Newtork again

I never did do a full-length post on Network, before, and to be honest, I haven't watched it since before the last time I mentioned it at any reasonable length. Because of that I don't really want to do a full-length post on it now, as there's so much that I'd miss. But I do want to point out that it's running again tonight at 10:30 PM on TCM. The movie is available on DVD, although Amazon's current low price seems to be for Prime members only, which does not describe me. The TCM Shop does have it, too, for a slightly higher, but not outrageously high price. Nothing like the Criterion Collection prices.

If I were going to make a comment about Network, it would be more or less the same thing that I said when I wrote about the movie five years ago. There's a lot to be said in favor of the movie and its utterly sardonic look at the world of television, a world with which screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky was intimately familiar. Indeed, much of that dark humor can also be found in his earlier movie The Hospital. It's fun to see how everybody wants to use a movie like Network to confirm their political biases, but a bit tedious when so many of the people doing it are doing it toward one particular channel that didn't exist back in 1976.

In reading a little bit more about Network this week, I noticed that Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner Beatrice Straight gets surprisingly little on-screen time for it. I don't remember all of the other peformances, although I probably should have seen all of them at some point or another, unless I have one of those blind spots that that other blogathon is about. (Come to think about it, I don't think I've seem Carrie, for which Piper Laurie was nominated, before.) But she beat out Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver?