Entertainment

(photo of a scene from the movie)

What's that fragrant bouquet? No, it's not just the gorgeous clusters of lavendar lilacs that give this weekend's festival its name. It's the pungent aroma of wine on wood.

Emma Thompson stars in "Carrington."

Conductor Fabio Mechetti calls it "revolutionary," a summation of the classical symphony and a forecast of what happens later in music. It's Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and Mechetti will lead two performances of the Ninth to close the Spokane Symphony's 50th anniversary season. Tonight and Sunday afternoon, the orchestra will be joined by the Symphony Chorale, the Whitworth Choir and soloists Julie Newell, JoAnne Bouma, Jon Garrison and Terry Cook. These performances will mark the first time since 1988 that Beethoven's great masterpiece has been heard in the Opera House. (For performance info, see Events at left.)

Confederate Railroad is following the tracks back to the Inland Northwest again. This time the band will appear at Kelly's Grand Ole Opry in State Line, Idaho, on Monday at 7:30 p.m. The country band, which stirs up a catchy mix of rock, blues and honky tonk, is known for all sorts of quirky hits like "Trashy Women," "Elvis and Andy" and "Daddy Never Was the Cadillac Kind." The band is out on tour supporting its latest album "When and Where," which was released last fall. Tickets are $15 and are available at G&B; outlets or by calling 325-SEAT or (800) 325-SEAT.

1. (No caption-photo of Charlie Musselwhite) 2. In the Blues tradition, Charlie Musselwhite, left, and Paul deLay, above, give credit for their sound influences throughout their lives.

Likehell plays Swack's on Monday.

Summer is the time for long evenings on the patio and weekends at the lakeshore. But it's also the busiest season for those who like to attend community fairs and festivals. The activities range from rodeos to bake sales, carnivals to parades. We're compiling a calendar of the fairs and fests in the Inland Northwest that we'll publish in late May in the Friday Weekend entertainment section. If your town or group is holding a festival, rodeo or a fair, send us the dates, place, some details about the event and a phone number where we can get more information, if needed. Just mail it to: Susan English, Weekend Fairs, SpokesmanReview, 999 W. Riverside, Spokane, WA 99201; or fax it to (509) 459-5098, or e-mail the info to susane@spokesman.com. The deadline for making the calendar is May 17.

French-made, "The City of Lost Children" is a lot closer to a Grimm's fairy tale than it is to any Hollywood-inspired silly symphony. No "Ghostbusters" in this corner. That's because it was written and directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jenuet, the filmmakers responsible for "Delicatessan," that brilliant bit of atmospheric flakiness of five years back.

Richard Harris and James Earl Jones in Darrel James Roodt's "Cry, the Beloved Country."

The coming weeks offer a couple of choice opportunities to chow down for charity. This Mom's Day, a bunch of Spokane-area restaurants will donate a portion of their profits to a program for single mothers called CAPA (Childbirth and Parenting Alone). CAPA is sponsored by Catholic Charities. It is designed to help single moms be better parents and self-sufficient members of the community. Last year, more than 650 young women received help from this program.

Smaller studios try to counter blockbusters like "Jurassic Park."

It'll be another night of nostalgia at Ugly Rumors, located in the Mars Hotel. Two '50s and '60s legends the Drifters and the Box Tops will resurrect their glory days for two shows Thursday at the downtown nightclub. During their run, the Drifters, one of the most popular vocal groups of that era, spawned a string of hits such as "On Broadway," "Under the Boardwalk," "Save the Last Dance for Me," "This Magic Moment" and "There Goes My Baby." The Drifters were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

If your only memory of Shakespeare was a lousy college production of "Hamlet" then Richard Loncraine's "Richard III" should surprise you. Ian McKellan portrays the villainous Briton with a barely contained glee. His acting, plus a Nazi-like 1930s-era setting, gives the play a welcomed boost that might please even the Bard.

1. Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt run from a raging tornado in "Twister." The movie's amazing special effects show the destruction of the storms. 2. Paxton and Hunt play meteorologists studying tornadoes.

Remember how after "Jaws," people were scared to go into the water? Well, the fabulously terrifying "Twister" is not going to do much for Oklahoma tourism or the trailer park biz. "Twister" will be a major windfall at the box office, though, surely the first megahit of the summer. It's a nearly perfect summer action movie, with great special effects, high-adrenalin action sequences, and nothing like complex characterization, subtle story lines or nuanced performances to complicate things and keep us from being thrilled to the tips of our nail-bitten fingers. "Twister" follows a day in the life of a funky crew of university researchers who chase tornadoes for a living. Meteorologist Bill Harding (Bill Paxton), who left the team when he broke up with his colleague and wife Jo (Helen Hunt), returns with his new fiancee Melissa (Jami Gertz) in tow. He just wants to get Jo to sign the papers so their divorce can go through.

Pamela Anderson Lee and her augmented orbs - breasts that enter a room days in advance of the rest of her - star in the title role of "Barb Wire," a cartoony, sci-fi take on "Casablanca" in which the former "Baywatch" star basically plays Bogie, in spike heels and leather. As the proprietor of the post-apocalyptic Hammerhead Bar, Barb is a hardened entrepreneur determined to stay neutral and make a few bucks in a world of warring idealist rebels and Gestapo-like government thugs. When Barb's old beau (New Zealand hulk Temuera Morrison, in the Ingrid Bergman role) appears with an underground scientist in tow (Victoria Rowell, as a distaff Victor Laszlo), Barb's heartstrings get tugged. (You can practically see the effect on her anatomy: "You're looking rather buoyant this evening," observes her bald-headed headwaiter.) "Barb Wire," which opens with a credit sequence that looks like an outtake from Lee's Playboy videos (wet, writhing and topless), isn't horrible, exactly, but it isn't any good. As an action heroine, Lee has a couple of good kickboxing moves, straddles a Triumph motorcycle convincingly and sports a decent Eastwood-y sneer. But the screenplay, credited to Chuck Pfarrer and Ilene Chaiken and plotted-out scene by scene from "Casablanca," is a muddle of cyberpunk gibberish and weary retorts. David Hogan's direction (a rock video/second unit guy making his feature debut) plods in all the wrong places, though he and his cinematographer have gone to great lengths to photograph their siliconed star from every conceivable angle. (Gaping down at Lee from overhead is like a flyover of the Grand Canyon.) "Barb Wire" can be intermittently amusing, as in when Lee breaks a nail in combat or when a character named Big Fatso descends from a bulldozer's maw. But despite its gimmicky appropriation of a film classic's storyline and the preternatural physique of its leading lady, the picture is a dud.

I make my living tasting off other people's plates. When I started reviewing restaurants, one of my concerns was that tasting four appetizers and four main courses would be so noticeable that I'd be instantly unmasked as a critic. The fear was unfounded. What I've discovered is an epidemic of tasting. Everybody does it. So many butter plates circulate around with a little of the chicken with wild mushroom sauce and a bite of the chili-lacquered salmon that the wait staff must get suspicious of those sticking with their own entree. Not all diners are happy with this state of affairs. In a letter to Ann Landers last month, a woman complained that when she ordered a chocolate dessert, the server brought extra forks and everyone at the table dug in. "I find nothing more annoying than a server who encourages others to eat part of my dessert. I ordered it, I'm paying for it and I'd like to eat it myself," the letter writer, who signed herself "Contemplating dessert forks as lethal weapons."

Samuel L. Jackson plays the Rev. Fred Sultan in "Great White Hype."