THURSDAY

AUGUST 1

2013

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

Today is Humphrey Bogart Day at TCM, so whenever you tune in, you’ll shoot a Bogey: The Maltese Falcon at 9 a.m. ET, To Have and Have Not at 10:45 a.m. ET, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre at 12:30 p.m. ET, and so on. And when prime time arrives, the festivities continue, starting with this 1946 classic reteaming Bogart and Lauren Bacall, with all the incendiary heat that implies.

DO THE RIGHT THING

The Movie Channel, 8:00 p.m. ET

Incendiary heat works as a description of this 1989 Spike Lee movie just as fittingly. Lee caught lots of attention and adulation, deservedly, for his movie about increasing racial tensions in a Brooklyn neighborhood during a brutally hot summer. He also plays Mookie, in a funny and tense film that also stars Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Rube Dee, and future stars Giancarlo Esposito and John Turturro.

OUR NIXON

CNN, 9:00 p.m. ET

In this new documentary, director Penny Lane (honest; that’s her name) combines vintage news footage and TV interviews (conducted by Barbara Walters, Phil Donahue, Mike Wallace and others) with a new find: excerpts from scores of hours of private Super-8 home-movie footage, shot by H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Dwight Chapin when they were highly placed aides in the Nixon White House. The images from Richard Nixon’s groundbreaking China trip are the best, visually, but Our Nixon scores throughout by marrying these often innocuous film clips with quotes from the Nixon tapes – as when he goes on a rant about the "new movie" with the “homosexual agenda” he’s just seen on TV, which turns out to be All in the Family. Priceless.

HOLLYWOOD GAME NIGHT

NBC, 10:00 p.m. ET

Even with the egregious product placement in certain of these games (Name the candy bar? Really?), this show is enjoyable, because eventually the celebrities drop their veneers and act like you suspect they would without the cameras running. And tonight’s group of celebrities is quite an eclectic bunch. Jamie-Lynn Sigler, formerly of The Sopranos, is here, as is Stacy Keibler, now formerly of George Clooney. Also playing on host Jane Lynch’s party couches: Patricia Heaton, Tom Arnold, Anthony Anderson and Rose Byrne (seen here with Keibler).

THE COLBERT REPORT

Comedy Central, 11:30 p.m. ET

We’re going crazy with Breaking Bad stuff here at TVWW, now that the final return of the series is less than two weeks away. (Please check out our own Breaking Bad supercut, our first video compiled by and for TVWW, on our brand-new YouTube channel.) And Breaking Bad deserves every bit of the attention. And Stephen Colbert thinks so, too: Tonight, his guest is that show’s outstanding, Emmy-winning star, Bryan Cranston.

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David Bianculli

Founder / Editor

David Bianculli has been a TV critic since 1975, including a 14-year stint at the New York Daily News, and sees no reason to stop now. Currently, he's TV critic for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and is an occasional substitute host for that show. He's also an author and teaches TV and film history at New Jersey's Rowan University. His 2009 Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour', has been purchased for film rights. His latest, The Platinum Age of Television: From I Love Lucy to the Walking Dead, How TV Became Terrific, is an effusive guidebook that plots the path from the 1950s’ Golden Age to today’s era of quality TV.

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BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

The Movie Channel, 8:00 p.m. ET

CNN, 9:00 p.m. ET

NBC, 10:00 p.m. ET

Comedy Central, 11:30 p.m. ET

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