Festivities rooted in taro

Sixty booths, Tahitian and Japanese master drummers, and a Lummi shaman headline the granddaddy of taro festivals.

The 10th annual Pacific Islands Taro Festival unfolds free from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at Windward Community College. Other highlights include sale of taro huli (seedlings), a poi-eating contest, imu and other traditional demonstrations, plus chant, dance and music of many Pacific isle cultures.

Also, shaman Cha-das-ske-dam Which-ta-lum of Bellingham, Wash., parallels the role of salmon in his Lummi tribe and the role of taro in Hawaiian culture. He speaks 11 a.m. to noon at Friday's taro conference; cost of the daylong conference is $5.

Call 235-7433.

Learn your wines
at Sunset Grill

Tim Ryan, Star-Bulletin

If you enjoy wine, then you know all too well how expensive it is in Hawaii. Especially when you're new at tasting and still having trouble knowing your merlots from your cabernets.

That's where the Sunset Grill Wine Club, begun last September by restaurant general manager Ted Toby, comes in handy. In the first month the club had 100 members. Now there are 700.

Membership is free. Members get a 15 percent discount on all bottled wine purchased at the restaurant; invitations to special parties, tastings and dinners; and the quarterly newsletter, "down at the Sunset Grill."

Sunset Grill offers one of Hawaii's most extensive wine lists, with more than 400 different labels, including Turley zinfandel, Arrowood cabernet, Patz & Hall chardonnay, Green & Red chardonnay, Peter Michael Cuvee Indigene and Signorello pinot noir.

There's even a wine room where diners can eat surrounded by stacked-to-the-ceiling wine bottles.

Wine tastings average about 100 people and cost as little as $20, including Sunset Grill's pupus. For information call 521-4409.

PREVIEW

Three movies begin their Oahu run on Friday:

Dr. Dolittle: (PG-13) Eddie Murphy stars as the doctor who not only can talk to the animals but now can understand what they're saying to him. As such they flock to his office for him to heal their ills.

Gone With the Wind: (G): The latest "restoration" visited upon David O. Selznick's 1939 "Gone With the Wind." Stars Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland and and Leslie Howard.

Out of Sight: (R) George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez star in the film version of Elmore Leonard's playful crime novel. Ex-con Jack Foley (Clooney) is tripped up by a dead car battery in his latest bank robbery. Incarcerated in a medium-security facility, Foley observes carefully the guards and cultivates the inmates, including Chino (Luis Guzman), Chino's lover and some others who plan to escape.

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