FRIDAY

AUGUST 29

2014

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

FXX, Check local listings

This is Day 9 of FXX’s mega-marathon of The Simpsons – and it’s the day that includes, in the proper order in the series’ overall narrative sequence, the 2007 big-screen The Simpsons Movie. It’s televised at 6 p.m. ET, and it’s especially entertaining to watch in retrospect, since it involves the town of Springfield being cut off from the rest of the world by a mysteriously appearing giant see-through dome. Sound familiar, Under the Dome fans?

THE KNICK

Cinemax, 8:00 p.m. ET

In case you’ve fallen behind, or never started: Tonight, beginning at 8 p.m. ET, Cinemax is repeating the first three episodes of its new, very good period medical series, starring Clive Owen as a dedicated but temperamental doctor in 1900. It’s a fine way to get up to speed: consider it a mini-binge.

PORTRAIT OF JENNIE

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

Today is Joseph Cotton day on TCM – but in prime time, it might as well be Jennifer Jones day, because the gorgeous actress co-stars in both of the Cotton films shown this evening. At 9:45 p.m. ET, she stars opposite him in 1947’s Duel in the Sun Western, playing a steamy temptress who comes between two brothers (Cotton and Gregory Peck). And before that, at 8 p.m. ET, Jones stars in 1949’s Portrait of Jennie (pictured) as a beautiful vision indeed – a ghostly muse who inspires a painter, played by Cotton, to produce his best and most saleable work.

AMERICAN MASTERS: “DOROTHEA LANGE: GRAB A HUNK OF LIGHTNING”

PBS, 9:00 p.m. ET

Despite one foot deformed by polio, or perhaps in part because of it, Dorothea Lange became a photographer who focused extensively, and invaluably, on the usually unseen and ignored: migrant workers and farmers in the Dust Bowl of the Thirties, Japanese-Americans forced into U.S. internment camps in the Forties, and so on. The images she captured are haunting, and linger with you – as does this very informative, understandably tender biographical study. Dyanna Taylor, who’s worked on PBS’s American Masters profiles of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, is this documentary’s writer, producer, director and narrator. She also happens to be Lange’s granddaughter – and her perspective here enhances, rather than disrupts or dilutes, the finished product. Check local listings.

NO CAMERAS ALLOWED

MTV, 10:00 p.m. ET

With this TV movie premiere, MTV presents the music-festival film equivalent of Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book – a legitimately distributed manifesto about how to beat the system. In the case of James Marcus Haney, 26, it’s his autobiographical documentary about how he conned his way into such sold-out music festivals as Coachella and Bonnaroo, by sporting fake wristbands and brandishing a professional-looking camera. Then, while he was there, he figured he may as well shoot some images – and he’s now a photographer, invited by such bands as Mumford & Sons to document their concert tours.

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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

FXX, Check local listings

Cinemax, 8:00 p.m. ET

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

PBS, 9:00 p.m. ET

MTV, 10:00 p.m. ET

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