David Proval

The first time David Proval walked into Chin Chin restaurant in West Hollywood, the waitresses were afraid to wait on him. They'd seen Proval on "The Sopranos." They knew him as Richie Aprile, the tightly wound gangster he played on the HBO series in its second season, and they were afraid of what would happen if they botched his order.

The first time David Proval walked into Chin Chin restaurant in West Hollywood, the waitresses were afraid to wait on him. They'd seen Proval on "The Sopranos." They knew him as Richie Aprile, the tightly wound gangster he played on the HBO series in its second season, and they were afraid of what would happen if they botched his order.

"Flipping" flops. Gangster pictures don't come any phonier than this misfired attempt to set down a bunch of sub-Scorsese good fellas, none of whom seem to have ever spent a moment west of New Jersey, on the side streets of Hollywood. Writer-director Gene Mitchell's first feature plays like an actor's workshop exercise--"Flipping" did in fact begin in a workshop--that had no business being filmed for public consumption.

David Proval huffs and puffs but fails to breathe life into "Seltzer-Man," a monologue written by Richard Krevolin, now at the Tiffany Theater. Set at "the end of the '60s" inside a seedy apartment on the Lower East Side of New York, "Seltzer-Man" examines 48-year-old Seymour Allan Cohen, who delivers bottles of seltzer by day and tries to write poetry by night.

Related to the 1953 Vincent Price film in name, embalming technique and Warner Bros. pedigree only, the new "House of Wax" is a dreary, predictable tale of hormone-driven young people who take a shortcut off a Louisiana highway only to find themselves potential figures in a backwater Madame Tussaud's.

In "Hollywood Dreams" an aspiring actress seeks stardom, finding rejection, romance, publicity and personal epiphanies along the way. It's the Hollywood fantasy seen through the eyes of writer-director Henry Jaglom, and it's a very mixed bag. When it's good, "Hollywood Dreams" is corrosively funny and unexpectedly poignant. And when it's bad, it's over-the-top bad.

To see Martin Scorsese's "Mean Streets" nearly 25 years ago was to be blown away by a film that confirmed a major talent with only two features behind him. A year earlier Francis Ford Coppola had created an epic crime family saga with "The Godfather," but though "Mean Streets" covered some of the same territory, it had a whole different feel. "Mean Streets" is a jazzy riff of a movie, zigging and zagging as if to the beat of snapping fingers.

There will be those for whom the mere pairing of former "Picket Fences" love interests Lauren Holly and Costas Mandylor will be reason enough to watch "Just Desserts," a made-for-TV romantic comedy about pastry chefs from opposite sides of the Harlem River that premieres Sunday night on the Hallmark Channel.

Heart & Soul is a fitting name for a hip-hop festival that spotlights two old-school heroes, Sir Mix-a-Lot and the legendary Afrika Bambaataa. Also appearing: L.A. DJ Richard "Humpty" Vission, Freaky Flow & MC Flipside, Valerie & the Vibe tribe and others. * Heart & Soul, National Orange Show Events Center, 689 S. E St., San Bernardino, 4 p.m. $20 to $30. (909) 888-6788.

One reason family values has entered the political landscape is that it's so adaptable. Rather than being fundamental, the term is actually--no pun intended--relative. Whatever their values, every family can champion the idea. And some families will go very far doing so, as Thomas George Carter shows in his play "Hells Kitchen Ablaze." This is not the Ozzie and Harriet nuclear unit, however.

Rabid fans of "The Sopranos" flocked to the Atlas Supper Club in the mid-Wilshire area the other night for red wine, baked ziti, Sinatra and a new episode of the smoking HBO series. The party was one of several that the cable network has sponsored around the country, open to any fans who responded to an ad that ran in several weeklies.