Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 63

Entertainment CALGARY HERALD Wednesday, June 2, 1999 E5 SILENCE OF LAMBS SEQUEL Lecter is nearly killed BOBBLAKEY Calgary Herald Not quite three years ago, Keavy Lynch was spinning lug wrenches as an apprentice mechanic in her father's Dublin garage, and about to change the tires on a car, when another young woman walked in by one of his victims in new book ft Si i S3- Ciil ttA.n 20 a BWitched started in a garage and now will star on YTV Awards show. BWitched is ready to put spell on YTV Awards RICHARD BROOKS The Times London The secret is out. Hannibal Lecter, the psychiatrist, serial killer and gourmand, is back this time as the hunted. Hannibal, Thomas Harris's long-awaited sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, published worldwide this month, will show how Lecter is nearly murdered by one of his own victims. He is saved by Clarice Starling, now a former FBI agent The central plot has been kept extraordinarily secret.

Rumours have persisted that Lecter is murdered at the end. Not so. "Hannibal is a story of horrific revenge," a source close to Harris disclosed last week. The three main characters are Lecter, Starling and Mason Verger. Verger was the one of Lecter's victims in Red Dragon, the novel before The Silence of the Lambs and the first about the serial killer.

Verger, a teacher in Wisconsin, apparently died after he was kidnapped by Lecter and tortured over several days in a farmhouse basement. Lecter told him: "You save your screams. Only the birds will hear you." After Lecter ampu Anthony I and began chatting. The two discovered they had a mutual passion for music, formed the all-woman quartet Witched and began writing songs that would vault them to the upper reaches of international pop charts. Now that's an achievement.

It made the Irish singers a natural choice to perform on this weekend's televised YTV Achievement Awards, the annual celebration of young Canadians who have made important accomplishments in bravery, the arts, education or other fields. The show is a colourful, high-energy 90-minute package taped on April 30 in Ottawa. "It was just fate that we met each other, because it was meant to be," Lynch says of her first encounter with Sinead O'CaroU. Keavy, her twin sister Edele, O'Caroll and Lindsay Armaou whom Keavy knew from kickbox-ing classes found the songs flowed when they began writing and rehearsing in an empty garage. "We all just clicked musically and socially and from day one," says Keavy.

"We never had any doubt about it." Canadian pop lovers know BWitched from the group's debut CD of the same name, and the current hit single C'est la Vie, a catchy, uptempo song about young love with a Celtic spin that includes some Irish dancing by the foursome in the video version. YTV viewers will see BWitched's spirited C'est la Vie performance and more on the awards special. Guest hosts Ben Savage and Danielle Fishel of the sitcom Boy Meets World join YTV program jockeys Paul McGuire and Phil Guerrero" to introduce the award nominees. Presenters at the show include Grammy and Juno nominee Tamia, Nicole Lyn and Mark Taylor of the popular teen series Student I the YTV special to be a good fit. They're young the Lynch twins are 18, Armaou is 17 and O'Caroll is 19 and though they're not exactly newcomers, they have only recently become an international phenomenon.

Keavy Lynch says Ireland's thriving music scene began getting attention abroad thanks to acts like U2 and the Cranberries, and that has encouraged other Irish performers to seek a big- ger stage. Witched has been based in London since late 1997, but the young women enjoy playing Dublin whenever possible even if they encounter critics. "I think the home crowd is the toughest also because you want everybody there to like you. We do get a bit of stick (criticism) when we go home but mostly we do really well in our hometown." BWitched, currently touring the United States, will launch a new European tour in Dublin in November. Hopkins as Lecter.

Bodies, and Meredith Henderson (The Adventures of Shirley Holmes). In the show's 10 years of showcasing talent, the YTV Achievement Awards have brought na- rreview tional attention to such newcomers as Barenaked Ladies (band, 1990), Lisa Brokop (vocal, 1992) and Marc Gagnon (sports, 1994). YAA! The 10th Anniversary YTV Achievement Awards airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on Ch. 20.

The show itself has garnered one Gemini Award and nine Gemini nominations, including three for best music, variety program or series. When sitcom star Ben Savage was told about the awards special, he didn't hesitate to accept an invitation to co-host. "It sounded like it would be fun so I decided to go ahead and give it a try," Savage says. "I had a really nice time doing it." The BWitched singers also found and Frasier were No. 2 and 3 respectively.

(Friends has now been the most-watched 9 p.m. show four years in a row.) Veronica's Closet ranked seventh, and the freshman comedy Jesse, starring Christina Applegate, rode the Thursday wave to No. 4. CBS' perennial favorite, 60 Minutes, logged in at No. 8 (same as last year), its 22nd year in a row in the Top 10.

Sort of, 60 was No. 11 in 1996-97, but one of the top 10 was a show (Fired Up) that had aired only four times. In any case, no prime-time show has ever been No. or better 22 years in a row. ABC's Monday Night Football ranked fifth (the same as the year before).

The network retained rights to the show in January '98 with a deal that costs it $550 million US a year. MNF has been an ABC staple for 30 years. CBS' Touched by an Angel also cracked the Top 10, finishing at No. 6, THE TELEVISION RULERS ER leads NBC to five top 10 finishes in 1998-99 tated and later ate one of his legs, Verger was left for dead. But he survived.

Verger, who has become wealthy, approaches Starling to find his old adversary and get his own back. But Starling, sympathetic towards Lecter, tracks him down to warn him, then teams up with him to protect him. At one point Verger enlists an Italian serial killer to help outwit Lecter. Another plot line involves carnivorous hogs a play on Lecter's own cannibalistic habit. The book ends with an extraordinary twist involving a woman from Lecter's earlier life.

Harris, who has taken a decade to write Hannibal, delivered his finished work to his New York agent, Morton Janklow, and publisher Carole Baron of the New York-based Delacorte Press on March 23. Within a few days a copy had been sent to Random House, his London publisher. The turnaround from finished book to an initial worldwide hardback print run of about 1.5 million has been unusually fast. Calgary Hi UNI 1 1 'f iTWi ifflnr "It's been possible partly because Harris has written such a superb book anyway and partly because he has editorial rights and so nothing is changed said a Random House executive. Harris, 59, a former newspaper reporter in Waco, once said his books took a long time because "I can't write until I really believe in it" I The Silence of the Lambs, published in 1988, was made into a film in 199J with Sir Anthony Hopkins as Lecter and Jodie Foster as Starling.

The film ended, famously, with Lecter remarking: "I'm having an old friend for dinner." The book had finished with a letter from Lecter to Starling with the line, "The lambs have stopped screaming" referring to Starling's youth on a farm where she heard the animals beingled, screaming, to slaughter. His letter went on: "I have no plans to" call on you, Clarice. The world is more interesting with you in it. Be sure you extend me the same cour tesy." Most of the new book is set in the United States, but: some is in Italy. Irr, 1994, Harris attended the trial of the Italian serial killer Pietra Pacciani, known as the Monster of Flo rence, who preyed on courting couples.

One killer Haiim-bal is loosely based on Pacciani. The novel is expected to go immedi ately to the top of the bestseller lists in the U.S. and Britain. Random House, which will publish Hannibal under its Heinemann imprint, will stock book- shops during the small hours of June so that thousands of copies are for sale when they open in the morning. "It's almost like the crime and mys- tery equivalent of the new Star Wars film," said Maxim Jakubowski, of Mur-; der One, a crime bookshop in London.

The film rights to the book have been bought by the leading U.S. pro- ducer Dino De Laurentiis, for $9 mil- lion US. This record figure compares with $8 'million for Michael Crichton's Air- frame and John Grisham's The Runaway Jury. Jonathan Demme, who directed The Silence of the Lambs, has been ap- proached. Hopkins and Foster have been sent copies of the new book.

Neither Demme or Hopkins, nor Foster, have said they will participate. Cinema 1 HiMj-ra-rnnprn rsrsv II .1 A the same as the year before, and the Eye Net also did well with its Sunday movie franchise, finishing at No. 9. ABC's Home Improvement, which closed for good last week with a high-rated finale, clocked in at No. 10 for the season, the same slot it occupied the year before.

The eight-year-old show peaked at No. 1 in the 1993-94 season. The highest-ranked newcomer after Jesse was NBC's surprise Friday hit, Providence (No. 19) Fox's The X-Files made another strong showing this year, moving to No. 11 from No.

19 the year before. CBS' Everybody Loves Raymond and ABC's Drew Carey validated themselves as hits, ranking No. 12 and 14, respectively. NBC's Dateline claimed four slots in the Top 50 chart, and ABC's 2020 grabbed two, both above Dateline in the rankings. The new 60 Minutes spin-off, 60 Minutes II, finished at No.

45. Enter To Win A Pass For Two To A Special Advance Preview 1 tiTimnnH imh "A ROMANTIC I AIMI 10R 'Mil MW MH.II.NNIHM! iSertnliKci dilcs ind siironsps us embrace of liter "Brrathtiikiim! lis tender, elusive iiml exquisitely ilh Ins TO MARK THE BEGINNING OF THE 1999 SPRUCE MEADOWS TOURNAMENT SEASON, SPRUCE MEADOWS AND THE CALGARY HERALD ARE INVITING ALBERTA STUDENTS TO WRITE AN ESSAY OF 500 WORDS OR LESS ON THE TOPIC OF The Importance of Horses in Alberta's History! DONNA PETROZZELLO Knight Ridder Newspapers NEW YORK Buoyed by interest in the buildup to co-star George Clooney's midseason departure, NBC's ER claimed the prime-time ratings crown for the 1998-99 TV season. It's the third time in the hospital drama's five-year run that it has finished at No. 1. ER reclaimed the top spot it had lost last year to NBC's outgoing, much-hyped Seinfeld.

Still, ER lost viewers (just like so many other network shows in the ever-expanding TV universe). ER fell to 25.4 million viewers (still more than enough for an easy victory) from 30.2 million in 1997-98. It averaged 30.8 million in '96-97 and 32 million in '95-96. NBC claimed five of the top 10 shows, thanks to the Peacock's Thursday slate of sitcoms. Veterans Friends Essays will be judged on creativity, content and composition.

They will be judged by an independent board. Winning essays will appear in the Calgary Herald on June 20, 1999. Deadline: All entries must be received by June 7, 1999. Any entries received after 5:00 pm on June 7, 19S9 will be ineligible to be part of the contest PLEASE INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION ON YOUR SUBMISSION: Student's Full Name Age at Contest Deadline Complete Home Mailing Address Home Phone Number Si GET YOUR IMAGINATION, PEN AND PAPER OR COMPUTER READY AND ENTER FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN t.T, 1 Jf'- CALGARYawHERALD TWO CATEGORIES Ages 6-10 and Ages 1 1-14 1ST PRIZE One per age categoryTotal of two $250 cash VIP visit to Spruce Meadows "North American" Tournament for a behind-the-scenes tour around the venue and then taking a premiere spot in the centre of the International Ring to watch the Laidlaw Cup on Friday, July 9th Special Calgary HeraldSpruce Meadows Grand Prize Package $250 Gift Certificate from Riley McCormick 2ND 3RD PRIZES One per age categoryTotal of four $100 cash Special Calgary HeraldSpruce Meadows Summer Fun Prize Package CalgaryHerald EDUCATION SERVICES Thursday, June 10, 1999 Plaza Theatre, 7 p.m. Complete theentry form win a pass for two.

Tcalgaryi Herald "BESIEGED" I I I City: SEND COMPLETED ESSAYS TO: The Importance of Horses in Alberta's History Essay Contest co Calgary Herald, P.O. Box 2400, Station Calgary, 0W8 Postal Code: Daytime Phone: I 9 To ,0 win t3St People, drop off your completed i al Calgary Herald, 21S IS St. S.E., or mail to 1 I UlCVliSlY Besieged contest, Calgary Herald, P.O. Boi 1515, Stn. T2P 4K2.

oad lin a Jo MteMsJJojidaMjMeJt, 1999 at 5 p.m. Sponsor employees and their Immediate families are not eligible to enter. No photocopies will be accepted. Passes will not be awarded before the deadline. This film Is subject to classification.

OPENS IN THEATRES JUNE 1 1 Qv ILEY CORMICK SPRUGE MEADOWS.