The Gazette du lieu suivant : Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 40

2 THE GAZETTE, MONTREAL, SUNDAY, JUNE 4, 1995 ravo oi mdour on lasDDiel opens video amou paintings I he classiest drama on the schedule tonight can be found in an unlikely spot on the TV be reasonable to expect that members of the troupe spend the 20 years since wearing dresses, nailing fljr-rots to their perches and screeching in falsetto. There were Python movies. Cleese went on to theiii-comparable Fawlty Towers. Eric Idle hung out with dial. Picture Windows, a series of six short films inspired by paintings and featuring top- ture Windows will be seen on the Showtime cable network in the U.S.

Picture Windows begins tonight at 8 on Bravo. mum While CTV telecasts Dick Tracy, a 5-year-old box-office stiff, Bravo warms up a late spring night with some honest-to-gosh original programming. And Picture Windows is on every Sunday for six weeks -plenty of time for you deprived Videotron inmates to find an open door and a warm TV set in CFCableland. The Picture Windows debut is Soir Bleu. Edward Hopper's de -notch directors and marquee stars, makes its debut on Bravo.

Bravo?" ask the befuddled inmates of the Videotron Gulag. The specialty channel is not available on Montreal's largest cable system. But if you're a CF Cable subscriber, you're laughing. And the laughter is particularly full-bellied tonight, because Bravo is offering a television premiere. "Stick close to your desks and V.

never go to sea and you all may be MIKE BOONE TV RADIO au.wo vy int. yuvvn 1 1 This keen observation still apt 1 00 years after W.S. Gilbert wrote it can be heard on the radio to morrow morning when Stuart McLean launches another summer season of the Vinyl Cafe. Every Monday at 1 1 a.m. and 8 p.m., McLean invites CBC Radio listeners to sample the wares of the Vinyl Cafe, a record store that "still has the audacity to sell records," where the proud corporate ethos is: we may not be big, but we're small.

McLean's debut broadcast segues from Harry Nils-son to Gilbert Sullivan to the host's reminiscences of singing in a hotel at at the age of 5 to Mahalia Jackson singing Onward Christian Soldiers. Whew! And that's all within the first 15 minutes of Stuart McLean at the Vinyl Cafe. Within the hour we hear the Supremes sing Rodgers Hart and lots of other interesting tunes, plus the wry commentary of the host. McLean is smart, funny, whimsical and just a delight on the radio: an un-fey Jurgen Gothe, with no cat stories and a hipper playlist. So stick close to your radio, and tune CBC and that's about as cute as I want to be.

Stuart McLean at the Vinyl Cafe begins its season this morning at 11:05 on CBM-940. The show will be on again tonight at 8. ueorge Harrison. And Jones read history or at least a bit of it. In explaining the genesis of The Crusades, hich begins on tomorrow, Jones said that Stephen Runciman's definitive three-volume history of the Crusades has occupied a chunk of the bookshelf in his study since 1 964.

Jones claims he has read 20 pages of it, a dabbling that constituted sufficient expertise for the British Broadcasting Corporation to come calling, pitching a television series. The result is "the Crusades as you've never seen them." A Pythonesque travelogue of the Mideast That's a safe bet if only because we've never seen the Crusades on television. In plundering history for dramatic fodder, few producers consider 900-year-old stories in which the heroes wear iron face masks (L)pn Cherry would have hated the Crusades.) Jones and the BBC team have put a bit of Pythonesque spin on the Crusades. The hostnarrator dresses up in armor and wanders around locales that were important, beginning with Istanbul, which vas Constantinople after it had been Byzantium. Pilgrims in Arms, the first episode of The Crusades, begins in 1 095.

Byzantine Emperor Alexis is becoming antsy about the Turks, a central Asian tribe who have recently converted to Islam. Seeking armed assistance to keep the heathen aVtiayi, Emperor Alexis writes to Pope Urban II. The letter provides a pretext for the realization of the pontjfCs own political ambitions. The pope raises an army that marches across Europe (slaughtering Jews en route) to the relief of Constantinople. And so begins the epic struggle between Christianity and Islam a clash of cultures that resonates today.

The Crusades spans 200 years of intrigue and bloodshed. Jones and his collaborators combine meticulous scholarship (and scrupulous objectivity: Islam gets a fair shake here) with cutting-edge television-production techniques to create four hours of historyCttiat zoom by at the pace of a Monty Python sketch. The Crusades begins tomorrow at 9 p.m. on The series continues, in 60-minute episodes, ntgtttfy through Thursday. piction of a pensive circus clown comes to life in a vignette directed by Norman Jewison.

The cast includes Alan Arkin and Dan He- daya. Although Hopper provides the visual jumping-off point (the painting dissolves to Arkin, in greasepaint), Soir Bleu's story is based on Pagliacci. The tragic opera (to which Smokey Robinson alludes in Tears of a Clown, Miracles fans) gets a contemporary reworking in a nasty love triangle involving Tully the Clown, Carl the wicked circus manager (the perennially terrifying Hedaya, guzzling vodka and raging in a Vat vass dat? accent) and Lola the Trapeze Temptress (Rosan-naDeSoto). Abuse and jealousy: no funny mix Carl abuses Lola, his wife, and is insanely jealous. Hedaya, who played a paranoid loon during the debut season of NYPD Blue, hasn't been this scary since Blood Simple.

But Arkin steals the show. He underplays the clown role to great effect; viewers will actually ache for this poor old guy, even though Tully's doom is foretold in Soir Bleu's opening tableau. There's more interesting work to come over the next several weeks of Picture Windows. The Picture Windows series features work by directors Peter Bog-danovich (Song of Songs, based on Botticelli's La Pri-mavera), Bob Rafelson (David Hockney's Pool with Two Figures becomes Armed Response) and John Boorman (Two Nudes Bathing, adapted from Gabrielle d'Estrees and one of her sisters). Casts of the six dramas include George Segal, Brooke Adams, Sally Kirkland, Brian Keith, Ron Perlman, John Hurt, Robert Loggia and Michael Lerner.

What's all this high-priced talent doing on a humble Canadian cable network that's only been on the air six months? The Bravo telecasts are part of a bigger picture. Pic $lLr "fSsIf All And now for something completely different: Terry Jones as host of a four-part historical documentary series. There he is on the cover of this week's TV Times: Jones, the former comic, looking characteristically sardonic in his costume of medieval chain mail. But The Crusades is no spoof, and Jones is on TV this week in a new role: pedagogue. And why not? Another Monty Python's Flying Circus alumnus, Michael Palin, has been doing light-hearted travelogues for PBS.

And John Cleese is a pitchman for home electronics. After creating 45 brilliant half-hours of TV comedy, the Flying Circus folded its tent in 1974. It would not Alan Arkin stars as Tully the Clown In Soir Bleu, a video take-off of an Edward Hopper painting. I0SPE1ERE Fuller felt world revealed secrets to naked eye TV TONIGHT World of Disney (CBMT-6 at 6): Stick With Me, Kid mystery. Nature (Vermont ETV-33 at Ghost Bear.

Pole to Pole (WCFE-57 at" 8): Michael Palin's journey concludes; Tony Awards (WCAX-3 aV: 9): Broadway salutes its best. Larry King 10th Anniversasy (CNN at 9): An hour of clips and reminiscences. Celtic Celebration (Channel 5 7,, at Performers include Clannad and Frances Black. Passionate Eye (Newsworld at Dream Girls looks at Japanese music hall stars. i No Time for Tears (Channel 33-at 10): Nurses remember Vietnam war.

Great Canadian Parks (Discover at 10): Series Clannad: Past Present (Channel 57 at Bono guest stars. Siskel Ebert (CJOH-8 at The career of Quentin Tarantino. seum. After the long voyage through sombre rooms bathed in the glow of TV screens, the burst of natural light comes somewhat as a surprise. The view into the distance is fantastic, and the intricate patterns of Fuller's trusses seen from up close are equally awesome.

The gleaming metal is solid, yet seemingly thin as gossamer. Indeed, the crucial question is how many people will make the trip to the former Expo site to use computers that increasingly can be accessed from home. Though fundamentally flawed, the Biosphere is laudable for giving ecology real visibility. And the museum must be credited for resurrecting a structure that Fuller's daughter, Allegra Fuller Snyder, says was "loved by my CONTINUED FROM PAGE F1 forget about the very real river just outside and to gravitate toward TV screens. The rooms themselves are very, closed and boxy, reminding us that during Expo, Fuller the Guru of the Circle, was not allowed to have full say about iffti interior.

Have the planners been too afraid of rocking the boat to wet their hands and tackle real, here-and-now issues? Daniel Green of the Societe Pour Vaincre la Pollution claims the Biosphere has "reduced thejife forces of the world into a video arcade." He is certainly right in sensing that, at this museum, the balance between information and immediate reality is skewed. How can we stay, squinting into a computer when behind us is the actual river? Fuller himself felt the world would reveal its secrets to the naked eye. if only we would look long enough. Probably, said Green, the primary lesson any of us can learn concerning water and pollution is that every single drop in the sink, toilet or sewer, will end up in the St. Lawrence, for Montreal still doesn't have adequate filtration plants.

For the Biosphere to drive home this point. Green has suggested that water be diverted from the river into the museum. Ironically, the cantilevered interior structures of the museum already recall Frank Lloyd Wright's celebrated Falling Water, a house built in and over a waterfall. Once in the museum, the water could be regularly and publicly analyzed for pollution. These measures, worth consider ing, might make the museum more "activist." But, according to Richard Dube, executive director of the Biosphere, "this would require turning the place into a laboratory." "There are laboratories elsewhere for this.

With the facilities we have, we're not ready to do this." In all fairness, the current Biosphere does offer some delights and potential delights. There is the wonderful little atrium, a place for meditation, on ground level; and there are the refreshing wall-texts and other explanations in which poetry and prose are allowed to flow nicely into one another. And the exhibition rooms have all kinds of possibilities for exhibitions relating environment and art. Then there are the stunning views from the "crow's nest," the open lookout at the pinnacle of the mu Clannad Two PBS specials cg TONIGHT'S TELEVISION LISTINGS CF VID 7:00 7:30 8:00 8:30 9:00 9:30 10:00 10:30 11:00 11:30 12:00 12:30 1:00 1:30 0 04 04 Sur invitation Pierre Verville Les Beaux dimanches Les Beaux dimanches LeTelejournal Scully rencontre Le Sport Cmema MariUs (1931) OfaneDeniazis. Pierre Fresnay S) 03 03 60 Minutes Wright Verdicts Tony Awards Space Precinct (11:15) Paid Program Paid Program (0ff Air) S3 16 16 mBaskebaf1a Eastern Conference Fml Gam 7 -Paixrs at Mage Larroquette Earth2 Sightings Movie: Nate and Hayes (1983) Tommy Lee Jones.

Michael O'Keefe 13 13 Touched by an Angel (Movie: 8eethoven(1992) Charles GmM BorinieHunt Sunday Report Venture (10:25) Sunday Nlgrrt Equestrian: Royal Bank World Cup. j(0ff Air) 26 Tel6ttion Operation Enfant Soteil Artisans d'uneepoque L'Evenement Le TVASports Courses d'auto (11 Serielndycar Players Umitee. En provenance de Milwaukee. Home Videos Home Videos Lois i Clark-Superman Movie: Pick Tracy (1990) Warren Beatty. Charlie Korsmo Sports Rap Live Sports Machine Married With Current Affair Extra (1:07) 50 18 Home Videos OnOurOwn Lols4 Clark-Superman Movie; fJckTracy(1990) Warren Beatty Charlie Kommo CTVNews sTskel Ebert Psychic Readers Burkes 09 09 Communiques Speciaux Sports Hotseat llnfo LaSalle Express I Verdun en bref Laval Plus Montreal Irish Show Rassemblementasonimage E3 07 07 Telethon Operation Enfant Soleil Artisans d'une epogue L'Evenement LeTVASpo Courses d'auto Wee.

En provenance de Milwaukee. 11 11 Home Videos 0n0ur0wn Lois Clark-Superman -CTVNews Entertainment Tonight jPaldProgram Paid Program SI 08 08 Histoirenaturelledelasexualile Vrvement Oimanchel Clnena: Festin de Sabette 1 987) Stephane Audran Points devue (OflAir) 7" US 22 22 Home Videos Home Videos Lois Clark-Superman lovte: pick Tracy (1980) Warren Beatty, Charlie Korsmo StarTrek: Voyager (11:17) Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Paid Program 56 Mozart en tournoe Mozart en toumee Cinema: Les 1978) Gfrard Jiignot A communiquer Panorama La Compilation (0ff Air) Jacques-Yves Cousteau Nat'l. Geo, on Assignment Renegade Kung Fu: The Legend Continues Midwest Media jSports Machine Jenny Jones "Entertainers 14 27 Family Secrets Nature Masterpiece Theatre no Time for Tears Mystery! Keeping Up Waiting for God (OffAlrj 13 05 05 Seaquestgardiendes oceans SonlaBenezraSpsciilDlmanche cinema: Au lit awe Madorro (1991) Madorm, Warren Beatty Grand Jml. Passlbete-ca cinema: Les Seducteurs (l 981) Roger Moore -V- 63 12 14 All Creatures Great and Small Pole to Pole celtlc Celebration (9:05) People Near Here (10:10) Clannad Past Movte Yanks (1979) Richard Gem, Vanessa Redgrave rag) 37 Ancient Mysteries Knights and Armor Civil War Journal Caroline's Comedy Hour Knights and Armor ilrjA) 39 In the land of the Deaf (6:00) Picture Windows: Soir Bleu jilovte: The FMsoner o( Second 1 975) jFlow (10:39) "champlln Movte: The Modems (1983) Keith Carradine, Unda Rorentino -'pin' (eg) 31 31 Kllometre-heure Vlva Jaa an deux temps Cinema: les Freres ten (1986) Blame Glaser. Pmlip Zanden CM 32 3S Capital Gang Crossfire Prlmenews Sports Sunday Best of Larry King Live World News Sports Tonight WeeklnNBA Best of Larry King Live sports Latenight World Report-; QSSg 29 33 Dlscovery.ca iMystertous Monsters Great Canadian Parks Dlscovery.ca Mysterious Monsters HAM' 45 PeenytheClown Movla: Polly -Cwnirf Home (1990) Kenny Logglns: Going Home (9:05) Movie: The Best of Everything (1959) Hope Lange.

Stephen Boyd Disney Album (0tf Air) (Eg 52 34 Tiny Toons: My Summer Vacation Isimpeons The Critic With MyWlldest Paid Program Paid Program Platypus Man IpigSty Paid ProgrrP" Paid Program Cop Files cop Files UFEj 36 36 Marriage Coun. Medical Break. Martha Stewart jJennlngs Home Harrowsmlth Country life Today's Parent Fishing Machine Galley Chefs Sportsman Jennings Home Martha Stewart Medical Break. Marriage W) 34 Elvis: Early Spotlight )Combt pes Clips toheast Muchwest iivlsTiarly Spotlight History of Rock 'n' Roll Mucheast fM! 43 49 tlovie (65): in th tJw of Rre (1 993) Ciint Eastwood IwafteBetigfaniM Heaven and Earth (1993) Tommy Lee Jones. Joan Chen CI3 30 20 Muslqe video (6:30) Qtrfbeep)us Musique video Flashback rjjjjjjp 25 29 OntheUne Sth Estate National Passionate Eye Antiques Road Show Fashion File Marketplace Medicine File Buslness WorlcC fRDp 19 19 Monde cetolr Grtffe Grends reportages UTeleoumal jsculty RDI Memolrevivsnte Accentfranco.

Bulletin de sante Griffe Euronews Trajectoires Foswauxlione" ffiDjj 33 25 Sports 30 France. Culturisme: Scfttwzen. Sports 30 Au baseball 5ifi mini putt Icourses d'auto: ManHqut CHgl 54 Star Trek: Voyager Babylon 5 Kung Fu: The Legend Continues News Highway Patrol Cheers Ask Manager Paid Program (0ffAir) SB 44 32 Cinema (5:15) jMovIe: A fombredu Golden Gate (1993) MaW Oaten cinem Les Lawgueiy remenageflt (1992) Ney Frijda Cinema Lunesde fa) (1992) QSMj 28 53 Sportsdesk Snooker: World Championship. Auto Racing: fnoyCar-Miler Genuine Dmtt 200. Sportsdesk Rugby: World Cup -England vs.

Western Samoa. rrvg 15 15 Journal deFr2 7aur7 Bouillon de culture Paris lumleres Journal Beige vlslonad'Am. Cercle de minuft (11:25) Faut pas rever (12:40) Ca colle-piq. Crag 59 Movte: Delta Force 2(1990) Chuck Norris, Bay Drago National Geographic Explorer NetworkEarth PaidProgram paidProgram Paid Program Pald Program Paid Program L. TLe 35 Secret-Machine Quantum Connectlons2 Archaeology Paleoworld Ancient Warriors Human Zoo Connection Archaeology Paleoworld Ancient Warriors Human Zoo Vfy; 40 Day-Discovery Ralph Martin Let'eSingAg.

Famlly Pictures Bemlce Gerard Ministries Bible Prophecy DoorofHope Cornerstone lt Is Written 'TerryWinter JohnW.Whlte jackVanlmpe -MM 55 Hercules: Legendary Jrnys. Vanishing Son Lifestyles News instant Replay Night Court Highlander: The Series Renegade Cvnr 1 20 1 46 Are You Afraid? Sweet Valley Weird Science News Hit List Rough Guide Missing Treas. ftoGiicT Movie: The Straiten Story (1949) James Stewart, June Alryson a CHLT (TVA) lYTVi Youth Channel CHANNELS LISTED Uj umivmiva) to uuu ivu) lawCFE(PBS) Cable News LIFE Life Network MPjMoviePix 0 CFCF (CTV) 2) WWBI ArtiEnttinmnt Discovery Chan. (JIMJ Much Music Newsworld CIVM (RQ) aiWETK(PBS) BRAV Bravo ffAl Family Channel (M) Movie Network RSi" Reseau News B3WVNY(ABC) CFJP (TQS) 51 Canal FOX Fox Network C3 Musique Plus SD1 Reseau Sports CD WCAX(CBS) CS WPTZ (NBC) CBMT (CBC) CS WMTW(ABC) a CJOH (CTV) a Cable TV SBKj WSBK iTBSj WTBS SET Super Ecran JlC Learning Sports Network vhT Vision TV TVg TV Internationale 'wd" WGN.