U Turn

In the past, Oliver Stone's lunacy has functioned as a protective shield for his movies. They're paranoid, bombastic, irresponsible, self-indulgent, lurid, hallucinogenic and unfathomable, apologists would say, but at least they're not boring! Until now, with the release of Stone's endless and endlessly dull road movie "U-Turn," a movie in which the director's celebrated "technique" seems more than ever like tired, desperate schtick. "U-Turn" stars Sean Penn as a drifter whose car breaks down in the remote Arizona town of Superior, where he quickly becomes involved in murderous affairs of the town's loony inhabitants.

Motorists who see a police roadblock ahead and veer off or make a U-turn to avoid the hassle are not doing anything wrong, the state Superior Court has ruled. The court ruled that police cannot chase drivers who try to avoid checkpoints, usually aimed at drunken drivers, unless they have good grounds to believe a crime has been committed. And making a legal U-turn or turning down a side street just before reaching a roadblock is not a crime, the court said. "While an officer may have a hunch that the motorist is avoiding a roadblock because the motorist has committed criminal activity, it is just as likely that the motorist forgot an item and is returning home to retrieve it, or is turning off into a side street to visit a friend or relative," Judge Vincent A. Cirillo wrote.

A Bear, Del. man was arrested this morning in Rehoboth Beach on suspicion of a sixth incident of driving under the influence of alcohol. Delaware State Police say the incident occurred about 1:15 a.m. when a trooper spotted an SUV driven by Jeffrey W. Barnes traveling northbound on state Route 1 make an illegal U-turn into the southbound lanes. The trooper said he followed the vehicle, which then crossed over the concrete median and back. He pulled Barnes over in a Walmart parking lot as the SUV was heading west onto Old Landing Road.

A man who impersonated a police officer to persuade a woman not to make a U-turn in a Burger King parking lot made a public apology yesterday in District Court. As a result, he avoided a possible prison sentence. "I'm very sorry for what happened - I'm not usually that way," Jerome Leland Pokorny, 52, of Drexel Hill, told the woman, Cass Philpott. "I'm very sorry if I caused you any fear because of the situation. I appreciate your understanding. " Philpott and another woman who had been with her at the Baltimore Pike restaurant on April 31 accepted the apology, leading District Justice John J. Perfetti to drop the misdemeanor charge of impersonating a public servant.

Police can't pursue drivers who make a lawful U-turn to avoid a sobriety checkpoint - even if the result is fewer drunken-driving arrests, a Pennsylvania court has ruled. Prosecutors say they'll appeal. The three-judge Superior Court panel's unanimous decision, based on a 1993 Montgomery County arrest, says such stops may be warranted only if the driver makes an abrupt U-turn, for example, or speeds away from the roadblock. The motorist who brought the appeal, Joseph Scavello, 23, formerly of Norristown and now living in San Diego, was convicted of drunken driving last year but was granted a new trial by the Oct. 15 decision.

A chain-reaction crash that was set in motion by a motorist making an illegal U-turn from the northbound to the southbound lanes of Interstate 295 here yesterday resulted in one critical injury and disrupted morning rush-hour traffic for almost two hours, state police said. John Schinkarow, 43, of Berlin, was in critical but stable condition yesterday afternoon at Cooper Hospital-University Medical Center in Camden after being flown there by helicopter, State Police Sgt. Al Della Fave said.

Three people were killed - two of them teenagers - and two people were injured last night when a pickup truck eluding police made a U-turn on Interstate 95 in Tacony and smashed into an oncoming car. A suspected thief with a female passenger was fleeing an officer from the 15th Police District in a black Ford Ranger pickup truck when the accident occurred about 9:30 p.m., investigators said. Earlier, the pickup had entered southbound I-95 at Bridge Street with the officer in pursuit, authorities said.

An Oliver Stone movie that opens with Sean Penn pulling his broken-down car into a lonely desert gas station manned by no less than Billy Bob Thornton is a virtual guarantee that what follows will be irregular, ultra-high octane, and full of flying lead. Stone, a director never reluctant to push the envelope, here discards it entirely. His raunchy, jolting and diverting U-Turn is a bold attempt to push film noir off the well-worn path it has followed in the '90s. U-Turn is a fond salute to the heyday (or we should perhaps say heynight)

A rescue team works to free Ernest Barbry, 19, of North Philadelphia, from the wreckage of his car in the 8300 block of State Road in Northeast Philadelphia. His car was struck by a truck while he was making a U-turn yesterday, police said. Barbry was taken to Frankford Hospital's Torresdale Campus, where he was reported in guarded condition last night. The truck driver was not injured.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. - NBC Sports announcer Al Michaels was arrested over the weekend in Southern California on suspicion of drunken driving, authorities said Sunday. Michaels was pulled over at about 9:30 p.m. Friday after officers manning a DUI checkpoint witnessed him make an illegal U-turn, Santa Monica police Sgt. Richard Lewis said. Michaels, the play-by-play man for "Sunday Night Football," was taken to the station, where he registered a blood alcohol level over the .08 percent legal limit, according to Lewis.

A Bear, Del. man was arrested this morning in Rehoboth Beach on suspicion of a sixth incident of driving under the influence of alcohol. Delaware State Police say the incident occurred about 1:15 a.m. when a trooper spotted an SUV driven by Jeffrey W. Barnes traveling northbound on state Route 1 make an illegal U-turn into the southbound lanes. The trooper said he followed the vehicle, which then crossed over the concrete median and back. He pulled Barnes over in a Walmart parking lot as the SUV was heading west onto Old Landing Road.

THURSDAY'S SESSIONS with Chip Kelly, Jeffrey Lurie and Howie Roseman gave us a little more insight into the stunning turnaround that led to Kelly being named the Eagles' coach, 10 days after telling the Eagles he was staying at Oregon. What seems apparent now is that the matter was never really completely dead. The way Kelly told it Thursday, he wanted to go to the Eagles after that 9-hour meeting Saturday, Jan. 5, but didn't feel comfortable making a life-altering decision under such scrutiny.

AN ENORMOUS book sits on a shelf near my Rutgers-Camden diploma, just a few steps from the closet where my old black-and-red Rutgers wrestling singlet lies stuffed inside a duffel bag. One of my semesters there was spent studying Milton's Paradise Lost , lugging that book around like a slab of granite. I never really gave Milton a chance and never won a wrestling match there, but eventually I forged a love for words and language in those Camden classrooms. Yesterday hundreds of students, faculty and alums gathered inside the Walter K. Gordon Theater, most dressed in Rutgers scarlet, all concerned that their small campus, their paradise near the Ben Franklin Bridge, was being threatened by Gov. Christie and by South Jersey power broker George E. Norcross III. Last week, Christie put his stamp of approval on an advisory committee's proposal to merge the Camden campus of New Brunswick-based Rutgers University into Glassboro-based Rowan University.

STATE REP. Cherelle Parker appeared near tears and refused to speak with reporters after leaving a Philadelphia courtroom yesterday. The Northwest Philadelphia Democrat had reason to weep, and her attorney, Joseph Kelly, had reason to promise an appeal and declared himself "shocked. " That's because Common Pleas Judge Paula Patrick reinstated Parker's drunken-driving charges after ruling that Municipal Judge Charles Hayden in November had "abused his discretion" by throwing out all evidence against Parker.

WASHINGTON - The last American prisoner in Iraq, a Hezbollah commander linked to the kidnapping deaths of five U.S. soldiers, was turned over to the Iraqi government Friday, the White House said. U.S. officials have long feared that such a transfer would lead to Ali Mussa Daqduq's release from prison. But his case became enmeshed in both international diplomacy and the Washington political debate over how best to prosecute suspected terrorists. Under President George W. Bush, prosecutors had planned to someday charge Daqduq in a U.S. criminal court.

LONDON - Prime Minister David Cameron said yesterday that Britain would look to the United States for solutions to gang violence after nights of riots and looting, and promised that authorities would get strong powers to stop street mayhem from erupting again. Cameron told lawmakers that he was "acting decisively to restore order on our streets," as police raided houses to round up suspects from four nights of unrest in London and other English cities. He told lawmakers that he would look to cities like Boston for inspiration, and mentioned former Los Angeles, New York and Boston Police Chief William Bratton as a person who could help offer advice.

For leading candidates in the Republican presidential race, confession is the price of admission. An ideological purge is under way, and they have to be righteous. Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty, and Jon Huntsman have all spent time renouncing policy positions that once were considered conservative, market-oriented solutions to problems but that in today's GOP are dangerous liberal heresies. Bring on the show trials! During a Fox News debate last month, Pawlenty squirmed in the dock as a moderator played an old radio ad of him calling on Congress to "cap greenhouse-gas pollution now!"

THE SCHOOL district's Re-Engagement Center officially opened yesterday, but actually it's been running since May, and over the summer has served 300 dropouts eager to earn a high-school-or-equivalency diploma. Some things, like stemming the city's 45 percent dropout rate, are too important to wait. And the release last year of the William Penn Foundation's report that described Philadelphia's dropout crisis in cold, data-driven detail, raised the issue high in the public and political consciousness.

DROPPING OUT of high school is an anti-social act: a 15- or 16-year-old who thinks school doesn't work for him has essentially thumbed his nose at society and at the future. It's hard for many to find sympathy for teens who take this obviously wrong path. But anyone who takes this hard line on dropouts will have to reconsider when confronted with a heartbreaking fact that emerged during a symposium on dropouts this week: In the past year, more than 1,500 dropouts called a hot line to find out how they could re-enter school and earn their diplomas.