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If you're into the Boston art scene, you might want to check out the Berwick Research Institute's BRI:AIR, A Retrospective. I have somewhat of an ulterior motive in saying this, as my brother co-designed the exhibition, but I've been down to tbe BRI a few times and it's always been interesting. It opens this Saturday and runs for about two months.

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Some notes on Apple's new word processor/page layout software, Pages:

It is a decent enough word processor for pumping out text; it is a consumer-class page layout program that won't fit the needs of anyone doing serious layout work. It's been driving me nuts, trying to get stuff done in it. You can't put borders around an in-line paragraph. You can put borders around a text box, but it's all or nothing: you have four borders or none. You can't shrink table row heights to an arbitrary size; there's a fairly widely spaced point beyond which it will not go. You can't delete a single page in the middle of, say, a newsletter. You can't shuffle pages around.

All that said, it's good consumer-grade stuff. You can do some fairly flexible things with layouts, including columns with individually controlled widths, multiple different column layouts on a single page, different headers/footers for even and odd pages, and so on. So it's not a total loss, and it's as good as anything for just writing in. But don't expect to be formatting books in it.

For ten bucks less, you can get Nisus Express. Mellel is only forty bucks. On the other hand, for the $80 you pay for Pages, you also get a top-notch presentation program in Keynote.

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So, the legions ask, what should I be looking out for on DVD this week?

Well, the Babe Family Double Feature DVD is out. I'd be a little leery of this, although I liked both the Babe movies -- it appears to be one DVD, so picture quality may suffer. Still, a cheap way to get two good movies.

DVD of the week is the Chariots of Fire Special Edition. It's about time; this was previously only available in a full-screen version. It comes with commentary, screen tests, making of documentaries, deleted scenes, and so on.

I'm not going to buy the Karate Kid Collection, but I'll sleep better at night knowing it's out there. This appears to be new pressings -- at least, the Karate Kid DVD has a bunch of extras, including a commentary by the director and the stars, which didn't exist on the old standalone DVD. The other DVDs don't have any such extras, though. I'd talk about how this set will ride on the coattails of Hillary Swank's Million Dollar Baby, but I'm laughing too hard. "Sweep the leg!"

Hm, Ray is out. There are a bunch of editions, so choose wisely.

Bill Murray's serious acting career probably started with Where the Buffalo Roam. Which was his third significant movie, so it's not like his recent stuff is really a change of pace. He's such a mensch. Anyhow, this DVD may or may not suffer from the same screwed up soundtrack as the Anchor Bay DVD release. (They didn't get the rights to the original music and substituted pablum.) We'll hope not.

Finally, there's the complete run of some TV series called Wonderfalls that they tell me was good. All I know is that you could go over to the Borders in the Cambridgeside Galleria and buy a copy right now, cause it's on display a day early.