FRIDAY
JULY 12
2013

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

FX, 7:00 p.m. ET

This 2010 Coen Brothers remake of the 1969 John Wayne movie casts Jeff Bridges in the role of crusty U.S. Marshal Rooster – and puts most of the weight of the movie on Bridges’ shoulders. He handles it effortlessly, and with a twinkle in his eyes. Well, make that eye. Hailee Steinfeld co-stars as the persistent young girl who hires Cogburn to help her find her father’s killer, and Matt Damon plays another person who joins their quest. It’s a well-staged, enjoyable Western, driven primarily by Bridges’ sly turn in the saddle.

 
  
 
 

CW, 8:00 p.m. ET

SERIES FINALE: This is a note, not a recommendation. The show that CW canceled and yanked from its schedule almost immediately after it premiered, then brought back for a summer burn-off run, presents its final episodes tonight in a yawn-inducing doubleheader. At this point, Cult has so few fans, and viewers, they don’t even qualify as a cult. More like a gaggle.

 
  
 
 

Flix, 8:00 p.m. ET

It doesn’t quite compute that this Michael Cimino movie is now 35 years old. But my, what a movie – so intense, it’s at times almost unwatchable. Yet it’s an important movie to see, because of the astounding work by its impeccable young cast. Robert De Niro already had made Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and The Godfather: Part II by the time he got to this 1978 Vietnam war movie, but The Deer Hunter was of that same high caliber. Yet he’s not the only standout here: Christopher Walken, John Savage, and John Cazale match him in intensity, and Meryl Streep, as the proverbial girl back home, shows strong proof of her early talents as well.

 
  
 
 

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

In 1967, film critic turned filmmaker Francois Truffaut wrote a book – a series of detailed conversational interviews, actually – in which he and Alfred Hitchcock examined and discussed every one of Hitch’s films. (The book was called Hitchcock/Truffaut, and a revised edition, covering Hitchcock’s final films, was published in 1985.)  The original book, a marvel of detail and insight and cinematic passion from both men, was one of my inspirations to become a critic. And the year after that first book was published, Truffaut went off and made this 1968 movie, a full-length homage to Hitchcock utilizing many of the details he’d probed in their conversations together. Jeanne Moreau plays a woman who reacts to her husband’s death by seeking revenge on those men she feels responsible – using her feminine wiles as her primary murder weapon. To make the Hitchcock connections even sweeter: the musical score is by Bernard Herrmann, who wrote the music for Psycho, and the story is based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich, whose work also inspired Hitchcock’s Rear Window.

 
  
 
 

HBO, 10:00 p.m. ET

Among tonight’s guests is someone who’s never failed to deliver both outrage and outrageousness at his seat on Bill Maher’s roundtable: Cornel West.

 
  
 
 
 
 
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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.