"Psycho" -- and a whole lotta Hitchcock -- on TCM in July 2017(with an internet "class")

The Beatles are a rock act unto their own and above and beyond their 60's peers

The Beatles began as rock and rollers but with George Martin's guidance in the studio proved to have such fanstatic open-ness to new ideas and alternative (sometimes much older, sometimes wildly foreign) musics that at least until the end of 1967 they're positive wonders.

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The Beatles channel on Sirius was active the first week in June so they did a "50 year anniversary special " on Sgt Pepper that made the case that this was a revolutionary album that changed everything for ALL rock groups.

Funny, listening to the special, I couldn't help recall that Psycho was considered a revolutionary movie that changed everything for ALL filmmakers.

In both cases, the artists were well established and famous, but they elected to take things up a BIG notch.

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Their signature is their bounding-ahead-ness, their absorbing more and more music influences, and that it all seemed to be accelerating...

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I can only come at this from the "mainstream" and well-known angle that the Beatles were incredible in how they morphed, year by year, album by album, record by record, into a DIFFERENT BAND, almost once a year. Personally, I like the early rock and roll better -- these were the fun dance songs of my childhood. Things started gettin' kinda arty around Rubber Soul, and just advanced in that direction year after year til psychedelia, drug influences and everything else seemed to explode the Beatles very persona. They HAD to break up.

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Martin Balsam was likely viewable by Hitchcock and screenwriter Joe Stefano a LOT in the late fifties as Psycho loomed into view as a movie project. Balsam was a familiar face, and one of perhaps 20 character actors available in 1959/60 who could play Arbogast. But Balsam got the part and "a star was born," I think. Suddenly he was in a movie seen by millions, and in a scene that terrified millions. He became very famous, and was thus hired even MORE in the years after Psycho.

But there's this: I've seen a lot of Martin Balsam's work, including his Oscar-winning turn in A Thousand Clowns, and Arbogast IS his best role. How Balsam looks at age 40(handsome, trim), the lines written for him, the acting partner (in the main) of Tony Perkins at HIS best, Hitchcock's direction of the visuals...Arbogast ends up being a great character above and beyond the rather sketchy backstory of the character.

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It's been years since I've watched Psycho. I need to brush up on it and join in on the fun at the board!

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A viewing's all it takes. Or just clips. They are all over Youtube.

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By the way, have you ever seen the documentary about Hitchcock called Dial H for Hitchcock? If not, it is fabulous and worth viewing. It's an obscure thing, so getting access to it might prove difficult.

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I saw it. I think it came out in 1999, the year of Hitchcock's centennial, and was made for cable.

What I most remember about it is how, at the very end, they used the sweet, sad, building, building BUILDING music of the famous scene in Vertigo where Judy emerges from the bathroom as Madeleine to kiss Scottie. But they didn't show that scene -- they showed newsreel/home movie footage of HITCHCOCK over the years, as Psycho screenwriter Joe Stefano said something rather profound, along the lines of "..I think Hitchcock was brought into the world at exactly the time it needed him, as if we were supposed to have him at that point in history."

Twilight Zone holds up beautifully. Is it that the prints were better preserved than most for old TV series? One might think the Hitchcock shows would look perfect, and the hour longs are nice to look at, but the half-hours have a drabness to them, as to tone, art direction, lighting. The average Three Stooges short, especially the ones with Shemp, look better than most Hitch half-hours.

I could be that most of the half-hours were done at Republic studios, though their movies often looked good. Cost cutting maybe. The Zone was MGM back lot for all but the first episode, and that may have been a factor. The Outer Limits was also MGM, and they look grand, too. But then Thriller, Uni back lot,--same as Hitchcock's hour--also looks fine and it's at best a cult classic.