A classic revisited
There are some films that, though they may be good, you wouldn't want to see twice; there are some movies that though you may have seen them six times, you'll watch them every time they're screened.
The Great Escape (Pearl, 9.30pm) is one such film. However many times I watch Steve McQueen stroll into the cooler, however many times he throws that baseball against the cell wall, however many times I see him tearing across the hills on that motorbike and careering over the barbed wire, it never ceases to thrill.
And every time I see Gordon Jackson board that bus I bite my lip in the hope that this time he won't respond in English.
Silly, but that's the magic of movies and the mark of an entertaining film.
It would have been difficult to find a better and more appropriate role for the late Steve McQueen. As the 'Cooler King', he was very much the maverick loner he is said to have been in real life.
Abandoned by his father, a navy flyer, when he was a child, McQueen spent part of his youth at Boys' Republic, a reform school in Chino, California.
Always said to be resentful of his peers Paul Newman and James Dean, his actor's apprenticeship was very different.
While Dean was attending classes at UCLA and Newman was at Yale Drama School, McQueen was drifting around the country in jobs as varied as sailor, lumberjack, carnival barker, oilfield worker and beachcomber. He enlisted in the marines in 1947 and even did some time in the brig for going AWOL.
While the other two young actors were middle-class boys who acted troubled, McQueen truly was.
Though it may have been his wry performance that captured the mood of the film, the cast of stellar actors is outstanding: Richard Attenborough as 'Big X', the master planner; a particularly handsome James Garner as the 'Scrounger'; a blinding Donald Pleasance as the 'Forger'; James Coburn strangely cast as the Australian 'Manufacturer'; and Charles Bronson, a Polish tunnel-digging expert, to name just a few.
Expertly written and directed, and with an infectious score, The Great Escape was based on a real-life mass escape of Allied troops in 1942 and remains the World War II escape film for many. I for one will watch it tonight and the next time it is screened - probably in a few months.
Hospital-based dramas continue to be popular throughout the world. In the UK, Casualty, the daily drama at a fictitious British hospital, has been a phenomenal success.
America's ER (Pearl, 8.30pm) and Chicago Hope are without doubt two of the more entertaining series on Hong Kong television.
In tonight's episode of ER, Dr Ross (George Clooney) has to come to terms with his new-found status as a media hero after saving the life of a boy in last week's episode and make a decision about his career.
It goes without saying that it won't be easy.
Changing status is something Clooney has to come to terms with in real life, too. The man of the moment in Hollywood, he stars alongside Quentin Tarantino in From Dusk Till Dawn, which opens in Hong Kong on Friday.
He has signed a three-picture deal with Warner Brothers for a sum reportedly in excess of US$25 million (about HK$190 million), which caused immense excitement in Tinseltown, especially when it was revealed that he'd been signed to play the Caped Crusader in Batman And Robin, ousting the temperamental Val Kilmer from the role.
The question is: will he be as charming in mask and stockings as he is behind a stethoscope?
