The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 33

C3 The Vancouver Sun, Thursday, April 8, 1993 7TT 21 pt-n i cience guy wye now more than Almost Live Kr iWriiT nnii i nTTM-TMMwitfVlVqa EL MARIACHI: Azul (Reinol Martinez) holds Domino (Consuelo Gomez) hostage BILL NYE THE Science Guy is an educational show that teaches the following valuable lesson: "When you drink a glass of water you could be drinking what was once dinosaur spit." As Bill says, "science rules." You may know Bill Nye the Science Guy as a regular on Almost the underappreciated Seattle comedy show that airs just before Saturday Night Live and these days is way funnier. Bill Nye the Science Guy is also the name of a pilot that airs Wednesday on KCTS at 7 p.m. Nye's topic is the water cycle: evaporation, condensation, precipitation and collection. Stuff like why it rains, why those of us who wear glasses get steamed up when we come inside on a cold day, and A peso saved is kudos earned TOM BARRETT to schools. It would make a great experiment YTV and Alliance Communications are looking for a "bright and spirited girl between the ages of 9 and 12" to star in Susannah of the Mounties, a 13-part series.

Based on Muriel Denison's 1936 novel, Susannah is the story of a 10-year old girl who goes to live with her uncle, a North West "Hee Haw." In 1989, the show's producers bought a full-page ad in the show-biz trade magazine, Variety, that proclaimed over a picture of the commander-in-chief: "A graduate of Yale. A decorated war hero. Former director of the CIA. Vice-president for two terms. The 41st president of the United States.

A dedicated Hee Haw (And in case you're wondering, Bill Clinton says he watches American Gladiators.) Coming up this week: Megan Porter Follows (Anne of Green Gables) stars as Juliet in a CBC production of Romeo and Juliet, directed by Norman Campbell. The cast includes Colm Feore as Mercutio and Antoni Cimolino as Romeo. That's Sunday at 8 p.m. Return Home is an Australian film about a Melbourne man's journey of discovery and his attempts to deal with modern society. It's on Knowledge Network's Best of the Vancouver International Film Festival, 10 p.m.

Saturday. It's not too late in the season for the networks to debut new series. A League of Their Own, from the movie of the same name about the Second World War-era women's professional baseball league, airs at 9 p.m. Saturday on KIRO. Tonight's highlights: Winter Light (5 p.m.

and 10 p.m. on Vision): A disillusioned pastor watches his flock fall apart and his faith disintegrate. Second in the Ingmar Bergman trilogy that includes Through a Glass Darkly El Mariachi is the kind of film almost any 23-year-old would like to make: campy slapstick with the Grim Reaper's grin at a pace that won let up. At times, El Mariachi attempts to go deeper than the surface action stunts. It gives us a love interest, dream sequences and a quest.

Most of all, it gives us great comic-type characters. Not all of it works, but young Rodriguez understands the most important thing of all: keep people entertained, and you can get away with anything. EL MARIACHI Directed by Robert Rodriguez, starring Carlos Gallardo Spanish, subtitled. Royal Centre. your mind off the fact that people are being blown away every five minutes or so.

But even that has its own element of humor as the bad guy disagrees with the drug lord about how many of his men he has killed six, or 10? Gruesome and bloody, but not offensive for me, at any rate because it conies off like hyperbolic fantasy, in other words, toons. Mounted Police superintendent. The story is set in 1896. Vancouver auditions will be held April 29 at the Gas-town Actors Studio, 502-21 Water Street The old order passeth. Last November, George Bush went 5' I jf .4.,: I t- s.

jk? i Jt jm. i I jr. 1 KATHERINE MONK Sun Movie Critic 4 TOU GET WHAT you pay for," goes the cliche. So JL what would you expect from an action feature that cost $7,000 US to make? A grainy black and white piece of garbage that calls itself 'experimental' to hide its mistakes, plastic guns and ketchup blood? To be frank, that's what I was expecting from rookie film-maker Robert Rodriguez' El Mariachi. I was surprised.

El Mariachi is an action film with spunk, character and some good stunts to boot. Not only that, but the production values are far from bad. For $7,000, it puts the $7-million action frenzies to shame. And it's all in color. But the fantastic production story aside, El Mariachi has a solid script Set in Mexico, a young Mariachi sets out on his own to practise the honorable trade of his father and his father before him.

Guitar in hand, he reaches a small town run by a drug lord. Unfortunately for him, one of the head honcho's biggest baddest enemies is a man dressed in black who also carries a guitar case but his, of course, is full of weapons. Hardly an original premise, but so what? El Mariachi is a film comic book with super-fresh bubble-gum action and a few twists and pops to keep you pegged. There's also enough jokes to keep down to defeat as the Top Guy of the free world, a victim of his inability to adapt to changing times and new media. Now Bush's favorite TV show, Hee Haw, has gone the same way, for the same reasons.

i -viv-xrj I SCIENCE GUY: Bill Nye entertains and educates (shown last week) and The Silence. Subtitled. Diary of a Teenage Smoker (6 p.m. on YTV): A look at a growing health problem. Mystery! (9 p.m.

on KCTS): While investigating the death of a former colleague, Inspector Morse (John Thaw) sees a parallel to an unsolved murder committed 18 years earlier. Une histoire inventee (10 p.m. on CBC): Quebec film, with subtitles, about a Montreal jazz musician, an actor, an actress and her daughter and their romantic attractions. L.A. Law (10 p.m.

on KING, U.TV): A cop may have used sexual relations to entrap a gay man for art theft. After 25 years of network and syndicated production, the durable cornpone creation has folded. "I'm in mourning. I've lost an old friend," said George Goober Lind-sey, who was on the show for 22 years. So, to the memory of Hee Ha we here on The Sun's High Culture Desk say: Sa-lute! (The stuff about George Bush is not made up, by the way.

When Newsweek asked him what television shows he watched, Bush said why that refreshing glass of water you just drank might once have been pterodactyl drool. On a Boredom' Potential Rating Scale of 10, this stuff could easily score an eight. But, as you might have guessed by now, Nye has a way of making things interesting. This show is aimed squarely and unapologetically at the MTV generation, with in-your-face video trickery that makes Nike ads look tame. There's the inevitable rap song that explains "Your brain is on vacation If you don't know about precipitation." Nye's rock-video production does more than simply keep the kids staring at the tube, however.

The visuals also teach, like the great little penguins-on-a-water-slide toy Nye uses to demonstrate the way clouds work. And it's not all slam-bang stuff. Nye settles into an overstuffed chair for a segment called Molecule Moments, a kind of deranged Masterpiece Theatre. The most important thing Nye does is to make science cool. Whether he's donning the Bubble Helmet of Science to venture into a walk-in freezer or introducing role model Holly Foley, a marine biologist and "Way Cool Scientist," Nye has an infectious curiosity, enthusiasm and sense of fun.

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