Sally Field

Anyone who has ever watched a snippet of almost any "Masterpiece Theatre" is going to be greatly underwhelmed by Sally Field's heavily promoted "A Woman of Independent Means," which begins at 9 tomorrow night on WBAL (Channel 11).The six-hour NBC miniseries, which continues Monday and Wednesday, is long on hours but is short in just about every other department.Field stars as Bess Steed Garner, the woman of independent means in this film, which is based on Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey's popular novel of the same title about a woman's life in Dallas from the turn of the century to the early 1960s.

What mattered about Sunday night's Emmy Awards telecast wasn't that The Sopranos won as best drama or that Ryan Seacrest was dubbed the worst host ever. Instead, people yesterday were talking about what they didn't see or hear on the Fox telecast - the full acceptance speech from Sally Field after she won an Emmy as best actress in a drama series for Brothers & Sisters. Toward the end of her anti-war-tinged speech, the telecast cut away and went silent as she said, "Let's face it, if mothers ruled the world, there would be no God damn wars in the first place."

Mona Hibbard is one determined young lady. Since she was a young girl, Mona has wanted only one thing: to be a beauty queen. And as events have proven throughout her life, Mona will do anything to win that title: lie, steal, cheat, engage in sabotage, even hand over her own daughter to be raised as another woman's. If only "Beautiful," the film that chronicles Mona's all-out assault on pageant-dom, displayed the same single-mindedness. Instead, director Sally Field's big-screen debut veers from light comedy to parody to feminist parable.

The most striking thing about The Court, ABC's new legal drama starring Sally Field, is how much it resembles First Monday, a CBS midseason legal drama starring Joe Mantegna and James Garner. The Court, which arrives tonight as First Monday slinks toward cancellation, centers on a new associate justice joining the Supreme Court and finding herself as the swing vote in a court generally divided in a 4-4 split between conservatives and liberals. Instead of a male justice who is identified as Catholic and moderate (Mantegna)

Give "Eye for an Eye" some credit for the originality it offers -- it's the first reactionary-feminist-vigilante picture to make it to the big screen. But if the idea of tiny, little Sally Field in the Charles Bronson part strikes you as a bit silly, that's only the beginning of the idiocies.Derived from a novel by Erika Holzer that I'd prefer to believe is subtler and more resonant, the story has been bleached of color and nuance until it's as black and white as an old-fashioned newspaper.

The most striking thing about The Court, ABC's new legal drama starring Sally Field, is how much it resembles First Monday, a CBS midseason legal drama starring Joe Mantegna and James Garner. The Court, which arrives tonight as First Monday slinks toward cancellation, centers on a new associate justice joining the Supreme Court and finding herself as the swing vote in a court generally divided in a 4-4 split between conservatives and liberals. Instead of a male justice who is identified as Catholic and moderate (Mantegna)

'Soapdish'Starring Sally Field, Kevin Kline and Robert Downey Jr.Directed by Michael Hoffman.Released by Paramount.Rated PG-13.** 1/2 stars. "Soapdish" dishes dirt, not soap. On a cheesily imagined network soap opera, it pays attention to who's sleeping with whom and for what; who hates whom and why; who's betrayed whom and how. It's office politics, show-biz style, turned into French farce and geek tragedy.It would help if Sydney Pollock's great "Tootsie" hadn't already trod the same ground more deftly in the recent movie memory.

NOT WITHOUT My Daughter'' is the kind of drama that has become commonplace on television. Fortunately, this one was done for the larger screen, carefully, brightly and with more suspense than any film really needs.''Not Without My Daughter'' is based on a true story, and that adds to its suspense, even if we know how it turned out. The woman, played by Sally Field in the film, told her story to Barbara Walters on television. She also wrote a book about her experiences.Familiarity with the facts, however, does not diminish the worth of the film.

For all their extraordinary ability to carry on telepathic conversations, Chance, Sassy and Shadow aren't too astute about knowing the difference between a family vacation and a trip to the pound.The three are, of course, the canine and feline stars of the popular 1993 Disney film "Homeward Bound," to which there was bound to be a sequel. And so there is: "Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco," which contrives to get the American bulldog Chance (voice by Michael J. Fox), golden retriever Shadow (Ralph Waite)

Gump, Gump, Gump, Gump, Gump. Were we shocked at the big winner at the Academy Awards Monday night? Of course not.The guests weren't very surprising, either. Nearly everyone was well-behaved. Some of the stars even combed their hair this year. For once, the presentation patter was slightly less than awful. Were there no highlights or disasters?Of course there were. Maybe you're still annoyed at some of the choices made at the Oscar ceremonies, but you can be assured that these unofficial awards are well-deserved:Most optimistic joke: "We should all be home in about half an hour."

Just when you think the sitcom genre might finally have run out of gas, along comes Bette Midler in "Bette" to show how many more wild laughs, witty repostes and moments of keen cultural satire are left in the tank. All it takes is the right driver, and Bette Midler goes pedal to the metal from the opening moments of tonight's premiere. The CBS sitcom is a throwback to the backstage/on-stage comedies of the 1950s and 1960s, such as "The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show" or "The Jack Benny Show," in which show biz celebrities play themselves in a merger of the star's on-stage persona with a fictional world of neighbors, managers and family members.

Mona Hibbard is one determined young lady. Since she was a young girl, Mona has wanted only one thing: to be a beauty queen. And as events have proven throughout her life, Mona will do anything to win that title: lie, steal, cheat, engage in sabotage, even hand over her own daughter to be raised as another woman's. If only "Beautiful," the film that chronicles Mona's all-out assault on pageant-dom, displayed the same single-mindedness. Instead, director Sally Field's big-screen debut veers from light comedy to parody to feminist parable.

For all their extraordinary ability to carry on telepathic conversations, Chance, Sassy and Shadow aren't too astute about knowing the difference between a family vacation and a trip to the pound.The three are, of course, the canine and feline stars of the popular 1993 Disney film "Homeward Bound," to which there was bound to be a sequel. And so there is: "Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco," which contrives to get the American bulldog Chance (voice by Michael J. Fox), golden retriever Shadow (Ralph Waite)

Give "Eye for an Eye" some credit for the originality it offers -- it's the first reactionary-feminist-vigilante picture to make it to the big screen. But if the idea of tiny, little Sally Field in the Charles Bronson part strikes you as a bit silly, that's only the beginning of the idiocies.Derived from a novel by Erika Holzer that I'd prefer to believe is subtler and more resonant, the story has been bleached of color and nuance until it's as black and white as an old-fashioned newspaper.

Gump, Gump, Gump, Gump, Gump. Were we shocked at the big winner at the Academy Awards Monday night? Of course not.The guests weren't very surprising, either. Nearly everyone was well-behaved. Some of the stars even combed their hair this year. For once, the presentation patter was slightly less than awful. Were there no highlights or disasters?Of course there were. Maybe you're still annoyed at some of the choices made at the Oscar ceremonies, but you can be assured that these unofficial awards are well-deserved:Most optimistic joke: "We should all be home in about half an hour."

Anyone who has ever watched a snippet of almost any "Masterpiece Theatre" is going to be greatly underwhelmed by Sally Field's heavily promoted "A Woman of Independent Means," which begins at 9 tomorrow night on WBAL (Channel 11).The six-hour NBC miniseries, which continues Monday and Wednesday, is long on hours but is short in just about every other department.Field stars as Bess Steed Garner, the woman of independent means in this film, which is based on Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey's popular novel of the same title about a woman's life in Dallas from the turn of the century to the early 1960s.

IT HAPPENED THREE WEEKS AGO,as I was entering the lobby of a posh Washington hotel, one known to be frequented by celebrities visiting the nation's capital."

Bettina Flores has been called the Latina Betty Friedan. But with her new haircut, she looks more like the Latina Sally Field -- same bangs, same intrepid air. You can imagine her as Norma Rae, climbing on a workbench and holding up a sign saying, "Latinas, take charge of your lives!"Then she'd turn the sign around and on the other side it would say, "Buy my book!"Ms. Flores is the author of "Chiquita's Cocoon" (Villard, $13.50), a combination of autobiography, self-help book and Latina feminist manifesto.