DAVID BIANCULLI

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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.

 
 
 
 
 
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