Love Story

A selection of modern African films will be screening in Baltimore this weekend, as part of the Baltimore Museum of Art's 16th annual "African Spirit Series," a celebration of African culture. Tomorrow, the offerings from the African Film Traveling Series include South Africa's Dumisani Phakathi's Don't F*** With Me I Have 51 Brothers and Sisters (noon), chronicling the director's search for his extended family; You, Waguih (1:50 p.m.), French director Namir Abdel Messeeh's look at his Egyptian father's abuse at the hands of Egyptian authorities; A Child's Love Story (2:30 p.m.)

If only a few minutes of "At First Sight" rang true.Although based on a true story, this tale of a blind massage therapist whose busybody new girlfriend convinces him to undergo a risky operation to restore his sight comes across as phony as anything Washington has to offer these days.Leads Val Kilmer and Mira Sorvino exhibit hardly any chemistry (though they do share the bond of being inordinately attractive people), the script never opts for a single tug at your heartstrings when a dozen will do, and the supporting players (including Nathan Lane, Kelly McGillis and Bruce Davison)

Except for William Shakespeare, who did it wholesale, precious few people have fashioned concepts that have left language and awareness forever changed. Joseph Heller did, with "Catch-22" - a phrase, an idea, a book that affirmed our essential insanity. And now, 36 years later, he has fashioned a memoir. It convincingly celebrates something like sanity: That life offers a central promise, which is that it can be lived decently, voraciously and finally happily.The book is called "Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here."

TODAY, READERS, I will feature reaction from some of you to my column about that despicable dreck of a movie "Gone With the Wind."Susan Fanske of Ellicott City wrote:GWTW "should be interpreted and left for the literary work that it is, a love story taking place with the Civil War as a background. I think it is no more historically correct than James Cameron's 'Titanic,' which is also a love story first. Please don't read more into the story than what is there and let the author have his/her own literary license."

When "Love Jones" opened in theaters last March, it didn't lack for buzz. It had shared the Sundance Film Festival audience award with "In the Company of Men," and it was being released by New Line Cinema, whose marketing miracles have included "The Mask," "Seven" and "Austin Powers."But despite stars Nia Long and Larenz Tate, its low-key urban love story and its stylish look, the film grossed only $12 million after two months in theaters.Some African-American critics complained that black audiences were shunning the very films they had been demanding for years -- films that didn't focus on farcical sexuality or social pathology.

In my dreams, I am lying on a warm, white crescent of beach in the shade of towering palms as frothy surf crashes before me and the love of my life leans over with a soft kiss, an icy glass of champagne and sweet words of affection."

Donald Dankwa Brooks says he tries not to repeat himself when he writes a play. But he's repeated himself in another way, by becoming a two-time winner of the annual competition for black playwrights sponsored by WMAR-TV (Channel 2) and Arena Players."This is twice as nice," Brooks says. The first time around, in 1995, he explains, "Everyone kept saying, 'This is once in a lifetime.' I said, 'This is only the first.' "A Baltimore writer and college student, Brooks, 27, is only the second two-time winner in the 17-year history of the competition.

An old Iranian couple have stopped at a stream to wash their most important possession: a brightly colored gabbeh, a hand-woven carpet that's both beautiful and, in the stories they tell, autobiographical.The story this gabbeh tells -- in the person of a beautiful young woman only the couple can see -- is of a girl who wants to marry her suitor, but whose father is determined to stall long enough that his daughter will lose interest. But she never does."Gabbeh," the latest from Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, is a lyrical fairy tale that reveals a deep love and respect for his country's people and traditions.

"LOVE STORY: Al and Tipper Gore were the real-life models fo Erich Segal's best seller."-- Time magazine"Author Erich Segal told the New York Times that he was "befuddled" by the comments published in Time magazine last week. He said he called Gore, and the vice president said it was a misunderstanding."-- Associated PressLet's clear this up. Reached in his Manhattan townhouse, where he is at work on a new book, "Robert James Waller Owes Me Big-Time," author Segal acknowledged that the Gores were the inspiration for a final chapter of "Love Story" that was lost and never published.

Reducing the scale of the Broadway megamusical "Big" for the road may have been a good idea. But the physical production isn't all that's gotten smaller.The musical, currently at the Mechanic Theatre, is based on the 1988 Tom Hanks movie about a 12-year-old named Josh Baskin who makes a wish at a carnival to be "big." When his wish is magically granted, he suddenly becomes a 12-year-old trapped in an adult body.Actor Jim Newman's big Josh, however, isn't an adult-size 12-year-old; he's more like an adult-size 7-year-old.

For a reminder of the good old days, when rock 'n' roll was still something of a lark and four working-class blokes from Liverpool had just taken over the world, head to the Enoch Pratt Free Library on Saturday for a free showing of "A Hard Day's Night," the 1964 film that marked the Beatles as a pop-culture force to be reckoned with, regardless of the medium. Richard Lester's brilliantly sustained piece of comic anarchy stars John, Paul, George and Ringo as a rock band (what casting!) desperately trying to make it through a typically frenetic day, all the while keeping a watchful eye on Paul's "very clean" grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell)

I may be the only person in America who didn't watch Michael Jackson's memorial service (I did pay my respects earlier, when MTV ran a series of his music videos). But I was intrigued to see that a literary reference by one of the mourners had sparked a flood of Google searches. It all began when actress Brooke Shields said that although Jackson was known as the King of Pop, he was always a little prince to her. She quoted from The Little Prince: "Here is my secret. It is very simple: One sees well only with the heart.

Love story -- The Drama Learning Center, 9130-1 Red Branch Road, will present a love story set to music, Once on This Island, performed by Teaching Young Actors (the center's teen professional company) at 7 p.m. tomorrow, Thursday, and Dec. 14 and 15, and 2 p.m. Sunday and Dec. 15. Tickets are $12 for the evening performances. Reservations are recommended. Matinees for student groups, which are open to everyone, feature a backstage tour, a chance to learn choreography and an opportunity to get autographs.

Wristcutters: A Love Story is a lousy title for a lovely-loony picture about an afterlife for suicides. It's an off-road "road movie" about people who off themselves. Patrick Fugit, still almost famous from Almost Famous (2000), plays Zia, who kills himself because he's heartbroken over Desiree (Leslie Bibb), the woman he thinks is his true love. In the odd little corner of the afterlife reserved for suicides in this movie - the seedier parts of Los Angeles and off-highway roads in the Southern California desert - Zia befriends a Russian rocker named Eugene (Shea Whigham)

Eagle vs. Shark is a loser's love story - daft, sweet, awkward and amusingly rude, a real Napoleon Down Under-mite. It's a name-tag romance launched in a New Zealand mall food court. And this Kiwi crush is sorely and hilariously tested by the arrogant ineptitude of the doofus who is the object of the crush. It's enough to give hope to the most lovelorn. Eagle vs. Shark (New Zealand Film Commission) Starring Loren Horsley, Jemaine Clement. Directed by Taika Cohen. Rated R. Time 88 minutes.

A selection of modern African films will be screening in Baltimore this weekend, as part of the Baltimore Museum of Art's 16th annual "African Spirit Series," a celebration of African culture. Tomorrow, the offerings from the African Film Traveling Series include South Africa's Dumisani Phakathi's Don't F*** With Me I Have 51 Brothers and Sisters (noon), chronicling the director's search for his extended family; You, Waguih (1:50 p.m.), French director Namir Abdel Messeeh's look at his Egyptian father's abuse at the hands of Egyptian authorities; A Child's Love Story (2:30 p.m.)

REVIEW B+ Something New is a love story about a woman so busy finding excuses for not falling in love, so busy worrying about what others will think, that she never considers what she thinks. The result for the character is that it takes her forever to recognize the real thing when it comes along. The result for audiences is a gem of a movie that illustrates how the best points are often made with the least hyperbole. True, the movie tackles an important social and cultural issue: interracial dating in a culture where color-blindness is still a far-off goal.

New York-- --Stockholm-born Lena Olin entered American movies 17 years ago with back-to-back masterpieces. She turned a bowler hat into a resounding erotic symbol as a Prague artist named Sabina in Phil Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988). She won an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress as an elemental, Holocaust-haunted New York immigrant in Paul Mazursky's Enemies, A Love Story (1989). Naturally, studio executives saw her as an heir to the Ingrid Bergman of Notorious - an actor who could send all the complications of Eros rippling to the surface without diluting their potency.

Critic's Pick-- Colin Farrell (above) and Shirley Henderson star in Intermission (8 p.m.-10 p.m., TMC), a love story about delinquents.

Runaway by Alice Munro. Alfred A. Knopf. 352 pages. $25. Among the many brilliant short stories by American writer Edith Wharton, one comes like a punch to the gut: Roman Fever, published in 1934. To explain why it is so powerful would entail giving away the ending. Suffice to say that once read, it is never forgotten. It's not common to find such stories -- that hurt like a wound, that make you gasp. Not, that is, unless you read Alice Munro. In the Canadian writer's latest collection, Runaway, wounds both subtle and profound gnaw at the characters' lives.