Double dose of classic movies
THIS is one of those all too rare nights, when viewers will want to put the VCR into use to record one side while watching the other. While Pearl is showing the all-time James Dean classic Rebel Without a Cause, World offers the best of its Asian Movie Showcase movies with To Liv(e).
The award-winning, sensitive To Liv(e) (World 9.30pm, Original Running Time 106 minutes) is a low-budget movie confronting Hong Kong's potent political issues, ranging from its treatment of Vietnamese refugees, to uncertainty over 1997 and fears on Daya Bay.
The film centres on a series of letters written by Rubie (former ballerina Lindzay Chan) to Norwegian actress Liv Ullman, a long-time critic of the treatment of refugees here. The correspondence amounts to a sensitive analysis of the moral dilemmas the repatriation of the Vietnamese represents to Hong Kong in the run-up to 1997.
The emigration question is less well-handled. Both Rubie and her boyfriend (Fung Kin-chung), and Rubie's brother Tony (Wong Yiu-ming) and his older girlfriend (Josephine Ku) face the question with increasing uncertainty, but their debates often seem contrived.
Overall, though, it is a bold effort by first-time director Evans Chan, who wrote the movie after being incensed by what he felt was an ill-informed attack made by Liv Ullman in January 1990 on Hong Kong's refugee policy.
Look out for Elsie Tu, in her movie debut, playing herself. REBEL Without a Cause (Pearl 9.30pm, ORT 111 mins) was the movie that made James Dean a star and it was the best of his short career. The film's message on youthful alienation is as pertinent today, centring on Deans' unsettled adolescent from a good home who just can't stay out of trouble.
He gets involved with the local bad boys, then adventure turns to tragedy.
The film's power comes from director Nicholas Ray's expressive use of light and dark to echo the characters' emotions and from his evident sympathy with all involved.
It also boasts strong performances all round, especially from the leads, Dean, Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood - all of whom died tragically early in real life. DOES he fake it, or is it for real? Macho man Randy Savage will answer these and more vital questions on wrestling in a lively interview with Gloria Wu for Eye on Hong Kong (Pearl, 7.20pm).
Oliver Tan examines the Excalibur, a Gatsby-esque car which could soon be turning heads on our streets, and in a separate piece he'll be talking to fashion accessories designer Izabel Lam.
John Dykes will review two films from the territory's up-coming French Film Festival: Fan Fan starring Vincent Perez of Indochine fame, and Les Visiteurs, a comedy being proclaimed as the biggest blockbuster in French cinematic history. A DOUBLE whammy of underwater delights comprise tonight's trip into wildlife wonders. The Reefs of Borneo (World, 8.30pm) includes encounters with the manta rays, weird cuttlefish and turtles who live on the virgin reefs off the coast of Borneo.
The Best of Cayman (World, 9pm) goes to some of the most popular diving spots in the Caribbean, including Tarpon Alley, Stingray City and the wreck of the Balboa. Curiously, Captain Wayne Hasson spends some time ''rapping'' with the marine animals - are they ready for this? MTV NEWS has compiled a half-hour special documenting the career of Stephen Kappur who's taken the industry by storm as Apache Indian. Going Home (MTV, 2.30am) looks at what it took for the rapper living in England to trace his roots back to the music of his homeland and popularise it on a global scale.
