Imagine that it's 1967, and you've just come out of a theater showing For a Few Dollars More, Italian director Sergio Leone's spaghetti western starring Clint Eastwood. Either you've enjoyed it as a sly, mythic take on horse-opera conventions or, more likely, you've concurred with the conventional critical wisdom of the day, summed up in one review that calls Dollars "excruciatingly dopey."

Now imagine that the sidewalk parts, and a little guy appears. He informs you that in 28 years the nearly mute star of the badly dubbed splatterfest you've just watched will be considered an elder statesman of the cinema; will be a director of vivid, evocative works that are just this side of art-house fare; will have won every plaudit of the film industry, including multiple Academy Awards--and will be the subject of a CD-ROM career overview so rich that it immediately becomes a standard-bearer of the medium.

You haven't heard of CD-ROM in 1967, of course. Even so, the rest sounds completely absurd, so you decide to forget about it and get on with your life.

You would have been within your rights too: back then, Eastwood merely represented pop culture's most violent, Neanderthal extreme. But pop culture has grown more violent in the intervening three decades, whereas Clint Eastwood the movie icon has grown more complex. The genius of Eastwood (Starwave; CD-ROM for Windows 95; $50; fax: 001-206-957-2009) is that it honors the gradual sense of breadth and depth that became apparent as the actor's career rolled on.

Everything about this project is as outsize as the man it profiles--from its two discs to the fire-snorting PC you had better own if you want to experience it. Not only is Windows 95 software necessary, but you can't even install Eastwood if your PC is slower than 486/66 MHz. You wouldn't want to either: I tested Eastwood on a Pentium PC, and load times between sections dragged on forever.

If your computer's up to snuff, though--and if you're feeling lucky, punk--Eastwood is a bottomless delight. The first thing you notice is its lush look: you're deposited in a ripely colored movie-theater lobby where the star's 53 films (up through Bridges of Madison County) are organized into six categories: "Early Years," "Cops," "Westerns," "Backroads and Barrooms," "Man of Action" and "Behind the Camera." Each category is depicted as a mural studded with visual elements from specific films (the immovable boulder from Pale Rider, the Halloween mask from A Perfect World and so forth). Clicking on each element takes you to a generous helping of clips, reviews (not always favorable), credits and a montage featuring the star's own commentary on that particular movie. (Although Eastwood did not directly oversee the production of the disc, he contributed materials and audio and video interviews.)

While hopscotching through Eastwood's oeuvre is no substitute for seeing the movies, it's an illuminating trip. There are the signal films such as Dirty Harry, of course, but I had forgotten about some of the winners (Escape from Alcatraz, Breezy) and outright duds (Firefox, White Hunter Black Heart), and Eastwood's westerns--from the Leone trilogy to The Outlaw Josey Wales to Unforgiven--look better and better with time. The "Early Years" section may be the most fun: clips of young Clint in Revenge of the Creature and Tarantula are almost as goofy as his guest shot on the TV show Mr. Ed and an appearance in a relentlessly mod Italian comedy called Witches.

The movie section may be Eastwood's meat, but even the side dishes contribute to a project that, unlike so many star-centered CD-ROMs, actually increases one's interest in the subject. There's a trivia puzzle that's surprisingly knotty and, unsurprisingly, has no patience for wrong guesses. And there's a time line with "live" graphics that lead to such fortunate finds as home movies of Eastwood clowning with his first wife, clips of him on the Tonight Show, gargly sound snippets from cowboy songs he recorded in the 1960s and filmed interviews with the current Eastwood: weather-beaten, relaxed, majestic in his perspective.

Eastwood is not picture perfect: installing it coughed up at least one bug in my system, the sound mysteriously popped in and out, and it would be nice if the spaghetti-western clips were shown in all their wide-screen glory. But the details--evocative music, witty animation, opulent design--make up for the patchy spots, and the project's respectful tone stops refreshingly short of adulation. Because Eastwood remembers that time when none of us took the man seriously, its thoughtful long view plays like elegant revenge.

--From ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

[SIDEBAR]

WEBSITE

JAMES BOND: 007 ON THE WWW

(http://www.mcs.net/~klast/www/bond.html)

IF BOND BADDIE BLOFELD WERE A WEB designer, this page might be his doing. It's so insanely ambitious (photos and in-depth profiles of five 007s, from the first, Sean Connery, to the newest, Pierce Brosnan, who debuts this month in the movie Goldeneye), so deliciously sarcastic (a chart of all the Bond villains and their methods of world domination) and so unrepentantly comprehensive (a Goldfinger radio spot from 1964!) that it's worthy of the most discerning Bond fanatic. You'd think the woman maintaining this site, Kimberly Last, lived in a secret undersea lair staffed with orange-jumpsuited minions. And even if she doesn't, Last certainly knows her spy stuff, as evidenced by this page's final link--to the official Website of the CIA.

ARTS

NEW VOICES/NEW VISIONS

Voyager, CD-ROM for Mac, $29.95, fax: 001-914-591-6484

A COLLECTION OF THE 24 MOST DYNAMIC entries in a computerized-art competition, this two-disc set of works that utilize animation, drawings, photos, video clips, text and audio is in turn heartrending, disturbing and hysterically funny as it examines ideas and cultures that span nine countries. Whether presenting a haunting tour of a monument to the Hungarian Workers Movement or an interactive poem about a dead alcoholic husband, each of the engaging exhibits makes you want to see twice as many more.

REFLUX

Inverse Ink, CD-ROM for PC and Mac, $19.99, fax: 001-415-703-0469

THE SPINE ON THE JEWEL BOX CLAIMS this is the "world's first live-action graphic novel," and Reflux proves to be a nervy, imaginative effort. Producer-writer James Harvey borrows from Japanese animation, superhero comics and chop-socky movies to fashion the tale of an ordinary fellow who can morph into a masked martial-arts master and computer jock named Flux ("My fu-ware is strong," he growls). The program enables you to read the story by clicking on flashily detailed comic-book pages or to hear it from the points of view of different characters. This is just the first installment of an ongoing Reflux series; so go ahead and get hooked.

HOME GAMES

CAESARS PALACE

Macplay, floppy disk for Mac, $19.95, fax: 001-714-252-2820

IT MIGHT SOUND SICK, BUT TO SOME people there's no greater rush than holding a pair of dice and wooing Lady Luck at a craps table. Unfortunately, a mouse isn't a pair of dice, a fact for which you can't really fault the makers of Caesars Palace. With more than 15 variations of poker, blackjack, baccarat, craps and roulette, this simulator deals as much Las Vegas glitz as a computer can. Fortunately, if you lose it all, a guy named Cheech won't break your kneecaps. If you must bet on Caesars, here's a tip: turn down the crummy sound effects and throw on something from your Sinatra collection.

BATTLE BEAST

7th Level, CD-ROM for PC, $49.99, fax: 001-214-437-2717

MORTAL WOMBAT, ANYONE? THIS SUPERBLY designed, relatively nonviolent fighting game features cute, furry creatures that morph into mechanized brawlers, and its 7th Level pedigree (it's from the producer of the Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time disc) guarantees plenty of laughs before and after the rounds of fighting. But ultimately any game of this kind has to be judged by the quality of its one-on-one combat, and here Battle Beast suffers a knockout punch. While it's a kick to sic a mutant puppy on an equally bloodthirsty turtle, it's too bad that the irritatingly unresponsive joystick commands fail to do justice to the quality of the animation.

MIXED-UP MOTHER GOOSE

Sierra On-line, CD-ROM for PC, $44.95, fax: 001-206-641-7617

KIDS BE NIMBLE, KIDS BE QUICK, KIDS navigate, point and click--in the course of helping 18 characters recover the lost props they need to undertake their famous rhymed exploits. When players return the items, this clever game rewards them with such uptempo musical delights as a rap rendering of Humpty Dumpty or a reggae ditty about Little Jack Horner. Add witty, vivid graphics and intelligent inhabitants of Mother Goose Land, and you've got a game sure to turn a child--or a parent, for that matter--into a merry old soul indeed.

WELCOME TO THE FUTURE

001-619-459-6366

Blue Sky Entertainment, CD-ROM for PC and Mac, $44, fax:

IF YOU LONG FOR THE DAYS WHEN SPACE rock was a prominent musical genre, then you'll love this disc. Future is a cosmic treasure hunt along sun-drenched mountain paths and glittering animated subterranean worlds. Once you have gathered all the game's silver and gold artifacts, you are allowed to enter Nirvana--if you can find the door. The iridescent artwork and animation are generally first rate, and the sparkling New Age soundtrack should appeal to those who appreciate floating asteroids.

--From ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, available on the World Wide Web (http://pathfinder.com/ew/)