Kung Fu

Tiny Katrina Leung, from British Columbia, twirled a sword in the best fashion of the martial arts, while on a stage next to her, a teen-ager from Azerbaijan fought with fist and foot an %o opponent from Kazakhstan to encouraging shouts in a half-dozen languages.Welcome to the international world of kung fu, as exhibited by 800 athletes from 54 countries at the Baltimore Arena. The athletes are participating in the third annual world Wushu (kung fu) championships, which began yesterday and will continue through Tuesday.

It's not San Francisco, where thousands of people get to see a 250-foot-long golden dragon weaving its way through the streets every year. It's not Washington, where city officials closed down H Street last Sunday to make room for fireworks, kung fu demonstrations and the usual big parade. But if you want to celebrate the Chinese New Year without leaving Anne Arundel County, your best bet might be a vibrant little martial arts academy in the rear of an otherwise ordinary-looking industrial park in Arnold.

Instead of punishing students for poor behavior and failing grades, officials at St. Johns Lane Elementary School are using senior citizens and free kung fu lessons to encourage better academic performance.The approach seems to work. Parents, teachers and students at the Ellicott City school say the program has changed students' attitudes toward school, increased parent involvement and reduced discipline problems in the classroom."The change in kids is they want to be here," said Vice Principal Darlene Fila.

Don't forget using the library to help save a little money Maryland libraries rank among the best in the country. You pay for them. Now get your money's worth. The movies you rent. The books you buy for $25 and $35 apiece. The video games costing $50 and more. Barney DVDs. They're often at the library, in most cases for free. The Baltimore County Public Library might be exaggerating when it estimates you can save $2,432 a year by using your library card instead of your VISA card. (It figures adults spend $450 a year just on books.

The best line of "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues" comes early tonight, when a Chinatown tough snarls at Kwai Chang Caine (David Carradine), "Where'd you get that? Out of a fortune cookie?"The martial arts master, of course, has just spouted another incomprehensible nugget of Shaolin philosophy, as he often did in the 1972-75 ABC series. This new syndicated sequel to the Wild West original brings the action forward to urban 1993, and again stars Mr. Carradine as the mysterious do-gooder Kwai Chang Caine.

A team of kung fu practitioners in Essex has prepared for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to China to study under the watchful eyes of Shaolin Temple monks whose predecessors created the art 15 centuries ago.But the trip pales compared with the long road each martial arts student has traveled already, away from self-destruction or seemingly unbearable trauma.And as they practiced daily for their monthlong trip, which starts today, they remained dedicated to avoiding the violence, drug trafficking, prostitution and other problems of their decaying eastern Baltimore County neighborhoods.

TWO POINTERS Run teen-agers who are studying the ancient Chinese martial art of Kung Fu have brought home trophies from tournaments in recent months.Jeffrey Ogle won three trophies at the 9th National Battle of the Martial Arts Championship held last month at Milford Mill Academy.He took first place in the 13 to 15 boys forms division, and in the 13 to 15 boys sparring division.He won second place in the 13 to 15 boys weapons division, using a long staff.John Droege competed in the Metropolitan Martial Virtue Championship held in Laurel last fall.

Terry Myers might not be the next Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris, but martial arts movie fans in the Far East should soon see the Annapolis kung fu master on the silver screen.Myers went to the People's Republic of China to study with and coach the Chinese national professional team. He would up appearing in two martial arts films made for theAsian market before returning home to Annapolis at the end of last month.Although he hasn't made it as a movie star, Myers has become a known commodity in the Asian film market and a respected figure in the Chinese martial arts community.

Jet Li wants to clear something up. The international action star is not retiring -- but Jet Li's Fearless (opening today) will be his final martial arts film. So what's that mean? "This is the last one, because everything I believe is in this film," says Li. Future films will have action, he said, but Fearless, a mildly mythologized biography of 1900s martial arts master Huon Yuan Jia, marks the end of his kung fu career. That's like John Wayne announcing he's giving up Westerns. But it's time, said Li, star of more than 30 films including kung fu classics such as Zhang Yimou's Hero and Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China quintet.

Clad in a sparkling white silk uniform, Collin Lee took a deep breath and prepared to win another wushu weapons title. The 12-year-old from Berkeley, Calif., then whirled a wooden staff around his head and kicked off a routine that sent him sprinting around a carpeted hotel ballroom, repeatedly slicing the weapon through the air and smacking it against the floor. "This is why I practice every day," said Collin after he had finished, proudly sporting the gold medal for his long-weapon age division.

BEIJING - If there was ever a subject and a genre tailor-made for China's film industry, it would seem to be Kung Fu Panda. The panda is a national symbol, kung fu was developed here, China is all the rage globally and animation is a state priority. Then along comes Hollywood, which turns the story of a panda who dreams of becoming a kung fu master into a global blockbuster - and the most successful animated film in Chinese history. Sure, DreamWorks animation added its own touches - for example, the panda's father is a goose and there's a bra made of noodle bowls - but still the film has prompted a bit of soul-searching here.

Leading the charge On June 29, 1863, Capt. Charles Corbit led a Union cavalry of 90 men to battle 5,000 Confederate soldiers in what became known as Corbit's Charge. Westminster is celebrating the courageous soldiers 145 years later during Corbit's Charge Commemoration Weekend. Historian Thomas LeGore kicks off the event tomorrow with a lecture on downtown Westminster in 1863, and O' Be Joyful performs music of the era. Saturday and Sunday feature Civil War living-history encampments enacted by the Pipe Creek Civil War Round Table, as well as speakers, exhibits, artisans, children's activities and battle-site walking tours.

True to its title, the feature cartoon Kung Fu Panda is an improbable combination of cute-animal comedy and martial-arts farce with a saggy middle and an overall cuddly kapow. Past a superb opening, it takes a while for Kung Fu Panda to achieve a full head of steam, within and without the noodle shop. When it does, it improves on a showbiz dictum. This movie leaves 'em laughing - and gasping. The plot puts an underdog parable into a bearskin. What energizes it is the wacky chemistry between Jack Black as a jolly black-and-white panda and Dustin Hoffman as his stern red panda mentor.

AT AN EVENING SOIREE, YOU EXPECT to see guests with cocktail and hors d'oeuvres in hand. But, not shopping lists. Unless that party is "Lotta Art," the annual fundraiser for School 33 Art Center. At this shindig, forewarned is forearmed, so to speak. The walls of the center's main studios were covered with 150 works of art, all donated by local artists. And all given away to guests in a lottery that began promptly at 7:30 p.m. "Lotta Art" veterans, like Craig Sacks, knew that when your name was called, you'd better be ready to quickly yell out the number assigned to your favorite piece.

They range in height from 3 1/2 feet to 5 feet, 9 inches, in shape from chubby to lithe, but when Shaun Wilson claps or shouts, the boys and girls in the white gis and sweat shirts move as one -- crab-walking, sprawling to the mat and back to their feet, striking the padded walls with resounding thump-thump-thumps. It's early evening at the Baltimore Martial Arts Academy in Ellicott City, and Wilson, a veteran instructor and competitor, is putting his advanced youth class (ages 8-14) through its paces.

So now it would seem, from watching Balls of Fury, that Christopher Walken has joined the legion of stand-up comics, student actors and bar-stool mimics trolling for laughs by doing bad Christopher Walken impressions. This isn't necessarily a complaint. If anyone's earned the right to pan-fry his image, it's Walken. Even when hip-deep in the throes of broad self-parody, Walken almost justifies the existence of a fumble-footed knockoff like Balls of Fury. He plays Feng, a villainous outlaw table-tennis kingpin who dresses like Fu Manchu and talks like somebody doing a bad impression of ... well, we don't have to pound it into the floorboards, do we?

True to its title, the feature cartoon Kung Fu Panda is an improbable combination of cute-animal comedy and martial-arts farce with a saggy middle and an overall cuddly kapow. Past a superb opening, it takes a while for Kung Fu Panda to achieve a full head of steam, within and without the noodle shop. When it does, it improves on a showbiz dictum. This movie leaves 'em laughing - and gasping. The plot puts an underdog parable into a bearskin. What energizes it is the wacky chemistry between Jack Black as a jolly black-and-white panda and Dustin Hoffman as his stern red panda mentor.

They leap, they bound, they kick, they spin. They flip through the air with the greatest of ease. And when they're not doing all that, they pray. They're the soldier monks of the Shaolin Temple in China's Henan Province. Tonight, they'll be on stage at the Morris Mechanic Theatre, performing an internationally acclaimed show that celebrates their history, religion and physical skill. The show, called Shaolin: Wheel of Life, combines high-kicking martial arts, high-technology lighting and dramatic music with a legendary story of tragedy and triumph.

Some people throw rice at weddings. Barbara Stanton, 48, threw her groom over her shoulder and slammed him down. Hard. Unfazed, Jonathan Klopp, 53, jumped up and flipped his black-belt bride onto her back. That display of holy acrimony went over well with the wedding guests - so well that about 50 of them rushed the mats of a Federal Hill martial arts studio yesterday and had themselves a celebratory brawl. Everyone, it seemed, was kung fu fighting. Or, in this case, they were aikido fighting - a modern Japanese martial art focused more on grappling and throwing than striking and punching, as in karate or kung fu. Before about 100 guests, Stanton and Klopp were married at the Baltimore aikido dojo, or training center, where they first met about 10 years ago. It was a nontraditional wedding in which aikido traditions took center stage and the bride and groom vowed to do more than love and honor; they would be each other's "lifetime ukes."

Sujal Bista moves across the gym floor in acrobatic spins and low leg sweeps and with loud hand claps. He lifts his 130-pound body off the ground and turns both legs for an aerial kick. Back on the gym floor four months after surgery for a torn Achilles tendon, he practices his moves at the University of Maryland, College Park until he is soaked in sweat and exhausted. "I'm going to do wushu until my body can't handle it anymore," the 25-year-old software engineer from Rockville says.