Brotherly Love

A movie that kicks off with Johnny Cash roaring "Ring of Fire" and ends up with Bob Dylan torture-moaning the same tune over the closing credits begs the question: Is it the song or the singer? By the end of "Feeling Minnesota," you have to conclude that it's just not enough to put footloose amorality, casual viciousness and overriding doom on the big screen. There's got to be something to keep the self-assured bravado from becoming a self-conscious, raspy wheeze.

Brotherly love gets you only so far in the NBA. Justin Holiday turned 24 Friday, four days after signing with Philadelphia and moving into the home of his younger sibling Jrue, the 76ers' All-Star point guard. What did Jrue get Justin for his birthday? "Some nice bed sheets and a pillow and a blanket," Jrue joked. Sleeping arrangements also were recently worked out between Marcus and Markieff Morris. The Phoenix Suns' identical twin forwards played a series of video games to decide who would get the only master bedroom in their new house.

Some families argue about food, others about politics. Then there's the Lopez family, whose soccer loyalties are challenged and tested seemingly every day. "It's a deep-rooted passion in our family," Sal Lopez said. Luckily, the four Lopez brothers are in agreement about one specific soccer subject -- their dedication to L.A. Cathedral High. Since 1991, when Sal became Cathedral's soccer coach and used his stipend to help pay for two of his younger brothers' tuition, the Lopez brothers have been attached to the program.

The Philadelphia Orchestra has come to the rescue of a budding musician, 9-year-old Aidan Milligan. The special-needs fourth-grader was so excited over an upcoming trombone lesson that he left his instrument on the curb at the end of his driveway. It soon disappeared. Aidan, who has Down Syndrome and attends Manoa Elementary in Haverford, Pa., said he left the instrument out on the street for just 10 to 15 minutes. It was either whisked away by that day's trash collectors or more nefariously swiped.

Some time Saturday in Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium, when the Navy football team kicks off to Army during the 93rd meeting of these service academy rivals, Gil Greene will do his best to knock Gaylord Greene's block off. And vice versa. "If I get the chance, I'll hit him right in the mouth if I have to," said Gil Greene, an Orange Lutheran High School graduate who is a sophomore reserve defensive back at Navy.

So here I am, cynically pondering the homoerotic subtext of Sammy Hagar's incessant rubbing up against his (now former) Van Halen bandmates during the performance of "Poundcake," when a drunken voice screams into my ear, demanding to be heard over the band and 20,000 equally drunken fans in this hellhole of a dirt pit called the Blockbuster Pavilion. "There will never be a rock guitar player as great as Eddie Van Halen," the voice cries out.

The buzz began the moment the cameras caught actress Angelina Jolie in her brother's arms and built as she gushed over him in her Oscar acceptance speech. And it has continued all week on radio talk shows and in computer chat rooms. So what's up with Angelina and her brother? Does that relationship seem a little strange? Maybe the questions simply reflect the image that the young actress has created: an eccentric iconoclast pushing the limits of convention on matters of sex and social mores.

In recent years Christopher Munch has emerged as one of the most distinctive American independent filmmakers. He created a splash with his 60-minute dramatic vignette "The Hours and Times" (1992), in which he sensitively speculated what might have occurred between John Lennon and the Beatles' gay manager, Brian Epstein, during a brief interlude in Barcelona in 1963.

Tautly and often exquisitely written, Pete Dexter's "Brotherly Love" is a novel partly dimmed by its darkness. That may seem a truism--what else would darkness do?--except that in a few great works, as in solar eclipses, darkness reveals the flaring corona around it. Iago illuminates "Othello," and the Snopeses backlight Yoknapatawpha County. Paris Trout, a human monster, did a similar kind of limning in Dexter's masterpiece of the same name.

Robert Darnton daydreams about history the way other people daydream about taking a vacation or finding true love. He lets the heavy volume in his hands fall on his lap. He sleeps a little, until awakened by a kiss. Un baiser. He is in Paris in the late 18th Century. Revolution ravages the city. It could be a kiss of death, or a kiss of love, still lingering among the restless shades of past events. It is "The Kiss of Lamourette."

Kings of the Earth A Novel Jon Clinch Random House: 396 pp., $26 Murder would seem to be a starkly defined crime. There's the killer, and the victim. The crime and the punishment. But within those relationships exists enough space to weave all manner of morality tales, which is what Jon Clinch has done with subtle brilliance in his novel "Kings of the Earth," which burrows into brotherly love and neighborliness and takes a determinedly unromantic look at rural life.

When Hiroki Kuroda takes the mound Tuesday in Cincinnati to open the a six-game Dodgers trip, the starting pitcher hopes the beneficial adjustments he made in his last outing carry over against the Reds. Kuroda threw scoreless ball through seven innings in his last, Tuesday against Chris Carpenter in the Dodgers' 1-0 win over the St. Louis Cardinals. That was a sharp improvement from Kuroda's previous three starts, when he was 0-3 with a 6.19 earned-run average. "There were a lot of things that I had to fix and I was able to make adjustments and I think that's what you saw in that game against the Cardinals," the Japanese right-hander said through an interpreter Saturday before the Dodgers played the Angels at Dodger Stadium.

Some families argue about food, others about politics. Then there's the Lopez family, whose soccer loyalties are challenged and tested seemingly every day. "It's a deep-rooted passion in our family," Sal Lopez said. Luckily, the four Lopez brothers are in agreement about one specific soccer subject -- their dedication to L.A. Cathedral High. Since 1991, when Sal became Cathedral's soccer coach and used his stipend to help pay for two of his younger brothers' tuition, the Lopez brothers have been attached to the program.

A comedy called "Melissa & Joey," starring and produced by Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence, received a 10-episode order from ABC Family and will premiere this year. Hart, who starred in "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" from 1996 to 2003, will portray the grown-up former wild child of a political family who is now a local politician herself and is forced to care for her teenage niece and pre-adolescent nephew after her sister is jailed and her brother-in-law flees after a scandal hits.

Dear Amy: My daughter has a boyfriend of 17 who still sleeps in the same bed with his 19-year-old sister, on occasion. He also sits in the bathroom and talks with her while she is in the shower. Is it just me, or is this a tad strange? The sister is also very controlling and possessive. Wondering Mom Dear Mom: It isn't just you. This is a tad strange. I'd start by asking how she knows about these habits. Is this hearsay, or does she have personal knowledge of it?

Nepotism is not unknown in the TV business, but with his latest project, Shaun Cassidy has taken family ties to a new extreme. Cassidy is the 1970s teen idol who has spent the last 15 years as a television writer-producer of cult dramas with a sci-fi bent ("American Gothic," "Invasion").

Judd Hirsch, who recently won a Tony Award as best actor in a Broadway play ("I'm Not Rappaport"), will be seen on CBS next Friday in a rerun of "Brotherly Love." He plays twin brothers at deadly odds with one another.

Kieran Culkin wasn't exaggerating when he described his latest film, the nostalgic indie drama "Lymelife," as a "family affair." Indeed, the sibling dynamics particular to brothers hovered over the entire production. "Lymelife," which opened in theaters Friday, is told from the point of view of an enigmatic 15-year-old named Scott Bartlett, played by Kieran's younger brother Rory.

In "Closing Time," Joe Queenan's new memoir, the author was none too pleased with his high school girlfriend when she told him that "she had big plans for her life, and that none of them included me." She was on her way to study music at Catholic University (out of state, that is), while Joe would be only a few blocks from home, his "dream . . . to make a living by ridiculing people, and it didn't seem to matter all that much where I got my degree, as you couldn't major in satire or invective."