Showtime

The first question Dick Cheney is asked in "The World According to Dick Cheney" is: What's your favorite virtue? "Integrity," he answers. What do you value most in your friends?"

The first question Dick Cheney is asked in "The World According to Dick Cheney" is: What's your favorite virtue? "Integrity," he answers. What do you value most in your friends?"

The usual fare on Showtime as the hour grows late Sunday evenings is a movie, followed by another movie, followed by another movie. Hey, we're talking cable here, remember.Even so, the net probably would have been better advised sticking with the kick-boxers and Arnold Schwarzenegger wiping out half of Los Angeles considering the alternative programming provided last night.It was a Don King Production. In other words, boxing. More specifically, bad, one-sided matches certainly not worth a mention were it not for the fact they were on national television.

Could you really kill someone by hacking his pacemaker? An alarmed researcher in Australia thinks so, and really, isn't that enough cause to dial down your "Homeland" disbelief index? It should be, because -- despite a few head-scratching incongruities -- it would be a shame not to have enjoyed one of the show's most gripping installments yet. In Episode 10 of Season 2, Abu Nazir kidnaps Carrie, Brody abets the apparent murder of Vice President Walden and Saul tips his hand too far in challenging the motivations behind the CIA's strategy on this terror investigation.

|TC The TV Repairman:The Hatfields and the McCoys of the television boxing industry come to grips this weekend, and, if nothing else, they present an interesting contrast in the way they conduct business.No, HBO and Showtime aren't going head-to-head with their shows. Hey, there's enough here for everybody. What Showtime boasts in numbers, five so-called championship bouts spread over a live show tonight (10) and a taped session tomorrow (3 p.m.), HBO has in the fact it is presenting a show as originally advertised tomorrow (10 p.m.)

LAS VEGAS -- Nine days of hell.That is how Jay Larkin, Showtime's vice president for programming, remembers the round-the-clock negotiations last March for his cable television company to gain exclusive rights to former heavyweight Mike Tyson's ring comeback just prior to his release from prison."

An air of mystery, melancholy and muted hope pervades "Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her" (8 p.m.-10 p.m. tomorrow, Showtime), first-time writer-director Rodrigo Garcia's carefully textured mini-portraits of women living the drama that is everyday life. The film is told as a series of five vaguely interconnected stories, with Mexican actress Elpidia Carrillo providing the common thread. Glenn Close is Elaine Keener, an M.D. who seems preoccupied with ... something. Close provides a powerful, nearly wordless performance that sets the bar high for the rest of the cast.

NEW YORK - Promoter Don King introduced heavyweight champion Hasim Rahman of Baltimore as his fighter for the first time publicly at about 2:20 a.m. yesterday during a news conference at Madison Square Garden. King, who signed Rahman to a guaranteed $10 million deal during a meeting with the fighter and co-managers Stan Hoffman and Steve Nelson on Thursday night, posed for pictures yesterday while standing between Rahman, the World Boxing Council and International Boxing Federation champ, and John Ruiz, the World Boxing Association champ.

The executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission has volunteered to serve as a peacemaker to head off another possible heavyweight boxing conflict March 16, between cable TV powers Time-Warner and Viacom, the parent of Showtime."

Baltimore heavyweight Hasim Rahman will meet with his co-managers, Stan Hoffman and Steve Nelson, and his promoter, Cedric Kushner, today in New York to discuss offers from Home Box Office and Showtime for his first world title defense. They hope to arrive at a decision "as soon as possible," Kushner said yesterday. HBO and Showtime have engaged in an unprecedented bidding war for Rahman, who had no ties to either network when he won the World Boxing Council and International Boxing Federation championship belts from Lennox Lewis on April 21. Last week, Showtime increased its total package for a bout with Mike Tyson to $16.25 million - a purse of $13.15 million, a $3 million signing bonus and an additional $100,000 to purchase cars.

The biggest winner Sunday at the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards had to be Showtime's “Homeland,” which took the top three drama awards in an upset over such favorites as “Mad Men” and Downton Abbey.” But Baltimore-based productions and stars had a very big night, too, during the telecast hosted by Jimmy Kimmel. For the second year in a row, Baltimore native Julie Bowen won the Emmy as best supporting actress in a comedy for her performance as Claire Dunphy in ABC's “Modern Family.” The groundbreaking sitcom also won again as best comedy.

Sometimes it's the lyrics and not the music that set a song apart. For the Ellicott City-based ShowTime Singers, one of the most challenging musical numbers they've performed was "America the Beautiful" - when they sang it in Mandarin for a Chinese New Year festival a few years ago. The 47 members of the choral group studied the spoken translation recorded by member Ruihua Tao, who is a native of Beijing and a Columbia resident. Then they put the new words to the patriotic tune in four-part harmony for appreciative immigrants and Chinese-Americans in the audience.

Duty, service and honor are big words. They are also ones that are often abused these days by Washington politicians who thank each other for their "service" even as they sink deeper into partisan gridlock. "Game of Honor," a documentary about West Point and Annapolis and the Army-Navy football game played Dec. 10 in Landover, reminds viewers of the higher meanings of those words. The two-hour film premieres at 10 p.m. Wednesday on Showtime. Producers Pete Radovich and Steve Karasik say they didn't set out with any such lofty goal in mind for their Showtime-CBS Sports co-production, which was shot during the past eight months in the barracks and on the playing fields at the U.S. military and naval academies.

This year's Army-Navy game will be the focus if a two-hour docu-drama co-produced by Showtime and CBS Sports. Showtime's cameras are spending six months in full-access, backstage coverage of the two academies and their teams in advance of the the game, according to the cable channel. The docu-drama will premiere Dec. 21 on Showtime, 10 nights after the game, which airs on CBS. A preview on the making of the docu-drama will air Nov. 23 on Showtime. Viewers can get their first look at the material on Oct. 17 when CBS.com launches a 10-part web series.

It's to laugh Judging by all the talent headed this way, there might be no funnier place in the entire world than Baltimore this weekend. First up is the master of his domain himself, Jerry Seinfeld , training his bemused, all-observant eye on the world and the people in it. He'll be at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 Cathedral St., for two shows Friday, at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Tickets are $62-$77. Also Friday, over at the Hippodrome Theatre at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center, it's the ever-opinionated Bill Maher , who undoubtedly will be casting aspersions on politics, religion, popular culture and anything else that crosses his mind.

Soon after last season ended, Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti challenged third-year player Joe Flacco to become a franchise-caliber quarterback in 2010. Ravens running back Ray Rice took the message personally, as well. "It wasn't just to Joe," said Rice, entering his third season. "It was to all the young players, including myself. Basically, he was saying the learning curve was over and the time is now." Rice got the message. Oh, did he ever. Last season was a breakout year for the former Rutgers star as he rushed for 1,339 yards and gained an additional 780 yards on 78 catches.

Showtime has an advertising slogan to promote its slate of Black History Month programming in February: "Strong. Spirited. Real. The Stories on Showtime." Keep the Faith, Baby, a docudrama starring Harry Lennix and Vanessa Williams, in the story of Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. is none of the three. And it makes me kind of mad. One goal of Black History Month is to use television is to tell a mass audience stories about the African-American experience - especially stories that the mainstream media might not have told well, or told at all. I suspect that Powell's story, which primarily took place in 1940s, '50s and '60s, was filtered through the racist culture and journalism of the time.

Hypocrisy in the suburbs is hardly a new theme for television, but seldom has it been explored with as much exuberance and intelligence as it is in the new Showtime comedy series Weeds, starring Mary-Louise Parker as a pot-dealing, single mom in the upscale community of Agrestic, Calif. Weeds, which premieres tonight, is meant to shock - even by the standards of premium cable - with a salty blend of four-letter words, graphic sex and a soccer mom who sells marijuana at her 8-year-old son's games.

LOS ANGELES — Release the balloons. Ah, better make that purple-and-gold confetti. In a game featuring two very tired teams, the Lakers exorcised the ghosts of past failures by winning the NBA championship Thursday over the Celtics 83-79. The Lakers had to rally midway through the fourth quarter to make it happen and it took some key free throws by Pau Gasol and Kobe Bryant to wrap it up. The Celtics were within two with 13 seconds to play. Sasha Vujacic was sent to the line and made both with 11.7 seconds left, giving the Lakers a four-point lead and the victory.

Nineteen23, a new monthly program dedicated to "films that were screened in schools instead of theaters, in small places instead of big ones, and for specialized audiences instead of general ones," begins tonight at the Maryland Art Place with a group of short works reflecting the theme "Cities and Towns." Highlights of the program include Shirley Clarke's 1960 "Skyscraper," a documentary on the construction of a Fifth Avenue skyscraper built three years earlier; Lincoln Johnson's "Elysium," which juxtaposes a 17th-century poem with Baltimore street scenes from the early 1960s; and Larry Yust's 1969 "The Lottery," an adaptation of Shirley Jackson's short story about small-town blackballing.