Dan Webster

If you're going to live in Montana, you might as well at least try and ski. People have been doing so for about as long as anyone can remember. Jean Arthur, who writes the occasional travel story for The Spokesman-Review, tells the story of how skiing came to the high slopes near Whitefish in her book "Hellroaring: Fifty Years on The Big Mountain" (Whitefish Editions, 80 pages, $29.95 paperback).

1. Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) left, and Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook) in "Secrets and Lies." Director Mike Leigh goes beyond the simple protrayal of a troubled vamily. 2. "Trainspotting" had a less-than-damning protrayal of heroin use. 3. "Lone Star" is one of the year's greatest films. 4. William H. Macy in the Coen brothers' "Fargo." 5. Demi Moore in "Striptease."

Matthew McConaughey, right, and Charles S. Dutton star in "A Time to Kill."

(Photo of John Travolta)

As we head into 1997, let's consider some wise words: "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving." These words, which constitute the apostle Paul's call for universal compassion (Ephesians 4:31-32), are as worthy of contemplation now as when they were written. With an echo from the teachings of Buddha, they carry an eloquent message to us all.

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Overweight yes, but Brando is still brilliant in "The island of Dr. Moreau."

Glen Berry as Jamie (left) and Scott Neal as Ste develop a loving relationship in "Beautiful Thing."

You're sitting through an afternoon showing of, say, "The English Patient." And two hours into its 162-minute run, you begin to notice the effects of that large Diet Coke you long ago gulped down. So you head off to the restroom, do your business and, anxious to get back to the film, find yourself facing a quandary: Since the theater management has eliminated paper towels in favor of those noisy blow-dryers, you have to decide whether to stand there rubbing your hands in a jetstream that never seems to get much more than lukewarm - thus missing an extra minute or so of the film - allow yourself to drip-dry or to just ignore washing altogether.

Michael Weaver discovered something while rehearsing his forthcoming dramatic reading of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." The Spokane actor discovered humor. "What surprised me, and I hadn't read it since I was a kid, was how funny it is," Weaver said on Thursday. "Dickens writes great jokes, so I've tried to keep as many of them in as I could." Weaver's reading, which he's basing on an abridged version of the 154-year-old Christmas tale, will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Monday at Auntie's Bookstore, Main and Washington. A native of Port Orchard, Wash., Weaver has lived in Spokane for the past 2-1/2 years but has performed with Interplayers Ensemble for the past 12 seasons.

It seemed like such a simple project. Just ask readers to send in their favorite Christmas holiday stories. We figured to get a couple or five, pick the best three and make most everyone happy. But the reality turned out to be quite different. Some 65 area writers answered our call, and the resulting situation forced us to pick and choose among a number of very good efforts. Though two-thirds of the entries came from Spokane, the others represented towns as far away as Libby, Mont., to the east and Kennewick to the west. Other letters carried postmarks from such places as St. Maries, Sagle and Sandpoint, from Inchelium, Tekoa and Colville, from Kellogg, Hope and Cheney. We left the style open. Resort to fiction if you wanted, we said, but true stories were perfectly fine. And the truth is what most entrants stuck with.

(Scene from film)

Kevin Costner plays a ne'er-do-well golf pro in "Tin Cup."

Post Falls Cinemas is located on Seltice Way. The complex includes six screens. Photo by Jesse Tinsley/The Spokesman-Review

Imagine if Margaret Mitchell had titled her book "Gone With the Mootsy." If John Irving had titled his novel "The World According to Mootsy." Or if John Grisham had titled his legal thrillers "A Time to Mootsy" or "The Pelican Mootsy." That's sort of the spirit that Rick Turner and Tom Davis hope to capture in their "The Story of Mootsy" short-story contest. Turner is the owner of Mootsy's, a tavern at 406 W. Sprague that has become a regular site of poetry readings. Following in the tradition of such other public-arena reading series as those once held at the Big Dipper and at the Anaconda Cafe, Mootsy's hosts weekly readings each Sunday at 5 p.m. The series began more than a year ago after Davis, a Spokane poet and former English teacher, approached Turner.

Let's do the Time Warp once again. Or at least a few last times. That's about all any fan of the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" will be able to do. For after a 7-year run, the Magic Lantern Cinemas will discontinue its Friday/Saturday midnight showings of the movie/performance-art project on Dec. 21. According to Kathryn Graham, co-owner of the Magic Lantern, the decision was financial. For several years, the theater didn't make enough to cover its costs. And for the past couple of years, it's only just broke even.

(Photo of film clip from "Surviving Picasso.")

1. A Martian invader gets the drop on the president (Jack Nicholson) in "Mars Attacks!" 2. At top, Annette Bening defends Tom Jones against the aliens in Las Vegas.

Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage star in "The Rock."

Of all the debates raging in today's world, few are more divisive than the issue of capital punishment. As a point of contention, it defies the notion of middle ground. Either you support it or you don't. If you or someone you love has been the target of violent crime, you may believe that capital punishment is not only justified but even necessary. Then again, some people hate the very idea of the death penalty - and this is true for people whose experiences bridge both sides of the question. Take Teresa Mathis and Don Reeves, for example. At 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Gonzaga University's Jepson Center Auditorium, they will co-present a public program titled "Left Behind: Victims of Capital Punishment." Mathis, the Seattle-based executive director of the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, lost her brother to murder in 1983. Reeves, a Nebraska farmer and economic analyst, has a son who was convicted of killing two women and who is now on death row. Despite their contrasting experiences, both oppose the death penalty. Mathis, for example, says that she probably is more liberal than her family. Yet, she adds, her family's reaction to her brother's death reflected her own anti-capital punishment stance. "Somebody said to my family group, 'Don't you wish the guy who did this could get the death penalty?' " Mathis said during a phone interview. "And my mother said, 'You know, I've seen enough killing. I don't want any more of it.' " After Mathis and Reeves tell their respective stories, they'll answer questions from the audience. The event which is co-sponsored by the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane and a consortium of other groups as a celebration fo Human Rights Day, is free and open to the public.

Contest announcements regularly cross this desk. They're mostly the kind of writing contests that ask for your work, then guarantees you publication - if you'll agree to buy a certain number of copies, etc. Buyer beware. But sometimes we get legitimate contests. And the one sponsored by Floating Bridge Press is a case in point. It's certainly ambitious enough. The 1997 Floating Bridge Press Poetry Chapbook Award, which is open to Washington residents only, calls for a maximum of 24 pages of poetry, a title page and a paginated table of contents. One previous winner was Nance Van Winckel, the editor of Eastern Washington University's award-winning literary journal Willow Springs. Her winning entry was "A Measure of Heaven."

On the subject of rape, some men still don't get it.

"The Cable Guy" stars Jim Carrey and Matthew Broderick.

Spanning a half-dozen years, this adaptation of Michael Ondaajte's critically acclaimed novel is an epic World War II romance involving expected attraction, betrayal and the kind of passion that only the threat of sudden death can kindle. Ralph Fiennes is the title character, but the likes of Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe and Naveen Andrews are just as memorable.