Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • Page 45

Op 730pm 57 EIGHT TO THE BAR TOWN HALL WESTHARTFORD FIVE O'CLOCK SHADOW IMMANUEL CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH HARTFORD TO OUR KNOWLEDGE. NOTHING ON THIS PAGE WAS WRITTEN BY CLAIRE GAUDIANI. THE HARTFORD COURANT FR1DA MAY 5, XOO SECTION Charlie, Emilio Taking Chances debauched and oddly inspired career in adult filmmaking had a Cain and Abel ending. The real insanity, it would seem, came before Showtime gave the made-for-TV movie the green light. What would possess siblings Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen to team up for this cinematic journey into the heart of darkness a Sodom and Gomorrah world from which Sheen himself had barely emerged.

With barely a year of sobriety under his belt after a very public history of drug and alcohol abuse and wild behavior that painfully paralleled the excesses of his character, Sheen was, at best, tempting fate. "We hadn't worked together for 10 years, and we hadn't really even thought about working together," says Estevez, 37, sitting in the shade of a poolside cabana at a Westwood hotel. "In fact, why DID we work together?" he asks Sheen, 34, the younger of the two brothers but a man whose lifestyle has clearly aged him. Tm still trying to figure it out," says Sheen, slyly grinning through the smoke of a newly lit Marlborough. Their father, actor Martin Sheen, star of NBC's "The West Wing" and a parent who had his son arrested a couple of years ago in an attempt to save him from self-destruction, was anything but supportive this time around.

"He didn't want us to do the movie," says Estevez, who directed. "He begged me, BEGGED me, 'Don't take Charlie down this road. Don't do it to yourself. No good can come of He was terrified." Showtime had its doubts, too, but they were mostly about Estevez as director. GOTOD2 JAMES ENDRST ONTV LOS ANGELES On a lot of levels, "Rated is pure madness.

It's not just the true-life story of porn kings Artie and Jim Mitchell, whose Maximum Flows The Red In With The Muscled Russell Crowe SPKSHEN HARTFORD Capturing The Boss' Spirit Of 78 Kj-- iv I I i I A JT A. 1 a By ROGER CATLIN Courant Rock Critic Amid the power and the drive of 1978's "Darkness at the Edge of Town" tour by Bruce Springsteen the Street Band, there was also some innocence. It was before the Top 10 hits. Before the arenas. Before the supers tardom.

It wasn't exactly before color. But it feels that way. "In the heart of many of Bruce's most devoted fans, they see those days in black and white," says photographer Lynn Goldsmith, who documented the tour as a journalist and who also happened to be Springsteen's girlfriend at the time. "Looking back, it feels more like a black-and-white movie," she says. So although she photographed the "Darkless" tour in color as well as black GO TODS 7 A "I JAAP BUITENDIJK DREAMWORKS RUSSELL CROWE as Maximus perfects the art of killing as he seeks revenge for the slaughter of his family in Ridley Scott's epic movie "Gladiator." ft iji TV MM 1 1 li ft fl 11 5 il A it ti 13-0 2 t3S vj if hi I haiL Maximus.

Unlike many of its predecessors, this is not a tale of decadent pagans and spiritual Christians. Maximus By MALCOLM JOHNSON Courant Film Critic Computer-graphic imaging resurrects the grandeur that was Rome in "Gladiator," an epic that strides like a giant, from the victories of legions in the dark forests of Germania to the battles-to-the-death in the sun-drenched Colosseum. LYNN GOLDSMITH THE BOSS on the street during his 1978 tour, a moment chronicled in a new book of photographs by Lynn Goldsmith. lives in hope of an afterlife, but his strength comes from household gods, not a crucifix. The Gen.

Maximus and later "The Spaniard," did not exist Unlike Spartacus, the slave who became a gladiator and led a revolt Maximus was invented for the movies. But Ridley Scott's overlong yet always gripping depiction of a plot against an insane young emperor draws on history. Covering more or less the same ground as Anthony Mann's 1964 "The Fall of the Roman Empire," Scott's collaboration with David Franzoni and two other screenwriters begins with a dizzyingly staged battle against the less well-armed barbarians, to a pounding revision of Hoist's "Mars" from "The Planets." Rome GOTOD7 SCREENSCENE Such magnitude demands a heroically proportioned star, 11 11 general-tumed-gladiator fights with a vengeance, heedless of death because he would welcome it Maximus is a nonsectarian, existential hero. The bull-shouldered, stoic fighter acted with depth and force by the Australian actor who put on pounds, known first as I i -4 man, muscled but mournful and quietly spiritual. All Dressed "East Is East" Two cultures clash within a British family.

"East-West" Hitchcockian suspense in Stalin's U.S.S.R. "I.D." An African king, out of his element "I Dreamed of Africa" Beautiful setting, star, but dramatically dreadful. Please stt reviews, Page D6 bloodbath after another. And after each vicious bout ancient precursors to TVs cheesy "American Gladiators" (call it "Smackdown 180A.D.") Crowe emerges looking even more glorious than before. Buff, brooding beefcake.

One gets the sense that the ecstatic Colosseum crowds go ga ga not because they've GOTOD7 yours. And, fella, it doesn't hurt to show a little leg. That's showbiz! So Crowe's Maximus does just that He puts on a show flashing meaty gams and bounteous biceps lopping off heads, severing limbs and disemboweling dozens of lesser opponents at a pop. For some Vegasy thrills, he even slays a man-eating tiger twice his size. So goes "Gladiator," one savage By GREG MORAGO Courant Staff Writer "Win the crowd, and youll win your freedom," afight-to-the-death ringmaster tells his reluctant hero in Ridley Scott's epic "Gladiator." In the world's most famous one-ring circus, the Colosseum the advice to gladiator Russell Crowe rings true: Win over the masses, and Rome is if i i I Si Charlton Heston in the 1959 blockbuster film "Ben-Hur." OHLINGERS JAVA: REVELRY ON THE RIVER, D2 CURTAIN: NOVELTY SONGS NOW MORE NOVEL THAN EVER, D3 DINNER AND A MOVIE? WE CAN HELP YOU CHOOSE ONLINE.

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