Van Sant

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.

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.

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.

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.

Larry Van Sant, president of Van Sant Plumbing & Heating, has been appointed to the Board of Directors of Frederick Memorial Hospital.A 1970 graduate of South Carroll High School, Van Sant has a bachelor's degree in business administration from West Virginia Wesleyan College.As a college student, he belonged to Delta Mu Delta and Pi Gamma Mu and was elected to the National Honor Society.His community interests include board memberships on the Economic Development Board for Carroll County and the Planning and Zoning Commission of Mount Airy.

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."

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.

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.

Gus Van Sant is another of those independent fringe directors who makes the kind of films he wants and is lucky enough to find the backing.Van Sant did ''Drugstore Cowboy,'' a saga of drugs, sex and death. His newest is ''My Own Private Idaho,'' a movie about two male prostitutes.It's a very poetic film. That is, it includes images that may mean more to the director than the spectator, but the film is an interesting one.River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves star. Phoenix plays Mike, a homosexual who sells himself to those who can afford him. He comes from a family that is highly dysfunctional.

Gus Van Sant makes his own private movies. Though they are typically set in the scrubby demimonde of boy street hustlers and petty criminals, the writer-director couldn't be called defiant. He's no outlaw, like the late, great, crazed Sam Peckinpah, who rubbed our noses in it; and he's no sexual provocateur, like that impresario of the deeply depraved, David Lynch.In fact, what courses through Van Sant's work in such abundance is a sense of normalcy. Van Sant isn't slumming, isn't consciously walking on the wild side, doesn't pine to force us complacent bourgeois dullards to confront the seething, scabrous underbelly of life.

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.

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.

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.

This was to be a time of celebration for Gray, Kirk/Van- Sant Advertising and Public Relations Inc., one of Baltimore's established advertising agencies. It just changed its name and moved into the city's trendy Tide Point development. But there is little time to celebrate. The agency recently lost its largest account, Choice Hotels International Inc., and was forced to lay off 13 of 68 employees. It missed the final cut for the Best Western International contract, which could have significantly softened the blow of the Choice loss - to a Baltimore firm run by a Gray Kirk alum, which only added to the insult.

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.