DAVID BIANCULLI

Founder / Editor

ERIC GOULD

Associate Editor

LINDA DONOVAN

Assistant Editor

Contributors

ALEX STRACHAN

MIKE HUGHES

KIM AKASS

MONIQUE NAZARETH

ROGER CATLIN

GARY EDGERTON

TOM BRINKMOELLER

GERALD JORDAN

NOEL HOLSTON

 
 
 
 
 
THE CHINA SYNDROME & NETWORK
March 21, 2019  | By David Bianculli

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

 

TCM host Ben Mankiewicz and his guest for this month-long Thursday night tour of movies and the media, Carl Bernstein, hold court over another prime-time celebration of some of the cinema’s best movies about the media. Tonight, for its leading double feature, the focus is on television news, with two more outstanding films – and two films that proved eerily prescient in their choice of subject matter. The 1979 drama The China Syndrome (8 p.m. ET), which depicted a nuclear reactor approaching meltdown mode, was released less than two weeks before a similar disaster occurred in Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. It opens the evening, starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon and Michael Douglas (pictured). Then, at 10:15 p.m. ET, it’s 1976’s Network, in which screenplay author Paddy Chayefsky predicted everything from the emergence of a Fox-type TV network and boisterous prime-time pundits to news operations as profit centers and networks being absorbed by major global corporate entities.

 
 
 
 
 
Leave a Comment: (No HTML, 1000 chars max)
 
 Name (required)
 
 Email (required) (will not be published)
 
SHEIM
Type in the verification word shown on the image.