Sylvester Stallone

When you see that Sylvester Stallone is making movies these days about lost souls seeking redemption, the temptation is to interpret it in the most immediate terms, thinking how much he may need that himself--redemption--after a decade in which many in Hollywood danced on his professional grave. In 1990, as he was trying to make a go of "Rocky V," you could hear one of those anonymous voices from inside the biz predict that the man was "looking at a downhill slide that may not be salvageable."

What's with these Seattle people anyway? This guy, built like Superman anddressed like a high-class gangster, glares at them and speaks to them in a deep, serious voice that suggests none too subtly that he means business. But nobody takes him seriously, which makes him very, very angry. These intense encounters run throughout the "Get Carter" remake, which was heavily promoted by Warner Bros. but opened Friday without benefit of press previews.

Seeing Sylvester Stallone with a club in his hand should not come as a surprise. In Hollywood, it's called typecasting. But a golf club? And yet here he is, in the Sporting Life, striding across the magazine pages in these natty--OK, ludicrous--plus fours and delivering golfing wisdom to all. Stallone claims a handicap of "probably between eight and nine, now," and golf seems to have given him another dimension-- a sense of humor. Asked his idea of a perfect golf day, he answered: "No injuries."

A holy portrait loomed above the doorway, sanctifying, in some odd, soul-preserving way, the brutal hand-to-hand combat that occurred within the confines of the old Resurrection Gym, as well as standing guard over the brave souls who entered through that door. From the instant he saw this sacred image of Jesus, Sylvester Stallone understood the leading role it had to play.

Actor Sylvester Stallone will present a check today to the newly founded Heart of a Child Foundation, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization to benefit research on congenital heart defects. The money stems, in part, from proceeds on sales of T-shirts designed by Stallone and sold exclusively at Planet Hollywood restaurants, which he co-owns. Stallone's support of the foundation follows the successful 1996 surgery at UCLA of his then-infant daughter, Sophia.

THE EX FILES: The California Department of Corrections, official keeper of convicted killer Lyle Menendez, is debunking reports of his pending divorce from his conference-call bride, Anna Eriksson. Because as far as Lyle's jailers are concerned, he wasn't legally married in the first place.

It began as a favor, and a pact between the brothers Stallone and an independent production company to make "The Good Life," a little $5-million film about two golfing hit men. Now, it has turned into a nasty legal tit for tat with a plot line straight out of Hollywood. Actor Sylvester Stallone, whose film "Cop Land" opened last week, fired the first legal salvo recently with a relatively tame breach of contract complaint in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Sylvester Stallone is having a problem with his waist. It's too trim. Too trim at least, for the shirt bagging up around his pants' 31-inch waistline, as a photographer snaps the star and his latest director, James Mangold. Stallone's slim physique seems doubly miraculous for a man of 51: a year ago, he gained and lost nearly 40 pounds to play Freddy Heflin, a chubby, ineffectual sheriff in Mangold's drama "Cop Land," which opens Friday.

TELEVISION Hall of Famers: CBS newswoman Diane Sawyer will be honored for "two decades of outstanding journalistic work" when she is inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences' Television Academy Hall of Fame during ceremonies in November in North Hollywood. Sawyer was among five 1997 inductees announced Tuesday. Others who will receive the honor are longtime NBC executive Grant Tinker, producers James L. Brooks and Garry K. Marshall and the late producer Quinn Martin.

In the real world, there is a distance between the decimated city of Sarajevo and the tumultuous career of Sylvester Stallone. At the Cannes International Film Festival, there is hardly any distance at all. The Bosnian city is represented by the ambitious "Welcome to Sarajevo," a film in competition directed by Britain's Michael Winterbottom. Stallone is here to trumpet "Cop Land," a (relatively) low-budget item that is something of a shift from the brawny epics he usually provides.