The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 131

I ENTERTAINMENTTHE ARTSTV LISTINGS SECTION CA1 NBA! THURSDAY Cos Anflctcs Stones NOVEMBER 9, 1989 HIGHLIGHTS For Top-Secret Narration, Call Charlton Heston Security: For six years the actor has held the nation's highest clearance to enable him to narrate classified films and videotapes. lT rr it s-s I I .1 i 1 ir I ij ii By ALLAN PARACHINI TIMES STAFF WRITER In a rare glimpse inside the defense Establishment's relationship with Hollywood, the U.S. Department of Energy has acknowledged that actor Charlton Heston has for six years held the nation's highest-level nuclear weapons security clearance to enable him to narrate classified films and videotapes. Heston's latest hush-hush video production "Trust but Verify" was completed earlier this year. Heston has worked on six highly classified productions, the Energy Department said.

Former President and actor Ronald Rea Gerre Edinger and Emi Canyn of the Sex, Mud GREG ALLEN band She-Rok go into their act as cameraman Steve Conant records the scene. and Rock 'n'Roll gan also holds an active Energy Department clearance, as the advanced classification is officially called. clearances are held by more than 28,000 Energy Department. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and defense-contractor Charlton Heston employees involved in nuclear Television: A spectacle that combines female mud wrestling, a heavy-metal rock concert and a game show is being touted as an attempt to expand the boundaries of pay-per-view television. weapons Hogan seriousness.

Beyond the mud pit, wearing a headset peach halter top and black bicycle shorts, is film director Penelope Spheeris, who is orchestrating the action. The wrestlers, the audience and Jessica Hahn are all part of a pay-per-view TV event some would consider it a pay-per-view experiment that is being taped for telecast on cable systems Friday. The show, referred to as both "Thunder and Mud" and the contraction "Thud" by its makers, is a combination female mud wrestling act heavy-metal rock concert game show with some comedy bits thrown in. Perhaps in the future, the rules of "Thud" will be common knowledge. But fleas see F12 programs, according to the department The department said Reagan simply retained the clearance status he gained as President Heston's clearance, originally issued in February, 1983, is up for routine, periodic renewal, an Energy Department spokesman said.

A rating is equivalent to the highest levels of top-secret clearance in the military. Neither Reagan nor Heston can simply walk into the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and ask, for instance, to read through the assembly manual for hydrogen-bomb triggers. The Energy De-Fleas see HESTON, F7 TOP SECRET: The U.S. Department of Energy confirmed that actor Charlton Heston has held the nation's top nuclear weapons security clearance since 1983 to narrate classified films and videos. Ft EASTERN ANNEX: LJL's Louver Gallery of Venice has become bicoastal with the opening of a New York gallery in SoHo.

part of a growing tendency in the art world to think in global, not simply regional terms. Response to the first show, a museum-quality exhibition of '80s sculpture by Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, has been "tremendous," said Sean F. Kelly, director of the N.Y. gallery'. Fl CRITIC AT LARGE: Kenneth Branagh.

the wonderlad of English theater, started his own acting company at 26, did his autobiography at 27 and at 28 has written, directed and stars in a film of "Henry that is drawing raves. Charles Champlin reports. Fl TELEVISION: Some people will call it exploitative, some will call it dumb, but "Thunder and Mud," a combination of female mud wrestling, rock concert and game show was designed to expand the boundaries of pay-per-view TV. Fl MORE ON ABC Entertainment President Robert Iger defended the cancellation of "Chicken Soup" by explaining that the Jackie Mason sitcom was failing to hold enough of the "Roseanne" viewers and that too many of those it was retaining fell outside the demo-graphically desirable age range of 18 to 49. F2 L.A.

HONORS: Eli Broad, Gordon Davidson, Ernest Fleischmann, Bella Lewitzky and Robert Wise will today receive the first Los Angeles Honors, presented by the Los Angeles Arts Council. F2 NAACP AWARDS: Oprah Winfrey was named Image Award entertainer of the year, and Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis and Sammy Davis Jr. were chosen for the Image Award Hall of Fame. The awards were announced by the Beverly Hills-Hollywood Chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

F3 PHILHARMONIC: Cellist Lynn Han-ell is looking forward to hearing the Elegy for String Orchestra at tonight's LA. Philharmonic concert It was written by Samuel Adler as a tribute to Han-ell's mother, who was killed in an auto accident in 1962. STAGE WATCH: Things are really cooking. Not only is Kenneth Branagh bringing his Renaissance Theatre Company to the Taper, but an exceptional "Peer Gynt" from the Hartford Stage may be part of the 1990-91 season. F8 Review MAGIC MEAN STREETS: "Sidewalk Stories," an audacious, black-and-white, Chaplinesque silent film, is a tender three-way love story: street artist, abandoned toddler, compassionate shopkeeper.

Charles Lane, its debuting writer-director-producer-and-actor, may be a discovery equal to Spike Lee; his portrait of life on New York's meanest streets in wintertime is an eloquent accomplishment. Reviewed by Sheila Benson. Fl QUOTABLE "Darling, they've absolutely ruined your perfectly dreadful play." TaBulaii Bnkhd to Tennessee Wams. after the preview of the version of "Orpheus Descending." from Peter Hay's just-puMsned "Broadway Anecdotes." INDEX white silent-film era in "Sidewalk Stories." A microphone is in her hand, a pit of mud at her feet "Slipping and sliding for She-Rok." Hahn yells, "is Quisha." Quisha. in a skimpy two-piece outfit comes bounding out from behind the stage curtains and steps into the mud pit where she faces the equally under-dressed Leslie.

Leslie, who the crowd is told represents the heavy metal band Young Gunns, promptly splashes a drink in Quisha's face. The women lock into combat and plop into the mud with Hulk Tougher World pure, distinctive vision. And now, with the magical "Sidewalk Stories" (opening Friday at the AMC Century 14), we can add Charles Lane, who has had the audacity to make a black-and-white silent movie and make it in the face of today's shamelessly callous values, with a brimming heart and an activist's outraged passion. Lane, the film's producer, writer, director, co-editor and central figure, plays a character Chaplin would recognize. Called only the Artist he's a bashful, ingenious Greenwich Village street portraitist, scuffling to get by in the breath-defining New York winter.

The physically small Lane is part of a collection of street performers tap-danc-FIcam set F13 A show of Kienholz works opens if? Jlku 1 1 ByJEFFKAYE TIMES STAFF WRITER Jessica Hahn, the living link between Jim Bakker and Sam Kinison. is standing onstage in the Park Plaza Hotel ballroom, a hairy crowd of leathered headbangers seated in the bleachers on her right A more subdued, straight-looking crowd William Morris agents and the like are seated to her left MOVIE REVIEW Little Tramp in By SHEILA BENSON TIMES FILM CRITIC The emergence of original, outstanding directing talent is always exciting. It's a hint that film may get a transfusion of lifeblood richer than the anemic reconstituted stuff trickling in from Movie of the Week directors or sleek MTV stylists. Authentic talents make their mark from the first: Spike Lee was someone to watch after "Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads," as is Terence Da vies after "Distant Voices. SUU Lives." Jim Sheridan, of "My Left Foot" is clearly a writer-director of intelligence and bracing unsentimentality and Jane Campion whose stunner, "Sweetie," will be here before long has a CRITIC AT LARGE TheWellesian Success of Citizen Branagh By CHARLES CHAMPLIN TIMES ARTS EDITOR To film Shakespeare's "Henry when Laurence Olivier's 1944 version is revered as a classic seemed an audacity bordering on madness.

But the blazing review: that Kenneth Branagh's "Henry IT is receiving here and abroad suggest that Branagh has not only brought it off. but in so doing has extended his reputation as a fearless wonder child whose equal the English theater has not seen. Branagh (rhymes with manna, as from heaven) has inevitably been compared with Olivier himself, to Branagh's impatience. "It's essentially meaningless," Branagh said at lunch in Los Angeles during a quick visit for the local opening of his film. "We are nothing like each other.

He is the greatest actor of the century. The comparison," Branagh adds with a quick grin, "is annoying to people who don't like my work, and also to those who expect the Second Coming." Branagh might more accurately be compared with Orson Welles, although his flamboyance does not extend to capes and riea BRANAGH, F4 a Charles Lane harks back to the black and Louver Gallery New York. A Opens Art: setting up The move the marketplace By SUZANNE TIMES ART WRITER NEW made galleries Louver Gallery Louver opened in sculpture from Kienholz. Is this a dealers aren't the move art world" hothouse. As international under one roof mobile, many one city, if not Peter Goulds, Kelly, director making reaching across will run both York providing while LA.

Merchant of Venice Shop in N.Y. Louver Gallery goes bicoastal by an outpost in the heart of SoHo. indicates a tendency to think of in more global terms. MUCHNIC YORK Los Angeles' seaside art scene has a splash in Manhattan. While Eastern open outposts in Santa Monica, L.A.

of Venice has gone bicoastal Gallery New York, in the heart of SoHo. October with a museum-quality show of the "80s by Edward and Nancy Reddin trend? Not in the obvious sense. Los Angeles lining up to rent New York spaces, but indicates a growing tendency to think of "the in global terms and not as a New York art fairs assemble far-flung galleries and the art market becomes increasingly dealers establish themselves in more than more than one country. owner of the two Louvers, and Sean F. of the New York gallery, talk about European connections through New York and the Pacific from Los Angeles.

Traffic ways, they say. with Louver Gallery New a forum for some Los Angeles artists Louver continues to include British and Please see GALLERY, F3 nM- II A 1 Morning Report F2 Radio F10 TV: Tonight's schedule. Fll Video Charts F2.