring to spend my copious free time watching reruns of The Underdog Show.  (I wish I could say I was making that up…but it’s true.)  Stacia’s the serious film scholar in the family, and I offer into evidence Exhibit A, a well-done piece on one of my favorite oaters, 3:10 to Yuma(1957).  (It’s compared with the 2007 remake—which I have not seen and don’t plan to make room for anytime in the future.)  Other exercises in fine Stacia film writing that might interest the TDOYfaithful include her takes on Quatermass and the Pit (1967), Greetings (1968) and The Green Slime (1968).  (Okay, maybe I should have excised that last one.)

There’s a couple of upcoming classic TV-on-DVD releases that might be of interest to readers of the blog, beginning with a definite date for the Wagon Train: Season 6 set I mentioned in passing here.  Wagon Train: The Complete Sixth Season will be available for purchase on March 5, 2013…and the eighth and final series of the hardy western perennial will be out sometime in the summer of that same year.  If you’re curious as to why Timeless Factory Video seems to be skipping a season, it’s because the seventh season has already been released to disc as Wagon Train: The Complete Color Season in 2008.

Timeless Factory Video has also announced that another oater from the television of yesteryear will be released to stores on February 19th: it’s The Restless Gun: The Complete Series, an 8-DVD set (priced at $59.97 SRP) containing all seventy-seven episodes of the western series starring John Payne that ran on NBC-TV from 1957 to 1959.  (The TSOD blurb doesn’t mention this information, but I suspect that the show’s Schlitz Playhouse of Stars pilot will also be included, seeing as how it was present and accounted for on a previously released “Best of” 3-disc collection in 2007.)  I mentioned this show in a write-up I did on Timeless’ The Classic TV Western Collection in December of last year, and having enjoyed the episode of Gun that was included (“Cheyenne Express”) was kinda sorta hoping they’d tackle a complete series set.  (Fans of the show know that the program was loosely based on the short-lived but excellent old-time radio drama starring James Stewart, The Six Shooter.)

On a final Timeless Factory note…TSOD has a snapshot of the cover art for the box set The Loretta Young Show – The Best of the Complete Series: 100th Birthday Editionhere.  (The set is scheduled for release on February 12.)

One final TV-on-DVD note: Image Entertainment is announcing the February 19th release of a 5-disc collection of Naked City shows entitled Naked City – Fan Favorites.  This shouldn’t be confused with the Madacy release due out on January 8 (Best of Naked City), even though there is duplication with eighteen of the episodes on both sets.  But the Fan Favorites collection will contain two episodes from the series’ first season (1958-59), when it ran thirty minutes: “Line of Duty” (10/14/58) and “Lady Bug, Lady Bug” (12/9/58).  To my knowledge, none of the thirty-nine half-hour installments from City’sfreshman season have been released to disc…so the conundrum is: will I be willing to shell out the necessary drachmas just to get two half-hour episodes?  Well, the set is priced at $24.98 SRP…so this will indeed be a weighty decision.

Oh…one more thing…I got a nice Christmas card from the True Classics crew (Brandie, Carrie, Nikki, Sarah and Shlomo…no, wait—I think that last one’s a typo) in the mail today.  Many, many thanks for the wonderful sentiment—the ‘rents and I are most appreciative, and I would be remiss if I didn’t share it with the rest of the TDOY readership: