Eddie Murphy

Pop Music Critic12 INCHES OF SNOWSnow (EastWest 92207)Is Snow the new Vanilla Ice? Dancehall fans may well think so, given the way his hit, "Informer," climbed the charts faster than anything by Shabba Ranks or Mad Cobra. But as much light-weight pop as there is on "12 Inches of Snow," it seems unlikely that Snow will melt away as easily as Vanilla Ice did. For one thing, there's nothing second-hand about Snow's hard-core side -- songs like "Runway" and "Lonely Monday Morning" not only capture the patois and cadences of Jamaican dancehall artists, but convey much the same worldview.

Eddie Murphy was recently at the Clarence M. Mitchell Courthouse to shoot some scenes for a new film. When those scenes eventually flash on area movie screens, local officials and citizens no doubt will puff their chests, just as they did 13 years ago when the city courthouse was featured in ". . . And Justice for All," the Al Pacino movie co-written by Barry Levinson.But that's show biz. In real life, city and state officials apparently lack enough pride in the 92-year-old landmark to save it from falling apart.

Television tinkering can be a wondrous process. Last year, CBS' "Royal Family," created by Eddie Murphy, was one of a very few new series showing ratings strength. Then, in October, Redd Foxx, who was playing the lead role of Al Royal, died suddenly. Sincere mourning was heavily tinged with panic.Jackee, formerly of the series "227," was grabbed to play Ruth, also known as Coco, who is the half-sister of Victoria, Al's widow, still portrayed by Della Reese.More time was needed, though, to work out necessary adjustments, and the show went off the air temporarily.

Eddie Murphy can no longer establish immediate audience rapport as a yammering celebrity egomaniac: He's more of a star when he plays family men or character roles like Donkey in Shrek. Co-star Owen Wilson, in a mere five years since Bottle Rocket, already has overdrawn on his hemming-and-hawing brand of humor. In I Spy, they work their own variations on the Bill Cosby and Robert Culp roles from the episodic TV espionage comedy that premiered in 1965. So a movie that has to hit the ground running begins as a pitiful race between the outworn and the familiar.

Eddie Murphy has the biggest one in Hollywood.Arnold Schwarzenegger hauls out his 52-footer whenever he's on location.Bruce Willis had his custom built. It isn't fancy, but it does the job.We're talking the ultimate in star power here.We're talking the thing that makes actors clawing their way to the top salivate, because once they get it, they know they've arrived.We're talking motor home.Visit the set of any movie shooting in New York these days and you'll see a sleek trailer with tinted windows idling on some side street.

Chuck Norris ought to go back to the karate formula. He did much better with those films than he does with action movies.His newest film is ''The Hitman,'' and it's a muddled, murky thing. It does have atmosphere, but it is also excessive and in some cases, badly acted.It has an added liability in Michael Parks who, as a bad cop, talks like Eddie Murphy -- all the genitalia business. Murphy can get away with it. He's younger and funnier. Parks, at his age, simply sounds silly.Norris plays a New York cop who is set up by his partner (Parks)

New York -- F. Scott Fitzgerald was sitting on my sofa the other night, as he sometimes does, watching ''Dynasty'' reruns when suddenly he murmured, ''The rich are different than you or I.''Normally when he says this, I let it go by, but this time, watching Alexis throw a bottle of scotch at Blake's head, I couldn't.''You're living in the past, Scotty,'' I said. ''The rich used to be different, but not any more. Why, we have two couples in this building alone who throw bottles at each other's heads.

What's this world coming to, when Robert De Niro and Eddie Murphy are not the best things about a movie? But that's what happens in Showtime, a humorous but much too predictable send-up of reality TV and the sheer banality of it all. The movie stars De Niro as Mitch Preston, the tough veteran detective who has no room for nonsense, and Murphy as Trey Sellars, the showboat cop who thinks being on TV is just grand. But the real stars here, the two guys audiences will talk about the most, are that venerable ham William Shatner, who plays himself, and T.J. Cross as ReRun, a small-time hood in way over his head (who actually gets Johnny Cochran as his lawyer!

Los Angeles -- David Picker was president of Paramount Pictures in the late 1970s when Alan Carr and Robert Stigwood talked him into making a movie out of a Broadway musical he had been unable to sit through. The upshot, he said on the witness stand last week, was the mega-hit "Grease," and the two producers walked away with $26 million.Paul Maslansky was 50 years old and had produced 20 movies when he finally scored big. After seeing some police cadets on a San Francisco street, he testified, he was inspired to write a treatment for the first in the "Police Academy" series.

It took Warren Beatty two months. Eddie Murphy, more than three years. Mick Jagger, about twice that long. Sting, though, wins the longevity prize: eight years.How long will it take Donald Trump? Now that he and his on-again, off-again girlfriend Marla Maples have announced that she is several months pregnant, the couple is expected to follow the parenthood thing with the marriage thing."I think Donald, coming from a middle-class morality, will marry Marla," says New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a longtime Trump-watcher.