The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 243

1 LAST CHANCE Three art shows close today, work by SHARON ALLICOTTI, RANDY All, MARK CHAMBERLAIN, JERRY DOWNS and RAY JACOB at Irvine Valley College (714 559-3277); paintings by DORIS BITTAR at Fullerton College (714 992-7317) and work by BONNIE GOTTLIEB SIMPSON at' Cypress College (714 826-5593). Zl Cos Angeles tmes orange county SECTION FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 1995 irawSr 1 Pig Races, Ugly Dogs Are Fine But Music Is the Draw Festivals: Former Bogart's talent buyer Steve Zepeda has raised the entertainment profile of this weekend's BeachFest in Long Beach. Sunday, raises money for more than 70 local organizations along with Beach Charities' own programs. Those include education and retraining for the homeless and the Santa Paws program, which provides pets and care for children and low-income seniors. Music always has been a part of the festival which this year also includes beauty contests, a car show, an "Adventure Island," rides, arts and crafts but previ- ously it was a hodgepodge with little quality control, said Dyer.

"I'm almost 50 years old and I know a lot about ugly dogs and chili," she said, "but with rock 'n' roll, I can't tell a good band from a bad one." Enter Steve Zepeda, best known as the respected, chance-taking talent buyer of Bogart's, the Long Beach venue that closed in late 1993. Hard as the loss of that club Please see FEST, F16 50,000 to BeachFest in Long Beach last year? "It's the music. It's the draw," said Beach Charities director Shame Dyer without equivocation. Now in its 14th year, BeachFest '95, to be held at Shoreline Park on Saturday and By JIM WASHBURN SPECIAL TO THE TIMES LONG BEACH Pig races have their place, a chili cook-off is fine, and who could fail to love an ugly-dog contest? But what was it that brought a crowd of 1 AY WJ- yJfr. JAMES BRIDGES Barbet Schroeder and starring "NYPD Blue's" David Caruso in his first post-stardom movie role, "Kiss" is not after dispassionate admiration.

Its depiction of fallible characters whipsawed by pitiless antagonists on both sides of the law is wrenching to experience, and that is as it should be but hardly ever is. As noir fans will know at once, "Kiss of Death" takes its title from a 1947 film Please see F10 if HIGHLIGHTS IT'S THE MUSIC: BeachFest in Long Beach really got cooking when former Bogart's booker Steve Ze-peda started putting together the musical lineup. Fl. The complete list of performers. F16 ON THE MONEY: David Caruso, Nicolas Cage and Samuel L.

Jackson star in "Kiss of Death," a pitilessly effective modern film noir. Kenneth Turan reviews. Fl SWEET DREAM: "While You Were Sleeping," starring Sandra Bullock, is an amiable, harmless confection about a lovelorn woman who pretends to be a comatose man's fiancee. Peter Rainer reviews. Fl TV REMEDY: There are too many loose ends in the well-acted "The Cure," about two 11 -year-old boys, one of whom has AIDS, and the entire film has the feeling it belongs on the tube rather than the big screen.

Kevin Thomas reviews. F7 AIR BALL: The movie version of Jim Carroll's cult classic "The Basketball Diaries" starring Leonardo PiCaprio is tedium itself. Reviewed by Kenneth Turan. F8 GEFFEN GIFT: Mogul David Geffen has given $5 million to UCLA's West wood Playhouse, which 'will be renamed after him. Theater leaders hope the gift signifies a new relationship between Hollywood and nonprofit theater.

F22 POINTS OF VIEW: "Faith Healer" is a living mystery because the nature of this play is not even so much a whodunit as a what-hap-pened," says playwright Barbara Damashek, who is directing the program of three monologues at South Coast Repertory. F28 DAVE GATLEY Los Angeles Times IRON MAN: Iron Butterfly's bassist and drummer revived the group which soared in 1968 with smash 1991. But it wasn't until 1994 that leader, singer and principal songwriter Doug Ingle, above, agreed to rejoin. They land tonight at the Coach House. F28 POP NOTES: "Noise for the Needy," Chapman University's fourth annual rock benefit for the homeless, has a date and a lineup.

Big Drill Car is disbanding. rocker Mike Conley, formerly of MIA and Naked Soul, is fronting a new trio called Jigsaw. Local rockers Trouble Dolls have renamed themselves Pinwheel. F28 Quotable lot of benefits are benefits only in the sense that the musicians aren't getting paid, while everyone else is the vendors and all involved. So I really scrutinize them." i-4hll Alvin, one of the musicians playing BeachFest.

Fl Index imp David Caruso, left, and Nicolas Cage star in "Kiss of Vivifying a difficult world of amorality. A Potent cKiss of Death' Caruso Lights Up a Shady World That Shows How Good Film Noir Can Be Some Errors as TV Races to Bomb Site HOWARD ROSENBERG TELEVISION Temporarily diverted from O.J. Simpson, they raced to Oklahoma like settlers taking possession of free acreage during the great land rush of 1889. From a Sacramento affiliates meeting came Connie Chung to anchor "The CBS Evening News" from Oklahoma City without Dan Rather, who was en route to Vietnam, which had its own carnage to memorialize. From New York came anchors Tom Brokaw Nightly Bryant Gumbel (NBC's Harry Smith This and Charles Gibson (ABC's "Good Morning Joining them was Geraldo Rivera, host of separate CNBC and syndicated talk shows, who Thursday issued this chilling promo: "I'm broadcasting live with the latest from Oklahoma City." Network correspondents poured in, too.

As did personnel from some of the nation's largest local stations, including KNBC-TV Channel 4, which jetted anchor Chuck Henry and reporter Gordon Tokumatsu t6 Oklahoma City on Wednesday afternoon. After touching ground, Henry got on the phone and checked in live during his" station's 4 p.m. newscast. Anchor Kelly Lange: "What is the mood of the people at this time?" Henry: "Actually, I just got here By Thursday morning, just about everyone had "just got there," and the whodunit speculation was already swirling like an Okie dust storm as observers began digging Please see ROSENBERG, F18 KLVE-FM Romances to the Top Radio: The Spanish-language station surges to the No. 1 spot while KNX-AM benefits from gavel-to-gavel Simpson coverage.

By CLAUDIA PUIG TIMES STAFF WRITER It is said that in spring, a young man's fancy turns to love. But, on the radio, a taste for love songs seems to have dominated the winter months, according to a local Arbitron ratings survey released Thursday. KLVE-FM (107.5), a Spanish -language station that recently retooled its format to focus heavily on romantic ballads, leapfrogged to the No. 1 spot during the period between Jan. 5 and March 29.

Spanish -language radio has been at the top of the Southern California charts for nearly three years, but, before this, KLAX-FM (97.9) had cornered the Span, ish-language market. time around, KLAX fell to third, suggesting that the Please see RATINGS, F27 By KENNETH TURAN TIMES FILM CRITIC The dark, twisty kingdom of film noir, a shadow world that leaks fatalism, pessimism and romantic despair, is the drug of choice for today's directors. Hardly a month passes without one filmmaker or another attempting a modern-day noir knockoff, so strong is the lure of this brooding While You Were Sleeping' a Sugary Romantic Comedy i 1 bad-guy genre. But it takes the arrival of a film as compelling as "Kiss of Death," one of the most effective neo-noirs, to underline why so many of the others haven't been able to go the distance. While most of the modern copies are content to mimic the surface moodiness of the classics, "Kiss of Death" duplicates their, emotional impact as well.

Written by Richard Price, directed by Gallagher), who shows up every day for the El. When he's rousted by muggers and left sprawling and unconscious on the tracks in the path of an oncoming train, Lucy rolls him to safety. Through a set of farcical complications in the hospital room, Lucy is mistaken for the comatose Peter's fiancee by his sprawling extended family, including his aptly named father, Ox (Peter Boyle), mother Midge (Micole Mercurio), Midge's mother Elsie (Glynis Johns) and long-term family friend Saul (Jack Warden). Because she has a tremendous ache to be a part of a chummy, contentious clan like the Callaghans, Lucy goes along with the ruse. Please see F14 THE BEST OF Seventeen -year-old Aussie Wunderkind Ben Lee had his solo debut album produced by Brad Wood (of Liz PhairVeruca Salt fame) and is on the Beastie Boys' Grand Royal label.

He makes his local debut Saturday at McCabe's in Santa Monica. ART: "Anne Frank In the World: A Leason In Tolerance," a photo-and-text exhibition at the Newport Harbor Art Museum through June 18, recreates the life and times of the Dutch Jewish teen-ager whose hiding place in Amsterdam was raided by the Gestapo in 1944. The diary she kept during the nearly two years she and her Sandra MICHAEL P. WEINSTE1N Bullock, Bill Pullman: An amiable pair. By PETER RAINER TIMES STAFF WRITER The amiable, methodically inoffensive "While You Were Sleeping" opens with a woman's honey-colored childhood memories of her deceased father but, even when the memories have faded into the present day, the honey continues to flow.

It's a movie about the warm feeling you get when you belong to a family, and, throughout, the thermostat is turned up high. Lucy (Sandra Bullock), who lives by herself, plus cat, has no family of her own. She works inside a token booth for the Chicago Transit Authority and moons over a handsome yuppie-ish exec, Peter Callaghan (Peter POP MUSIC: British rocker Graham Parker is back with a new album Haunted a new band (The Episodes) and a new tour showcasing both. He plays Saturday at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano. Folk-blues-jazz guitarist Pat Donohue brings his fleet work on the acoustic guitar to Shade Tree Stringed Instruments in Laguna Niguel tonight.

There's a large dose of Louisiana in L.A. tonight as Andri Thierry A Zydeco Magic play the Culver City Masonic Hall and C.J. Chenler (son of the late Zydeco king Clifton Chenier) rocks the Alligator Lounge in Santa Monica. THE WEEKEND family lived in the "secret annex" published in a fuller version this year has long been a classic. The exhibition includes more than 500 photographs, facsimiles of the diary and a model of her hiding place.

JAZZ: No matter which side of the jazz fence you sit on straight ahead or fusionthere's a saxophonist playing this weekend to meet your tastes. Brandon Fields, a sax man with an assertive, contemporary style, previews a new album Saturday at Randell's in Santa Ana. Then cool-toned, bop-inspired tenor man Gordon Brisker leads a combo Sunday at Spaghetti- ni in Seal Beach. True jazz fans probably 1 will want to catch both. You can hear the depth of experience, gained from stints with Art Blakely.

Thelonious Monk, Eddie (Lockjaw) Davis and others, when Chica go-born saxophonist Johnny Griffin takes up his tenor. Griffin's quartet, with drummer Kenny Washington, plays the Jazz Bakery in Culver City tonight through Sunday. The hot horn of trumpeter and Grammy winner Arturo Sandoval heats up Catalina Bar Grill in Hollywood tonight through Sunday. Please see WEEKEND, F23 Morning Report F2 Wfiat Goes On F28 Movie Guide F29 Openings F32 Radio F32 TVa Tonight's schedule F33 TV-Tips F33.