The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 17

Ha NTF RTAINMENT Arts Entertainment Editor Bart Jackson 732-2120 FAX 732-2521 The Vancouver Sun Monday, February 3, 1997 JB2 7 TODAY FRIDAY THURSDAY WEDNESDAY TUESDAY WORTH LARRY SAUNDERS ER MILLENNIUM THE SCENE KERRY GOLD IT TAKES AN artist like Vancouver's Stephen Arthur to MELROSE PLACE HQMEBOYS IN OUTER SPACE HlllliM'L WATCHING A look at some the best programs coming up over the next five days 8:30 p.m. KIRO-UPN Morris and Ty join the battle to repel the intergalactic invader Ebolatolla (Little Richard). It's the Ebonics-Ebola-Ayatollah episode. 8 p.m. Superchannel "It's like The Shining up there," a grumpy David Duchovny complains to Larry, describing our fair town.

Sanders is distracted, however: He's convinced Duchovny made a pass at him and he's mortified. 7 p.m. p.m., KCPQ-Fox No, you're not losing your mind. Just when you thought Amanda was about to become a sympathetic character, she's off Prozac and back to her schemes. All's well in TV land.

9 p.m. U.TVKCPQ Frank (Lance Henrik- sen) encounters a doomsday group that is predicting a major cata- clysm in the year 2000 a catastrophe they claim will be caused by alignment of the solar system's seven innermost planets. 10 p.m. BCTV, CHEK, KING-NBC Television's most consistently fine drama finds Benton (the absurdly underrated Eriq LaSalle) wheeled into emergency surgery after he's struck with sudden abdominal pain. TELEVISION New view for a muMcuttund city When CIVT goes to air Sept.

1, it promises a schedule that will appeal to Vancouver's diverse ethnic and regional interests. ALEXSTRACHAN Sun Television Critic Viewers who tune into Vancouver's newest television station this fall expecting to see TV's traditional "jolts-per-minute" formula will be disappointed. According to its backers, the Baton Broadcast System (BBS), CIVT-TVs emphasis will be on homegrown drama, arts, culture and local and regional affairs. Although a proposed schedule for CIVT echoes much of what is already on BCTV popular U.S.-produced programs like Melrose Place, Home Improvement and Drew Carey those close to the new station, including the four prominent British Columbians who will be on CIVT's eight-member board of directors, insist viewers will see something new. What's new is the station's commitment to local and regional production, and its promise to reflect Vancouver's increasingly complex multicultural and multilingual communities.

CIVT will be on the air Sept. 1. The new station will focus on artists and stars from Asia and Hong Kong in particular, who are unknown to most non-Asian viewers, but who enjoy huge following both in the Asian community here and abroad. If CIVT is to carve out its own niche among CBC, BCTV and U.TV, it has to provide something that is being overlooked by existing players. That something, CIVT's boosters believe, is community storytelling providing a forum for people and communities with a lot to give but no place to tell their stories.

Daryl Duke, a veteran film director and founder of Vancouver's CKVU-TV in 1976, says CIVT's mandate is to fill a void in local broadcasting. He believes CIVT will appeal to Lower Mainland viewers by treating them as being distinct from other audiences in Canada. "There's a wide multicultural audience that isn't being addressed," Duke said, "not just in news terms but in terms of their stories, their issues and concerns. We have to redefine the nature of what a 'typical' Vancouver audience is, and we have to redefine the meaning of the word mainstream." CIVT will be the third station Duke has helped usher in in Vancouver. He was instrumental in tap into a truly intriguing aspect of the computer age.

While riding the information highway has left some cold, Arthur's revolutionary use of his personal computer has transformed two-dimensional art forms into choreographed kaleidoscopes. His Touched Alive short film animates the paintings of Vancouver artist Jack Shadbolt so successfully that the artist is delighted at the results, says Arthur. Anyone who'd passed through the Vancouver International Airport in December might have noticed his moving Shadbolt film projected every half hour on the new bank of continuously changing giant screens (which, incidentally, have a totalitarian effect, like something out of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four). Now he's extending the 80-second project to four minutes, and it should be ready for viewing later this year. Animation is exhausting work, perhaps one of the reasons so few artists experiment in the genre.

The extended project will take Arthur about 3,500 hours, working 10-hour days, seven days a week. Until the National Film Board purchased the film for $20,000, Arthur and his wife were 10,000 in the hole and on the verge of bankruptcy, he says. Now he's contracted to produce the extended film for the NFB, and his financial worries are over. The eclectic Arthur has two masters degrees, one in neuroscience and the other in fine-arts film production, but it was while viewing the work of Canadian animating legend Norman McLaren in high school that he was inspired to produce his first animated film. Four years ago he began experimenting with computer animation and the surrealist paintings of zoologist Desmond Morris.

The Naked Ape author viewed his work, and encouraged him to do more. Arthur was recently profiled on the Knowledge Network. Watch for his first installation of Touched Alive at the Spike and Mike Festival of Animation in March. It was also recently accepted into the Berlin International Film Festival. THE STANLEY THEATRE on Granville Street was busier than it's been in years on Saturday afternoon, when organizers held an open house from noon until 4 p.m.

Inside, it's the same old-world movie theatre but without the antiquated seats. While TheatreSports League members gave a free show, Arts Club fixtures like artistic director Bill Millerd circulated among the standing crowd. The Stanley Theatre Society recently announced a change to the design plans for the soon-to-be-renovated heritage building. Instead of two theatres, one on the lower floor for the Arts Club, and one upstairs for the TheatreSports League, only the Arts Club will occupy the building. TheatreSports has decided to make the New Revue Stage on Granville Island its permanent home.

The Stanley is scheduled to open in mid-1998. THE MIKE MURLEY QUINTET, originally slated to play the Glass Slipper Wednesday, has re-booked at the Cas-bah Jazzbah club at 175 W. Pender St. The Coastal Jazz and Blues Society show begins at 9:30 p.m. Susannah's heat cooled off by VO production SUSANNAH Vancouver Opera Feb.

4, 6, 8, 10 at 8 p.m., Queen Elizabeth Playhouse LLOYD DYKK Sun Music Critic For all of Susannah's atmosphere of fire-and-brimstone religious revivalism on a hot July night in New Hope Valley, Vancouver Opera's production of Carlisle Floyd's 1955 classic looks cool and stylized. In the way that designer Ken MacDon-ald's vast tree dominates the set (except for two or three minimalist windows suspended over the stage), cool blues dominate the color spectrum and cold, formal movement governs the action. The tree is awesome, a great sprawling thing, massive but twisted and sickly looking. The image seems to proceed from the biblical story of Susannah, on which Floyd loosely based his opera. In the Bible, the virtuous Susannah is found bathing by two elders who try to make her submit to their lust or be accused of adultery.

Her innocence is later proven by conflicting identification of the tree under which the seduction was supposed to have happened. The opera, written in a time of the "red scare," rings a variation on the story. Susannah, the Tennessee mountain girl, is also found "guilty" of sin simply because she's too pretty and because she is found bathing naked in a creek that the village elders intend for baptism purposes. But the opera's social conscience traces the dynamics of official fear-mongering, the violation of social trust, and the predation on the innocent, who all too often come out of it warped by the force of "good Intentions." Please sec Susannah, What's new: CITV-TV, Vancouver's first new TV station in 20 years. When It will air: Sept.

1 What It will show: Mainstream, conventional English-language programming, similar to BCTV. A mix of U.S. programming and Canadian drama in prime time, with a heavy emphasis on local, regional news and current affairs during the day. Local news will feature neighborhood news bureaus staffed with multilingual reporters. How much it will cost: Included in basic cable at no extra charge.

VIC BONDEROFFVancouver Sun Benevolent Association of Canada, who feels his community's voice is all too often lost in the din of Vancouver's mainstream media. "It couldn't have gone to a better group of people," Huey said. "They seem to have a very good understanding of what's going on in different communities, and I believe they'll do a good job not only for the ethnic community but for the whole community in general." Murray, a Simon Fraser University communications professor who recently served on the Juneau Commission studying the future of the CBC, will have to share her teaching responsibilities with her new position as CIVT board director. Murray believes Baton has been handed an opportunity to make a real difference in the Vancouver broadcasting scene. "We have to redefine what is mainstream, rather than ghettoiz-ing ethnic groups," Murray said.

"Our job as directors is to hold their feet to the fire on their commitments, and I am convinced that they have the will and the integrity, and the creativity, to do it." Please see CIVT, B8 Who's involved: Film-maker Daryl Duke, impresario David Y.H. Lui, university professor Catherine Murray are on the new station's board of directors, and former BCTV news director Cameron Bell is a key adviser. shaping CBUT-TV, CBC's Vancouver affiliate, and produced its opening-night programs in 1953. He built CKVU-TV from the ground up 20 years ago, and has now assumed a major role in shepherding in CrVT, along with fellow B.C.-board members Calvin Helin, David Y.H. Lui and Catherine Murray.

"I hope we put U.TV and BCTV on notice that we're here with an excit ing program mix," Duke said. "We want to carve out a territory for ourselves that's unique, and I hope they rise to the challenge of reflecting the city in a better way as well." CrVTs promise to reflect Asian interest and concerns, including establishing six news bureaus with multilingual reporters in ethnic communities, is especially welcomed by Gim Huey of the Chinese SURF CITY Compiled by Alex Strachan JUST DO IT: The Discovery Channel's "You View It, You Do It" contest kicks into high gear this week, offering viewers the chance to win a 10-day trip for two to this summer's Eco-Challenge Adventure Race in Australia (a five-part, five-hour special of last summer's Eco-Challenge race at Whistler airs on consecutive nights, beginning Feb. 16 on Discovery). Viewers are invited to watch the following six Discovery programs; when you see the "You View It, You Do It" toll-free 1-800 number on the screen, call to register. Winners will be selected by random draw on March 7.

Second prize is a 1997 Subaru Outback. The programs are World of Horses with John Scott (Tuesday, 5 p.m.), CPdiscowry.ca (Friday, 4 p.m.), Go Fork! (Feb. 10, 3 p.m.), Great Canadian Parks (Feb. 12, 5 p.m.), Eco-Challenge, parts 1 and 2, (Feb. 16, 5 p.m.) and Eco-Challenge, conclusion (Feb.

19, 7 p.m.). SURFING THE GLOBE, PART DEUX: Further evidence that American pop culture is taking over the world can be found on Variety's recently released list of the most-watched TV programs from nround the globe. In Spain, the five most watched programs of 1995 were the homegrown AC Milan and Ajax Amsterdam, the current-affairs program Fatto Di Enzo Biagi and gasp! Sister Act (it's a Catholic thing). That hardly com- Eares with the Yankee influence Down Under, owever, where six of the top 10 choices were American movies: The Fugitive (the single most-watched telecast of 1995), Four Weddings and a Funeral, Sister Act Lethal Weapon 3, The Mighty Ducks and Dave. Then again, nothing not sand, heat, dust, nor flies can explain Oz's infatuation with Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie (a special featuring the two was Oz's sixth most-watched program of the year).

SOUND BITES: "Madonna, I think, won (a Golden Globe) in the comedy or musical category. She sang in Evita, so that satisfied the musical requirement. And she acted in die movie, which satisfied the comedy requirement." Jay Leno on The Tbnight Show "I've never bought Hustler. I don't approve of Hustler. But I will defend to the death my right to read somebody else's copy." Bill Mahcr on Politically Incorrect sitcoms Farmacia dc Cuardia and Medico de Famil-ia, a European Cup soccer match between Spain and Belgium, the royal wedding between Cristina de Borbon and Jaime de Marichalar and yikesl Kindergarten Cop (Question: Was Ah-nuld dubbed or Viewers in Japan favored New Year's Eve celebrations, a sumo wrestling tournament, a news special on the Aum subway gas attack and baseball.

Italians tuned in to the San Remo Song Festival, a soccer game between INSIDE: TV schedule B8 Shadow Conspiracy review B9.