Epic

It seems like the coun try is asleep. A lot of people we meet are against the war. But it doesn't seem like many people are doing any thing about it." - MICHAEL ISRAEL, 18, who is walking 3,000 miles from San Francisco to Washington in a trek he and Ashley Casale, 19, had hoped would rally the nation and lead thousands to join them in their epic March for Peace; during a recent stop in Loveland, Colo., however, the teens remained alone

Even 30 years later, the memories barely have dimmed. Chris Haley was a teenager in 1977 when he visited the set of the epic miniseries Roots. But he still can see the African-style huts hunkering down beneath the hot Georgia sun. He can hear the long, dry grasses rustle like crickets. And he still feels sweat pooling beneath his shirt, near his heart. That's when he knew that his Uncle Alex was about to accomplish something big. On TV Episode 5 of Roots will air on TVOne at 8 p.m. today; episode 6 airs at 8 p.m. Sunday.

When Washington National Opera decided to tackle its first-ever staging of Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung, an awesome rite of passage for any opera company, it set out to give the epic fresh context. And that's what it got from director Francesca Zambello. Dubbed "the American Ring," her version substitutes this country's myths and iconography for the original Norse/German ones in this tale of gods, heroes, contracts and loyalties. If you go Die Walkure will be performed at 1 p.m. tomorrow and 6 p.m. April 5, 9, 14 and 17 at the Kennedy Center in Washington.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) attracts followers so fanatical that the chance to see it in 70 mm would draw them to a theater every day for a month of Sundays. Now they have a chance to see it in 70 mm every Sunday in a month, starting this weekend through Sept. 2, at the AFI Silver in Silver Spring. Especially in the days since Titanic, any film can be called an epic if the producers pour enough money and special effects into it. But Lawrence of Arabia comes from an era when epics boasted men and women of vision and appetite and the adventure of committing them to celluloid-filled theaters with a wind-storm of fresh air, not the whiff of the computer room.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The "real" Super Bowl was a wet and one-sided dud yesterday at 3Com Park, and, well, let's blame the home team.The NFC championship game between the Packers and 49ers had the makings of an epic -- each team had won 14 of 17 games to get here -- but it didn't deliver on its promise because the 49ers turned out to be pretenders more than contenders.Yes, again.Only the most loyal Cheeseheads will want to keep the tape of the Packers' 23-10 victory, and even they might be willing to tape over it if, say, a really good bratwurst show comes on the cooking channel one night.

A legacy that began with a 1903 silent version of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and extends through such legendary performers as Ethel Waters, Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne and Sidney Poitier is chronicled in AMC's tribute to Black History Month, "Small Steps, Big Strides" (10 p.m.-11 p.m.).African-American actors were rarely seen on the silent screen; usually black parts were played by white actors (as was true in D.W. Griffith's epic -- and shamelessly racist -- "Birth of a Nation").Change was slow in coming; one of the first African-American stars, Stepin Fetchit, achieved fame by playing a stereotype so offensive that, even in its day, it was criticized.

AXIS Theatre doesn't typically produce Broadway plays, but then, there's nothing typical about"Angels in America," Tony Kushner's two-part epic about politics, religion, relationships - and angels - in the Reagan era. Part one, "Millennium Approaches," is already off to an impressive start. Part two, "Peres-troika," opens Thursday."Angels in America" runs through Nov. 8 at AXIS, 3600 Clipper Mill Road. Tickets are $10 and $14.Call 410-243-5237.Pub Date: 9/20/98@

At age 50, Israel has not escaped the mid-life torment of self-doubt. What its citizens hoped would be a brief, unremarkable coming of age has become an epic, because many of the questions dating from the country's birth remain unanswered: Israel will be a Jewish state, but how Jewish? It must share land with the Palestinians, but who has the better claims to which parts of it? Peace is necessary, but peace obtained at what price?A photograph by Micha Bar-Am in "Israel: A Photobiography, the First Fifty Years" (Simon & Schuster, 200 pages, $40)

Much is being made of a television series by Robert Hughes, the eminent art critic, that will be shown on public broadcasting channels beginning May 28. Far more should be made of his associated book, "American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America" (Knopf. 635 pages. $65).Each of the eight elements of the TV production contains about spoken words. Each of the book's nine chapters contains about 20,000 words of splendidly fluent, lean prose. As active as Hughes and his film crew were in traveling to 100 locations the length and breadth of the land, the most important visual aids to his larger task are reproductions of art. In the book they are superbly integrated in the text, and far clearer, on fine coated stock than on a screen.

ON THE LONG drive back from Grandma's last weekend, our 15-year-old spent the entire trip in the back seat memorizing rap lyrics off her Walkman.It was, I'm afraid, a sad but telling commentary on the status of poetry today. The great works have already been written, and they are still worth reading. But the rest is dross.As practiced by our contemporary bards, poetry is a literary form that simply has outlived its usefulness.Before you call me a philistine, just ask yourself: "How often do I curl up by the fireside with a slender volume of verse?"

FILM 'Star Trek' : Lost creator J.J. Abrams takes the classic series back to square one, and the results are kind of cosmic. It's an adrenaline rush of action and adventure with just enough nostalgia. Finally relieved of the original cast, it boldly goes where no Trek has gone before. In theaters Friday. POP MUSIC 'White Lies for Dark Times': : by Ben Harper ... : The folk rocker switches up his sound and his backup band. With White Lies, we get a harder, louder edge and the Relentless 7 in lieu of the Innocent Criminals.

FILM Joaquin Phoenix: in 'Two Lovers': Shaggy and sedate, Joaquin Phoenix made such a splash recently on the Late Show with David Letterman, it would be easy to overlook why he was there. He was supposed to be hawking Two Lovers, which isn't the hot mess that Phoenix's bizarre appearance insinuated. He delivers a complex, solid performance, playing an unbalanced but likable photographer juggling two very different women. And yes, he's clean shaven. In theaters Friday. CONCERT Mos Def: Actor, poet and political activist, the renaissance man of hip-hop can be unpredictable and headstrong, but he's never boring.

Filmmaker Baz Luhrmann calls them "banquets of cinema," visual and narrative feasts that offer audiences drama, romance, comedy and that sweeping feeling of being transported to another world. In other words: an epic. Creating an epic is not for the faint of heart or those with limited ambition, which is why the audacious Luhrmann - who reconceived the movie musical with Moulin Rouge! and the Shakespearean tragedy with Romeo + Juliet - deliberately aimed his latest film, Australia, to be on a, well, epic scale.

New Milford, Conn. - The kernel was planted in Bill Eppridge's mind while he was studying photojournalism at the University of Missouri. "Create a photographic epic poem." Eppridge was taking a history course in the late 1950s taught by the university's poet-in-residence, John Neihardt, who was best known for his 1932 book, Black Elk S peaks, about an Oglala Lakota medicine man who had witnessed Gen. George Custer's defeat at Little Big Horn and the Massacre of Wounded Knee. Outside of class, Eppridge spent a lot of time discussing what Neihardt, the poet laureate of Nebraska and the Plains, called epic poems.

The Counterfeiters is in its own smart, trim fashion The Bridge on the River Kwai of concentration-camp sagas. Also based (like Kwai) on a real-life story, this movie starts small but becomes a miniature epic of overreach and moral drift. When we first meet the anti-hero, Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), it's in 1936 Berlin, and he's merely the world's best counterfeiter. But when, in 1944, he enters an incongruously cushy corner of the Sachsenhausen camp, he gets the chance to achieve a goal he never mastered on the outside: Creating a perfect copy of the U.S. dollar bill.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) attracts followers so fanatical that the chance to see it in 70 mm would draw them to a theater every day for a month of Sundays. Now they have a chance to see it in 70 mm every Sunday in a month, starting this weekend through Sept. 2, at the AFI Silver in Silver Spring. Especially in the days since Titanic, any film can be called an epic if the producers pour enough money and special effects into it. But Lawrence of Arabia comes from an era when epics boasted men and women of vision and appetite and the adventure of committing them to celluloid-filled theaters with a wind-storm of fresh air, not the whiff of the computer room.

It seems like the coun try is asleep. A lot of people we meet are against the war. But it doesn't seem like many people are doing any thing about it." - MICHAEL ISRAEL, 18, who is walking 3,000 miles from San Francisco to Washington in a trek he and Ashley Casale, 19, had hoped would rally the nation and lead thousands to join them in their epic March for Peace; during a recent stop in Loveland, Colo., however, the teens remained alone

Even 30 years later, the memories barely have dimmed. Chris Haley was a teenager in 1977 when he visited the set of the epic miniseries Roots. But he still can see the African-style huts hunkering down beneath the hot Georgia sun. He can hear the long, dry grasses rustle like crickets. And he still feels sweat pooling beneath his shirt, near his heart. That's when he knew that his Uncle Alex was about to accomplish something big. On TV Episode 5 of Roots will air on TVOne at 8 p.m. today; episode 6 airs at 8 p.m. Sunday.

When Washington National Opera decided to tackle its first-ever staging of Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung, an awesome rite of passage for any opera company, it set out to give the epic fresh context. And that's what it got from director Francesca Zambello. Dubbed "the American Ring," her version substitutes this country's myths and iconography for the original Norse/German ones in this tale of gods, heroes, contracts and loyalties. If you go Die Walkure will be performed at 1 p.m. tomorrow and 6 p.m. April 5, 9, 14 and 17 at the Kennedy Center in Washington.

Book Signing Author Joe Drape to appear at Pratt Tonight at 6:30, author Joe Drape will discuss and sign Black Maestro: The Epic Life of an American Legend. The sign ing takes place at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, 400 Cathe dral St. Call 410-396-5494. FYI Tim Smith has the day off. His music column does not appear today.