ABC delivers ‘Ten Commandments’
Nearly a half-century after its premiere, the 1956 biblical epic “The Ten Commandments” (7 p.m. tonight. ABC) continues to attract a large audience. Last year, when it aired on a Sunday, it was among the top-rated shows of Easter week.
Speaking of miracles, the once-canceled NBC drama “LAX” (8 p.m. tonight, NBC) has risen from the dead. As viewers may recall, Heather Locklear stars as the director of the busy Los Angeles airport. No, it’s not a comedy.
Elizabeth Wurtzel’s memoir “Prozac Nation” was one of the most talked-about books of the 1990s. But the film adaptation (9 p.m. tonight, Starz) has become one of the Hollywood mysteries of the new century. Produced by Miramax and completed in 2001, “Prozac Nation” has been missing in action. The film’s trailer has been floating around the Internet for years, but its release date remained elusive. And tonight, it appears on cable.
The true tale of Wurtzel’s early writing talent and her bouts with clinical depression, “Prozac,” starring Christina Ricci, is an ordeal to endure. To call Ricci’s Wurtzel self-absorbed is a monumental understatement.
A powerful, painful film experience, “Sometimes in April” (8 p.m. tonight, HBO) recalls the 1994 Rwandan genocide from the point of view of a Hutu family torn apart by that country’s hellish tribal civil war. Look for Deborah Winger as a U.S. State Department official powerless to end the bloodshed.
With a title like “Spring Break Shark Attack” (9 p.m., Sunday, CBS) you’d expect a film to be an over-the-top comedy. Neither funny nor particularly gory, “Break” stars Shannon Lucio (“The O.C.”) as a coed who defies her strict father to hang out with her flighty friends at a beach house not far from where her nerdy brother is conducting research on tiger sharks.
Somebody spent a ton of dough producing “Dragons” (5, 7 and 9 p.m. Sunday, Animal Planet), a “what if” documentary employing the magic of special effects to speculate about the “natural history” of fire-breathing dragons.
The Discovery Channel offers back-to-back histories of 13th-century intrigue and mayhem.
“Genghis Khan: Rise of a Conqueror” (9 p.m. Sunday, Discovery) chronicles a humble man’s rise to become one of the greatest rulers in world history. The film features many breathtaking battle scenes shot on location in the Mongolian Steppes.
“Kublai Khan and the Fall of the Mongol Hordes” (10 p.m. Sunday, Discovery) sets out to examine one of military history’s greatest mysteries.
Kublai, the grandson of Genghis, attempted to conquer Japan with one of the biggest armadas ever amassed: 4,400 ships carrying 140,000 soldiers and sailors. But in August 1281 they all disappeared. Archaeologists and oceanographers now think they know why.