I am royally pissed at Comcast. Until recently, TCM was a part of my cable package. Now, within the last couple of weeks, it has become subscription only.

It ends up being the same thing.

Ben Mankowitz of Turner Classic Movies usually tells this story at the end of the film 'Bridge on the River Kwai' on TMC:

The explosion at the end of the movie was filmed from several different angles...naturally, since the bridge was actually blown up-there was no second take...well, actually there was:

The explosion was due to occur one day in March, 1957...but at the last moment Director Lean realized that one of the cameramen filming the action had not cleared the explosion 'zone'....so Lean called off the detonation...the train crossing the bridge in that climatic scene safely made it to the other side-where it collided with a generator.

The train was repaired (they were just going to wreck it anyway) and the filming resumed the next day.

This time the dramatic explosion and train falling into the river worked like clockwork.

The film of the sensational finish (no copies existed yet) was put in canisters to be send to London. The plan was to put the canisters on a ship to head directly to London-with no stops...but due to the Suez crisis that had closed the canal, the producers were forced to send the film via air cargo...this involved numerous flights & transfers of the precious canisters...why no one was sent with the film was never explained...

Later when the canisters failed to arrive in London as expected, panic set in. A worldwide hunt was set in motion to find the missing film-as mentioned, no copies existed.

Five days later the canisters were found-sitting on a tarmac at an airport in Cairo. They had been sitting in the hot sun for those 5 days....the color film was heat sensitive -the worst was expected...but miraculously the film of the bridge explosion was fine-somehow surviving the heat of the Egyptian sun

Bridge, LoA, and Dr. Z are liek three of the biggest epics in hollywood history, whereas Ryan's Daughter is almost never mentioned.

Is it too....provincial? It was certainly shot beautifully, and is the reaosn I went to Dingle instead of the Ring of Kerry on my one trip to the island.

Same with his last film, "A Passage to India".

I remember watching both of them, and being disappointed with no desire ever to see them again. Whereas I've watched Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago multiple times each.

Maybe the common thread was Alec Guinness, who was in all of them, though he was the lead in only one of them (and won his Best Actor Oscar).

Ryan's Daughter pissed me off, her Dad should've been the one biting down on the blasting cap at the end for what he did.

That film was just a tour de force. Everything worked - plot, casting, effects, just a marvel.

[spoiler alert, stop reading now if you haven't seen it]

And the denouement after the explosion, with the great actor James Donald's reaction - brilliant beyond description.

So many little things that made it so good. One of my favorites is that Col. Nicholson (the always brilliant Alec Guinness) after being stunned by the mortar explosion and before stumbling to fall on the plunger, stops to pick up and put on his hat.

Guinness wanted to play his role with a cynical sense of humor/irony (similar to the way William Holden played his role). Lean demanded that Guiness play his character as a strict, no nonsense martinet. Guinness also clashed with Lean over camera angles on some scenes......Lean made the film his way, and Guinness won the Academy Award for best actor.

Donald thought the film was too anti-British

Lean apparently hated working with the British actors in the film & liked American William Holden much better

I still get DVD's from Netflix, for many reasons but one of them being the extras. Also love the background stuff on TCM.

And if any one of them is on, I can't help to watch it again.

It's hard to say which I like best, but my #1 might be Casablanca. But it's a close call.

That's my co-favorite Bogart movie (the other is The Caine Mutiny)

My favorite Cary Grant movie and co-favorite Hitchcock (the other is Strangers on a Train)

My co-favorite Brando movie (of course The Godfather is the other but that's a lot more than Brando)

My co-favorite David Lean movie (the other is Lawrence of Arabia)

My favorite John Wayne/John Ford western - and I love just about all of them from Stagecoach through The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - and co-favorite John Wayne/John Ford film (the other being The Quiet Man).

By the way, two of those movies co-star Eva Marie Saint, still alive and well at the age of 95.

Though it is not my favorite Cary Grant film. I wouldn't be able to decide between His Girl Friday and To Catch a Thief, something where he gets to be a bit more comedic or romantic role.

Never going to be another movie star like Cary Grant. Almost pitch perfect in both drama and comedy, and possibly the most handsome man to grace the screen.

Terrific Grant Comedies.

the incomparable Irene Dunne.

Even when chewing the scenery in Arsenic and Old Lace, he's hilarious.

Archie Leach from Bristol made himself the suavest man alive.

It was that old vaudeville vibe, there was something about that that didn't leave him.

He also just has one of the most fascinating life stories. Too bad they will never be able to find an actor good enough or attractive enough to play him in a biopic. Never.

Clooney in "O Brother Where Art Thou?" and Pitt in "Snatch" are two of the best comedic performances ever.

How would you even find anyone with that chin?

One of the many great things is how he never took himself seriously. On that famous chin, in "Charade", Audrey Hepburn asks him, "How do you shave in there?"

every time I drive by a cornfield being sprayed by a crop-duster plane. I wonder if they are looking for me.

to make sure I'm not being attacked by a crop duster.

Especially that he put a forest on the top of Mt. Rushmore and Cary Grant's mother is younger than he is. But that movie is great from start to finish, just about every scene is brilliant - including the very end with its wink at the censors.

Same with The Searchers, where the setting in west Texas is filmed in Ford's real favorite place, Monument Valley, hundreds of miles away. But it's worth it because the photography is knock-your-socks-off stunning.

Switzerland/are interested in Europe. He was inspired to write the movie the Birds while staying at the Badrutt's Palace hotel in St. Moritz. The legend has it a flock of Crows flew at his balcony while staying at the hotel.