Zeitgeist

As the U.S. military prepares for an increasingly probable engagement with Iraq, Hollywood is tentatively taking a business-as-usual approach. Many political pundits are pointing to the first week in March as a likely start date for military action. Yet, the major studios have done little shifting of release dates around that time, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is continuing plans to present the Oscars on March 23. Zeitgeist Films, an independent distributor with two foreign films scheduled for release in early March -- 10 from Iran and Nowhere in Africa from Germany -- has no plans to alter its schedule, either.

Appaloosa : *** 1/2 ( 3 1/2 Stars) Starring Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris (who also directed) as Old West lawmen intent on cleaning up a frontier town, Appaloosa is an actor's duet scored for shotguns and six-shooters. It has been delighting Western fans and cowboy-picture neophytes for weeks, but it appears to be heading for its last theatrical roundup. Catch it while you can on the big screen, where you can really savor its Southwestern vistas. next friday Changeling : (Universal Pictures)

9 *** ( 3 STARS) The rare computer-animated film that feels handmade from cuffs to collar, Shane Acker's post-apocalyptic fantasy centers on a group of walking, talking raggedy dolls who contain the final remnants of the human spirit.The story may be slight, but Acker renders the evil super-machines scary and the "Steampunk" landscapes eloquently mournful. And his diminutive heroes boast personality and soul, thanks partly to a great voice cast including Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau, and Jennifer Connelly.

Tickets are available for the 17th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Breakfast, to be held at 8: 30 a.m. Monday in the cafeteria at Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold.U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat, will be the keynote speaker for the breakfast, which honors the slain civil rights worker's legacy.Four county residents will receive awards.Maria Casaco of Annapolis will receive the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Award from the Annapolis Human Relations Commission for her Hispanic initiative with the county Department of Health Preventive Services.

Seven people, including the recently re-elected president of the county NAACP, will be honored next month for outstanding community service at the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Awards banquet.Chief Judge Robert M. Bell of the Maryland Court of Appeals will be the keynote speaker at this year's dinner on Jan. 15 at Buddy's Late Night in Annapolis. Bell is the first African-American to lead Maryland's highest court.The seven honorees and their awards are:Gerald Stansbury, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Angela Graham Haste, a community activist in Annapolis' 3rd Ward; Sheryl Banks, former chair of the Black Political Forum; and Willie Nixon, president of the Nixon Bus Co., will receive the Drum Major Award for Community Service.

Maureen Berry, a dance student at Towson State University, won fourth place in the Oireachtas National Competition for Irish Step Dancing, qualifying her to compete for the world championship to be held in Dublin in April.*Eight high-school students were winners in a high-school senior art competition sponsored by the art department at Villa Julie College. Mark Selby won best of show and was awarded a half scholarship for two years at Villa Julie College. Other winners are Wendy Gelber, Karen Beard, Laura Singer, Jason Kehl, Ben Tilly, Bradley Zisow and Jason Scott.

The Corporation isn't impressed much by the benefits of capitalism, and with a select panel of judges that includes Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky, you can guess how that goes (badly, for corporations like Monsanto). Still, given the black eye corporations have given themselves over the past few years, you can hardly say that The Corporation isn't timely or overdue. The documentary starts with legal decisions in the 1800s that established incorporated bodies as "persons" with the right to buy, sell, borrow money and sue. Corporations attained these privileges but often undertook them without any moral framework.

Can we cut? In a stroke of master casting, funny fashionista Joan Rivers will play herself in the season finale of Nip/Tuck, FX's hit drama about a booming plastic-surgery practice in Miami. It runs Oct. 5. "This is like John Gotti being on The Sopranos," says creator-executive producer Ryan Murphy. "It's the ultimate typecasting and the ultimate hot-button discussion topic." In the story line, Rivers, 71, who has done riffs on her many nips and tucks, goes to Drs. Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh)

So this is how Constellation Energy Group's crafty new ownership is going to play it. Appearing before the state Senate Finance Committee this week, a top executive with MidAmerican Energy Holdings was asked whether the company was open to reregulation of electricity in Maryland. His answer? He's willing to discuss it. Perhaps it should come as no shock that an Iowa-based power company known for its low-key approach and progressive management is not letting the sparks fly in Annapolis.

Paul Newman and Robert Redford play history's handsomest bank robbers in 1969's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (4 p.m., TCM), a turn-of-the-century Western that has little to do with the West or the turn of the century, but everything to do with friendship, charisma and good-old movie magic. Butch and Sundance were real outlaws, and the character Etta Place (played by Katharine Ross) was Sundance's companion (though probably not a schoolteacher, as she is in the movie). But that's about where the truth of Butch Cassidy ends.