Redford

On July 8, 2005, MAURICE B. Friends may call at the FAMILY OWNED MARCH FUNERAL HOME EAST, 1101 East North Avenue, on Tuesday 8:30 A.M. to 8 P.M. Funeral Services will take place on Friday at Mc Cormick Chapel, in Redford, NC. See www.marchfh.com

DENVER - Loud and giddy after morning recess, two dozen elementary school students lined up on the playground of their school here to return to class. But before their teacher led them back into the building, she had a warning: "Quiet down, kids. People are voting inside." And so they were. It seemed most everyone in Colorado, no matter how young, understood the stakes of yesterday's election. Voters, energized by a tight U.S. Senate race and the notion that their state was a battleground in the presidential contest, turned out in droves at schools, churches and libraries.

HOLLYWOOD -- Having played characters such as the Sundance Kid and Bob Woodward, Robert Redford knows what it's like to evoke real life on film. But nothing quite prepared him for the stomach-churning experience of screening The Motorcycle Diaries, the new film based on Che Guevara's youthful road trip across South America, for Guevara's widow, Aleida March, her family and Albert Granado, now 82, who was Guevara's companion on most of the trek. When Redford acquired the rights to Guevara's book about his journey of discovery long after the Cuban revolutionary's death, he promised Guevara's widow a first look at the finished movie.

In the cluttered, hyperactive Spy Game, Robert Redford employs the same hilariously enigmatic expressions he used in his hipster youth in movies like The Candidate (1972). And they're even better here, because he does it with supreme knowingness. As a 30-year CIA man who spends his last 24 hours before retirement trying to rescue a former protege (Brad Pitt) who has gone rogue and been arrested in China, Redford plays the smartest, most righteous man in the agency. He pulls it off with a quick, dry grace.

The Last Castle is a pea-brained dinosaur of a movie, big and stupid and lumbering. It's a mishmash of The Bridge on the River Kwai, From Here to Eternity and The Great Escape, with everything complex and entertaining siphoned off. Robert Redford stars as a three-star Army general who embodies all military virtues except obedience. His disregard for orders and his leadership of a disastrous overseas raid land him in a military prison run by a colonel, James Gandolfini. This warden is the general's opposite: a martinet who demands total control of his inmates and achieves it by any means necessary, including murder.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- The remains of 18 people -- apparently left as they fell during an altercation at the end of the Old Kingdom in Egypt -- may shed light on the last days of the Old Kingdom, according to a Pennsylvania State University researcher. "Several texts suggest that some kind of upheaval resulting in civil disorder occurred at the end of the Old Kingdom," says Donald B. Redford, professor of classics and ancient Mediterranean studies. "Until now, there has been no archaeological evidence of these events."

"The Horse Whisperer," which Robert Redford has adapted from the best-selling novel by Nicholas Evans, recalls a common description of war and parenthood: interminable boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.Clocking in at a posterior-numbing three hours, "The Horse Whisperer" is a long, slow travelogue of gorgeous natural and human scenery punctuated by deeply troubling scenes involving a tormented horse. That's entertainment?Granted, it only looks like torment: The production notes take pains to assure us the American Humane Association was on hand during all the animal scenes, so we can at least rest assured that in real life, these beautiful beasts were treated just fine.

REDFORD, Texas -- There are two Rio Grandes wending past this border town, one river that feeds the alfalfa banks and one river that mocks America's war on drugs.One river nourished Esequiel Hernandez Jr.'s goats. The other took his life.Born inside his family's adobe cottage, the 18-year-old high school sophomore seemed more attuned to the ebb and flow of the murky waters than to the neon temptations that have lured away all but 100 of Redford's people.Junior, as he was known, talked of becoming a park ranger or game warden.

Somewhere in "Sunset Boulevard," silent-screen queen Norma Desmond bitterly dismisses these new-fangled talkie movie stars, saying, "We had faces then."Memo to Norma: See "Up Close & Personal." There are some faces left.And if you love faces, you'll probably love "Up Close & Personal," which gets into such dramatic magnification of the iconographic, mythological beauty objects Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer it should be called "Up Close & Nasal."In other departments it's sadly lacking, both undernourished dramatically, over-nourished politically, fatuous, meretricious and not even very entertaining after the first hour or so. It drags.