Wow. 1997 - I was 4 and you were doing transfixing crit like this. So cool! Never seen Network, but a million people have told me why it's important. Your review finally sold me - gonna rent it this weekend. Killer write-up.
I watched “Network” again for the first time in ages recently, and I was dumbfounded by its prescience.
Peter Finch’s character could have been Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson, or Rush Limbaugh, and it seems as if Rupert Murdoch patterned his news division after this movie.
ohhhh Ms.. Wilson it is NEVER a bad time to sift the present thru lense of sorta recent cultural past and the stark juxtaposition of your late 90's perspective with what has transpired since even that time is hmmmm well like going back and watching Carly Simon sing "Let the River Run" the theme for "Working Girl" (another cultural watershed?! ha?) and just realising the fast pace of our (hmmmmm again) progress? rapid whitewater chute thru sheer insanity?
god i love your voice on so many levels, fresh from nap or not and the "speed-freak" and bear references (cocaine bear now?) all so perfect and funny...
a few of us on here were bandying about this movie lately on Substack and aside from the "we're not gonna take it anymore" scene the one you describe has haunted me for years albeit with a wry smile: the eery dark green glow emanating from that intimidating boardroom table, Beatty a precursor to the Truman Show's Ed Harris when the script, the politics gets to the absolute heart of the matter and this scene amplified when Trump had that Exxon idiot Pompeo as secretary of state and you just knew he and Putin were gonna carve up the Arctic and its iced over waterways to divvy up the harvesting and marketing of oil....there are no real governments as we suspected... that is all bullshit even today...there is power and $ and they talk and walk with impunity like On the Waterfront hoods until the peons stand up to them,demand their purses back.....good one had totally forgotten 'the Unabomber" and when you wrote this only a few years from internet bubble then the main event: 911 which galvanised ALL the festering paranoia and let loose the demons from hell (Duck Dynasty ? heeeheee)
For all the reasons mentioned I haven't been able to bear watching TV news for some years, but now that I spend part of my week caring for my 97-year-old mom who watches TV news shows almost constantly, I can report the national news is freakier and scarier than ever. The ABC dude sits in front of a dark amorphous background and intones more than speaks about the day's disasters. My mother watches a ton of MSNBC as well. Modern cable news is not news at all. It's not even entertainment. It's a system of brain washing that employs endless redundancy to turn the most "correct" opinion into the most "certain" belief. Oh, and lots of drugs are for sale too!
Wow. 1997 - I was 4 and you were doing transfixing crit like this. So cool! Never seen Network, but a million people have told me why it's important. Your review finally sold me - gonna rent it this weekend. Killer write-up.
"'Network' rolls over the commercial bulwarks of television-as-propaganda-machine like a squadron of speed-freak-driven Panzers."
So good.
I watched “Network” again for the first time in ages recently, and I was dumbfounded by its prescience.
Peter Finch’s character could have been Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson, or Rush Limbaugh, and it seems as if Rupert Murdoch patterned his news division after this movie.
ohhhh Ms.. Wilson it is NEVER a bad time to sift the present thru lense of sorta recent cultural past and the stark juxtaposition of your late 90's perspective with what has transpired since even that time is hmmmm well like going back and watching Carly Simon sing "Let the River Run" the theme for "Working Girl" (another cultural watershed?! ha?) and just realising the fast pace of our (hmmmmm again) progress? rapid whitewater chute thru sheer insanity?
god i love your voice on so many levels, fresh from nap or not and the "speed-freak" and bear references (cocaine bear now?) all so perfect and funny...
a few of us on here were bandying about this movie lately on Substack and aside from the "we're not gonna take it anymore" scene the one you describe has haunted me for years albeit with a wry smile: the eery dark green glow emanating from that intimidating boardroom table, Beatty a precursor to the Truman Show's Ed Harris when the script, the politics gets to the absolute heart of the matter and this scene amplified when Trump had that Exxon idiot Pompeo as secretary of state and you just knew he and Putin were gonna carve up the Arctic and its iced over waterways to divvy up the harvesting and marketing of oil....there are no real governments as we suspected... that is all bullshit even today...there is power and $ and they talk and walk with impunity like On the Waterfront hoods until the peons stand up to them,demand their purses back.....good one had totally forgotten 'the Unabomber" and when you wrote this only a few years from internet bubble then the main event: 911 which galvanised ALL the festering paranoia and let loose the demons from hell (Duck Dynasty ? heeeheee)
god i love naps
For all the reasons mentioned I haven't been able to bear watching TV news for some years, but now that I spend part of my week caring for my 97-year-old mom who watches TV news shows almost constantly, I can report the national news is freakier and scarier than ever. The ABC dude sits in front of a dark amorphous background and intones more than speaks about the day's disasters. My mother watches a ton of MSNBC as well. Modern cable news is not news at all. It's not even entertainment. It's a system of brain washing that employs endless redundancy to turn the most "correct" opinion into the most "certain" belief. Oh, and lots of drugs are for sale too!