Daily News from New York, New York • 55

Mm entertainment HOLLYWOOD I By MARILYN BECK STACY JENEL SMITH Lava stories headed our way The Pierce Brosnan-Unda Hamilton "Dante's Peak." due to wrap at the end of October, has been slotted for a March release. An million effects extravaganza, the Universal picture would seem a natural for a summer debut. Some most would assume the March slot has everything to do with the race between two volcano pictures, "Dante's" and Fox 2000's currently lensing "Volcano." However, "Dante's" producer Gale Anne Hurd pooh-poohs the notion. "Ours is an action adventure focusing on two characters, Brosnan as a vulcanologist and Hamilton as the mayor of a small town, with much of the drama being about whetherto evacuate this little community," she says. "Theirs is a multi-character piece that deals with an impending volcanic eruption in L.A.

They're so different, they're not goingtocancel each otherout." Can you picture Fran reseller coming off as vulnerable? Director Ken Kwapls reports that "The Beautician and the -Beast" will show movie audiences "a few new sides" of "The Nanny" star: "When people think of Fran, they think loud and brassy but in this film we're showing off her vulnerable side." Her romantic side, too. Kwapis says the feature about a Queens beautician mistaken for a teacher and recruited to go to Eastern Europe to tutor the children of a dictator (played by Timothy Dalton) "has a lot of charm and a very gentle tone. It's more romantic than comic." Tumbling to a risky situation Anyone who debated the propriety of Olympian Kerri Strug continuing her gymnastic program after injuring her ankle should be interested in Lifetime's planned telepic "Little Girls in Pretty Boxes." It's a fictional story about a husband and wife who send their daughter off to study gymnastics with a supercoach. The husband eventually learns of the tragic end of one of the coach's proteges, and determines to get his daughter out of the program before it's too late. 7 In a 'Cutthroat' biZjGeena Davis has vowed to be a woman of action By NICK CHARLES Daily News Staff Writer TAMMY WYNETTE MAY have sung it but Geena Davis makes it a living principle: "Stand by Your Man." So what if her husband, Finnish-born director Renny Harlin, featured her in the biggest bomb since "Ishtar" a modern-day pirate flick, "Cutthroat Island," that walked both the critical and popular gangplanks? In her sincerest voice, Davis proclaims: "We're very happy with that movie." As proof of her loyalty, Davis is starring in Harlin's latest big-budget film, the $60 million action adventure "The Long Kiss Goodnight," opening tomorrow.

She plays a former CIA assassin who, due to amnesia, is now a soccer mom in suburbia. When shady detective Samuel L. Jackson gets a lead on Davis' former identity, bodies start dropping and the stunts keep coming. "I did 90 of my stunts," says a pleased Davis sitting in a midtown hotel. Among the most challenging was jumping out of a three-story building and ending up in a frozen lake, with minus-20-degree temperatures, on location in Canada.

"Both Sam and I hated to have to do that scene," adds Davis. "Sometimes I get shocked at what I might have to do." For another director, says Davis, she "might not have done it," but for Harlin, no situation is too unbearable. "Renny knows exactly what Geena's capable of, and we both ended up doing 80 of our stunts," says Jackson. "Once he got her to do it, I was obliged to do" the stunts. Still sporting the close-cropped, platinum blond 'do she wears in the film, and swaddled in jeans and an oversize white cotton shirt, Davis explains the push to become the female Sylvester Stallone.

"It sort of started around Thelma Louise' and the stunts we she and Susan Sar-andon did. Women don't often have franchises in the action-adventure films, and NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL lffs Hrj to KirfeiEcB Jtii ian Quilt ERE ARE CAPSULE REVIEWS OF TODAY'S New York Film Festival screenings at Lincoln Center. Call (212) 875-5050. GABBEH (today at 6 Sat, at 11:30 a.m.) The title of Mohsen Makhmalbaf Iranian feature refers to a kind of carpet, woven by the nomadic tribes of southeast Iran, which uses an image to tell a personal story from the weaver's family history. This film tells one such story, of a young girl who follows her fiance's family on their annual migration, even though she loves another.

This is intercut with documentary material on how the gabbeh is dyed and woven, which itself takes on a strikingly beautiful, lyrical quality. Using telephoto lenses to flatten out his own compositions into patterns that resemble the gabbeh designs, Makhmalbaf links his own, highly modern art to the oldest traditions of his culture. With a matinee screening on Saturday, this is one festival choice highly suitable for children. THREE LIVES AND ONLY ONE DEATH (today at 9 pjn.f The work of Chilean-born Raul Ruiz recalls the structural playfulness and taste for philosophical paradox of his fellow Latin American, author Jose Luis Borges, though with a uniquely cinematic twist Ruiz strings together the stories of four different characters, all played by Marcello Mastroianni, who appear to be sharing the same body. Though each story is narrated in turn, there are subtle suggestions that they are, in fact, occurring simultaneously.

Ruiz can sometimes get lost pursuing his more arcane ideas and associations, but this is a remarkably open, accessible film, consistently funny and inventive. DaveKehr MCMAJIO COOTLEJFY DMLV NEWS LOVE IS A RENNY-SPLENDORED THING: "Island" girt Davis is in hubby's latest. vt 3 Q. "Well, I like Matthew, but whatever he wants to say," says Davis through clenched teeth. "All that stuff.

we would hear this and go, 'What are they talking To rehabilitate their careers, Harlin and Davis turned to scripter Shane Black, writer of the first "Lethal Weapon" movie, for a reported $4 million. With Black onboard and the always-reliable Jackson onband, fingers are crossed that audiences will not kiss off "Long Kiss." And if they do? "If it isn't a success," says Davis, "that still this is something we wanted to try," she says. Davis, who won a Best Supporting Oscar for her role in 1988's 'The Accidental Tourist," wants to be identified as an actress capable of physical parts, like Linda Hamilton of 'Terminator" renown and Si-gourney Weaver, heroine of three "Alien" films. To that end, Harlin, whose reputation as a director of action films was solidified with "Cliffhanger" and "Die Hard 2: Die Harder," recast the lead of "Cutthroat Island," to accommodate his wife. Reports of the film's problems came from no less a source than co-star Matthew Modine, who told friends that Harlin and Davis had been hit by exhaustion and food poisoning.

wouldn't be grounds for a divorce".