Coming up in the next 24 hours

Yesterday, I mentioned that TCM's morning and afternoon lineup for today was a bunch of crime movies made in 1950. That programming block ends at 7:00 PM with Experiment Alcatraz. I missed the first 10 minutes or so of this one the last time it showed up on TCM, which means I missed a lot since the movie runs under an hour. The plot involves a doctor who has an experimental radioisotopic medicine that he has to try out on Alcatraz prisoners. One of the prisoners goes insane, stabs another, and escapes; the doctor and his assistant have to solve the case by finding the guy and proving that he really wasn't insane. It's the sort of thing that by the end of the decade would likely have been produced as episodic television, but it's reasonably entertaining.

Speaking of episodic TV, those of you who watch enough of it may recognize this month's Guest Programmer: Jason Lee, from the sitcome My Name Is Earl. He shows up wiht Robert Osborne tonight, although he's only presenting three movies, unlike the four most Guest Programmers normally present.

First up, at 8:00 PM, is The Kid,which has Charlie Chaplin as the Little Tramp becoming a foster father and having to fight to keep custody of the kid.
At 9:00 PM is another Chaplin film, City Lights, which has the Tramp going to great lengths to try to raise the money for a blind flower seller to get an operation that will presumably restore her eyesight.
Finally, at 10:45 PM, you can see Paris Texas, with Harry Dean Stanton as a man who comes in from the desert and has to try to reunite with his estranged family.

Unrelated to the Guest Programmer, but for those of you who like the Traveltalks shorts, tomorrow at about 7:38 AM, or following The Affairs of Martha (6:30 AM, 67 min), TCM is showing Minnesota, Land of Plenty, showing the state as it was, or as James Fitzpatrick envisioned it, back in 1942.