Movie Industry Los Angeles

When Los Angeles mayoral candidate Richard Riordan promised to improve the city's relations with the Hollywood film community, he didn't know that "Speed" producer Mark Gordon was preparing to put his feet to the fire as soon as he took office. Nor did Riordan realize that among Gordon's requests was to have an Uzi-bearing mad bomber trigger a derailment on the city's spanking new Metro Rail line.

Unifrance Film President Apologizes: Daniel Toscan du Plantier says he is sorry for a "bad joke" attributed to him in which he was quoted as saying the earthquake in Los Angeles was God's retribution to Hollywood. In a letter to Motion Picture Assn.

Auguste Lumiere and his brother Lois are credited as the first to project a film to a paying audience--on Dec. 28,1895. "It can be exploited for a certain time as a scientific curiosity, but apart from that, it has no commercial value whatsoever," said Auguste about their combination camera / printer / projector. He obviously underestimated their achievement.

It could have been worse. Even as Sony Corp. was projecting a companywide operating loss for its year ending March 31, the Tokyo-based firm's Hollywood studios were generating dramatic sales increases. The numbers: Filmed entertainment brought sales of $112.5 million for the quarter ending Dec. 31-an increase of 65.4% over the corresponding period a year earlier. Sony's total television, movie and record sales for the period rose 25.2% But can the studios keep performing in 1992?

In Europe, the Sony televisions that line storefront windows flicker with familiar scenes from the movie "Hook," a proud product of Sony's film division. Outtakes from the updated Peter Pan fable have also found their way into Sony's new corporate image campaign in Japan. On the company's Culver City studio lot, meanwhile, Sony hardware executives are hard at work on the technologies that are expected to take the film industry into the next century.

In response to "Robbing Russia Isn't an Option," by George McGovern, Thomas R. Mattair and Richard F. Wilson, Commentary, March 25: Had the trio dared to "name names" rather than offer vague accusations against "some of Israel's congressional supporters" this article would surely have bordered on defamation. One must wonder aloud why McGovern and his colleagues failed to reveal that they are fronting for Arab interests?

In "Leap of Faith," a Paramount Pictures film that opens Friday, Steve Martin plays a revivalist preacher in a spangled jacket who specializes in fleecing his flock. As he navigates the back roads of the Midwest, Martin wins over his audiences with a potent mixture of religious zeal and Las Vegas pizazz. "I give people a good show," Martin's character, the Rev. Jonas Nightengale, says in self-defense.