In August, TCM salutes a different movie star each day, showing a generous sampling of that performer’s films all day and night. Today’s star in Peter Finch, whose salute begins at 6 a.m. ET with 1957’s The Shiralee, and continues with such Finch-featuring films (say that three times) as 1956’s A Town Like Alice (12:45 p.m. ET) and 1967’s Far from the Madding Crowd (5 p.m. ET). The most gleaming jewel, though, is 1976’s Network, starring Finch as unhinged TV anchor Howard Beale – a brilliant performance at the center of an equally brilliant movie. Network, co-starring William Holden and Faye Dunaway, is televised at 11:45 p.m. ET, and is well worth the wait. Paddy Chayefsky, America’s first breakout television writer (Marty, for starters), wrote the script, which, all these decades later, is astoundingly intelligent, and even more astoundingly prescient.