Sophia Loren night schedule heads up

If you're an avid TCM viewer like me you probably download the monthly TCM schedule. Sometimes, especially when it comes to scheduling those shorts which are part of the programming feature -- that is, things like a series of two-reelers in Silent Sunday Nights as opposed to the Traveltalks or other shorts that don't wind up on the printable monthly schedule -- TCM has some problems. Tonight, I think, is one of those nights.

TCM's spotlight on Sophia Loren begins with a short called Human Voice, based on a play by Jean Cocteau and directed by Sophia's son Eduardo Ponti. IMDb, and the daily schedule, both list the short as being 26 minutes, which I'd presume is right. The original monthly schedule, has it at 35 minutes, which is clearly wrong since it's being put in a 30-minute time slot. More noticeable, however, is that the monthly schedule lists it running three times tonight. The last of those airings is the one that's not goign to take place. The monthly schedule ends with Man of La Mancha at 3:30 AM, followed by the alleged third airing of Human Voice at 5:30 AM. However, Man of La Mancha is 129 minutes, and so clearly can't fit in a 120-minute time slot.

As for airing Human Voice at all, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of agreement to run this in exchange for getting Sophia and Eduardo to come to the TCM Film Festival. I haven't seen it, so I can't comment on whether it's any good. For the record, the two airings that will be on are at 8:00 PM, and again at 10:30 PM.

TCM is also padding out the night's schedule with quite a few shorts. Unfortunately, cutting one airing of Human Voice and shorts that don't pad out the 10-15 minutes between the end of one feature and the start of the next would have only freed up an hour if I've counted correctly, so there wouldn't have been time to include an extra feature-length film. Since one of those shorts is a promo for Loren's movie Madame, it would be nice if TCM could actually show that (the feature, not the trailer).