The Piano (today, World, 9.35 pm) is all about communication and music. It's a stark and beautiful love story that's original, well written and beautifully acted. Ada (Holly Hunter, left) hasn't spoken since she was six and communicates with hand signals and through her beloved piano. But when she arrives in New Zealand for an arranged marriage, her new and grump husband (Sam Neill) insists her beautiful piano is too bulky to be carried from the beach. Enter grunting, bulky settler, Baines (Harvey Keitel) who agrees to buy the piano.
The musically accomplished Ada agrees to give him lessons and, low and behold, Keitel's clumsy fingers and thumbs start to intertwine with Hunter's more delicate digits. He begins to trade illicit sexual favours in return for time on her beloved piano and she doesn't like it one bit. Neither does her husband. But at least someone is playing the piano.
The Commitments (Tuesday, Pearl, 9.30 pm) is about communication, music and soul. Alan Parker's 1991 movie is a fast-talking and foul-mouthed adaptation of the wonderful Roddy Doyle book of the same title. In the Hong Kong small-screen version, forget the foul language. The movie follows a young and hopeful Dublin soul band called, funnily enough, The Commitments, as it tries to break into the Irish big time. The movie follows the gritty determination of the band's ambitious young and mouthy manager (played superbly by Robert Arkins, left) and creates a lot of laughs by charting the band's backstage troubles and triumphs. And the music - Otis Reading, Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin - is wonderful. Before this movie, most of the cast had never appeared in front of a camera, though it certainly doesn't show as enthusiasm and spot-on direction carry the day. Alan Parker has never been better.
Zhang Yimou's The Story Of Qui Ju (Saturday, World, 9.35 pm) is also about communication. Or rather the lack of it. Qui Ju, excellently portrayed by Gong Li (left), is a tough and pregnant Chinese peasant and when her husband has a row with the village chief and gets kicked where it really hurts, she demands justice. So, after tending her husband's private parts she goes on a journey that starts with the local policeman and ends in the highest court in the county. Zhang Yimou, all the time careful not to tread on government sensibilities, weaves a wonderfully frustrating portrayal of the bureaucratic madness that is modern-day, rural China. Zhang Yimou directs like never before. If Gong Li re-invents herself, Zhang Yimou re-invents mainland fifth generation, social realist cinema. The Story Of Qui Ju is a wonderful movie. Don't miss it.
The Philadelphia Story (Saturday, Pearl, 1.55 pm) is also a great movie. It's an old-fashioned romantic farce starring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart (left), and is a delight from beginning to end. The action starts when Hepburn - who plays an ice maiden recently divorced from a flighty millionaire (Cary Grant) - is about to be married to a more stable, if infinitely duller man.
James Stewart enters the action as a snooping newshound covering the society wedding of the year, but instead ends up falling for the feisty Hepburn. Then, along comes old flame Grant who deepens the farce by deciding he wants his old girl back. The acting is sublime, the timing is perfect and the romance is deliciously flirtatious. The movie contains an ironic and ambivalent attitude towards the idle rich that is understated but still extremely funny. This movie sparkles. They just don't make them like that any more.