entertainment

 With television increasingly dominated by the Outrage Business and shamelessly exploitative and cheap ‘reality’ shows, the 1976 Sidney Lumet-directed Oscar-winning movie ‘Network’ looks increasingly prescient. In this bitter satire of the effect that intense commercial competition has on broadcast standards, Australian Peter Finch plays Howard Beale, a TV demagogue so appalled by the profit-driven amorality of the network that employs him that he urges his viewers to turn their sets off. (more…)