Van Sant

THE PROBLEM -- A sign hanging from a construction fence at the site of the new Hilton Baltimore Convention Center Hotel seems to encourage motorists driving south on Eutaw Street to take a right onto Pratt Street. That would put them going the wrong way on the one-way street. THE BACKSTORY -- Eutaw Street is "open for business" as contractors say on a sign, an attempt to remind people that they can still shop even if a large swath of property is closed north of Camden Yards to make way for the city's new publicly financed hotel.

NEW YORK -- They're young, they're talented, they're on magazine covers.Oh, swell, two more movie star pretty boys, right? Well, not exactly.Matt Damon and Ben Affleck star in "Good Will Hunting," which opened last week. It's the tale of a working-class Boston guy named Will (Damon) who's constantly getting hauled into court for public brawling and talking his way out of it. He happens to be a genius. But he's headed for jail unless a rumpled, troubled therapist (Robin Williams) can break through to him.Affleck plays Chuckie, one of Will's childhood friends.

Does the world need another "Psycho"? Probably not, but an extra one doesn't hurt.In one of this year's most talked-about cinematic experiments, underground-to-indie-to-mainstream director Gus Van Sant has orchestrated a shot-by-shot re-creation of Alfred Hitchcock's horror classic.With a young, fresh cast and an equally vibrant look, the new "Psycho" will no doubt prove groundbreaking to teen-agers who think this stuff started with "Scream." Hitchcock buffs with absolutely nothing better to do than to satisfy their curiosity won't be offended by Van Sant's tribute to the master, which has been given added verve by cinematographer Christopher Doyle's vivid photography.

Union National Bank OKs Nasdaq stock listingThe Union National Bank board of directors recently approved the listing of the corporation's stock on the Nasdaq small-cap market.The listing will be effective as soon as market makers and applications are completed.The three markets makers will create a more active market in the stock, allowing shareholders to have a true market price for purchases and sales.Shareholders also can follow their stock in the newspaper.The board also approved a two-for-one share stock split for shareholders of record on Jan. 30, payable Feb. 13.Larry Van Sant Sr. elected to bank boardLarry A. Van Sant Sr., president of Van Sant Plumbing and Heating, has been elected to the board of directors of Union National Bancorp, the holding company for Union National Bank.

Ronald E. Nodine of American Renovator Inc. turned the leaky flat roof on an addition of a Baltimore County house into the floor of a master bedroom suite that resembles a ski chalet.The feat has earned Mr. Nodine the Homebuilders Association of Maryland's 1995 Project of the Year and has given owners Paul and Melanie Van Sant a contemporary living space that maintains the architectural integrity of the exterior of their turn-of-the-century house.Originally, the Van Sants wanted to fix the roof of the great room added to their house in the 1940s by installing a pitched roof.

WITH HIS Gateway 2000 computer perched on his desk, Robert F. Mewshaw is a one-man investing machine.The 44-year-old co-founder of Van Sant and Mewshaw Inc. can invest millions of dollars in seconds, and conduct research to sniff out the hottest stocks or mutual funds."

A group of Notre Dame Prep parents and alumnae has appealed directly to Cardinal William H. Keeler to prevent the showing of a video to high school seniors that contains hard-core pornography.A spokeswoman for the Roman Catholic girls preparatory school in Towson said its board of trustees convened an extraordinary "special session" March 7 to consider the escalating complaints.The board backed the administration's decision to continue to show the film to high school seniors with their parents' permission, said Lynn McKain, the school's director of public relations.

"To Die For" will give a certain segment of the audience something to live for and another segment something to die from. It's not for the irony-impaired.Mordant, dark, bitter, funny, sexy, sardonic, it's one of those special-case movies that rides its outrageousness into your heart and demands your affections even as it's brazenly offending you. It fits in that small category of nasty gigglers that includes "Sunset Boulevard," "The Loved One," "Where's Poppa?" and "Pretty Poison."What bad boy director Gus Van Sant ("My Own Private Idaho")

F. Douglas TillettAdvertising personageF. Douglas Tillett, a former vice president and associate creative director at the Van Sant Dugdale Inc. advertising agency, died Nov. 5 of cancer at the Mercy Medical Center.A memorial service for the 67-year-old Phoenix resident was to be conducted at 7 p.m. today at the Sheffield Audio Visual Productions recording studio, 13816 Sunnybrook Road, Phoenix.Since leaving the advertising agency in 1972, Mr. Tillett had worked as a free-lance narrator of commercial and political advertisements, and of educational messages for the Society of Jesus and the National Park Service, which used his voice in automated exhibits.

John Wesley Hooks III, 37, died Tuesday at his home from a brain tumor. Born in London, he was the son of John Wesley and Martha Griffin Hooks of Towson. He was the husband of Beth Ann Westbrook Hooks. A surveyor, he had served in the U.S. Army and had worked for Rosenfelt &Woolfolk in Ownings Mills. He was a member of the Baltimore chapter of the National Railroad Historical Society. In addition to his wife and parents, survivors include a daughter, Rebecca L. Hooks of home; stepson, Paul J. Nagle of Columbia; brother, Thomas J. Hooks of Owings Mills; and grandmother, Margaret Damaschke of New York.

M ilk rests so exclusively - and solidly - on its performances, especially Sean Penn's marvelous characterization of Harvey Milk, that audiences won't realize how strong its mojo is until an assassin's bullets break the spell. It's not a great movie, but it is an enlivening and unusual one: an effervescent political film that also packs a knockout punch. As Milk, Penn provides the most embracing, democratic portrait of an American figure since Henry Fonda's young Abe Lincoln - and Fonda was playing Lincoln in his lawyer days.

THE PROBLEM -- A sign hanging from a construction fence at the site of the new Hilton Baltimore Convention Center Hotel seems to encourage motorists driving south on Eutaw Street to take a right onto Pratt Street. That would put them going the wrong way on the one-way street. THE BACKSTORY -- Eutaw Street is "open for business" as contractors say on a sign, an attempt to remind people that they can still shop even if a large swath of property is closed north of Camden Yards to make way for the city's new publicly financed hotel.

The Zenith luxury apartment tower seems likely to rise in downtown Baltimore now that a large union-backed real estate fund has agreed to put up most of the $37 million cost. "It's going to get the project built," said M.J. "Jay" Brodie, president of Baltimore Development Corp., the city economic development agency. The nationwide Multi-Employer Property Trust - with $3.7 billion in assets - will become the majority owner of the 23-story building, long planned for a prime spot near Oriole Park at Camden Yards, according to the BDC. The city's Board of Estimates is expected today to ratify the addition of MEPT to a team initially led by Legacy Harrison Enterprises, a minority-owned Baltimore firm that has received city assistance on the project.

Gus Van Sant titled his new movie about a Portland high school that becomes host to a Columbine-like atrocity Elephant, in homage to the late British director Alan Clarke's movie about Northern Ireland, also called Elephant. Clarke got the name from the idea of people talking around the elephant in the room - the great big thing you can't discuss. But Van Sant was also thinking of the parable of the blind men and the elephant, in which six sightless wise men are asked to describe an elephant, and, putting their hands on different portions of the beast, say it's like a wall, a rope, a snake, and so on. The parable sums up the futility of finding the truth in any one man's observations.

THE NEW movie Elephant takes its name from the parable of the five blind men who come upon the giant pachyderm from different angles; each decides that it is something different depending on which part of the animal he is touching. The elephant in this movie is teen-age violence, specifically the murders at Columbine High School in April 1999. Director Gus Van Sant records a fictional day in a high school from the vantage point of a handful of students, including the two who will murder their classmates, and asks us to decide what he is touching.

On October 9, 2003 BETTY M. VAN SANT (nee Hand); beloved wife of Paul K. Van Sant, Sr.; devoted mother of Irene E., Robert D., J. Timothy and the late Paul K. Van Sant, Jr.; dear sister of Robert L. and the late Herbert J. Hand, Jr.; loving grandmother of Christianne, Nicholas, Kaitlin, Andrew, Alexandra, Zachary, Matthew, Natalie and Kieran. Vigil Service will be held at the family owned RUCK TOWSON FUNERAL HOME, INC., 1050 York Rd., (beltway Exit 26A) on Sunday at 7 P.M. A Funeral Mass will be celebrated in St. Ursula's Church on Monday at 9 A.M. Interment Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens.

CANNES, France - Even Clint Eastwood had to shop around his latest movie, Mystic River, which earned a 15-minute ovation at its premiere at the recent Cannes Film Festival. One studio executive, for example, obsessed over a hand gesture that Kevin Bacon's Boston cop makes to a childhood friend, played by Sean Penn. Eastwood, who directed the film, eventually found partners in Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow. The $16 million drama about the shockwave effects of childhood trauma did not win any awards here, but it is poised to be an important release this fall.

A 28-year-old Cockeysville woman was killed in a freak accident early yesterday when a would-be thief sent an empty Jeep Wrangler careering down an embankment and crashing through the wall of the bedroom where she was sleeping. The victim, Melanie Judith Wentz, was public relations manager for the Baltimore Zoo. Baltimore County police said someone intentionally put the Jeep in neutral about 2 a.m. and pushed it from a parking lot down the grassy embankment. The vehicle smashed through the wall of Wentz's first-floor unit at Century Apartments in the 300 block of Limestone Valley Drive.

If director Gus Van Sant isn't careful, audiences might start thinking he has permanently crossed over into the cushy mainstream of commercial success. Van Sant made his name with such edgy, indie gems as "Drugstore Cowboy" and "My Own Private Idaho." But in "Finding Forrester," he has produced a compelling film that probably will be as popular with audiences, critics and those folks who hand out statuettes as his Academy-Award winning "Good Will Hunting." In fact, there's already early Oscar buzz for Van Sant and "Forrester" co-stars Sean Connery and Rob Brown.

Does the world need another "Psycho"? Probably not, but an extra one doesn't hurt.In one of this year's most talked-about cinematic experiments, underground-to-indie-to-mainstream director Gus Van Sant has orchestrated a shot-by-shot re-creation of Alfred Hitchcock's horror classic.With a young, fresh cast and an equally vibrant look, the new "Psycho" will no doubt prove groundbreaking to teen-agers who think this stuff started with "Scream." Hitchcock buffs with absolutely nothing better to do than to satisfy their curiosity won't be offended by Van Sant's tribute to the master, which has been given added verve by cinematographer Christopher Doyle's vivid photography.