Action Packed

For football fans burned out -- and bummed out -- by NFL expansion, there is still a place where the league isn't expanding.While other major NFL licensees issue monster-sized sets (Upper Deck, Fleer Ultra and Stadium Club each has at least 500 cards) that may have forgotten only the sideline gofers, Action Packed stays comparatively small. This year's set checks in with 162 in the basic set and 42 more in three insert sets."We keep our sets small . . . because we feel that when a person opens our cards that they're happy with what they get," says Action Packed's Laurie Goldberg.

Filled with ominous, gaseous globes that suck up lower life forms and terrify most humans, The Day the Earth Stood Still passed my popcorn-movie test. Using the vast, expensive technology of a big studio production, it roused enough cheap energy to drive me to eat a bag of popcorn fit for a circus animal and wash it down with a quart of Diet Coke. But it's what a screenwriter friend of mine used to call "high-calorie filmmaking": Every bit of entertainment is consumed and digested in the watching.

Action Packed, which has produced innovative football card for the past three years, has turned its attention to baseball.The result is the first of three 84-card All-Star Gallery sets. It is aptly named.Like Action Packed's NFL cards, the baseball cards are thicker than standard and embossed. As Lou Brock practically slides off his card and Bob Gibson falls off the mound (and almost off the card), it's clear that Action Packed's techniques work with baseball, too."Baseball cards are not football cards with baseball players on them," says Action Packed's Laurie Pearlstein, who grew up in Pikesville.

School is almost out and that means one thing: It's time for summer reading lists. But this year, students who dread the idea of plodding through Shakespearean verse to learn the tales of star-crossed lovers and ruthless rulers can take heart. Wiley Publishers, famous (or infamous) for its Cliffs Notes study guides, has come out with Shakespeare in manga. So far, Haml et, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth are available in the graphic novel style spawned in Japan and given full flower in the U.K. and U.S. Rated for ages 13 and older and priced at a mere $9.99, these abridged versions of the best-known plays in the English language are now vividly depicted in classic action-packed manga style: a kind of Saturday morning cartoon version of Shakespeare.

Action Packed became an NHL licensee this year, something the company had sought for several years. But the license is not to produce cards.The company that first put gold foil on trading cards is branching out -- sort of.Hockey fans won't be able to get a pack of Action Packed cards or assemble a set. But they can buy some items that are a lot like cards.One is the Mammoth Card, a comic book-sized piece of embossed cardboard that looks like an oversized Action Packed card. It made its debut this summer in an NFL version.

Action Packed has turned its attention to auto racing with all the attention to detail that characterizes its NFL and All-Star baseball sets.The bulk of the 84-card set is devoted to subsets, all logical choices in a NASCAR set. There are subsets devoted to race winners, pole winners, Winston Cup points top finishers, top rookies and Richard Petty. The remainder feature profiles of drivers and teams.The thought that went into these cards sets them apart.In the race winners subset, there are winning cliches (kissing the wife, holding the trophy)

It's the law of supply and demand in action -- with a grisly twist.When NASCAR driver Davey Allison died July 13 from injuries received in a helicopter crash, demand for his memorabilia went up. So did prices. And the supply, except for some memorial items, is unlikely to expand.It had happened in April, when Winston Cup points champion Alan Kulwicki was killed in a plane crash. The experience wasn't lost on Sharon Knecht of Pit Stop in Catonsville."Tuesday [the day of Allison's death], I didn't sell anything," said Knecht.

The NBA season rolls on into late spring with the playoffs. The basketball-card season hasn't ended yet, either.Action Packed has added basketball to its mix with the 42-card Basketball Hall of Fame set. It's Series I Notebookof a projected 84-card set.Upper Deck fleshes out its NBA set with a 200-card, high-number set plus 79 inserts.With the familiar embossing and thick-card stock, the Hall of Fame set is pure Action Packed. All players featured were in the NBA or its predecessor leagues, but most of the coaches are from the college level.

Collectors watching the Super Bowl might want to look closely at the seats in the Georgia Dome.Each one has a special Super Bowl cushion in black and trimmed in turquoise and filled with souvenir goodies.About 400 Morris Brown College students spent the past week distributing 73,594 cushions throughout the dome. Each student volunteer received a Super Bowl XXVIII shirt and seat cushion, and GTE, which provided the cushions, gave the school $10,000.The cushions are decorated with the Super Bowl XXVIII and GTE logos.

Basketball fans with a nostalgic bent or who are interested in the history of the game might enjoy Action Packed's second series of Basketball Hall of Fame cards.Action Packed's embossing seems to be more effective on the black and white photos, reproduced in a tintype-style, in the 42-card set than on the full-color ones. Backs have enough stats to be interesting but are not overloaded.There's Paul Arizin dribbling -- in black and white -- the way he looked on TV in the '50s. For postwar fans, Harry Galltin and Ed Macauly are included.

Despite its wordiness, near-overwhelming continuous action, dated class-consciousness and obscure political references, the Naval Academy Masqueraders' production of Hannah Cowley's The Belle's Stratagem provided exciting theater over the past two weekends at Mahan Hall. Rendering the play's shortcomings insignificant, director Christy Stanlake and Richard Montgomery, the set and costume designer, created a production to delight all the senses. Stanlake's ebullience and vision were reflected in the brilliance of Montgomery's fanciful birdcagelike set and colorful costumes.

Vin Diesel might be a better video game star than Hollywood celebrity. His latest movie, The Chronicles of Riddick, has gotten mediocre reviews, but the new Xbox game starring his Riddick character is superb. Vivendi Universal's The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay ($49, rated for ages 17 and up) takes place before the first movie in the Riddick series, Pitch Black. The game opens with a captured Riddick being flown to Butcher Bay prison, a sort of intergalactic Alcatraz.

BE ADVISED that a poker craze is sweeping the nation. Almost every night there are poker tournaments on television. And if you think that watching people play cards on television would be boring, I have three words for you: correct-o-mundo. The problem is that there's not a lot of action in televised poker, where the most strenuous thing the players do is push small plastic chips a distance of about 15 inches. (Granted, this is more action than you see in televised golf.) To make matters worse, poker players do not betray any feelings, so most of the time what you have, visually, is a bunch of grim-faced guys sitting around a table, looking like a hemorrhoid support group.

Indiana Jones is the man. He'll kick, scratch, punch, crawl on his belly, swing over pits and elude poison darts just to retrieve a little golden statue in an ancient tomb. And then - and this is always the best part - he'll have to find a way back out, except now the whole darned place is crashing down and spikes are shoving up through the stone floor, and there's a giant boulder bearing down like a steamroller. Run, Indy! I love this guy. I wish they'd make 10 more movies. That's unlikely, so at least there's a great new video game that does a fantastic job of re-creating that classic Indiana Jones anticipation, excitement and self-deprecating humor.

The title refers to Andy Warhol's dictum: "In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." This brazen movie's 15 minutes may never come, because its premise is passe and its execution confused. The writer-director, John Herzfeld, envisions an ultimate extension of tabloid television. A Czech ex-con, just off the plane from Prague to New York, kills four people and starts two fires. His Russian sidekick, who wants to be a filmmaker, shoplifts a deluxe videocam, records the mayhem, and proclaims himself a great American director.

CAREER DAYS are common at schools, but Freetown Elementary has managed to turn an ordinary event into something special. Its Career Awareness Day 2000 will introduce pupils to jobs ranging from firefighter to attorney through presentations and demonstrations. Following the theme "Careers in Action," the school will have 20 presentations Friday. "In the past, we've had speakers come in and talk about their jobs," said Carolyn Crawley, Freetown guidance counselor. "This year, students will see a little about what the career is like.

Magic Johnson's Sept. 29 announcement that he was returning to the NBA was early enough that, of the major companies producing NBA sets, only Fleer won't have Johnson in its first series.After his retirement, Johnson signed an exclusive agreement with SkyBox International Inc., maker of NBA Hoops and SkyBox. Once he renounced his retirement and signed a contract, he was again covered by the NBA players association's licensing agreements.Hoops, with an eight-card subset, and SkyBox, with a five-card subset, ended up having a jump on their competitors rather than an exclusive.

The Winter Olympics ended last weekend, and the Summer Games are five months away. But there's still time for collectors to get in shape for the Olympics' most popular sport -- pin collecting.Reports from Albertville, France, indicate that more than 1 million pins were traded by 350,000 people at the official pin centers run by Coca-Cola.For those who couldn't make it to France, the International Pin Collectors Club could be the ticket to beginning or augmenting a collection. It was founded in 1980 and has 2,000 members worldwide.

I judge thrillers strictly on the twitch factor. That is, if I'm sitting there and suddenly someone is going "ULP!" "OOF!" and "AGH!" and punching the air, and annoying everybody around him, and that person is me, the movie deserves a friendly reception.What those spasms signify, of course, is that the story has gotten beyond the rational brain and connected with the subconscious. It has taken over, like the critter inside John Hurt's belly in "Alien." It's running the show.On that scale, then, "Ransom" gets three "Ulps," a couple of "Oofs" but only one "Agh!"

Carlos Gomes' "Il Guarany" created a sensation when it was first performed at Milan's La Scala in 1870. The 34-year-old Gomes was hailed as the "Verdi of Brazil" and the great composer himself called "Il Guarany" a "work of true musical genius."Gomes (1836-1896), the son of a village bandmaster, had the good fortune to grow up in Brazil just as that huge country -- ZTC which had established its independence from Portugal in 1821 -- was beginning to try to forge its own cultural identity.Gomes was already an established composer when Pedro II, Brazil's enlightened ruler, sent him in 1864 to study at the celebrated Milan Conservatory.