Network

[ussusimiel]

(I couldn't find a thread on this.)

I watched this for the first time last night and found it quite interesting.* I knew that it was highly rated, so I watched it with a fair bit of attention. There was lots in it, maybe a bit too much at times, and it seemed to flip over into the surreal a bit too regularly for my taste. It is quite wordy as well, at times coming across like a play (the language sometimes felt overwrought).

In many ways it comes across as prophetic, presaging the emergence of infotainment and people like Jerry Springer. In others it is too pessimistic of the potential of TV, leaving no room for the emergence of such things as 'The Sopranos', 'The Wire', 'Mad Men', 'True Detective' etc..

The performances of the leads were mostly very good (it won three of the four acting Oscars), although at times I felt that the script was asking a bit much from them.

Overall, well worth a watch.

u.

* For some reason I had it mixed up with the Michael Keaton movie, The Paper.

[peter]

It hasn't registered on my radar U. It certainly sounds worth a look however - I'll see if it's found its way onto Netflix yet.