Love Interest

  In a delightful matter of life imitating art, the Daily News has learned that former Eagle Vince Papale is quietly growing his family some deep South Philly roots. As has been noted, the movie "Invincible" took more than a few liberties with his actual past, relocating the Delaware County-bred Papale to a South Philadelphia rowhouse, for example, and hooking him up with a football-savvy bartender. In reality, his love interest and wife is a former USA World gymnast and current Realtor, the market-savvy Janet Cantwell-Papale.

Desert Flower is a weighty biopic that by all rights should have bloomed more fully than it does in the hands of writer-director Sherry Hormann. That said, a lovely performance by Ethiopian supermodel-actress Liya Kebede as supermodel-activist Waris Dirie works wonders to elevate this uneven, occasionally awkward, but often absorbing film. Based on the novel by Dirie and Cathleen Miller, Desert Flower attempts a mini-epic telling of Dirie's rise from dirt-poor Somali nomad to international runway superstar.

Eve Brent, 81, a veteran character actress whose most recognizable role was Jane to Gordon Scott's Tarzan, died Aug. 27 in Sun Valley, Calif. Ms. Brent rebooted the character of Jane, Tarzan's civilized love interest, in the 1958 films Tarzan and the Trappers and Tarzan's Fight for Life , after Jane was left out of the two previous Tarzan movies. She said she took the part to please her son, who was then about 6. But although it raised her profile, she later concluded it had been a disastrous career move.

A PHILLY CLASSIC will be honored at the Philly Classic event Saturday. To be sure, it will be a posthumous honor. But we're sure Scott Safran will be watching, glancing down as he plays that big "Asteroids" game in the sky. Safran, you see, has been the world record holder on the video game since 1982. He was 15, a video wizard. At the All-American Billiard arcade in Newtown, Bucks County, Safran played for 60 hours, finishing with a score of 41,336,440. No one has come close since.

AMY'S CUP RUNNETH OVER Friends of Amy Irving - now a multimillionaire as a result of a friendly little divorce settlement with Steven Spielberg - are thrilled that she's found herself a new romance with writer-director Bruno Baretto. (It's only fair - Spielberg is said to have been ga-ga over actress Kate Capshaw for ages.) Baretto's credentials are quite respectable. He wrote the screenplay for "Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands," and also wrote and directed "Gabriela" with Marcello Mastroianni and Sonja Braga.

The Ellen DeGeneres Show (3 p.m., NBC10) - Actress Sandra Bullock ( The Blind Side ). The Oprah Winfrey Show (4 p.m., 6ABC) - Jenny Sanford discusses her ex-husband's international, headline-making affair. Community (8 p.m., NBC10) - The gang finds out that Jeff has a new love interest, which he wanted to keep under wraps. But now that everyone knows, he can at least keep her identity to himself. Rookie Blue (9 p.m., 6ABC) - Many of the officers' personal secrets come spilling out as Andy and Traci are among the first responders to a home invasion.

If El Greco cartooned for Mad Magazine, he might have created Tom Green, the gaunt, goateed MTV cutup with the face of a martyr and the mind of a maniac. In small doses, Green can be diverting, whether wild-eyed as the mouse-swallower in Road Trip or woolly as Drew Barrymore's swain, Chad, in Charlie's Angels. But Freddy Got Fingered, which Green wrote and directed and in which he stars, definitely exceeds the prescribed dosage. This slipshod slapstick about an aspiring animator with a prurient interest in animal behavior should be a controlled substance.

Fredro Starr pretty much just has to show up to play his new role on the UPN sitcom "Moesha. " He plays Q (that's right, Q), Moesha's new love interest, a street-wise rapper from New York. In real life, Starr is a member of the hard-core rap group Onyx. "That's my life . . . a city kid who raps," says Starr, 22. Thanks to the success of Onyx, Starr has developed a gangsta persona that may seem a bit edgy for the wholesome family show. But Starr is not too worried about it. "I am walking a thin line," he concedes.

"Loaded Weapon I" is a ramshackle spoof of macho cop pictures that's very funny when it isn't excruciatingly bad. Referencing "Lethal Weapon" and "48 HRS," this movies casts Emilio Estevez and Samuel L. Jackson as white/black cop partners on the trail of a criminal organization that is spiking Girl Scout cookies with cocaine. Jon Lovitz appears as a sad sack version of the Joe Pesci "Lethal Weapon 3" character, and Kathy Ireland provides Estevez's sure-to-die love interest.

"The Beautician and the Beast" is a head-on collision between "The Nanny" and "The King and I. " There are no survivors. Victims include Fran Drescher, trying to make the jump from sitcom star to movie star, and jettisoned Bond Timothy Dalton, who must be wondering what Pierce Brosnan has that he doesn't. Drescher modifies her popular TV image only slightly for "Beautician and the Beast," playing a Queens beautician sent by mistake to a backward Eastern bloc republic to educate the children of a scary tyrant (Dalton)