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Network

Starring: Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Wesley Addy, Ned Beatty

Directed by: Sidney Lumet

RS: 4of 4 Stars

2006

If movies can tell the future, then this 1976 harbinger about a major network's calculated and deranged ratings grab is right on time. Newscaster Howard Beale (Peter Finch) is the over-the-hill face of failing TV network UBS, and his last televised gasp is to refashion himself as "an angry prophet denouncing the hypocrisies of our times." Ratings spike upward, to the delight of Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), a monomaniacal exec who makes Ann Coulter resemble a dewy doe. ("I want a show developed based on the activities of a terrorist group," Christensen proclaims, and makes her own wish come true.) But when Beale rants on-air that "I don't want the banks selling my country to the Arabs," the conglomerate boss (Ned Beatty) steps in and instructs him to preach strict pro-corporate cosmology. But viewers don't want to hear that they're disposable, and the lesson learned is that plummeting ratings are punishable by death. What was originally a brilliantly scabrous satire by writer Paddy Chayefsky now seems more like the guttersnipe game plan that Fox News has followed almost to the letter.

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