Music Videos

There's a scene in the new film "Mr. 3000" in which Bernie Mac, as pro baseball player Stan Ross, recalls the music of the Mr. Softee truck that was always parked near the field where he played ball as a kid. Other players chime in with their own memories of the tune. Director Charles Stone III based the scene on his own childhood memories of pitching and playing right field for the Wolf Baron Cardinals in Overbrook. Instead of focusing on the game itself, the 9-year-old Stone often found his attention drifting to his surroundings: the smell of grass underfoot, the arguments between parents and umpires and the distinctive jingle of the nearby Italian ice truck.

Jessica Alba, the famous mutant hunter of Fox's defunct Dark Angel, has exchanged the skintight black attire of the post-apocalyptic world for skintight b-girl gear in the feel-good Honey. While it isn't Breakin' or Beat Street, the footloose Alba does have a certain twinkle in her toes, and the DVD extras keep it real with several treats. Alba is Honey Daniels, a young flygirl looking to make it big in the rap game as a dancer while teaching hip-hop moves to kids at her mother's community center.

One hundred years ago tomorrow, in December 1903, "The Great Train Robbery" was released. This film is often credited with the first use of "parallel editing" - editing that alternates between two stories. "The Great Train Robbery" is considered by many to be the birth of modern film editing. Editing is an essential aspect of filmmaking. Editing determines what we see and how long we see it; establishes the pace and visual rhythm; guides our emotional and intellectual reactions. Eric Zumbrunnen is an editor with American Cinema Editors, based in Los Angeles.

Of all the methods rock performers use to avoid the "here we are, now entertain us" gaze of an expectant audience, Jim James' ranks among the most inventive. The singer, songwriter and guitarist of My Morning Jacket - the Shelbyville, Ky., quintet whose revelatory and often astonishing third effort, It Still Moves (ATO/RCA . . out of 4 stars), arrives in stores Tuesday - simply hides behind a curtain of long, wavy brown hair. It cascades symmetrically from his scalp to cover his face and everything down to his waist, and is divided, but not officially parted, by a nose.

Aszreanna, 13, longs to be adopted. She has expressed her wishes of having a room of her own and a mom who has time to spend with her. "She's a very sweet girl," her social worker says, "but shy enough that it takes a while for her to warm up. "She has three foster siblings in her home, and if she has a bag of chips, fries or candy, she'll offer it to them before she takes a bite. " Aszreanna's activities include reading, going to church, shopping, listening to music and singing, and watching music videos.

As tooting-your-own-horn documentaries about innovative alt-rockers who've been around for 20 years go, Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns goes very well indeed. John Flansburgh and John Linnell, the Lennon-McCartney of Brooklyn's Williamsburg, are nerdy musicheads made good. The duo's band, They Might Be Giants (a name taken from the 1971 George C. Scott flick about a delusional eccentric obsessed with Sherlock Holmes), has been making records and self-distributed cassette tapes since the early '80s.

This is, as the rapper himself would say, Eminem's moment. He owns it. First, he conquered the music charts (the Grammy-winning The Eminem Show was last year's best-selling record); he's made his acting debut in and nabbed a best-song Oscar for 8 Mile - and now he's got a video game. Conspiracy Entertainment's Mix TV Presents: Eminem, which can be played by one or two people in tandem or against each other, is a music-video brain teaser. The object is to unscramble puzzles formed from the game's four videos before each song concludes.

The playing field began to tilt two years ago. The operators at MTV's popular countdown show TRL were being inundated with requests for Michelle Branch. Problem was, they didn't have any videos from the young Arizona singer. Her debut CD, The Spirit Room, wasn't in stores yet. So MTV called up Branch's record label, Maverick, wondering where in the world kids were seeing her clip. The answer was AOL Music. Along with Yahoo's similarly themed Web site, Launch, AOL Music has become a significant player in the music industry.

The eighth annual Lost Film Festival continues through this weekend, and the good news is, thanks to the folks at the Rotunda (4012 Walnut St., 215-573-3234, www.foundationarts.org), it's all free, but donations are encouraged. Among the music-related highlights: "156 Rivington," a documentary about ABC-No-Rio, the 20-year-old, once-squatted performance space in New York; "By Hook Or Crook," a lesbian buddy film co-written and directed by Tribe 8's Silas Howard; music videos by Tracy + the Plastics and Milemarker; and "Illegal Art," an exhibit hosted by Stay Free!

Recently, my seventh-grade daughter came home from school and told me about an exchange she'd had with another student we'll call "Shaina," who called my daughter a "retart. " Quick-witted as she is, my daughter responded: "It's retard, you retard. " Perhaps embarrassed by her mispronunciation of the word, Shaina criticized my daughter as being "too perfect," and added, "I bet you don't even listen to rap. " Actually, my daughter does listen to rap, and she watches music videos, too. The difference is that my daughter acknowledges that what she sees and hears on TV or the radio is pure entertainment and not behavior to be emulated.