Briefs for July 25-26, 2021

TCM's Silent Sunday Nights block for tonight lists three shorts all of them a little over 20 minutes. TCM has each of them starting 40 minutes apart, while TitanTV has the first two in 20-minute blocks and the last in an 80-minute block. Clearly this is wrong if the actual running times for the movies are correct. (IMDb doesn't have a running time for the first one, Just a Good Guy. My DirecTV box simply lists "Movie" in a two-hour slot.

Speaking of looking up the running times on IMDb, IMDb's drop-down search box is increasingly irritating. In theory, you enter a title and IMDb will give you matches without having to click through. But I've found that it often gives me popular movies that are near matches without giving me the actual movie I'm looking for. Today, I was looking of the running time of the second Silent Sunday Night short, titled Charley My Boy!, and got... "No results found", until I clicked through, where it was the first title. Every time web-sites change their design to make things easier for people using tiny touch screens, it seems not to break just the design for people on desktop computers, but basic functionality.

The theme for the most recent Thursday Movie Picks blogathon was "Summer Break", and the Monday morning and afternoon lineup on TCM is, if not summer breaks, hot summer places. The day kicks off at 6:00 AM with an interesting little programmer that doesn't get seen enough, Heat Lightning, which I blogged about just over a decade ago. Hot Summer Night, with Leslie Nielsen in one of his dramatic roles, follows at 7:15 AM.

One of the movies I mentioned briefly last Thursday, having used it already in a different edition of the blogathon, was Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation. That's a Fox movie, and wouldn't you know, but it's on tomorrow, at 6:00 AM up against Heat Lightning. Right now, the showing tomorrow is the only showing TitanTV lists in the next two weeks.

According to Wikipedia, today is the birthday of sometime TCM special programming host and granddaughter of an Oscar-winner, Illeana Douglas (granddaughter of Melvin). Illeana turns 56. Happy birthday to her!