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Viva el Cine Latino!, a celebration of Latin-American filmmaking, brings a pair of Mexican films to the Creative Alliance. Tonight, Walter Salles' The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) chronicles young med students Che Guevara (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Alberto Granado (Rodrigo De la Serna) as they ride through South America and develop a distaste for social injustice and a taste for socialism. Showtime is 8 p.m., and tickets are $8, $6 for alliance members. Tomorrow, short comedies starring comics Cantinflas (Mario Moreno)

Once upon a time, there was Bette and Tina. And they were in love. They lived a sexy lesbian fairy tale in West Hollywood, surrounded by sexy art, sexy Mid Century furniture and sexy lesbian friends. Then Tina had a miscarriage, Bette went creeping with a carpenter named Candace and the creator of The L Word, Showtime's hit series about impossibly hot, impossibly well-off, impossibly libidinous lesbians, decided to really mess with our emotions. THE L WORD / / The fourth season makes its premiere tonight at 10 on Showtime.

Single Carrot Theatre is offering a raw bit of Christmas activism in La Muneca, a harshly plotted, rigorously performed fable staged at Load of Fun Gallery. "A Christmas Carol," it ain't. The play, based on a poem by late-19th-century Spanish writer Vital Aza, is an unforgiving tale of a cheerful but ignored orphan girl's day on a city street in winter. The title translates as The Doll, which is what the girl, Lucia, eyes through the window of a toy store as the proprietor repeatedly chases her away.

Two films by the late Don Dohler, Baltimore's own impresario of low-budget horror, will be shown at 7 p.m. tomorrow at the Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave. in Highlandtown. The Alien Factor (1978), his first film, offers a look at what might happen if a spaceship bound for an intergalactic zoo crashed in a small town, while 2006's Dead Hunt finds 10 movie reviewers attending a horror-film convention beset by deadly traps. Showtime is 7 p.m., and tickets are $15 ($12 for alliance members)

Turning a radio show into a television series is not exactly new. After all, many of the hits of early network television -- such as The Jack Benny Show (1950-1964 on CBS) -- were radio productions reimagined for the hot new medium of TV. On TV This American Life premieres at 10:30 tonight on Showtime.

Cinema Sundays at the Charles opens its 40th series this weekend with The Rape of Europa, a documentary from Richard Berge, Nicole Newnham and Bonni Cohen that chronicles how the Nazis plundered art treasures during World War II, and how art historians have struggled to ensure pieces are returned to their original owners. Showtime is 10:30 a.m. Sunday at the Charles, 1711 N. Charles St. Tickets are $15; 10-film memberships are $110. Information: 410-727-FILM or cinemasundays.com. Series comes to close The Charles Theatre's film noir revival series concludes this weekend with Otto Preminger's Angel Face (1952)

When a leading member of America's corporate elite is asked to bring his hobnobbing talents to the service of a financially needy national museum, perhaps no one should be surprised that his champagne lifestyle comes, too. What was galling about Lawrence M. Small's lavish spending to maintain himself and his wife in the manner to which they had grown accustomed was that he presented the tab - for first-class travel, limousine service, $1.5 million in...

Its much-revered predecessor only lasted three seasons, so in one very important sense, Showtime's "The Outer Limits" has improved upon the original.Now in its fifth season, "Limits" will air its 100th episode Friday, a science-fiction morality tale about a time traveler who helps bring a war criminal to justice."

Total games missed: 322Earliest estimated date season can start: Jan. 22.Projected player salary losses (through Jan. 22): $480 million.Negotiations: Nothing scheduled.Today's best game: "The Game on Showtime," which features 16 current or former All-Stars competing to raise money for charity and boost the players' flagging popularity. Tip-off is at 9 p.m. at the Atlantic City (N.J.) Convention Center. Cable customers who pay the premium for Showtime will see a "Red" team that includes Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone and Reggie Miller face a "White" team with Alonzo Mourning, Chris Webber and Gary Payton.

They could be stars. At least that's what they are hoping and wishing and singing and dancing their little hearts out for.It's show time at Reisterstown Road Plaza, where dozens of kids vied yesterday for a chance to make it to the real "Showtime" at New York's famed Apollo Theater.Kids from ages 5 to 12 performed in front of Maxine Lewis, the amateur-night and Apollo kids' segment producer for "It's Showtime at the Apollo.""Turn toward your audience! Act like they are your Apollo audience!"

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.

'Watchmen' returns : Watchmen, the big-screen adaptation of Alan Moore's graphic-novel exploits of a group of outlawed superheroes, will return this weekend for a limited run at Bengies Drive-In Theatre, 3417 Eastern Blvd. Showtime through Sunday is 10:45 p.m. on what is not only the last surviving drive-in screen in Maryland but also the biggest screen in the U.S., at 52 by 120 feet. Information: bengies.com, 410-687-5627 or 410-391-1956. Free 'Millionaire' : Reigning Oscar champion Slumdog Millionaire, director Danny Boyle's tale of undying love and unexpected riches among India's poor, will be shown at 7:15 p.m. Wednesday at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institute's Mountcastle Auditorium, 725 N. Wolfe St. Admission is free.

Repertory cinema continues its run at the Senator Theatre this weekend, with filmed appearances by The Beatles, the living dead, the first actress ever to win an Oscar and Carlos Santana. Janet Gaynor, who won her Oscar in 1929, stars in William Wellman's 1937 A Star Is Born (remade under the same name in 1954, with Judy Garland, and 1976, with Barbra Streisand). Shot in glorious Technicolor, at a time when color was still a relative rarity in Hollywood, the movie offers Gaynor as Vicki Lester, a struggling actress whose career is nurtured along by her mega-star husband, Norman Maine (Fredric March)

It's almost showtime at WBAL, and - for reasons I cannot explain - Clarence Mitchell IV has engaged me in an argument over Easy Cheese and Cheez Whiz. He claims that Cheez Whiz also comes in an aerosol can, which is ridiculous. What's more ridiculous is the notion that anyone would challenge my expertise on processed foods. If you don't know the difference between Easy Cheese, Cheez Whiz and the cheese they put in Cheez and Cracker Snacks, you don't deserve to have a radio talk show. ( For more, go to baltimoresun.

Britney Spears case dismissed after jury deadlock leads to mistrial The criminal driving-without-a-license case against Britney Spears in Los Angeles has been dismissed. A mistrial was declared yesterday morning when jurors said they couldn't come up with a unanimous decision after two full days of deliberations. Jurors were deadlocked 10-2 in favor of acquitting the pop singer of any wrongdoing. A couple of hours later, prosecutors said they would not pursue the criminal case further, and the case was dismissed.

For more than 90 years, until it was demolished on a snowy January day in 2004 to make way for the Enoch Pratt Free Library's Southeast Anchor branch, the glorious Grand Theatre stood on Conkling Street as the pride of Highlandtown. With its Saturday Afternoon at the Grand film series, that same library, at 3601 Eastern Ave., seeks to invoke at least the spirit of those bygone days, with a movie, refreshments and some other Grand-ian touches. Tomorrow, the series will feature Sean Connery as James Bond in 1963's From Russia With Love.

The Spring 2008 Cinema Sundays series wraps this weekend with documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney's Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Former Cinema Sundays programmer Gabe Wardell, now executive director of Independent Media Artists of Georgia, Etc. (IMAGE), and organizers of the annual Atlanta Film Festival will be on hand for the introduction and post-film discussion. Showtime at the Charles, 1711 N. Charles St., is 10:35 a.m. Sunday, preceded by 50 minutes of no-additional-charge coffee and bagels.

Baltimore's outdoor movie season kicks off tomorrow with an 8:30 p.m. screening of Shrek the Third in Dundalk, at the Patapsco Masonic Lodge, 2 Trading Place (next to Heritage Park) and behind the old Strand Theatre. The movie is free, and vendors will sell food. Pre-show entertainment begins at 7:30 p.m. Sponsored by the Dundalk Renaissance Corp. Information: 410-2982-0261. 'Screen Painters' The Screen Painters, a 1988 documentary on the Baltimore folk art of screen painting, will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave. in the Patterson Theatre (where the film had its premiere 20 years ago)

A film series spotlighting the work of Joel and Ethan Coen, whose No Country for Old Men dominated February's Academy Awards, will unspool Wednesdays through June in the Mountcastle Auditorium of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions Pre-Clinical Teaching Building, 725 N. Wolfe St. The series kicks off Wednesday with No Country for Old Men, starring Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson and Kelly Macdonald in the sordid tale of...

The 2008 Baltimore Jewish Film Festival wraps Sunday with Joel Katz's Strange Fruit (2002), a look at the song of the same name made famous by Billie Holiday's hauntingly evocative 1939 recording and subsequent performances. The movie will be presented by filmmaker Ivy Meeropol, whose grandfather, Bronx, N.Y., schoolteacher Abel Meeropol, wrote the song after seeing a photograph of a Southern lynching. Showtime is 3 p.m. at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive. Admission: $9. Information: balti morejff.