Edmonton Journal from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada • 8

-m mn i i Elite Af. rtainment A review of 1 Celine Dion JOUmal Tuesday night concert can be found on http:www.southam.comedmontonjournal EDITOR: Bob Remington, 429-5346 1 'Storyteller' Tom T. Hall adds a new chapter to his songbook Evans alert after stroke surqery Dale Evans, who starred in dozens of VVestern films JIM PATTERSON The Associated Press with her husband, Roy Rogers, is recovering from surgery following a stroke she suffered on Mother's Day. Evans, 83, was alert and doing well following week end surgery at Loma Linda, University Medical Centre, said her son, Roy (Dusty) Rogers Jr. She underwent an operation to bypass a clogged carotid artery that supplies blood to the brain.

On May 12, Evans suffered a stroke apparently triggered by the blockage. She remained alert before and after surgery, though family members could not say when she would return to the Apple Valley, home she shares with Rogers. The Associated Press Alanis bound for Coliseum Aua. 3 Canadian superstar Alanis Morissette willplay the Edmonton Coliseum Aug. 3.

Toronto rockers Our Lady Peace and Australia Frente will open the concert. Tickets are $29.50 and $34.50 plus service charge. They go on sale May 25 at TicketMaster outlets or over the phone at 451-8000. Journal Staff 7 A oii A i Ground control to Capt. Marc Canadian astronaut Marc Garneau will be interviewed live from space Thursday on CBC Newsworld.

The interview with Garneau is slated for 11:30 a.m. MDT and is expected to last about five minutes. Newsworld has also been granted five minutes during a 30-minute news conference from space at 9:45 a.m. MDT next Monday. Most of the questions by the network's interviewers are expected to be directed at Garneau.

The Canadian Press Tonight's tube tip Edmonton-born Jill Hennessy (Claire Kincaid) makes her final appearance tonight on Law Order, which makes its final appearance of the season (10 on CFRN11 on NBC). In a break from the show's cast-in-iron crime-solving format, the episode opens at an execution witnessed by detectives Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and Curtis (Benjamin Bratt) and prosecutors McCoy (Sam Waterston) and Kincaid. Richard Helm The Daley news: she's off to radio CBC-TV anchor Kathy Daley is leaving TV for radio. The co-host of CBC Alberta News has become host of CBC Radio's Edmonton AM, taking over from John Grant. Franklin, Tenn.

Feedback squeaked from the amp as Tom T. Hall gingerly picked his way through a new song, Shoes and Dress That Alice Wore. The audience leaned forward to hear through the high-pitched buzz, as did fellow performers R.B. Morris, Steve Forbert and Billy Joe Shaver. It was worth it for a fresh story from the elusive Storyteller.

Nearing 60 and supposedly retired, Hall was revealing a new tune that ranked with classics, including his Harper Valley P.T.A. Its deceptive simpleness and pointed detail make it a combination of country song and haunting short story. "I don't write Little Darling songs," Hall says with a tone of finality. It's human nature for people to rebel against change. "I had a notion for a long time to write a song about when people die.

This one person I knew had all the clocks in the house stop and never set them. It was years later and the clocks don't work, 'cause that's the time her husband died." Dressed in jeans and a work shirt. Hall managed to play the relaxed retiree even as a reporter, a photographer, Hall's manager, a publicist from his record company and his literary agent hovered. A TV crew was expected any minute. None of this stopped him from scratching behind his dog's ears or taking a moment to admire the peacocks that roam his grounds.

Tommy Cash, Johnny's brother, called to ask Hall to write liner notes for his new album (he said yes) and the literary agent wanted approval on cover artwork for his next book, titled What a Book! (She got it). "It's a satire on American politics to sex, religion, war, music, food," he says of the book to be published in July. "Very narrow. I narrowed it down to the universe." In-between all this activity, Hall talked about how he ended up putting out a new album several years after he began considering himself retired from the music business. "I was in Florida walking on the beach and I started writing these songs.

So Mercury was putting out a box set (last year's Storyteller, Poet, Philosopher)," he said. Hall went to Mercury-Nashville chief Luke Lewis and said, "If you'll give me a little budget I'll do a couple of new things to sweeten up the box set." Lewis, who'd heard some of the new material, suggested a new album instead. "I said, 'I'm old and I'm cold and I don't think I can sell any Hall recalled. "He said, 'Well, we won't do it for the money, we'll do it for the music' "And I thought, 'Well, here goes another guy's career. I'm retired, and this guy's gonna get Mercury, home of the six-times platinum recording star Shania Twain of Timmins, can afford to take some chances these days.

Songs From Sopchoppy was recorded in The Canadian Press Tom T. Hall: after considering himself retired for several years, he has a new album out Journal Staff said, 'I'm old and I'm cold and I don't think I can sell any albums. He said, Well, we won't do it for the money, we'll do it for the music' And I thought, Well, here goes another guy's career. I'm retired, and this guy's gonna get Tom T. Hall 'Do tell: it's a make-over for Mommy After 36 years with a bob and pointy flip, Mommy is getting a new hairdo thanks to a reader's suggestion that the character in the popular comic strip Family Circus was looking a bit passe.

The author of the strip, Bil Keane of Paradise Valley, said a man wrote him in January that it was old-fashioned for Mommy to still have the same hairstyle she wore in 1960, when he started the feature. The cartoonist said he based the hairdo on the way his wife wore her hair back then. The writer, Tim Vanderburg of Lubbock, said Keane didn't seem to take to the idea at first, responding that he had daily strips finished as far ahead as next Christmas. "But he said he was going to run it by his wife, who was on vacation. (Then) he wrote back and said, basically, 'You were right.

She deserves a Monday's comic strip had Mommy going to the hairdresser. On Tuesday, the children are wondering what it will look like. Thursday, readers will get to see the new hairdo. Tlie Associated Press breakthrough coming four years later when Jeannie C. Riley took Harper Valley P.T.A.

to No. 1. Kennedy persuaded Hall to record some of his backlog of songs for Mercury, and he had hits into the 1980s. His literary bent made such songs as The Year That Clayton Delaney Died and A Week in a County Jail stand out. "My ambition as a child was to be a writer you know? be a journalist or a novelist or something.

I always wanted to write the great dirty American novel," Hall said. "I came out of the army and I went to school on the GI Bill and ran around campus in a field jacket. I thought that was the way to do it like (From Here to Eternity author) James Jones. "But in the meantime I was pickin' a guitar and singing and this guy came by the radio station and said, 'Hey, these are good I said, "And the rest is history little known history but history nonetheless." Sopchoppy, with a bunch of "reformed hippies" that Hall pals around with at his vacation home. It's heavy on keyboards and saxophones, worlds away from the peppy, lightweight rock sound now popular on country radio or Hall's old acoustic-based records produced by Jerry Kennedy.

Born in Olive Hill, Hall moved to Nashville in 1964 when he was 28. He wrote songs for $50 a week, with his big Mission israb mpene The plot's a mess, but big, fun stunts save this impossible dream Mission: Impossible Director. Brian De Palma Starring: Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, EmmanueJIe Beart, Henry Czemy, Jean Reno, Ving Rhames, Kristin Scott Thomas, Vanessa Redgrave Writers: David Koepp, Robert Towne Where: Famous Players Classification: Parental guidance. Warning: violent scenes TV rivals set for round two in bidding for local licences RICHARD HELM Journal Television Writer Edmonton If at first you don't Officials with two rival bids for new television stations in Edmonton are turning up the publicity heat in advance of July hearings in Calgary' before the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission. Executives with CanWest Alberta Television, a subsidiary of CanWest Global Communications of Winnipeg, will release details in Edmonton today of two new television stations they plan to operate in Edmonton and Calgary.

Late Tuesday, Craig Broadcast Systems of Manitoba, a Craig-family company which operates the independent three-station Manitoba Television Network (MTN), confirmed it is renewing its bid to create a new Edmonton station to be known as The A-Channel. Both CanWest and Craig were rejected in similar bids to the federal broadcast regulator in 1994. The CRTC announced last week that a hearing will be held in Calgary July 15 to review applications for new licences. Boyd Craig says his station will provide television designed for Edmontonians by Edmontonians, while creating 139 jobs at the A-Channel's broadcast facilities in Edmonton and Calgary- "The station will carry a substantially higher amount of Alberta content than others now in the markets." Craig said in a prepared statement. "All programming decisions will be made in Edmonton." MARC HORTON Journal Movie Writer 1 Tom Cruise plays Mission: Impossible team member Ethan Hunt What's On Edmonton Don't let anyone tell you that they figured the plot out early in this extravagant, often thrilling series of set pieces and big scenes.

It's not that the plot is intriguing in its complexity; it aimlessly weaves in and out in a sometimes baffling number of switchbacks. Character motivation changes with the click of a computer mouse and Mission: Impossible quickly becomes Mission: Impenetrable. With an updated opening where the mission statement arrives on a self-destructing video rather than the oh-so-primitive audio tape of the '60s and 70s tele-ision show, the movie begins with the promise of unchallenging familiarity. It helps that Lalo Schiffrin's superb score is retained intact, and viewers will settle back comfortably, watching the team assemble itself for its next assignment. It won't be long before the complications and contrivances begin to pile up as a Prague mission to nail a traitor who is preparing to sell a list of undercover agents goes very wrong.

The team has been set up for an ambush and things quickly go awry with leader Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) face down in Prague's Vltava River, Sarah (Kristin Scott Thomas) dead with a very efficient, very mean-looking knife in her ribs, Hannah (Ingeborge Dapkuinaite) in smithereens from a car bomb, and a computer hacker team-mem- what's what because director Brian De Palma and screenwriters David Koepp and Robert Towne know that's really not important. What we're talking about here are stunts big, fun, wacky ones where the laws of physics are broken at every turn and the demands of logic ignored with an indifference that's truly remarkable. The most tense of them involves Hunt being lowered into a computer room at CIA headquarters where he must tap into the innermost secret heart of America. That it's basically nonsensical isn't the point. Your palms will get sweaty anyway.

And the centrepiece of the film is a dandy, comparable to the very best of Speed. This time a helicopter is accidentally hitched to a train roaring through the Chunnel between England and France. A couple of characters are riding on top and De Palma doesn't let them or us off this roller-coaster ride until he absolutely must. The performances are generally fine but forgettable, becoming like the story itself: filler between the special effects. ber played by an unbilled Emilio Estevez, snuffed in a grisly elevator accident.

The survivors are Ethan Hunt, played by Tom Cruise and Claire, Phelps's wife played by Emmanuelle Beart, the young French actress who looks like Bardot with a major pout. The lower lip may be her best asset. Things are a mess to be sure, and Ethan must reassemble a new team to find out who set up the sting operation, although suspicion falls squarely on the shoulders of Kittridge (Canuck Henry Czerny), the CIA agent-in-place in the Czech capital. Hunt's new team, a computer specialist played by Ving Rhames and a hard, tough, unshaven sort played by Jean (Vie Professional) Reno, will have to make contact with a shady underground arms dealer named Max, played with delicious villainy by Vanessa Redgrave. But that's altogether too much plot explanation for a movie that zips with jet-lag speed between London.

Prague and Langley, Virginia, headquarters of the CIA. Besides, you'll have just as much fun without trying to figure out who's who and CITY HALL READINGS: With children's author Will Reese, today at 12:10 p.m., tree admission. AN EVENING OF LIEDER: Presented by the King's University Collii with visiting soprano Judith Henbest and accompanist Joachim Six; ger performing art songs by Poulenc, Wolf. Mahler and Jouberl. tonight at 8 p.m.

in the performance hall, 9125 50th St. Tickets $5. $.1 student and senior, at the door or call 465-3500. BACK POCKET LENNIE: Azimuth Theatre, the company devotod to producing plays about social issues, presents the Edmonton pramiwp of this play by Sandy Paddick. The drama examines the effects of child abuse through three generations of women.

Through flashtu ka. visions and dreams, the intergenerational patterns of family violm are exposed. Directed by Deborah Hurford. the cast features Samon tha Banks, Michelle Martinuk and Jan Streader. Performance is p.m.

in the Old Strathcona Bus Barns, 103rd St. and 84th Ave 1h koto are $10, $8 members, $9 CWA members, free if you buy ship. For tickets call Azimuth at 448-9165. Play runs through May i ST. DAVID'S WELSH MALE VOICE CHOIR: The annual spring cert will be held Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

in Knox Metropolitan Church, 8307 1 09th St. The choir will be joined by special gtm-iH i Lynn, Celtic harpist, and the Queen Street School Boys' Chew I t.oi are $8. For tickets and more information call Gerry at 450-0il This is a selection of events. For complete listing, consult Fmiiy't What's On putt-out..