St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 41

r--1 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH Wednesday- September 13, 2000 Do you hunger for Peaches Herb or crave Kid Rock? Postnet.com radio offers more than postnet.com. SECTION 50 music channels that stream straight to your desktop. You select the type of music, everything from '70s hits to TV theme songs. Go to postnet.comradio.

0). MOVIES TELEVISION tet-M if Ml ljfca mL. iSa 1fr'-fi: In. i UPNisleft homeless in St. Louis after Channel 24 cuts ties The year-long marriage of United Paramount Network and KNLC (Channel 24) has gone pffft, and UPN is again homeless in St.

Louis. Could anybody be surprised that this match made in hell didn't work out? After all, Channel 24 is a religious station, owned by a minister-politician (the Rev. Larry Rice). UPN is the rawest of the six broadcast networks, targeting young men with programs heavy on sexual content and crude language. Signing on with UPN in May 1999, Rice held the desperate network which had been off the air here for 16 months to tough terms.

The agreement he reached allowed the station to "cherry pick" among UPN shows, rejecting those deemed unsuit i'av Vr It 5 i In1 f4 r' ft. A -i i in. imriiinin ii i Gail PenninMon "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," directed by Ang Lee, is a martial arts story about a young woman of almost superhuman fighting skills who must choose between good and evil. able. "Some of them, frankly, we don't feel are appropriate for our audience," Rice said at the time.

No kidding. Last season, Channel 24 rejected three-quarters of the UPN By Harper Barnes Special to the Post-Dispatch Telluride's scene stealers Glorious premieres get all the attention at the film festival in the enchanting town nestled in the Colorado Rockies. I "'7 ft see obscure films in two small theaters have grown to 5,000 pass holders with seven venues to choose from, including two modern ones that seat more than 500 apiece. But the lines remain long a fact that is simultaneously one of the curses and delights of the festival. In my six or eight visits to the festival over the years, I've stood in line with a fair number of actors and filmmakers, including Jodie Foster, although we were waiting to go to the bathroom.

But stargazing is not really the point of Telluride. It is perfectly permissible to walk up to Willem Dafoe of the or Ken Burns on the street if they' are not otherwise occupied and tell them you enjoy their work, but autographs are considered a bit tacky, and paparazzi are few and far between. There are few provisions for the press that's what Cannes and Toronto are for. A tribute to Ang Lee Ang Lee, the Taiwanese-born, New York-trained director of the best film at the festival, an inspiring, rousing martial arts story called "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," called Telluride "Arcadia for a filmmaker like me. It's wonderful being able to ride horses in the mountains and watch movies without a full day of interviews." Lee, whose work has ranged from tales of Chinese and Chinese-American family relationships like "The Wedding Banquet" and "Eat, Drink, Man, Woman" to his remarkable adaptation of Jane Austen's, "Sense and Sensibility," was honored with a tribute, a standard practice at Telluride.

After a brief series of film clips reprising his career, his newest movie was shown, to enthusiastic applause. See Telluride, E2 TELLURIDE, Colo. Here's the Telluride Film Festival in a nutshell. It's opening night, the Friday before Labor Day weekend, and you're standing near the end of a long line waiting to get into your first movie "Shadow of the Vampire," an ingenious retelling of the horrific tale behind the classic vampire movie "Nosferatu." Just behind you in line is a lanky Brit, a curly-haired young man in a rain jacket which he needs because of the intermittent sprinkles and the growing chill in the air. Your wait is half an hour or so, so you strike up a conversation with the young man.

You both hope there will be decent seats left by the time you get to the door of the theater. He says his name is Kevin, and he's from London. Telluride, which presents two dozen premieres over the long Labor Day weekend, is the best film festival in America for sheer concentration of glorious movies the most intense three-day film-going experience in America. But Kevin has traveled an awfully long way to see movies that will surely be shown in London. What's the story? "Oh," he says diffidently.

"I have a film to present." "Terrific," you say. "Part of the Filmmakers of Tomorrow program?" you ask. "No," he says with a shrug. "It's on the regular bill. It's called 'One Day in You're startled, and not sure you heard him right, thinking maybe he was talking about some early-autumn love story with a similar name.

"You mean the documentary about the 1972 Summer Olympics?" you ask. Kevin Macdonald nods. Willem Dafoe plays an actor who may also have a taste for blood in "Shadow of the Vampire." lineup, including the network's signature hit, "WWF Smackdown," a two-hour celebration of the headlocks and trash talk of professional wrestling. Also found unsuitable was "The Parkers," a "Moesha" spin-off that quickly became the top-rated program with black viewers nationwide. "Moesha" itself, "Star Trek: Voyager," the cartoon "Dilbert" (now canceled) and the thriller "7 Days" were the only UPN programs making regular appearances here.

Then, in February, a strange-bedfellows deal between Acme Communications (owner of KPLR, Channel 11) and the Paramount Stations Group set up the move of "Voyager" to Channel 11 and some other Acme stations this fall, along with "Smack-down." The deal should look better than ever to "Voyager" fans now that UPN and Channel 24 have split. A UPN spokeswoman confirms that ties with KNLC have been severed, while adding that the network is working to place its shows elsewhere in St. Louis. Maybe that will happen, but it doesn't seem likely. After KDNL (Channel 30), an ABC affiliate that had carried UPN programs in late-night hours, dropped the network in 1998, no other station came forward, and schedules are full to the brim for fall.

In addition to "Moesha," "The Parkers" and "7 Days," UPN series that won't air here include "The Hugh-leys," the underrated family comedy moving from ABC. UPN has only three other shows: "Girlfriends," an African-American "Sex and the' City" from Kelsey Grammer's production company; "Freedom," a futuristic thriller from Joel Silver and "Level 9," about cyber-crime fighters. Meanwhile, UPN has bigger problems than the loss of St. Louis air time. In August, Rupert Murdoch's News which owns the Fox network, bought ChrisCraft, owner of eight UPN-affiliated stations in major markets such as New York and Los Angeles.

With News Corp. apparently prepared to drop UPN from those stations when contracts expire in January, the deal could very well kill UPN altogether. Even without a network, "WWF Smackdown" seems likely to survive somewhere, possibly even on CBS, which is owned by Viacom, as is Paramount. (This is called "vertical integration," kiddies, and isn't it fun?) And Paramount has already announced that this season of "Star Trek: Voyager" will be the last. For that final season, "Voyager" makes its debut Sept.

30 on Channel 11, airing at 10 p.m. Saturdays. That episode is a rerun; the new season begins Oct. 7 with a two-hour installment, a repeat of last spring's cliffhanger followed by the season premiere. See Pennington, E8 Award ceremonies last spring.

It won the best documentary Oscar for 1999, was shown on HBO on Monday night and will go into general release this year. The lines can be long at the Telluride Film Festival, which has grown enormously in its 27 years. The few hundred dedicated film buffs who first came to this former mining town to "Yes, actually it's showing at this theater after 'Shadow of the I suppose I won't have to wait in line for that one." He laughs, cheerfully. "One Day in September," an emotionally wrenching story of terrorism, the murder of Israeli Olympic athletes and a botched police raid, had a brief special opening late last year to qualify it for the Academy PLAN AHEAD "Fantasticks" opens new Clayton theater In its first musical prpduction, the Clayton Community Theatre mounts "The Fantasticks," opening 8 p.m. Friday at Clayton High School auditorium, 1 Mark Twain Circle.

advance, $12 at the door. (314-726-6129) TELEVISION Latin Grammys are on Channel 4 Antonio Banderas, Gloria Estefan, Andy Garcia, Jennifer Lopez and Jimmy Smits are the hosts as CBS airs the first "Latin Grammy Awards" (8 tonight on Channel 4), live from Los Angeles. Prizes will be handed out in 40 categories, including rock, jazz, salsa and merengue. MOVIES VIDEO A visit to the red planet Director Brian DePalma has made a career of paying homage to other directors, and his latest movie, "Mission to Mars" (just released on home video), is an obvious ode to Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey." Tim Robbins and Gary Sinise star as astronauts who are sent to Mars to investigate the whereabouts of a previous expedition. What they find is the key to human identity.

Loaded with special effects, "Mission to Mars" is rated PG-13. 1 1 Andy Garcia hosts the "Latin Grammy Awards" tonight on Channel 4. rv 9y ywf H1 vJb i iS-W'.