Dan Webster

Mike Kramer

Tony Bamonte has lived the kind of life that, on paper at least, sounds like something worthy of a made-forTV movie. He's been a logger, a Spokane policeman, sheriff of Pend Oreille County, a private investigator, political candidate, a real-estate salesman and writer.

1. "Tommy," featuring a small boy and a "dream guide," starts Monday. United Feature Syndicate 2. (Photo of first strip)

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William Macy plays a car salesman in 'Fargo.'

1. Gita Hatcher, affirmative action specialist for the City of Spokane, included a sari in her family mementos which are part of an exhibit showing the diversity of city employees. Photo by Kristy MacDonald/The Spokesman-Review 2. A family's batik is included in the exhibit with photos.

Ken Cochran and Lori Hansel can't get enough of John Lee. As counselors at Shaw Middle School, Cochran and Lee have traveled all the way to North Carolina to study Lee's method of anger management. As Primary Emotional Energy Response - or P.E.E.R. - counselors, they've already sponsored one Lee-led workshop in Spokane.

(Scene from "Celestial Clockwork")

If you've ever had the yen to visit Vancouver, British Columbia, the next three weekends should be a good time. And that's especially true for films fans.

Toshiro Mifune, right, stars as the hired sword in "Yojimbo.'

A bouquet is OK, but is it really what she wanted?

Writer and illustrator Hudson Talbott's recent collection of Arthurian stories is "King Arthur: The Sword in the Stone."

In the ongoing debate over abortion, Dorothy Fadiman's trilogy of documentary films doesn't even pretend to take a middle ground. Fadiman is adamantly pro-choice. But she's no mere hard-liner. If Fadiman threw an ounce of the venom at anti-abortion activists that many of those activists hurl at abortion clinics on a regular basis, she'd be the Oliver Stone of documentary filmmakers. As it is, she's just being herself. But based on her latest effort, "The Fragile Promise of Choice: Abortion in the U.S. Today," and the two films that preceded it, 1992's Oscar-nominated "When Abortion Was Illegal: Untold Stories" and 1995's "From Danger to Dignity: The Fight for Safe Abortion," Fadiman's own self is plenty.

In her first film, 1985's "Orianna," Venezuelan-French filmmaker Fina Torres explored the tangled world of memory vs. the reality of now. In her second effort, which comes more than a decade later, Torres is still looking at the notion of now. But this time she's approaching it from the opposite direction.

(Photo of scene from "Independence Day.")

Kids in the Hall (McCulluch, left) thrive in "Brain Candy."

Want to scare the spit out of grade-school kids? Just tell them that cooked carrots now are part of their regular lunch menu. Some people find carrots so scary that it's easy to sympathize with those north Spokane elementary school students who are being haunted by a carrot the size of Sasquatch. Even so, how silly it is for officials to bar such a creature from area schools.

With the star power available to director Hugh Wilson, you'd think he could come up with something a bit more intelligent than "The First Wives Club." Then again, star power may have been the problem.

If you ever wondered why geese fly in a V formation, the Ojibwa Indians could tell you. According to them, the trickster Nanabozho tried to catch an entire flock of geese by swimming underneath them and tying their feet together. But when he came up for breath, the birds nearest him sounded the alarm and the whole flock took off.

We have just pulled off Interstate 95 and are driving through a pastoral Connecticut village when the whole reason for our trip becomes suddenly, glaringly clear. I mean, here we are, some 3,000 miles from home, combining a vacation with a look-see tour of several East Coast universities. And one of our stops is to be at the campus of a well-respected school in this seaside burg.

Like many people raised in the 1950s, I tend to be an Internet ignoramus. There's just something codelike about the terminology that drives me crazy. Most of it seems to read: http://www.hahahaha.com.

Jennifer Aniston and Mike McGlone appear in "She's the One."

In the two films for which he's probably best known, 1979's "The Black Stallion" and 1992's "Wind," director Carroll Ballard displays as much visual acuity as he does lack of story sense. But Ballard is hardly another of the style-over-substance drones Hollywood seems to churn out by the dozen. A former camera operator on "Star Wars," he knows how to frame a shot. He can also light a scene, transition smoothly from one moment (and mood) to the next and - from Mickey Rooney to Jeff Daniels, Jennifer Grey to Anna Paquin - work well with actors.

(Photo of "Piano" characters)