The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 79

On Movies By Steven Rea Old-Time Market Fair 'Rounders' shows the hand of authenticity 'fn v. -J in imuuil ua "Tv ounders is set in the world of big-stakes poker, from I i muies ui nuanuc I I 'ty t0 clandestine Bam LI V-k bling dens in New York. The At 4 I on the art-house hit Buffalo 66, has an interview in the new issue of Transportation Alternatives. Here's a snippet of what the Renaissance Man and long-time Schwinn rider opined to the bicycle-and-pedestrian advocacy mag out of New York: "The good thing about bicycling is that, since I'm a public figura, I don't have to interact with people. If I walk from here to West Broadway, 50 people will stop me.

On my bike, I can just wave. More public figures should ride bikes. It's a good way to deal with people." On another front, Gallo has been in Los Angeles this summer, recording an album with fellow actormusician Lukas Haas. The band's called Bunny, and the album's going out on Work, the label Fiona Apple records for. "It's really unguarded, which means that it's very under-produced, very under-orchestrated, very penta-tonic; it isn't traditional song structure," Gallo explained a couple of argot is thick with stuff like "berry patch" (an easy game) and "three stacks of high society" (the highest denomination chip in play), the characters have names like Worm (a hopped-up Edward Norton) and Teddy KGB (an Oreo-crunching John Malko-vich), and people meet under bridges in the middle of the night, just as they do in old noir movies.

But one thing you won't see a whole lot of in director John Dahl's atmospheric yarn is close-ups showing off the players' cards. "I looked at a couple of scenes from movies where they had photographed cards, and I realized how incredibly uninteresting that was," says the director, best known for his indie double play, Red Rock West and The Last Seduction. "I thought I just don't want to see that." i 'J ...4 i 'i i tarriage rides offer a taste of transportation colonial-style the Pennsbury Manor Fair. "Rounders," a story about Matt Damon and Famke Janssen star in underground, high-stakes poker. Delaware River.

Billy Perm's plantation Pennsbury is a 43-acre estate on the banks of the Delaware River near Tullytown; The complex includes the re-created 17th-century home of William Penn and 15 outbuildings, among them a brew house, a joiner's workshop, a smithy, barns and a servant's cottage. Two period gardens also line the site, one for edible and medicinal plants, and one for flowers. And roaming about the area are several breeds of farm animals -Romney sheep, Devon cattle, guinea fowl and peacocks. The details The 16th Pennsbury Manor Fair will take place from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and next Sunday, rain or shine.

Admission is $6, $5 for seniors, and $4 for students ages 6 through 17, with a maximum charge of $15 per family. Parking is free. The manor is located at 400 Pennsbury Memorial Rd. Call 21 5-946-0400. For 17th-century snnsylvanians, the fall har-vast marked an end to the heavy labor of summer farming.

With the crops gathered, farmers and their families traveled to the annual fall market fair for trade and socializing. It was a time to sell, buy, and themselves. Rustic recreation Pennsbury Manor in Bucks this weekend will undergo its annual transformation into a colonial market fair. The two-day festival will feature traditional arts displays, hands-on farm activities, live music, and demonstrations of hearthside cooking. Antique reproductions, herbs and foodstuffs will be sold at stalls patterned after those in old prints and drawings.

Hawkers will mingle among the crowds, Jelling old-time items such as rfiouth harps and herbal remedies. For youngsters, there will be jugglers, a colonial dance-master, and Tuckers Tales Puppet Theater. Fairgoers can also visit an American Indian encampment along the months back. "We're playing very subtly and singing very subtly. It's certainly the best music that I've ever done in my life by a lot, and I've been in some cool bands.

I mean, I did music with Jean-Michel Basquiat that was really interesting, but Lukas is certainly the most productive relationship I've ever had with anybody musically." And remember: More public figures should ride bikes. Philly film stuff. Local casting maven Kathy Wick-line is sponsoring a "Cast and Crew Conference' from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Saturday at Dave Buster's on Delaware Avenue. The event, proceeds of which will go to the Sharon Pinkenson Film Project and the Big Picture Alliance, is geared to area folks whc work in or want to work in film and television, either in front of the camera or behind it.

The conference's panelists hail from all walks, including casting agents, production designers, music scorers, location scouts and whatevers. Tickets are S40 in advance, S50 at the door, $25 for students with a valid ID. (Students with phony or expired IDs will be charged double!) Information and reservations: 215-739-9952. Speaking of Sharon Pinkenson, the Greater Philadelphia Film Office's execu tive director has announced a new free-cops policy for film and video productions shooting in the city That is, Philadelphia will provide up to three police officers at no charge for traffic control and security on film and video shoots. Previously, off-duty offi cers accepted such assignments and the production companies were billed at an overtime rate.

The new policy is one of several steps Pinkenson and Mayoi Rendell have taken to make the city more attractive to film and video productions. Instead, Dahl looked to some other pictures for points of reference. He watched The Hustler, the Paul Newman pool-hall classic, because the Rounders script, by newcomers David Levien and Brian Koppelman, reminded him of it. He watched Midnight Cowboy, because the friendship between Dustin Hoffman's Ratso and Jon Voight's Joe Buck had a similar dynamic to that of the characters played by Matt Damon and Norton. "And Searching for Bobby Fischer I loved the way they showed the passion for a game.

And there was this other New York movie called Little Odessa, with Tim Roth I liked the way it was photographed, New York in the wintertime. And that was kind of the extent of my film vocabulary on this one." In Rounders, Damon plays Mike McDermott, a law student with a talent for poker reading the cards and, more important, reading the guys holding the cards. He's living with a fellow student (Vanity Fair "It" girl Gretchen Mol) and paying his tuition with earnings from his poker wins. And then his old pal Worm is released from prison, and McDermott's life is upended. "The guys who had written it really knew this world, and so rather than inventing it or making it up, you could actually go look at it," says Dahl, who was guided through a few of New York's underground card clubs where "you're buzzed in on video camera" and people are playing for serious, serious money.

"There was so much enthusiasm about what they were writing, and there was so much authenticity, that I think all of us were inspired by that," he says. The filmmaker and his brother Rick Dahl the two cowrote Red Rock West and rewrote the Ray Liotta Linda Fiorentino thriller Unforgettable have a couple of other things in the works, including Black Out, a neo-noir thing set in Nevada. That project was put on hold when the actor Dahl thought he had for the lead dropped out, and Dahl decided to do Rounders instead. "Black Out is a little like Red Rock," he says, referring to his deliciously nasty tale of deceit, double-dealing and murder. "I'm eager to get going on it, but, you know, I've got to find an actor first.

It's that pesky casting problem." Film clips. Sept. 21 is the start date for The Sixth Sense, the Disney production that will bring Bruce Willis, Toni Collette (the Muriel of Muriei's Wedding), Olivia Williams (The Postman), and Haley Joel Osment to town. Scripted and to be directed by local-ite M. Night Shyamalan, The Sixth Sense is about a troubled young boy (Osment, the young Forrest in Forrest Gump) who appears to have paranormal abilities.

Willis is the psychotherapist treating the kid, and Collette plays the kid's mom. Willis was last seen in this neck o' the woods (professionally speaking) doing Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys Steven Spielberg has cast the lead in his next pic, an adaptation of the Arthur Golden novel Memoirs of a Geisha, set to start shooting in the new year. Rika Okamoto, formerly principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company but pretty much an unknown in film and theater circles, has nabbed the part of Nitta Sayuri, the renowned geisha whose tale of childhood slavery and erotic servitude is at the heart of Golden's book. Celebrity cycling. Self-described hustler Vincent Gallo.

who also served as star, writer, director, composer and dress-designer I ft. A fl if- 41 t- II i iiABHANN PRODUCTIONS PR ESENTS (JSL i rr;" he sh oy a i 5 ''ff j. BILL WHELAN POD'JCSD 6Y MOYA DOHERTY ''TRIUMPHANT! A PERFECT GEMI AN ENTERTAINMENT MAMMOTH!" NW TO ft (c posr "A FAMILY EVENING UNLIKE ANYTHING ELSE!" THE TIMES, tONOON DlStCTEO BY JOHN McCOLGAN A SPECTACULAR FUSION OF SONG AND DANCE, CELEBRATING IRELAND AND THE WORLD BEYOND! 15 PERFORMANCES ONLY! SEPTEMBER 9-20 The Mann Center for the Performing Arts nfrfffTTlYTfrftlT This exhibition was organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Ad and the Reunion des Musees Natwnaux. The exhibition has been supported in part byElfAtochem North America, Inc. Additional support was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Robert Montgomery Scott Endowment for Exhibitions, the National Endowment for the Arts, and an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts.and the Humanities.

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