Gong with the wind
THE Asian Movie Showcase draws to a close, appropriately enough with a Zhang Yimou/ Gong Li movie - probably the two most internationally known names of Asian cinema.
Unfortunately, A Terra-cotta Warrior (World 9.30pm, Original Running Time 120 minutes) was the first film the couple made together and unlike their later efforts - such as Raise The Red Lantern and Judou - which Zhang directed, here he acts alongside Gong Li.
Pity, Zhang's direction might have been less slack than that of Ching Siu-Tung who renders Terra-cotta Warrior less than exhilarating. It's meant to be an adventure comedy a la Indiana Jones, but after a good start withers to nothing.
The story starts in the Qin Dynasty when a guardsman is turned into terracotta for seducing a virgin, albeit a willing one. Giving him one last kiss, she slips him an immortality pill and he wakes up 2,000 years later to claim his bride, now a brainless starlet. CHOCKS away for another showing of Top Gun (Pearl 9.30pm, ORT 110 mins) a shamelessly contrived action movie and romance, with small but smiley Tom Cruise strutting his stuff in shades and leather flying jacket.
He's one of several arrogant young studs vying to be Top Gun at the US Navy Fighter School in San Diego, and falling in love with his instructor (Kelly McGillis - unlikely) while he's at it.
There's little chemistry between the two leads but that's compensated for by the Academy Award winning song Take My Breath Away and scene-stealing performances from Cruise's navigator (Anthony Edwards) and his wife (Meg Ryan) who's fond of yelling acrossthe bar ''make love to me now or lose me forever''.
All this plus a young Tim Robbins, a nasty Val Kilmer and flying sequences that can't fail to take your breath away.
IT's comforting to know that from tonight we can again go ''where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came''. Cheers (Pearl 9pm) is back after an interruption to make way for the Thatcher documentary series.
Watch these precious episodes, this is the final Cheers series and Ted Danson, Kirsty Alley, Woody, et al, will be taking final orders in the new year. THIS is going to make some people feel very old. Joni Mitchell, the singer whose hits in the 60s and 70s included Big Yellow Taxi and Both Sides Now, is now 53. Last year she became one of a growing number of post-menopausal women to undergo fertility treatment resulting in the birth of her son, Morgan.
Mitchell, who also wrote Woodstock, appears on a Horizon (Pearl 5.40pm) report called Cheating Time, which looks at these fertility treatments, and the moral and ethical questions involved. BRING on Oliver Stone, we're talking JFK and conspiracy in one sentence. The Kennedy Assassinations: Conspiracy or Coincidence (STAR Plus 7pm) is another documentary to mark the 30th anniversary of the Dallas shooting, and it's boldly claiming to provide ''conclusive evidence'' of links between John and Bobby's deaths.
Not only that, but it will ''prove'' that both men were connected to the deaths of Marilyn Monroe and Jimmy Hoffa. FOR a little matinee magic, tune into La Dolce Vita (World 11am, ORT 175 mins). Director Fellini's mood is evident from the opening scene in which a helicopter lifts a statue of Christ into the sky and out of Rome. With God gone, Fellini is free to chart with relish a society's descent into spiritual and moral decay. Riveting. DON'T forget the final of the Diamond Jubilee cricket tournament is on live this afternoon (Prime Sports 5pm).
