Armageddon

TONIGHT HBO presents its premiere screening of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee based on Dee Alexander's 1970 best-seller about the brutal displacement of Native Americans in the late 19th century. Aidan Quinn, Adam Beach, August Schellenberg and Anna Paquin star in the film. (Miss Paquin, who won an Oscar for The Piano in 1994 at age 12, has avoided the pitfalls of too much, too soon. She thrives, quietly.) The premiere happens at the American Museum of Natural History on NYC's West Side.

MEGIDDO, Israel -- If the year 2000 brings the feared "end of days," surely Armageddon could expect some action. But from outward signs, this promises to be one of the most tranquil spots in the country, if not the world, as the new year arrives.Elsewhere in the Holy Land, police are bracing for a particularly bad night. For months, they have been scouting for disturbed Christians who might be tempted to commit mass suicide in hopes of hastening the day of judgment.In the often tense Old City of Jerusalem, authorities will be on extra alert for terrorism and for a crowd control headache as Christian pilgrims converge with an expected 400,000 Muslim worshipers marking the end of the sacred month of Ramadan.

Early on in "Armageddon" there are clues to what we are in for: the opening narration, which is delivered by Charlton Heston in tones reserved for high school science films; the line "Nothing will survive, not even bacteria my God, what'll we do?"; the incessant thrum of music meant to stir the patriotic hearts of good Americans and the adrenal glands of adolescent boys everywhere.The scale, the self-importance, the over-produced sentiment -- there can be no doubt that this is a Michael Bay production.

This summer, the hottest trend in music is movies.Since June, the best-selling albums in America more often than not have been soundtracks. Over the last eight weeks, "City of Angels" has spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart, while "Armageddon -- The Album" spent two. Furthermore, the few albums that have bumped them aside quickly fell out of the Top 10, while the soundtracks remain fixtures in the Top Five.Nor are they the only soundtrack albums selling well at the moment.

They heal the sick. They care and share, they nurture and touch lives. They are male pediatricians with the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and for a bunch of guys they know a heck of a lot about colic and breast feeding.But once every couple of months these sensitive docs gather for a night of gratuitous thrills, vicarious violence and macho posturing. They are the core of a group called the Men's Film Circle, and they have a taste for cinematic red meat.Dr. John Andrews, a 36-year-old assistant professor of pediatrics at Hopkins from Kalamazoo, Mich.

London -- You reap what you sow when you attempt to develop an underdeveloped country. This is Mexico's lesson -- and Algeria's, Pakistan's, Turkey's and Egypt's.A whole range of half-developed countries are finding out belatedly what they were told 30 years ago -- if you don't have land reform, if you don't breed a strong and prosperous peasantry, if you don't halt the mad rush to the town, if you don't make your villages attractive with safe water and rural clinics, if you don't educate your young girls so that they themselves are moved to control the birth rate, you are going to have economic, if not political, Armageddon.

POINT OF IMPACT.Stephen Hunter.Bantam.` 451 pages. $24.95.Strange as it may seem, not every heart was gladdened by the remarkable international events of the past few years, including the destruction of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.Besides certain members of the military services, right-wing columnists and that bloated welfare system known as the defense industry, those novelists who specialize in the twin...

Julian Sands may be becoming the Boris Karloff of the '90s -- that is, the elegant, accomplished English film actor who brings his special elan, his eclat, his joie de vivre to the most godawful swill. Not a week or two ago, the poor guy was whacking the arms and legs off Sherilyn Fenn in "Boxing Helena.""Warlock: the Armageddon" is a sad case of Hellzafloppin'.MOVIE REVIEW"Warlock: The Armageddon"Starring Julian SandsDirected by Anthony HickoxReleased by TrimarkRated R*

ObligationsThe editorial staff of The Sun and its syndicated Opinion * Commentary contributors have enthusiastically supported the administration's proposal to increase income taxes on Social Security payments.I wonder whether you, and they, would be equally enthusiastic if a private corporation, in order to produce more attractive operating results, were to unilaterally repudiate its pension obligations to long-service employees, some of whom had contributed to the scheme for over half a century.

AMERICANS threw off the tyranny of George III. The tyranny of the National Rifle Association is proving a little harder to shake, but there are encouraging signs.If you sense an edge of hysteria creeping into the rantings of the NRA, it is because this once most mighty of lobbies is beginning to suffer some heretofore unthinkable losses. It fears -- accurately, if the rest of us are lucky -- that the tide is turning against it.Oh, the NRA is still winning some, but often at the cost of a widening public revulsion.

The little-boy fantasy of cars coming to life and turning into giant talking robots from outer space plummets straight into the high-tech junkyard in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It's so loud and relentless you feel you're in the center of a trash compactor. Although the movie goes all over the world to tell a rudimentary tale of good humans and good robots, or Autobots, uniting against the bad robots, or Decepticons, its frenetic and often pointless action induces a weird claustrophobia.

Warmongering adds to economic woes I appreciate that The Baltimore Sun has again placed the quagmire in Afghanistan on the front page, where it belongs ("Afghan bombings expected to worsen," April 5). As someone who has been protesting the invasion of that desperately poor country since 2001, I believe the war should always be on the front page, as misbegotten military adventures mean death and destruction for all sides. And to be frank, it is utter madness, especially as we face economic devastation, to expend billions of tax dollars funding wars and the occupation of the Palestinian people.

In the 1998 movie Armageddon, audiences thrilled as Bruce Willis, Steve Buscemi and Ben Affleck scrambled to save life on Earth from destruction by an asteroid - and the vast majority left the theater safely confident that such a far-fetched threat could not possibly reflect reality. They should not have been so sure. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported that on March 2, asteroid 2009 DD45 came within about 48,000 miles of Earth. In astronomical terms, that's way too close for comfort.

1 Prediction? Pain: Two teams with hard-hitting defenses face off when the Ravens host the Steelers with first place in the AFC North on the line (4 p.m., chs. 13, 9). 2 Shooting stars: Terrell Owens has been shooting off his mouth heading into the Cowboys' game against the Giants (8:15 p.m., chs. 11,4). At least that's better than shooting yourself. 3 The other football: The Maryland men's soccer team faces Atlantic Coast Conference rival North Carolina in the national championship game (1 p.m., ESPN2)

On Labor Day weekend, Maryland divides into two camps: those who jump into their cars and join the teeming, sweltering masses headed down to the ocean and those who think fighting all that traffic is insane. Guess which camp I'm in. Does the translucent Irish skin give it away? Oh, go ahead, beach people, have your fun down there in Ocean City or Rehoboth or wherever you are. Splash in the surf, cruise the boardwalk, play your miniature golf at the erupting volcano place, stuff your fat little faces at your Dough Rollers, your Dumser's, your Bulls on the Beach, etc. But there'll be a price to pay for all that, won't there?

TONIGHT HBO presents its premiere screening of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee based on Dee Alexander's 1970 best-seller about the brutal displacement of Native Americans in the late 19th century. Aidan Quinn, Adam Beach, August Schellenberg and Anna Paquin star in the film. (Miss Paquin, who won an Oscar for The Piano in 1994 at age 12, has avoided the pitfalls of too much, too soon. She thrives, quietly.) The premiere happens at the American Museum of Natural History on NYC's West Side.

"At this time of great crisis in the world, we should be looking for nuclear disarmament, nuclear abolition - saving the world, not ramping up for Armageddon by nuclear proliferation." - Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio. "There's always an alien battle cruiser, or a Korlian death ray, or an intergalactic plague that's trying to wipe out life on this miserable little planet." - Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black. Armageddon is hot again, and why not? We crave explanations for wars in the Middle East and madness at home, such as the shooting of six people at a Jewish center in Seattle last week by a man claiming to be a Muslim and wanting revenge against Israel.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was closing in on a resounding vote of confidence yesterday with early returns showing state voters passing two ballot measures that are cornerstones of his plan for recovery from the state fiscal crisis. Proposition 57 authorizes the state to borrow $15 billion to balance the budget. Most of that would refinance previously approved debt that is under court challenge, but roughly $4 billion would be used to close current and future budget gaps, according to the nonpartisan legislative analyst's office.

NEW YORK -- The Upper West Side studio resembles a mad fashion tea party. Antique candy dishes and gilded vintage furniture fill the space. Seamstresses buzz and sew in a back room, and the clothes hanging everywhere are the ultimate in designer decadence: sequins, lame, chinchilla cuffs. The scene looks sumptuous. But to fashion designer Bryan Brantley who just walked in, it smells even better. "Ohmigod, you got McDonald's," he says, spying the cheese danish and hamburger co-designer Josh Patner has saved for him. "And wine," Patner adds, brandishing a bottle of red. A feast of fast food and noon wine is a rare break for the partners in both life and business.

MEGIDDO, Israel -- If the year 2000 brings the feared "end of days," surely Armageddon could expect some action. But from outward signs, this promises to be one of the most tranquil spots in the country, if not the world, as the new year arrives.Elsewhere in the Holy Land, police are bracing for a particularly bad night. For months, they have been scouting for disturbed Christians who might be tempted to commit mass suicide in hopes of hastening the day of judgment.In the often tense Old City of Jerusalem, authorities will be on extra alert for terrorism and for a crowd control headache as Christian pilgrims converge with an expected 400,000 Muslim worshipers marking the end of the sacred month of Ramadan.