Laurel’s TV Picks

Best Bets

Stalag 17 (TCM, 7pm)
Kelly’s Heroes (TCM, 9:15pm, letterboxed)
Good Morning, Vietnam (TCM, 11:45pm, letterboxed)

News & Notes

So are you guys intersted in picks for Saturday? What about Sunday? I used to do rather comprehensive picks for the weekend that covered both daytime and primetime, but it got to be a crazy amount of work and very few people seem to visit my website on the weekend (as opposed to during the week).

So I recently signed up with this new website called “Review Me” which is at www.reviewme.com. This is one of those sites which pays bloggers to post reviews in their weblogs. Full disclosure: I’m being paid to review the site here (I hope that doesn’t bother you too much). One reason it shouldn’t bother you: bloggers get to pick and choose which items they’re willing to review, bloggers are required to indicate that it’s a paid review, and bloggers can write whatever they want (bloggers get paid the same amount whether they write a positive or negative review). I probably won’t accept all offers to write reviews, it will depend on whether I feel the site fits with what I’m doing here and I also wouldn’t want to have reviews like this on the site too frequently. The website at reviewme.com is easy to navigate and it’s very easy to set up an account and get started. Not all weblogs will be accepted into the program, whether or not you’re accepted depends on how much traffic your site gets and how many other sites link to it, etc. There appears to be no wait time to find out if you’re eligible, they must have some backend software that checks on Alexa rank and other factors to give you an answer right away when you send in an application. I haven’t checked out the site as a would-be advertiser, but I imagine it’s easy to work with the site from that angle too. The prices paid for reviews seem reasonable for both the advertiser and the blogger. If I do any more reviews that are paid, I will make that clear upfront so you guys know (and I won’t let the fact that I’m paid influence my review); these things are required by Review Me, but I’d do that even if it wasn’t required.

Primetime Grid

Daytime

Turner Classic Movies celebrates Veteran’s Day with some classic war movies: The Longeset Day (TCM, 11am, letterbox), Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (TCM, 2pm), Sergeant York (TCM, 4:30pm). Three great movies. You can read more about these movies and the other movies on TCM today on the TCM website.

Primetime

William Holden stars in Stalag 17 (TCM, 7pm). One of my favorite movies– if you’ve enjoyed everything from Hogan’s Heroes to Chicken Run, they all owe a lot to this movie. A cynical serviceman in a World War II POW camp works to prove he’s not an informer. With Don taylor, Otto Preminger, Robert Strauss, and Peter Graves. Directed by Billy Wilder. Holden won the Oscar for best actor for this role, Wilder was nominated for best director and Robert Strauss was nominated for best supporting actor.

Sgt. Schulz: “How do you expect to win the war with an army of clowns?”
Lt. James Skylar Dunbar: “We sort of hope you’d laugh yourselves to death.”
  from Stalag 17

Space Shuttle: Countdown to Comeback (Discovery, 7pm and 11pm).

College Football: Texas at Kansas State (ABC, 7pm).

College Football: Alabama at LSU (ESPN, 7pm).

Rebroadcast of two hours of “To Catch A Predator” on Dateline NBC (NBC, 7pm).

Part of the team investigates the death of owner of a doll hospital while other members of the team look into the death of a terminally ill patient on a rerun of CSI: NY (CBS, 7pm).

(Danny is holding up a piece of evidence)
Stella: “You’re gonna have to do more than stare at it.”
Danny: “I’m waiting for it to talk to me.”
Stella: “Ah, then you might wanna buy it a drink first.”
  from CSI: NY

The team investigates the stabbing of a motocross racer, and Nick digs deeper into the case involving his kidnapping on a rerun of C.S.I. (CBS, 8pm). Guest stars include Mitch Pileggi (”Skinner” on The X-Files) and Rebecca Staab (I’ll always think of her as “Jessie Matthews” from Guiding Light).

Warrick: “Every time this chick calls Tom, somebody gets shot.”
Grissom: “It’s like thermite.”
Sara: “Thermite?”
Grissom: “When you combine two seemingly harmless elements, aluminum and rust, press them together, add heat, it creates an explosion so hot it’ll burn through steel. Powerful but uncontrollable. It burns and burns until it burns itself out, finally consuming both elements.”
Sara: “I guess some people just shouldn’t be together.”
  from C.S.I.

Bill Bradford, who wound up on death row in 1988, posed as an amateur photographer and took pictures of young women, two of whom were murdered on 48 Hours Mystery (CBS, 9pm).

Leslie Caron guest stars in a rerun of Law & Order: SVU (NBC, 9pm) and I think that so far this season she’s the leading candidate for an Emmy award for Guest Actress in a Drama Series as she’s just amazing in this episode. Connie Nielsen, Charles Shaughnessy (of The Nanny), and James Naughton also guest star.

Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, Carroll O’Connor, Gavin MacLeod, and Donald Sutherland in Kelly’s Heroes (TCM, 9:15pm, letterboxed). Am American platoon tries to recover buried treasure behind enemy lines.

Late Night

New episode of Mad TV (FOX, 10pm).

Talk Show with Spike Feresten (FOX, 11pm).

Alec Baldwin hosts Saturday Night Live (NBC, check your local listings) yet again; with musical guest Christina Aguilera.

Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker, and Bruno Kirby in Barry Levinson’s Good Morning, Vietnam (TCM, 11:45pm, letterboxed).

Danny Kaye, Dana Andrews, and Dinah Shore in Up in Arms (TCM, 2am). A hypochondriac’s imagined illnesses aren’t enough to keep him out of the military.