Absence of denite blockbuster doesn't slow fall lm lineup

The summer brought us "There's Something About Mary."

The first two weeks of the fall movie season have already brought us something about Meryl, something about Matt Damon, something about martial arts and something about a very short child.

But the remainder of 1998 is a wide-open race with no clear front-runners and plenty of potential dark horses. It's a season chock-full of choices - more than 125 of them, about everything from Shakespeare's first love to Jennifer Love Hewitt.

The younger, more nubile of those two loves returns this November with her schlock sequel "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer."

Also filed in the teen horror section are the Kevin Williamson/Robert Rodriguez co-production, "The Faculty," starring Elijah Wood and Usher as students inexplicably fleeing from the grasp of evil alien teachers like Salma Hayek in "Urban Legend," in which a killer copying oft-told myths hopes to make mincemeat of Jordan Catalano and the Noxema girl.

For the pre-Noxema set, the fall offers several animated choices: the competing insect features "Antz" and "A Bug's Life" and the grandiose inaugural film from DreamWorks' animation division, "The Prince of Egypt."

The hunky princes of Hollywood are also out in full force this season, as Will Smith makes himself an "Enemy of the State," blind guy Val Kilmer falls in love with Mira Sorvino "At First Sight," and Brad Pitt plays dead, or actually Death, in the romance "Meet Joe Black."

After all those showy displays of testosterone, you might need some estrogen in the form of witchy women Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman in "Practical Magic," or Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon squaring off over Ed Harris in "Stepmom," or Meryl Streep and her four Irish sisters in "Dancing At Lughnasa."

Do Streep and sisters have you in a familial mood? Then visit "Pleasantville," where a '90s kids Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon try to put some color into the black-and-white '50s world of new parents William H. Macy and

09-24-98