Stars out tonight
THERE are more than 50 television personalities taking part in The 46th Annual Emmy Awards (Pearl, 9.30pm and STAR Plus, 12 midnight), some of whom are famous and some of whom are not. Have you, in all honesty, heard of Fyvush Finkel? The event happens in Pasadena Civic Auditorium on Sunday and is not being shown live in Hong Kong. But a day late is better than nothing. It is repeated on STAR Plus tomorrow at 8.30pm should you want to watch Fyvush Finkel and Bette Midler giving it their best a second time. Midler will be performing songs from the mini-series Gypsy, which has received 12 nominations for one thing and another (including Outstanding Lead Actress In A Mini Series for Midler).
Other celebs down to do a turn, or up for awards, are Tim Allen (from the silly comedy Home Improvement, which runs on Monday evenings on TVB Pearl); Kathy Baker and Tom Skerritt (Picket Fences, also on Pearl on Mondays); and Candice Bergen (Murphy Brown, Pearl on Fridays).
In fact Pearl comes out of the Emmys smelling of roses. The streetwise cop show NYPD Blue, which the station airs on Tuesday evenings (although with some of the best bits exorcised) is up for 26 awards. The last episode of the current series goes out tomorrow. TVB has bought the new series, but has yet to decide when it will run it.
There are some stars who might or might not turn up, depending on if they get a better offer or simply decide to stay in and wash their hair. Watch out for Michael Caine, Robin Williams, Kirstie Alley, Richard Gere, Matthew Modine, Cyndi Lauper, David Letterman and so on ad infinitum.
THE Merchant Ivory production Roseland (STAR Plus, 8.30pm) is technically careless and below par, but this was due to a meagre budget and a shooting schedule that gave director James Ivory just three weeks to get everything in the can.
In these circumstances the odd slip-up can be forgiven, particularly as the stories (the film consists of three vignettes, in much the same way that New York Stories did) are lively and charming.
The setting, New York's Roseland ballroom, is the central character. The three other main characters, the human ones, are Teresa Wright, a widow whose memories flow when she is on the dance floor; Christopher Walken, a gigolo; and Lilia Skala, an elderly German lady who works as a cleaning woman in order to pay for her nights out.