Dennis Hopper

Since he revived his career 10 years ago as the creep in Blue Velvet and thebroken-down drunk in Hoosiers, Dennis Hopper has become indelibly identified with perverse villainy. To the mainstream audience he is the mad bomber of Speed, the chain-smoking loony in Waterworld and the sneaker-sniffer of the Nike TV commercials. All this baggage means that Carried Away presents a heavy challenge to Hopper. But in this understated film he has turned what might be a drawback into an advantage.

Dennis Hopper, 74, the rogue actor and director who kick-started a new era of indie moviemaking with his trippy '60s road picture, Easy Rider , who turned a nitrous-sucking villain in Blue Velvet into an icon of roaring weirdness, and who worked in the great American movie genres with any number of great American moviemakers, died Saturday in Venice, Calif. He had been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer last fall. Mr. Hopper, who was also a painter, a sculptor (as a child, he took art classes from Thomas Hart Benton)

Not far from the intersection of G-string and G spot is Dennis Hopper's The Hot Spot, which might be confused with a Twin Peaks segment except that it's 2 hours and 10 minutes long. Set in one of your picturesque, dust-blown Texas cowtowns with a population of 17 and two thriving car dealerships, The Hot Spot stars Don Johnson as a generic drifter who wheels into town in a vintage Studebaker. He slakes his thirst at an exotic dance parlor called (what else?) the Yellow Rose.

Dennis Hopper, 74, the rogue actor and director who kick-started a new era of indie moviemaking with his trippy '60s road picture, Easy Rider, who turned a nitrous-sucking villain in Blue Velvet into an icon of roaring weirdness, and who worked in the great American movie genres with any number of great American moviemakers, died Saturday in Venice, Calif. He had been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer last fall. Mr. Hopper, who was also a painter, a sculptor (as a child, he took art classes from Thomas Hart Benton)

Three movies from unexpected places top this week's new video arrivals: a comedy from London's Chinatown, a fantasy from the always unpredictable Dennis Hopper and a drama of Chekhovian proportions from Woody Allen. PING PONG (1987) (Virgin Vision) $79.95. 100 minutes. David Yip, Lucy Sheen, Robert Lee. Where there's a will, there's not necessarily a way, as the family of the late Sam Wong discovers when it hears the conditions of his last testament. Set in London's Chinatown, this is a comedy of colliding cultures and the hopeless task all immigrants face in striking a balance between their roots and the often alien society they live in. RIDERS OF THE STORM (1988)

Gone are the scraggly days, the zonked days, the days of misadventure. Gone are the days of coke and tequila and wandering buck naked down strange Mexican highways. Gone are the needles, the leather, the girls, the oceanic paranoia. Let 'em go. Dennis Hopper, just a clean-cut working Joe, doesn't want 'em and doesn't need 'em. He's hot now and straight - after many booze- and drug-blurred years - trumpeting a new picture, a freaksploitation item dubbed Flashback, in which Hopper portrays an Abbie Hoffmanesque political prankster from the '60s awash in Ronald Reagan's '80s.

LOS ANGELES DENNIS HOPPER SUED FOR SLANDER Actor Rip Torn, who appears as a sidekick on "The Larry Sanders Show," filed a slander lawsuit yesterday against actor-director Dennis Hopper for statements Hopper made on a recent "Tonight Show. " Earlier this year, "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno and Hopper talked about the 25th anniversary of "Easy Rider," the cult counterculture film about a trio of laid-back rebels on a cross-country motorcycle odyssey. Hopper, Peter Fonda and newcomer Jack Nicholson were engraved into the U.S. psyche as the 1969, low budget movie became a smash success.

If you're a fan of neo-sci-fi, drug-addled, frequently amusing and just as frequently incomprehensible left-wing fantasies, then you'd better make it your business to see "Riders of the Storm," which opens today at the Roxy Screening Rooms. I'm not so sure about the rest of you. The film stars '60s survivors Dennis Hopper and Michael J. Pollard, which should be a tipoff about something. They play two members of the crew of "Uncle Slam," a B-29 bomber full of Vietnam vets that, ever since the war ended, has been traversing America, beaming subversive messages to the nation's broadcasting systems and eluding the attempts of the military to bring it down.

It's been 19 years since Easy Rider. Do you know where your children are? Dennis Hopper, who wrote and directed that counterculture manifesto in which policemen were pigs and hippies their fodder, is back behind the camera with Colors. Does he know where his loyalties are? Hopper's bullet-riddled saga, of Los Angeles cops policing the alleys where teen gang members recklessly slaughter each other, sides with the lawmen and the lawbreakers. Which makes Colors schizophrenic, like a cop who arrests and handcuffs himself.

  When the Philadelphia 76ers play the Phoenix Suns at 7 tonight, they will try to encourage their fans to block out the sun - literally. Main Line Health will conduct free melanoma screenings on the main concourse beginning at 6 p.m. and will distribute information on the dangers of excessive exposure to the sun. The Sixers will present Linda Stowell , regional vice president/east of the Associated Press, with the Sixers Pioneer Award, recognizing individuals who have dedicated their lives to bringing awareness to a health-related cause.

Rebel actor-director Dennis Hopper , who died Saturday at age 74, was eulogized by fellow thesps Jack Nicholson and Val Kilmer Wednesday at a memorial Mass in Ranchos De Taos, N.M. Hopper's son, Henry Lee Hopper , read from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass . Nicholson, who costarred with Hopper in Easy Rider , described the late actor as an "an all-around guy. It was a very singular relationship I had with him, like nobody else....

Dennis Hopper, 74, the rogue actor and director who kick-started a new era of indie moviemaking with his trippy '60s road picture, Easy Rider, who turned a nitrous-sucking villain in Blue Velvet into an icon of roaring weirdness, and who worked in the great American movie genres with any number of great American moviemakers, died Saturday in Venice, Calif. He had been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer last fall. Mr. Hopper, who was also a painter, a sculptor (as a child, he took art classes from Thomas Hart Benton)

Dennis Hopper, 74, the rogue actor and director who kick-started a new era of indie moviemaking with his trippy '60s road picture, Easy Rider , who turned a nitrous-sucking villain in Blue Velvet into an icon of roaring weirdness, and who worked in the great American movie genres with any number of great American moviemakers, died Saturday in Venice, Calif. He had been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer last fall. Mr. Hopper, who was also a painter, a sculptor (as a child, he took art classes from Thomas Hart Benton)

  When the Philadelphia 76ers play the Phoenix Suns at 7 tonight, they will try to encourage their fans to block out the sun - literally. Main Line Health will conduct free melanoma screenings on the main concourse beginning at 6 p.m. and will distribute information on the dangers of excessive exposure to the sun. The Sixers will present Linda Stowell , regional vice president/east of the Associated Press, with the Sixers Pioneer Award, recognizing individuals who have dedicated their lives to bringing awareness to a health-related cause.

Since he revived his career 10 years ago as the creep in Blue Velvet and thebroken-down drunk in Hoosiers, Dennis Hopper has become indelibly identified with perverse villainy. To the mainstream audience he is the mad bomber of Speed, the chain-smoking loony in Waterworld and the sneaker-sniffer of the Nike TV commercials. All this baggage means that Carried Away presents a heavy challenge to Hopper. But in this understated film he has turned what might be a drawback into an advantage.

"Yes, Michael and Lisa Marie spent a weekend with us in May. We weren't really sure it was a romance . . . They seemed to be comforting to each other. " - Marla Maples, on her recent houseguests Going back to Nirvana Musical life for Kurt after death The Seattle grunge group Nirvana, mum since the April suicide of vocalist Kurt Cobain, will issue a posthumous 30-track double album of the band's live recordings in November, the band's label said. "Verse Chorus Verse" will feature previously unreleased performances from 1989 to '94, as well as the band's complete "Unplugged" acoustic special, taped for MTV late last year.

LOS ANGELES DENNIS HOPPER SUED FOR SLANDER Actor Rip Torn, who appears as a sidekick on "The Larry Sanders Show," filed a slander lawsuit yesterday against actor-director Dennis Hopper for statements Hopper made on a recent "Tonight Show. " Earlier this year, "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno and Hopper talked about the 25th anniversary of "Easy Rider," the cult counterculture film about a trio of laid-back rebels on a cross-country motorcycle odyssey. Hopper, Peter Fonda and newcomer Jack Nicholson were engraved into the U.S. psyche as the 1969, low budget movie became a smash success.

As yet another reporter asks him what he thinks about the "big lawsuit," best-selling author Leo Buscaglia, America's honcho of hugs, knows that the convention vibes are not going his way. To the surprise of Buscaglia and nearly everyone in the publishing business, the American Booksellers Association, which ended its annual four- day convention here yesterday, launched its rite of spring on Friday by suing five publishers (Houghton Mifflin Co.,...

Red Rock West opens on an empty stretch of Wyoming blacktop, where a battered Cadillac sits on the shoulder, washed in early morning light. A guy with a brace on his knee gets out, does some one-handed Marine Corps push-ups in the middle of the road, searches for a fresh shirt (western-style) from the trunk, puts it on, checks his hair and drives off. We don't know much about this character yet, except that he probably spent the night in his car and that he's heading for trouble.

So have you seen those new Nike athletic-shoe commercials? The ones featuring actor Dennis Hopper hopping around like a crazed ex-referee weirdo? Perhaps you liked them. Perhaps you didn't understand them. (You wouldn't be alone.) Perhaps you hated them. (You wouldn't be alone.) Whatever, the four commercials for Nike's new Air Veer cross-training shoes have rankled some in the mental-health community, who fear that the character Hopper has created could perpetuate stereotypes.