Inertia

Following are capsule reviews of a selection of the screenings today and Sunday at the American Film Institute Los Angeles International Film Festival at the Cineplex Odeon Cenutry Plaza Cinemas. SATURDAY 'Prisoners of Inertia' United States, 1989, 95 minutes 9:10 p.m. Languid inertia grips newlyweds Amanda Plummer and Christopher Rich, faced with almost too many ways to spend their New York Sunday afternoon. But before this pleasant satiric comedy is over almost one of everything has happened.

Aries (March 21-April 19): It takes a tough person to compete in the arena you've chosen. There are a lot of contenders out there, eyeing your position. Taurus (April 20-May 20): You'll evolve. The best part is that it will not take months or years. Results are immediate. Gemini (May 21-June 21): Sometimes doing research in your area of interest seems like a guilty pleasure. If you like something and want to know more about it, it's as worthy a use of your time as anything else.

Conrad's cartoon depicting the Coliseum commissioners as headless and pantless statues is a classic (Op-Ed Page, Aug. 26). The two statues should have been named "Municipal Arrogance" and "Low Intellectual Cunning." Irwindale will build a stadium in less time than it took the Coliseum commissioners to negotiate the non-construction of luxury boxes. This says a lot about the difference between momentum and inertia. MICHAEL A. SCOTT Glendora

In this economy, every state is hurting. Unemployment is in double digits, tax receipts are taking a dive and deficits are piling up. But, once again, California seems to be in a class of its own when it comes to financial dysfunction. The problems here eclipse those elsewhere. California has the distinction of being the only state that is constantly running out of cash. California is the only one pleading with the federal government to backstop an emergency borrowing plan.

I'm pleased and encouraged to see the editors of The Times step forward and clearly state in your editorial that the key impediment to true educational reform in our state is "chronic structural problems, including bureaucratic inertia." We're cheating our young people and endangering our future well-being by continuing to permit our school bureaucracies to divert precious tax dollars from the desperate, crowded, undersupplied schools. Now is the time for the bureaucrats to step aside and allow the real education experts--those teachers and staff who work with kids every day--to utilize their experience and know-how to begin to reshape our school system.

Joan Thorne paints large, bright, three-dimensional shapes sinking in a sea of squiggly lines. The shapes are powerful, abstract forms whose mass toys with weight amid a feathery web of floating lines. As the wispy brush strokes sweep around the shapes they create rivulets of motion that tickle form and void alike with a charged, furry atmosphere. Thorne's expressionistic energetic lines and the more hard-edged static forms make an unlikely wedding of inertia and movement. But the resulting image, with it's ominous depths thickened by pulpy fibers, is solid.

Aries (March 21-April 19): It takes a tough person to compete in the arena you've chosen. There are a lot of contenders out there, eyeing your position. Taurus (April 20-May 20): You'll evolve. The best part is that it will not take months or years. Results are immediate. Gemini (May 21-June 21): Sometimes doing research in your area of interest seems like a guilty pleasure. If you like something and want to know more about it, it's as worthy a use of your time as anything else.

"Prolonged sitting is not what nature intended for us," says Dr. Camelia Davtyan, clinical professor of medicine and director of women's health at the UCLA Comprehensive Health Program. "The chair is out to kill us," says James Levine, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine. Most of us have years of sitting experience, consider ourselves quite good at it and would swear that nature intended us to do it as much as possible. PHOTOS: 17 ways to fight the inertia, step by step But unfortunately, a good deal of data suggest that we're off our rockers to spend so much time on our rockers - as well as the vast variety of other seats where we're fond of parking our duffs.

Want to lose weight? Redecorate. Really? Really. Conventional furniture is part of the obesity problem, a growing number of scientists now say, but with the right changes it can be part of the solution. Rising to the challenge, designers are creating new styles of furniture, some meant to encourage perpetual motion and some meant to discourage perpetual eating. PHOTOS: 17 ways to fight the inertia, step by step "With all our products, we try to invite users to move more," says David Kahl, owner of Ergo Depot, which sells furniture online (www.ergodepot.com/)

Los Angeles County supervisors surely recognized last July that the county had to begin restructuring its health services immediately. Only an eleventh-hour federal/state bailout had averted a probable county bankruptcy that would have crippled care for the uninsured poor. So why is the relationship between county hospitals and independent clinics still fragmented, with no coherent plan for savings or for moving cases from costly hospitals to clinics?

The meeting that helped produce a franchise renaissance was conducted behind the scenes at Angel Stadium shortly after the Walt Disney Co. had hired Bill Stoneman as the club's general manager following a tumultuous 1999 season and shortly after Stoneman had hired Mike Scioscia as the manager. The meeting was designed to introduce the two to the administrative staff.

After being named editor of Newsweek on Tuesday, Jon Meacham said America's second-largest newsmagazine needed to produce unique stories and expand its long-form storytelling to strengthen its position in an increasingly competitive media environment. The 37-year-old Newsweek managing editor will take the top job early next month, at a time when the magazine is fighting to bolster relatively stagnant advertising and circulation.

If the stock market were truly efficient, Ron Muhlenkamp would be managing a lot more money, and many of his peers would be managing a lot less. The eponymous Muhlenkamp Fund, which holds $2.7 billion in clients' assets, has generated returns averaging 16.9% a year over the last 10 years and 13.1% a year over the last five. Now compare that with Fidelity Magellan. With $55 billion in assets, it's one of the world's best-known stock funds. Its 10-year average annualized return: 7.

Fifty years after it was formed by a merger of two powerful factions of labor unions, the AFL-CIO is on the brink of a historic split. If there's any single person to blame, or praise, for what happens next, it's an intense Ivy League graduate with a penchant for purple, the unifying color of the 1.8-million-member Service Employees International Union.

One law of physics doubles as a standard rule of personal finance: Inertia is a strong force. The inclination, or outright desire, to leave one's investment portfolio as it is usually trumps any urges to make change. In other words, what you have, you're likely to keep, for better or worse. Sometimes it is all for the best. Warren Buffett, who knows a thing or two about generating and keeping wealth, has said the best time to sell a stock is "never."

If parts of your lawn lift off like a toupee, grubs have been at work chewing grass roots. Grubs are larvae of Japanese (and related) beetles. The beetles lay eggs in turf from mid- to late summer, and the eggs hatch into grubs that feed on grass roots. Cold weather drives the grubs deep into the soil, but they surface again in spring before emerging as beetles. These caterpillar-like grubs--fat and creamy white--are usually curled up when you find them.

State Insurance Commissioner Roxani Gillespie took off the gloves Wednesday, accusing the Legislature of ignoring the insurance concerns of consumers while knuckling under to special interests and declaring that her own department had been subject to "undue influences" in the case she decided this week involving the Travelers company. Gillespie said she had overruled her own chief counsel, John J.

It may not be the stuff that drives elections here, but it certainly reflected an unusual meanness of spirit in German politics last week when word got out that one of the nation's most respected public figures, former President Richard von Weizsaecker, had been given the bum's rush by his own party.

It changed Los Angeles and forced a nation to again confront the issues of racism and police brutality. To African Americans, the videotaped images of police officers pummeling a black man was see-it-for-yourself proof of the street justice they had long complained about receiving at the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department. For once, they weren't ignored. With outrage extending all the way to the White House, Los Angeles first reeled, and then demanded reform. Police Chief Daryl F.

Los Angeles County supervisors surely recognized last July that the county had to begin restructuring its health services immediately. Only an eleventh-hour federal/state bailout had averted a probable county bankruptcy that would have crippled care for the uninsured poor. So why is the relationship between county hospitals and independent clinics still fragmented, with no coherent plan for savings or for moving cases from costly hospitals to clinics?