In today's e.mail from The New York Times, Melissa Kirsch has a note about cramming for "award season". Feel the same, but some days, you just get tired and want to veg out, and it's hard to concentrate on some of the award-worthy candidates. So instead, you turn on the TV and wind up watching something like BARB AND STAR GO TO VISTA DEL MAR, which had some amusement but it wore thin very fast. 

Over the last few weeks, have watched some lesser B noirs, films like SHADOWED (1946, one of the first films directed by John Sturges) and VIOLENCE (1947), both on Movies. On Friday, TCM had a day filled with B thrillers, including THE PENGUIN POOL MURDER (the first of the Hildegarde Withers series, initially starring Edna Mae Oliver), THE GARDEN MURDER CASE (a 1936 entry in the Philo Vance series, this time starring Edmund Lowe as Vance), and GRAND CENTRAL MURDER (an inventive low-budget MGM mystery from 1942, starring Van Heflin and Virginia Grey as a private detective and his wife... the ending is rather startling, and it looks like it could have been the first in a potential series). Then TCM had a whole evening of Warners' Torchy Blaine series, which (mostly) starred Glenda Farrell. It's such a tonic to see these fast-moving mysteries, with witty (or trying-to-be witty) dialogue and amusing plots. I wish BARB AND STAR had learned the lesson of brevity.

But i'm not the only one who feels that there's a lot to catch up with this award season.