ALL TIMES ARE EST UNLESS NOTED CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS. - - - - - - - - - - - - RECENTLY IN BLUE GLOW "Cracker" crumbles (01/28/98) "Hollywood Squares" '98 (01/26/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - ENTERTAINMENT THIS WEEK Oscar and Lucinda A shimmering romance starring Ralph Fiennes as a misfit Australian gambler Spice World The Spice Girls' tasteless debut - - - - - - - - - - - - ENTERTAINMENT LAST WEEK The family values of "NYPD Blue" By Joyce Millman The most pro-family show on television Deconstructing Harry Yucky Woody gives his hard-core fans the final finger Kundun Scorsese's exquisite Dalai Lama biopic - - - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE MOVIE ARCHIVES TV ARCHIVES

blue glow SALON'S TV PICKS FOR THURSDAY, JAN. 29, 1998 BY JOYCE MILLMAN S E R I E S On Just Shoot Me (8:30 p.m., NBC), Brian Dennehy plays Finch's (David Spade) confused father. Finch is neat, single, acerbic and works as a secretary, so Dad assumes he's gay and wants to let him know that he's OK with it. Except Finch isn't gay. Kathy Griffin ("Suddenly Susan") guests on a new Seinfeld (9 p.m., NBC) as an actress who bases a one-woman show on Jerry's criticism of her. A new episode of ER (10 p.m., NBC) finds Carter having to make a difficult decision: Which critically injured patients should get the hospital's last remaining pints of blood during a blood-supply shortage? S P O R T S College hoops: U-Mass. at Rhode Island (7:30 p.m., ESPN); Louisville at Cincinnati (9:30 p.m., ESPN). T A L K Rosie O'Donnell (syndicated) reruns the show where she vies with another "Mary Tyler Moore Show" trivia expert for the crown; David Spade guests on David Letterman (CBS); Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jewel appear on Jay Leno (NBC); Robert Duvall is scheduled for Charlie Rose (PBS); Karen Finley and Heavy D are panelists on Politically Incorrect (ABC); Conan O'Brien (NBC) features Michael Keaton. R E V I E W "Gia" (9 p.m. Sat., HBO; also plays at 9 p.m., Feb. 3) The latest in HBO's long line of movies based on recent pop cultural history, "Gia" is the tragic bio of supermodel Gia Carangi, who reigned over magazine covers and runways for about a minute and a half during the late '70s and early '80s. But what an influential minute and a half it was. Gia was a tough chick from a broken home in Philadelphia who never got over her mother's abandoning the family when she was a kid. Despite her purple punk hair and "shocking" escapades (Gia was a lesbian and she liked to play with knives), no less a modeling agency heavyweight than Wilhelmina herself saw a gold mine in the rebellious teenager's dark, dangerous beauty and untamed personality. Modeling had been dominated by sunny blonds for years; Gia was the perfect girl for the moment when punk gutter-bravado was being co-opted by American fashion and culture. Gia became a star at 18, a junkie soon after and was dead of AIDS at 26. Her heroin-chic legacy lives on, though, which brings us to the central problem of "Gia." How do you make a movie about a beautiful smack addict without either glorifying smack or coming off as a heavy-handed cautionary tale? Well, it's hard. The script, by Jay McInerny (who knows a thing or two about models) and director Michael Cristofer, is often a mess. The movie is flat when it should be bitchy-funny (this is fashion we're talking about, after all), and there are a couple of thudding anti-drug, anti-fashion magazine speeches tacked on toward the end. It's the explosive performance of Angelina Jolie in the title role that pulls "Gia" through. Jolie (Jon Voight's daughter) creates a haunting Gia -- bratty, sexy, vulnerable, manipulative, self-destructive, brave and spirited. Jolie rocks. She's in nearly every scene of the movie, but you still can't get enough of her. She makes you care about Gia the way you'd care about any wayward, neglected kid thrown in your path. Jolie's poignant wasted beauty in the last third of the film is all the anti-smack message this movie needs. The tragedy of Gia was that she lived the decadent life when most of those around her merely posed it. Some of the most potent scenes in the movie are virtually wordless -- wavering between documentary-style black and white and lush color, they're like fashion magazine layout landscapes through which Jolie's Gia totters, never quite numb enough to be the perfect mannequin. In a long, dreamy sequence, Gia, sick and needing to cop heroin, bolts from a perversely stylized photo shoot on the back of a motorcycle, dressed in white geisha makeup, a huge lacquered wig and a magnificent billowing red ball gown. As Echo and the Bunnymen's druggy, jangly "The Killing Moon" plays on the soundtrack, she makes her way to a scuzzy shooting gallery and gets her fix. Near the end of the film, a used-up Gia sits for a notorious 1982 Cosmo cover in which an actor playing Francesco Scavullo gently tucks her brutally track-marked arms behind the billowy skirt of her gown and takes the photo. If that isn't a trim, savage metaphor for the fashion world, I don't know what is. SALON | Jan. 29, 1998 Blue Glow for < href="/ent/glow/1998/01/28glow.html">Tuesday, Jan.28, 1998

ILLUSTRATION BY JASON PORTER