Bad Guys

Ronan, an 18-month-old Belgian Malinois, bolted from his owner's grasp and charged across the open field toward a guy waving a stick and screaming, "Get that dog out of here." The dog lunged toward the man, bit into his arm and held on. "Good grip," said a man with a clipboard. As a judge for the Protection Sports Association, he made note of it as part of the dog's ability to take commands from his owner, ignore all distractions and hang on to a "decoy," a person outfitted in a thickly padded bite suit.

It's all Clint (almost) all day, as AMC brings viewers nearly 10 straight hours of the guy with the most bankable squint in Hollywood, in the role that proved he wasn't just a cowboy anymore. As San Francisco cop Harry Callahan, Clint took guff from no one, least of all some bad guys screaming about their rights. The Clintfest kicks off at 3:30 p.m. with Don Siegel's 1971 Dirty Harry, where Eastwood gets to play the archetypal vigilante cop, daring bad guys to take a chance on how many rounds he has left in his gun. A trio of muy macho sequels follows: Ted Post's 1973 Magnum Force at 5:30 p.m., James Fargo's 1976 The Enforcer at 8 and Eastwood directing himself in 1983's Sudden Impact (which was also the last film he would make with girlfriend Sondra Locke, who would later file a palimony suit against him)

To make travel on its subway, light rail, commuter trains and buses as safe as possible, the Maryland Transit Administration may soon call on the largest and most expert security team available - the tens of thousands of people who ride public transportation in the Baltimore area each day. Text messaging, those short little bursts of information fired from a cell phone, Blackberry or similar device, could let transit police know when and where crime is...

Because of Magic Johnson, my all-time favorite athlete, my basketball allegiances have always been simple: Lakers purple and gold. This made for an uncomfortable partnership after Magic retired. Cheering for Anthony Peeler, Cedric Ceballos and Nick Van Exel during the lean years was not particularly uplifting and required a lot of feigned enthusiasm with little or no payoff. But when Kobe Bryant arrived, I felt like I had finally found a Laker I could embrace again. We were similar in age, we were both hungry to prove ourselves, and I loved Kobe's mini-afro and the ice water in his veins.

Soothing blue and purple lights, ambient music, free Ziploc bags for liquid toiletries - these are the government's latest tactic for better safeguarding the nation's passenger planes. Beginning in May, one of Southwest Airlines' checkpoints at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport will pilot a new passenger screening concept that Transportation Security Administration officials say will make it easier to spot would-be terrorists. Calming panels of cool light and a low decibel level will make it harder for jittery perpetrators to blend in with the hectic environment that typically accompanies long lines of passengers waiting to pass through security screening.

Jodie Foster, who earned an Oscar nomination 32 years ago for playing a child prostitute in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, plays a more cultured character in The Brave One, an illegitimate heir to that incendiary mid-1970s masterpiece. Here she's a radio personality who reports poetically on the changing face of New York until her own face is beaten to a pulp. Then the whole thing turns into trash with flash. The Brave One (Warner Bros.) Starring Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard. Directed by Neil Jordan.

Baltimore police Commissioner Leonard Hamm is dying in increments. "When the pager goes off and I look at the location of [a homicide]," Hamm said yesterday, "I know [the victims] are black men and I know the perps are black men. A little bit of me dies each time it happens - as a black man, as a father, as an uncle and also as a police commissioner." Death was the topic yesterday when I spoke with Hamm at police headquarters. At the time we met, Baltimore's homicide count was 152 compared with 133 at the same time last year.

Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth film in the Die Hard franchise, comes after a 12-year hiatus but easily returns to all the requisite high-octane traditions. Lots of stuff gets blown up; lots of bad guys do bad things; lots of chances come for our hero, John McClane, to laugh in the face of death just one more time. The film's action doesn't disappoint; if anything, it ups the adrenaline ante considerably. And one could forgive McClane for losing his sense of humor -- that's what happens when enough bad guys try to kill you. But when the filmmakers chronicling McClane's exploits in the Die Hard movies lose the connection with their funny bones, that's a problem.

Occasionally on this page, we include opinions from around the country and around the world. Today, the views expressed here are from around the corner. Teenagers from East and West Baltimore, brought together by the civic group BUILD, are pressing for changes in their city in the run-up to the municipal elections. In many ways, they're just kids: One wants to design video games, another looks forward to a summer at the pool, a third is headed for dance camp, a fourth had to get his grades up to play sports, which kept him out of trouble.

After conquering Doc Ock and the Green Goblin in the first two films, and fighting the New Goblin and that "human sandpile" the Sandman in the first hour of this film, a beleaguered Spider-Man hauls himself to a perch high over Manhattan and asks, wearily, "Where do all these guys come from?" It's the biggest laugh line in the movie. But before long audiences are asking, "Where do all these guys come from? And why?" Spider-Man 3 (Sony) Starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard.