Yanna Avis sings. (Stephen Sorokoff)

New York used to be a swinging town after dark. Now it’s just lonely. After dessert is served, the cafes close. After the boring, obligatory standing ovations that end every show in town whether it’s any good or not, the theaters empty and the audience heads home. Back in the day, you could head for a midnight show at any nightclub in Midtown. Now everyone is in bed by 11, watching the news and setting the alarm. New York gets more like L.A. every day, where, as the great Shirley Booth used to say, “No matter how boring it gets during the day ... there sure ain’t nothin’ to do at night.”

Good news! The swanky Café Carlyle, a k a “Bobby Short’s Room,” has launched a new late-night music show on Thursday and Friday nights, bringing excitement and joy to People Who Know Things, like jazz and show tunes and the restorative value of the time-honored nightcap. Things usually get started about 10:45, and it’s green lights ahead by 11. Last week, the svelte, undulating body and warm dulcimer larynx of Yanna Avis were the lure. She repeats the magic Thursday the 16th and Friday the 17th. Your lids might get heavy just taking in her curves and listening to her sultry voice, but you won’t fall asleep. She’s from Paris, so like any bona fide chanteuse, she sells “l’amour” in at least seven languages. And she’s the widow of rent-a-car czar Warren Avis, so she’s never late for work. You be on time, too. You don’t want to miss a thing.

The show is called In Love With Love, and when this cosmopolitan femme fatale climbs on top of the grand piano in a gown so tight it looks sprayed on, crooning seductive songs by Kurt Weill, Cole Porter, Michel Legrand, Cy Coleman and others, you know she’s not kidding around. Singing Frederick Hollander’s “Illusions,” which Marlene Dietrich introduced in the film A Foreign Affair, she brings back the essence of those louche Berlin cabaret cellars where drinks were delivered by girls on horseback. “Want to buy some illusions?” she sings in a throaty whisper, and brother, you better have your credit card handy, because she’s not giving anything away. On “Big Spender,” she sells sex with a wicked sense of humor. Acting as a tour guide through Paris, where, Oscar Wilde said, “good Americans go to die,” her romantic French medley of “Ca C’est l’Amour,” “C’est Magnifique” and “C’est Si Bon” is formidable.

Nobody else is carrying on the European tradition quite so well, and her fans find it all charming as hell. No phony intensity. No innocent ingénue. And no music hall coquette. She teases sex like Dietrich, with a wicked sense of humor. She’s sharp and soigné as Hildegard Knef. And sometimes she touches the heart like Piaf. Ms. Avis has a raw, unrefined talent, the determination to succeed against the odds (what kind of future is there in today’s ragamuffin cabaret world for a girl with curves, warm as cashmere, who sings immortal lyrics like “Ich Hab’Noch Einen Koffer in Berlin,” accompanied by an accordion?) and an admirable resolve to make time stand still.

rreed@observer.com

Osnes.

Such a busy girl. After getting herself Tony-nominated for her starring role in the underrated—unfairly, I might add—Bonnie and Clyde, which, as it turned out, was one of the better musicals of the 2012 Broadway season, Laura Osnes starred in the Encores! production of Pipe Dream as well as a one-night concert version of The Sound of Music at Carnegie. Now she has brought her clarion voice and stunning beauty to the swanky Café Carlyle for a two-week cabaret debut (through June 30). All you have to do is hear her one time to understand why.

She looks pretty socko, too. Leaning against the grand piano with Rapunzel hair in strapless black satin that looks, frankly, sprayed on, she’s quite a package. Unfortunately, the uneven repertoire of pop and show tunes she’s sewn like beads together doesn’t always do her justice. Five years ago, this unknown commodity from a small town in Minnesota won a national contest to appear in a Broadway revival of Grease, and since then, she’s come a long way, baby. But she is not as equally at ease singing unmelodic pop tunes as she is tackling the throbbing Broadway icons—the underwhelming Randy Newman songs she mixes in with the classics by Jule Styne, Richard Rodgers, Irving Berlin and Oscar Hammerstein have a jarring way of intruding on an otherwise pleasant musical adventure. Okay, so somebody said, “Do something contemporary for balance.” But why? Another tired rendition of “Fever” does not compare favorably with “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from Funny Girl. And songs by Alan Menken, Tim Rice and Frank Wildhorn hardly belong in the same musical Christmas stocking with Jerome Kern’s “All the Things You Are.” Ms. Osnes has so much poise and talent when she shares “’Til There Was You,” a dream song from a role she longs to play (Marian the librarian in Meredith Willson’s The Music Man), that I hate to see her waste valuable time on pop sludge like “Bluebird” by Sara Bareilles. I can understand her need to salute Frank Wildhorn with the raucous “How About a Dance” from Bonnie and Clyde, as well as one of the much-maligned composer’s better songs, “Must Be My Lucky Day.” But there is no denying that her voice loses its warmth and luster when she wanders unwisely away from standards. And she has yet to challenge her own apple pie cover-girl sweetness with anything that reflects real sadness or pain. You walk away with very little emotional involvement, knowing nothing much about her, but liking her anyway.

On opening night, she coaxed Joel Grey, her co-star in Anything Goes, from the audience for two Cole Porter songs from the show, to which both of them forgot the lyrics. But she is recording her first “live” CD during this run with special guests. If you drop in June 28, you can catch Jeremy Jordan, the bouncy star of Newsies, who played Clyde Barrow to Ms. Osnes’s Bonnie. On June 29, she will be joined by Tom Wopat. She is a solid-gold addition to the Broadway musical scene, a real Cinderella, who next season will really play one—the Julie Andrews role in the Rodgers-Hammerstein musical Cinderella. Obviously the girl is going places and I look forward to watching her do it. But at the Carlyle, playing it safe in a disappointing show is not a good way to showcase a talent as rarefied as hers. This is cabaret, and every minute counts.

rreed@observer.com

Former 'Weekend Update' anchor Ebersole.

There’s a ripe adjective to describe every flavored, favored aspect of Christine Ebersole’s versatility, and before she throws in the towel and does something besides entertain, like run for president, the critics will probably get around to using them all. For now, I can think of only one—sensational!

In her elegant, witty and intelligent new show at Café Carlyle, she serves up a thoughtful, incisive master class in how to enhance cabaret and keep it alive with fresh new insights that should be required viewing by aspiring performers everywhere. She calls it “The End of the World as We Know It.” I call it “Christine Ebersole Sings the Apocalypse.” She does it with such panache that the swinging Matt Dennis evergreen “Show Me the Way to Get Out of This World” has never been more relevant. When she shakes her saffron yellow curls and smiles her survival grin in Technicolor, she makes the end of the old world, the beginning of a new one, and everything in between seem as rare and giddy as a Disney cow.

The premise, of course, is only an umbrella that gives her a lot of poetic license to peruse and reflect on the stuff that is sucking the joy and health and optimism out of our lives today, from the annoyance of cell phones to the rottenness of the economy. Warning against texting, checking emails and disrupting the other patrons, she begins her show with “—and remember, if you see something, say something!” What follows is more a celebration of the soul, a jubilation of life, basted with enough meaningful patter to keep us laughing while we “let the healing waters of cabaret comfort and guide us.” Tsk-tsking the negative forces that drag us down, she croons Irving Berlin’s blues-tinged “Get Thee Behind Me Satan” with an undulating tempo, fueled by the wailing sax of David Mann and packaged in a sexy arrangement by Rosemary Clooney’s long-time ace pianist, John Oddo. The jazz quintet behind her includes two more Davids—bassist David Finck and drummer David Ratajczak—and Tony Kadleck on trumpet. Five better men good and true do not exist.

You can always rely on the hip and supertalented Ms. Ebersole for exquisite taste in musicians and material, as well as an unusual program of underexposed jewels. And so Noël Coward’s “What’s Going to Happen to the Children (When There Are No Grownups)” rhymes “tiny fists” with “psychiatrists” and she makes the meaning inherent in both. The Depression comes to life with Yip Harburg’s lyrics to “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” conjuring images of bread lines, soup kitchens and penny apples. Then, Sophie Tucker’s licentious lament “Max From the Income Tax” reminds us that good times or bum times, there is always somebody in the wings forcing you to pay up whether you’ve got it or not. Sometimes she waxes ecstatic about the things that see us through the dark and lead us into the light, like her three adopted children, who provide the penultimate intro to a gorgeous, stunning rendition of Harold Arlen’s “Right as the Rain.” The songs don’t always seamlessly illustrate the challenges of the world she describes. But who cares? I would join any queue just to hear her sing her special arrangement of “I Loves You Porgy.” This show encompasses the kind of scope that offers a carefully selected Whitman’s sampler of her many inherent influences, from jazz, gospel and blues to Ethel Merman’s belting on Broadway show tunes like Cole Porter’s “Blow, Gabriel Blow.” Who else would close any show with an exquisite arrangement of an old chestnut like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat, Gently Down the Stream?” and make it sound brand new?

So save those pennies and take Christine Ebersole’s advice: Whenever it’s over and our coffers are empty, remember copper is a valuable metal. Impeccable phrasing that moves from glass-breaking high notes to perfect restraint to heartbreaking ruefulness helps enormously. She has a lot to give and at the Carlyle, she’s giving it all she’s got. When she floats away on her ark, I pray that she saves a lifeboat for me.

rreed@observer.com

Szot. (Zach Hyman/Patrick McMullan)

Opening-night jitters threatened temporarily to diminish the vocal capacities of Paulo Szot in his new cabaret act at the Café Carlyle. The first four numbers, all part of a well-deserved celebration of the 100^th birthday year of composer Burton Lane, suffered from pitch problems. Then something clicked and the romantic Brazilian baritone, who won a Tony for his starring role in South Pacific at Lincoln Center, grew more at ease. As his voice gained strength, his vocal resources increased and so did his artistry. The rest of the show, which runs through Jan. 28, was pure delight.

The catastrophic deconstruction of one of Mr. Lane’s best scores (with Alan Jay Lerner lyrics) in the current, ill-advised Broadway “revival” of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever would have given the elegant, eloquent composer apoplexy, but I think he would have been pleased to hear Paulo Szot’s take on “Too Late Now” and “You’re All the World to Me,” both from the MGM musical Royal Wedding. And it was good to hear two Lane-Lerner songs from one of their least appreciated shows, Carmelina, though not the best two. “It’s Time for a Love Song” is very nice, but “Carmelina,” the title tune, is nothing more than a briskly paced throwaway. I’m curious as to why Mr. Szot didn’t reduce the rapt ringsiders to tears on the best song from that neglected score, a deeply touching “Just One More Walk Around the Garden.” He saved the sentiment for later, with a melting blend of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Retrato Em Branco e Preto” and Michel Legrand’s poignant “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life,” carefully arranged by the multitalented pianist-musical director Billy Stritch, who is no stranger to bossa nova himself. He’s from Texas, not Brazil, but he knows his music. When you’ve got him at the keyboard of an enormous Steinway, subtly supported by an ace rhythm section comprising David Finck on bass and Dave Ratajczak on drums, any headliner is in very safe and restorative hands indeed.

My favorite part of this show is the Brazilian miniconcert featuring the throbbing tempos of Jobim and Ivan Lins. It’s ballsy to take on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s rangy “Soliloquy” from Carousel so soon after Hugh Jackman just knocked out sellout crowds every night on Broadway with the same song, but damn it if Mr. Szot doesn’t stamp it with his own monogram. He doesn’t get around to his three-year stardom as Emile de Becque in South Pacific until the very end, when he gobsmacks his slavish fan base with “This Nearly Was Mine” as a rousing closer. Then, without pausing for a coffee break, he launches into “If Ever I Would Leave You” from Camelot with such power that he erases memories of all previous Lancelots. Few stars of the opera and concert stage make the crossover to the intimacy of a supper club with so much self-assurance. With dark, matinee idol looks and a voice that moves deftly from Broadway show tunes to classical arias with seemingly effortless ease, Paulo Szot promises much and delivers even more.

rreed@observer.com

There’s now an answer to the age-old conundrum of what to do after midnight on the Upper East Side.

New to the neighborhood that heretofore became a ghost town during the wee hours, Café Carlyle has just this month become an after-hours nightclub.

Whereas the cabaret-restaurant used to close after the last act ended at around 12 a.m., it now stays open on Thursday thru Saturday nights until the party dies.

What’s more, the hotel has started handing out nifty cards to “friends of the hotel.” Cardholders—essentially V.I.P.s who are either high-profile or have dropped a lot of cash at the joint in the past—don’t have to pay the $25 cover charge, can bring a guest and are guaranteed immediate admission upon arrival.

But don’t go asking for one. A rep from the hotel told us that they are rather discriminating when it comes to deciding who gets one.

“We just wanted to give another late-night option to people on the Upper East Side,” the rep told us. “It’s a completely new concept [for us]. Often times in the past, people would tell us they wish the evening could continue. It was designed specifically for that exclusive nightlife experience. Guests can sip specialty drinks and dance the night away listening to guest DJs.”

From January 24^th until February 2^nd, for example, Café Carlyle will bring the resident D.J. from chic Mayfair club Annabel’s to spin for the late-night set.

Surprisingly, she seems comfortable in the close proximity, with no proscenium arch to protect her from the unwashed masses. Of course, she does live upstairs, making this the first job in years for which she hasn’t needed to ask for a car and driver. But the crowd (there is always a crowd) gives her ballast, and provides her frisky brio something to play with. Don’t misunderstand: It’s not that Elaine Stritch has gone soft. She’s still salty as a sardine, dry as gin and rough as a cob. Repeating the word “fucking” half a dozen times in 20 seconds to demonstrate how many ways you can say “fucking” without ever actually fucking isn’t exactly what you’d expect from a convent-bred girl raised on Amy Vanderbilt’s rules of etiquette. But the audience—suits, pearls and no slackers—wolfs it down like Beluga. And even when she’s dancing on a tree limb with a saw in her hand, her seasoned mannerisms and her split-second timing are the stuff that wins at the finish line. The sideways glances that Dame Edna knows so well, the furrowed-brow expressions like biting down on an exotic canapé of pickled rattlesnake—you find yourself laughing even when she just stands there!

Fortunately, she does a great deal more. In a stream of well-rehearsed observations that sound improvised, she muses about everything from self-help books (“Serenity is call-waiting”) to her love affairs with Jack Cassidy, the juvenile lead in a Mame tour, a singer named Tony, and a man ordering a brandy stinger in the reading room of the Savoy Hotel in London. Thank God she leaves Rock Hudson out of this one, but she does tell a funny story about a disastrous blind date with Frank Sinatra. He insulted her. She insulted him. They both survived. In its delightful stream of consciousness, the show is positively Faulknerian. She calls it “Elaine Stritch at Home at the Carlyle.” Like Eloise at home at the Plaza. And not too far away, either. Stritch is 80. Eloise was 6. But they were on the same page.

Oh, yes. She also sings. Renée Fleming isn’t going to lose any sleep about this, but even in her voice of Gravel Gertie sandpaper, Elaine Stritch is such a great interpreter of lyrics that she should be on every young cabaret singer’s see-and-learn list. Accompanied by a six-piece band headed by pianist Rob Bowman, she illustrates why Noël Coward and Cole Porter are her forte, of course, but half-talking her way through the Kurt Weill–Ogden Nash classic “That’s Him” is a graduate course in music education. I’ve never heard Lorenz Hart’s bittersweet lyrics to “He Was Too Good to Me” sung with so much piercing wisdom. And absolutely nobody has found the same truths in Stephen Sondheim’s “Could I Leave You” from Follies, turning it into an aria of moment-to-moment Stanislavsky acting that suggests a cabaret revue at the Actors’ Studio—rueful, cynical and devastating. Interspersing Coward’s catty lyrics to “I Went to a Marvelous Party” with memories of a few drunken parties of her own is undeniable fun, but she knows her way around the serrated edges of a ballad, too.

Hers are the experiences you don’t often find on a cabaret stage. Alcoholism, diabetes, paramedics and meeting the Bushes at the White House can get a bit sticky-wicket, but she self-indulges in it uniquely, marching to the beat of her own tambourine with candor, charm and brittle humor. And why not? She’s crowded a lot of life, love and gossip-column punch lines into 80 years. She can pretty much do and say whatever the hell she wants. Showbiz isn’t always kind to the people who dedicate their lives to it. But with all the wrinkles in her life seamlessly smoothed, her special brand of narcissism is inevitable and easy to forgive. Short of canonization, I can’t imagine what’s left for her to accomplish, but I hope I’m around to watch her do it. Elaine Stritch owes me $14.50. That’s the price of an apple martini at the Carlyle bar, where I was forced to watch her crowded show on a barstool. Just kidding. The drink was worth every penny, and so was she.

Oh, Julianne!

At the movies, some plucky ladies with a lot to give are giving it all they’ve got—and then some. From her rich and versatile scrapbook of women with grit, Julianne Moore deserves a medal for The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio. Based on the book of the same name by Terry Ryan, about her mother Evelyn, it’s an American patchwork quilt of a movie, interspersed with humor and tears, and with a fine feeling for the nostalgia of the period. But Lord, let us praise Julianne Moore, who lifts it above and beyond the banality of a TV sitcom until it sprouts wings.

Evelyn Ryan was a bright Ohio housewife with a flair for words who gave up her dream of becoming a newspaper reporter when she married her husband Kelly (played with relish and even some pathos by Woody Harrelson) and turned into an overworked, unfulfilled, housebound mound of fertility whose most stimulating challenge in life was scraping enough nickels together to pay the milkman. Kelly was a cheerful, good-for-nothing drunk who loved his wife and kids, but he spent so much money at the liquor store that there was never anything left of his weekly paycheck to buy groceries.

The movie tells the saga of Evelyn’s struggle to feed, clothe and educate her children while miraculously managing to keep a roof over their heads, in a narrative pop-50’s style. “If I can pause for a moment in the story, I’d like to explain my marriage,” Evelyn says to the viewers, and darned if she doesn’t make it clear as a Mason jar. While the soundtrack plays bouncy retro hits like “Rag Mop” by the Ames Brothers and “Wheel of Fortune” by Kay Starr, Evelyn’s own windfall comes in the form of contests (“I’m glad I used Dial because … ”), jingles, rhymes and slogans. In 10 years, the Ryans won a complete set of Revere Ware, a variety of convertibles and station wagons, a working oil well, two ice buckets, galoshes for the whole family, a supermarket sweepstakes that stacked their fridge with popsicles and caviar, 15 ice crushers, a kennel of dog food, a Brownie camera, an outboard motor, a lifetime supply of bird seed and a pony which they sold to pay the electric bill. Somehow, Evelyn always managed to survive every crisis at the 11th hour of desperation—the film’s tensest scene shows the movers carrying out the furniture when, at the moment of bankruptcy and mortgage foreclosure, the phone rings and Evelyn beats out 250,000 competitors in a Dr. Pepper contest. In the long haul, she sent all of her kids to college, two of the boys became ballplayers with the Detroit Tigers, and the rest turned into nurses, lawyers, businessmen, policemen and teachers. One daughter became a writer and penned The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less, the memoir about her mother on which this film is based. This is a nice gesture and an evident work of love, because Evelyn Ryan was a selfless and terminally optimistic woman who gave domestic ingenuity new meaning.

But the author of the original book, as well as first-time writer-director Jane Anderson, who adapted it for the screen, have fallen so in love with this lovable woman’s heroism that they’ve overlooked the sinister violence and mental illness gnawing at her family’s foundation. Even when he trashes the house, deprives the children of the simplest childhood joys and beats up their mother so severely that she ends up in the hospital, Dad is always forgiven as a jerk who didn’t really know any better. And Mr. Harrelson plays him that way. This is a despicable character, and we are led to believe he’s just a real card. The scenes of domestic abuse are matters of no more serious consequence than a tax audit. He even breaks down in tears after he’s through bashing his wife bloody. Some viewers may offer a more aggressively repugnant response. This is a minor caveat.

To be fair, there is much to enjoy. Director Anderson, who helmed the riveting TV movie Normal with Tom Wilkinson as a husband and father demanding a sex change, gets the same kind of unexpected, offbeat reaction to abnormal psychology out of the Ryan family’s dilemmas. Ms. Moore’s radiant central performance makes the movie dance. The period flavors of tacky off-the-rack fashions, vinyl dinette sets, ozone-polluting cars and American home life punctuated by noisy television commercials are carefully brought to life, and at times the jingle singers shamelessly marketing Evelyn Ryan’s musical product placements step right out of the family Philco to chirp away on stovetops and washing machines. This is a thin wafer of a film, but it’s got good intentions and I don’t want to get too testy. There’s still a lot to make you merry, so if you want to relax and have a cloudless escape from routine, pure pleasure is guaranteed.

Fear of Flying?

What Flightplan would be without Jodie Foster, I don’t even want to think about. As an American wife in Germany whose husband is pushed off a rooftop and whose 6-year-old daughter disappears on the night flight from Berlin to New York with Daddy’s coffin in the hold, Ms. Foster quickly and understandably goes ballistic. Worse still, she thinks she’s already spotted the two Arabs in the first row watching her house; they might be kidnappers, but there’s no record of her child on the passenger manifest and she can’t find her boarding pass. With 400 passengers on the E-474 jumbo jet already scared out of their wits, the mystery thickens when the air marshal trying to help her (Peter Sarsgaard) turns out to be part of a much more sinister plot involving hijacking, bomb smuggling and a threat to blow the plane to smithereens.

All of which leaves Mom to break out of her handcuffs, smash her way through the restroom ceiling and crawl through the electrical wiring into every conceivable locked compartment on the aircraft—a job for which she is well-suited, ho ho, since she works as an aircraft engineer who designs planes and knows the architecture from stem to stern better than the pilot. What begins as a credible script with plausible dialogue eventually falls apart somewhere over Newfoundland.

The big problem with Flightplan is that it takes forever to get the red herrings out of the way, then explains so much so fast that you end up saying things like “Huh?” German director Robert Schwentke bulks up the suspense early, but already exploring every scare you can find at 37,000 feet, he runs out of speed fast. With no idea how to get the characters out of all the contrived thrills, he explains everything in the final 10 minutes. Whatever you thought was real in the far-fetched plot ends up stretching credulity to the snapping point. This movie could do irreparable harm to the already beleaguered airplane industry. People who are afraid of flying now will probably never book another flight.

Jodie Foster’s no-nonsense craftsmanship sort of gets you through the turbulence. First you suspect she might be crazy. But by the time she finds out what happened to her child and starts detonating bombs, you begin to realize she’s been spending entirely too much time at the gym. She’s such a valuable commodity that I wish she’d spend her time making better movies. She is also resourceful, but she can’t save Flightplan.

Ladies in Lavender, carefully written and superbly directed by the actor Charles Dance, is a film of unusual elegance and artistry, set in the years leading up to World War II, about two elderly sisters whose comfortable but dull lives on the coast of Cornwall are interrupted by a shipwreck that sweeps overboard one sole survivor-a mysterious young man who washes up on the beach below their cottage. Awkwardly nursing their guest back to health with the aid of their fat, crusty housekeeper (Miriam Margolyes), the intrusion of life from the outside world in the form of a handsome, smiling stranger with a broken ankle who speaks only Polish and German opens old wounds, revives old resentments and rekindles rivalries long resigned to mothballs. For Janet (Dame Maggie Smith), the logical, pragmatic one who was briefly married as a young woman to a man who died in World War I, the boy symbolizes the son she never had. But the spinsterish and childlike Ursula (Dame Judi Dench) develops an affection for the lad that is far from maternal. Doting on his every need, placing a flower on his breakfast tray, teaching him English, she makes him the surrogate of everything she never had-brother, lover and the Prince Charming she has waited for all of her life to rescue her from her prison tower.

As their castaway is slowly welcomed by the local farmers and fishermen who are suspicious of anyone from outside the village, the sisters overcome the language barriers and learn that their visitor is a Polish Jew named Andrea (played with wonderful honesty and naturalism by the appealing German actor Daniel Brühl, who captivated audiences last year in Goodbye Lenin). Andrea was escaping the Nazi anti-Semitism of Krakow on a ship bound for New York when he was washed into the sea. More thrilling still, he is an accomplished violinist. Janet and Ursula now have a fresh drive in their efforts to make Andrea a permanent part of their little family; they will encourage his talent and fuel him with the ambition to make a career. But their dreams are short-circuited by a vacationing artist (Natascha McElhone) whose brother is a famous musician with important connections on the concert stage. Before the summer ends, Andrea is abruptly whisked away to London with no time to say goodbye, leaving the old women desperate with worry. The loss is unsettling for Janet but devastating to Ursula, and as the season turns to autumn and the coastal chill settles in on the Cornish coast, the events that wedged the two women apart also bring them closer together when the days shorten and the nights grow long. Then, in a finale that will quicken your pulse and touch your heartstrings with a miraculous lack of sentimental manipulation, Andrea makes his debut on the BBC. For once, the war news of storm clouds over Europe is replaced by the beauty of music. Janet and Ursula invite the whole village to their house to listen to the broadcast. But in a momentary decision of rare impulsiveness, they travel to London instead to burst with pride in person at the concert hall. For a moment, Andrea is reunited with the little family that saved his life, but the tears of gratitude and joy quickly fade as he is swept away by the famous conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham. Ursula and Janet walk away, less lonely than before, having learned at last the importance of letting go, and disappear in the throng of Andrea's admirers, to begin the next chapter in a continuing story that has found new value.

Lush, sun-dappled photography by the distinguished cinematographer Peter Biziou, the honesty of village life, the human elements that embellish maps of experience in the faces of the actors, a multitude of authentic period details, and gorgeous music by Nigel Hess and the Royal Philharmonic, with violin solos by the internationally acclaimed Joshua Bell, add up to an idyllic, impeccable, enriching and amazing cinematic experience. Above all, there is the rapture of watching the energy and concentration of two of the world's most accomplished actors. The passion in their glances, exchanges and closeness-like two bookends on a library shelf-is exhilarating. Watching them thrust and parry and feed each other with crumpets of the English language the way it should be spoken has an effect I can only call enriching. To find this many exemplary elements in one movie in 2005 is a miracle. Get to Ladies in Lavender fast.

In a time of micro-minute trends, I'm not naïve enough to suggest that a movie graced by Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith might pave the way for a future where timeless legends take precedence over fly-by freaks, but it sure is transforming to have them around for a visit, no matter how brief.

Lovely Ladies

Spring will be a little late this year. In fact, we might just skip the whole thing and move right into summer. To that end, a lovely flotilla of female singers has arrived, bringing their own heat. Barbara Cook has moved into the august throne room at the Carlyle that Bobby Short used to call home, and from now through May 27 she's making the kind of music the recently departed king of cabaret would have been proud to share. Since Barbara recently lost her own longtime pal, arranger, musical conductor and pianist, Wally Harper, this excursion at the Cafe Carlyle, appropriately called Tribute, marks a new page for her, too, and from the top-rung celebrities she's attracting, it looks like everyone is dropping by to help her turn it. Tribute showcases a new Barbara Cook-softer, more subdued, poetically etching her way through a new program of songs she's never sung before. The room and the mood seem perfect for a celebration of Bobby Short with a thrilling, beautifully modulated "Bojangles of Harlem" and a sensual "Nashville Nightingale"-two songs she would never have touched in the past. And her own homage to the songwriting talents of Wally Harper reveal a marvelous gem he wrote with David Zippel called "Another Mr. Right Left" that makes me wonder why she hid them in her piano bench for so many years. Her voice of Tiffany gold is unlike anything on the planet, but sunny ("I've Got the World on a String") or torchy ("Make the Man Love Me"), the diversity of it in this song recital is doubly mesmerizing. Example: Singing two gorgeous songs that Arthur Schwartz and Dorothy Fields wrote for men in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, she phrases them differently, in a softer and more reflective mood than usual. It's Actors Studio phrasing. It's a different can of peas. But her new pianist, Michael Kosarin, is a peach. His chords give her ample room to snuggle in. Barbara Cook doesn't need a shoulder to lean on. She's her own muse, her own vocal coach, and every time she sings, the rest of us learn something. Hitchhike, power-walk or cab it to the Carlyle immediately, and get to know what perfection is.

Nobody in what Jimmy Durante used to call "the show business" is more beloved than the Broadway gypsy. Donna McKechnie is one of the most popular, and in Gypsy in My Soul, her aptly titled act at the chic new boîte on East 58 Street called Le Jazz Au Bar, she dances a little, sings a lot and spreads joy like marmalade. She ran away from home and arrived on the scene in 1959, when juicy, pre-Disney 42nd Street was Oz with garters ("Hookers and hustlers and pimps, oh my!" she croons), a new kid named Streisand was singing down in the Village, an unknown named Cy Coleman was playing in the piano bars uptown, Tito Puente held mambo contests at the Palladium, and you could buy a balcony seat to any show on Broadway for $1.50. This act is about her times, her songs, her shows and her dreams. Dramatic ballads requiring subtle lyric readings are not her forte, and the material doesn't always fit the format. (One minute she's doing all three voices on "You Could Drive a Person Crazy," the Sondheim trio number she performed in Company; the next minute, in comes "But Not for Me" from nowhere.) But when she talks about her ups and downs as a dancer, recreates her Tony-winning role in A Chorus Line, stops the show with a great song like Ed Kleban's "Better," or tells affectionate but hilarious stories about working with Ann Miller in Follies, her passion triumphs. Her heart is as big as her love for the stage, and a swell time is had by all.

The big-band sound of Vegas in the good old days is always a welcome tonic, and Vegas '58 ... One More Time, the title of Keely Smith's show at Feinstein's at the Regency (through May 7), says it all. Wailin', jivin' and celebrating the 100th anniversary of the town where music, money and neon go together, the indefatigable Keely and her nine-piece orchestra are a workout without a gym. She's so nonchalant and relaxed that on opening night, she already reached the tag of "Autumn Leaves" before she realized that she'd forgotten to take the chewing gum out of her mouth. From the old Louis Prima catalog to timeless arrangements by Billy May and Nelson Riddle, it's one hour of midnight at the Sahara Hotel when Sinatra and the Rat Pack stood and cheered, and on the dust-kicking "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You," the band stands up and rocks and sways from side to side like syncopated elephants. These are the sounds you hear coming out of every door on Bourbon Street. When Keely Smith comes to town, she doesn't just polish the Apple. She gives you the whole cobbler.

On Oldboy

Finally, a word about Korea. A few weeks ago, in my broadside against the gory Korean movie schlockfest Oldboy, I apparently raised the hackles of several readers who objected to the way I mentioned the Korean film industry and the fermented Korean national dish called kimchi in the same sentence. I'm not an admirer of political correctness in first-person byline opinion writing, but that doesn't make me a racist, so if I inadvertently offended anyone who misinterpreted my humor, I apologize. I like Koreans. In truth, I have probably spent more time in Korea than any of the irate letter-writers currently bombarding me. I even lived there for several months while making a movie called Inchon! with Laurence Olivier, Jacqueline Bisset, Ben Gazzara, Richard Roundtree and Toshiro Mifune. We had many happy times, admired the lush landscape and liked the friendly people. We all hated the kimchi.

If there's a glimmer of light on G.M.'s horizon, we can't find it. The company has $23 billion in cash, but owes about $30 billion. It's original projection of a positive cash flow of $2 billion this year now looks like a negative cash flow of $2 billion. To add insult to injury, G.M. has to pay Fiat $2 billion to extract itself from a foolish deal the company made in which ailing Fiat would be given the right to sell its auto business to G.M. Meanwhile, G.M.'s credit rating is on the brink of being downgraded to junk-bond status.

Perhaps the most critical factor is market share. Twenty-five years ago, G.M.'s share of the U.S. market was over 50 percent. Ten years ago, they had 33 percent, and today they have just 25 percent. G.M. is not alone: In 1999, Detroit's big three held almost 71 percent of the U.S. market; now they have just 58 percent, and that number shows no signs of changing direction. Indeed, Chrysler is basically out of business, and Ford is looking shaky at best. How did three of the world's most recognizable brand names become dinosaurs on the brink of extinction? What happened?

A complacent arrogance on the part of the U.S. automakers' management is largely to blame. Years ago, people went to work for G.M., Ford and Chrysler because they were great, cushy jobs. You didn't have to do a darn thing, and as long as you showed up and kept your nose clean, eventually you could buy a nice pile in Grosse Pointe or Bloomfield Hills. The problem was, these coddled executives eventually became upper management, and snoozed their way through the 1980's and 1990's as the foreign auto makers blew right by them. Now they wake up to find that they don't have the engineering or the design to compete, and that the European and Japanese auto makers are eating their lunch. (In the old days, you couldn't find a place to repair a foreign car. Now the network of foreign dealerships is so widespread, it's as easy-if not easier-to get a foreign car serviced and repaired as an American model.)

And so the once-great American corporation that produced such brand names as Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Chevrolet and Cadillac-names that have long since lost their luster and market power-looks to be almost beyond saving. G.M. has announced plans to trim its bloated white-collar work force by as much as 28 percent in some departments. Not to mention that the company faces a bruising fight over health-care benefits with the United Auto Workers union.

Can G.M. turn around? The situation almost requires an extraordinary C.E.O. type to go in there and make the radical changes that might be necessary. But who would that be? And who might have the power to do it?

City Student Wins Intel Prize

S

tudents from New York City schools regularly dominate the lists of semifinalists and finalists for the Intel Science Talent Search, the country's most prestigious science contest. This year, for the first time since 2000, a New York City student has also won the top prize. And the winning project reminds us of how much the world has changed since the city's last first-place finish.

David L.V. Bauer, a 17-year-old Bronx resident, was awarded a $100,000 college scholarship for his work on developing a new way of detecting toxic substances in the nervous system. The project is a legacy of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, when New York realized how vulnerable it was to all kinds of new and deadly menaces. David, a senior at Hunter College High School, began his research when he learned that a lab worker who had been at Ground Zero on Sept. 11 had a higher level of asbestos exposure than other workers. That inspired him to think about ways to quickly measure a person's level of exposure to toxins in the event of another terrorist attack.

His research may lead to the development of a patch that could instantly detect toxins in the nervous system. As he noted, such a device would be of enormous help to firefighters, paramedics and other first responders. He conducted his research at the City College of New York, assisted by Professor Valeria Balogh-Nair.

The Intel judges have a knack for choosing talent: Past winners of the Intel contest-formerly known as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search-have gone on to receive six Nobel Prizes, 10 MacArthur Foundation grants and three National Medals of Science.

Two public schools-Hunter College High and CCNY-played an instrumental role in Mr. Bauer's success. Granted, Hunter College High is not your average public high school. It's highly selective, as are public schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. But at a time when so many are willing to give up on the very idea of public education, it's imperative that we remember that students like David Bauer are thriving in the city school system.

In fact, young David himself seems to appreciate the role that public institutions have played in developing his talent. He plans to attend the City University of New York's Honors College next year, and says he hopes one day to teach at CUNY. If New York is lucky, David's future successes will not lead him to reconsider that laudable goal. You can be sure that the nation's top private universities will be bidding for his services one day.

Bobby Short

O

ne of the brightest lights of Manhattan went out last week, when the singer, piano player and entertainer par excellence Bobby Short died at the age of 80. For over 35 years, Short held court behind his Baldwin grand piano at the Café Carlyle on Manhattan's Upper East Side, performing standards by Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller and all the greats, reflecting back to the city an aura of sophistication that became a set piece in Woody Allen films.

Short's elegance, joie de vivre and infectious energy were born of hard work. At 9 years old, he was playing in roadhouses in his native Illinois, and when he first played piano in New York's jazz clubs, he was just 13. He started playing all around the country and soon met Nat King Cole, Lena Horne, Cole Porter and his beloved partner Mabel Mercer, with whom he performed a series of legendary concerts at Town Hall on West 43rd Street in the early 1960's. After making a name for himself in Los Angeles clubs with his carefree and assured playing style, he came back to conquer New York in 1968. As effortless as his reign at the Carlyle may have seemed, he never stopped practicing his majestic piano and refining his purring, growling vocal technique.

He infused his audience with his love of the music, from the sand in his shoes to his white tie and tails. At the time of his death, he was booked to play his regular gig at the Carlyle this spring. As he often sang in the Cole Porter song he loved so well, for New Yorkers everywhere, Bobby Short was "the best, the crest, the works."

If there's a glimmer of light on G.M.'s horizon, we can't find it. The company has $23 billion in cash, but owes about $30 billion. It's original projection of a positive cash flow of $2 billion this year now looks like a negative cash flow of $2 billion. To add insult to injury, G.M. has to pay Fiat $2 billion to extract itself from a foolish deal the company made in which ailing Fiat would be given the right to sell its auto business to G.M. Meanwhile, G.M.'s credit rating is on the brink of being downgraded to junk-bond status.

Perhaps the most critical factor is market share. Twenty-five years ago, G.M.'s share of the U.S. market was over 50 percent. Ten years ago, they had 33 percent, and today they have just 25 percent. G.M. is not alone: In 1999, Detroit's big three held almost 71 percent of the U.S. market; now they have just 58 percent, and that number shows no signs of changing direction. Indeed, Chrysler is basically out of business, and Ford is looking shaky at best. How did three of the world's most recognizable brand names become dinosaurs on the brink of extinction? What happened?

A complacent arrogance on the part of the U.S. automakers' management is largely to blame. Years ago, people went to work for G.M., Ford and Chrysler because they were great, cushy jobs. You didn't have to do a darn thing, and as long as you showed up and kept your nose clean, eventually you could buy a nice pile in Grosse Pointe or Bloomfield Hills. The problem was, these coddled executives eventually became upper management, and snoozed their way through the 1980's and 1990's as the foreign auto makers blew right by them. Now they wake up to find that they don't have the engineering or the design to compete, and that the European and Japanese auto makers are eating their lunch. (In the old days, you couldn't find a place to repair a foreign car. Now the network of foreign dealerships is so widespread, it's as easy-if not easier-to get a foreign car serviced and repaired as an American model.)

And so the once-great American corporation that produced such brand names as Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Chevrolet and Cadillac-names that have long since lost their luster and market power-looks to be almost beyond saving. G.M. has announced plans to trim its bloated white-collar work force by as much as 28 percent in some departments. Not to mention that the company faces a bruising fight over health-care benefits with the United Auto Workers union.

Can G.M. turn around? The situation almost requires an extraordinary C.E.O. type to go in there and make the radical changes that might be necessary. But who would that be? And who might have the power to do it?

City Student Wins Intel Science Prize

Students from New York City schools regularly dominate the lists of semifinalists and finalists for the Intel Science Talent Search, the country's most prestigious science contest. This year, for the first time since 2000, a New York City student has also won the top prize. And the winning project reminds us of how much the world has changed since the city's last first-place finish.

David L.V. Bauer, a 17-year-old Bronx resident, was awarded a $100,000 college scholarship for his work on developing a new way of detecting toxic substances in the nervous system. The project is a legacy of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, when New York realized how vulnerable it was to all kinds of new and deadly menaces. David, a senior at Hunter College High School, began his research when he learned that a lab worker who had been at Ground Zero on Sept. 11 had a higher level of asbestos exposure than other workers. That inspired him to think about ways to quickly measure a person's level of exposure to toxins in the event of another terrorist attack.

His research may lead to the development of a patch that could instantly detect toxins in the nervous system. As he noted, such a device would be of enormous help to firefighters, paramedics and other first responders. He conducted his research at the City College of New York, assisted by Professor Valeria Balogh-Nair.

The Intel judges have a knack for choosing talent: Past winners of the Intel contest-formerly known as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search-have gone on to receive six Nobel Prizes, 10 MacArthur Foundation grants and three National Medals of Science.

Two public schools-Hunter College High and CCNY-played an instrumental role in Mr. Bauer's success. Granted, Hunter College High is not your average public high school. It's highly selective, as are public schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. But at a time when so many are willing to give up on the very idea of public education, it's imperative that we remember that students like David Bauer are thriving in the city school system.

In fact, young David himself seems to appreciate the role that public institutions have played in developing his talent. He plans to attend the City University of New York's Honors College next year, and says he hopes one day to teach at CUNY. If New York is lucky, David's future successes will not lead him to reconsider that laudable goal. You can be sure that the nation's top private universities will be bidding for his services one day.

Bobby Short

One of the brightest lights of Manhattan went out last week, when the singer, piano player and entertainer par excellence Bobby Short died at the age of 80. For over 35 years, Short held court behind his Baldwin grand piano at the Café Carlyle on Manhattan's Upper East Side, performing standards by Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller and all the greats, reflecting back to the city an aura of sophistication that became a set piece in Woody Allen films.

Short's elegance, joie de vivre and infectious energy were born of hard work. At 9 years old, he was playing in roadhouses in his native Illinois, and when he first played piano in New York's jazz clubs, he was just 13. He started playing all around the country and soon met Nat King Cole, Lena Horne, Cole Porter and his beloved partner Mabel Mercer, with whom he performed a series of legendary concerts at Town Hall on West 43rd Street in the early 1960's. After making a name for himself in Los Angeles clubs with his carefree and assured playing style, he came back to conquer New York in 1968. As effortless as his reign at the Carlyle may have seemed, he never stopped practicing his majestic piano and refining his purring, growling vocal technique.

He infused his audience with his love of the music, from the sand in his shoes to his white tie and tails. At the time of his death, he was booked to play his regular gig at the Carlyle this spring. As he often sang in the Cole Porter song he loved so well, for New Yorkers everywhere, Bobby Short was "the best, the crest, the works."

Still, he inherited Mabel's throne and made Cole Porter, Vernon Duke, Irving Berlin and Cy Coleman more popular than ever. When he died unexpectedly Monday at 80, he drove the final nail in the coffin lid of sophisticated popular music. But I believe the purity of what he contributed to the world of popular music will still mean something. He relentlessly pursued do when everybody said don't, and in a world where music has largely been replaced by jerks and groans and flat falsetto screams programmed by I.B.M. computers that have regrettably gone mad, Bobby Short sang about love-the one thing that will never become camp. Pity the saloon singers who elect to follow in the footsteps of his patent-leather shoes.

For the poor son of a coal miner from Danville, Ill., he learned fast. Robert Nahas, his best friend and the co-executor of his estate, says, "Bobby came out of the womb attached to a grand piano." He could never read a note of music, but he played the piano in Danville saloons at the age of 9, ran away from home at 12 and landed in New York just shy of 13, quickly becoming the darling of café society. It was years before he found a permanent perch at the swank Café Carlyle, but it was home for nearly 40 years. From the beginning, he didn't hang out with the cats. He loved to sing and play black anthems by Lil Green and Fats Waller, but was more at home with the Blue Ribbon 400 than the Harlem jazzbos who frequented the old Cotton Club. His apartment was filled with trophies and awards, a testament to the fact that he was an easy person to honor at charity benefits. His society clientele were the high rollers who could afford to write $10,000 checks. Yet he successfully straddled several worlds and remained a darling of jazz purists from Sugar Hill, matrons from Park Avenue and tourists from Little Rock.

In the past few years, even after rap and rock relegated real music to museum status, a visit to hear Bobby Short sing "From This Moment On" at the Carlyle was as de rigueur on a trip to New York as a tour of Ground Zero. Wherever Bobby Short appeared, he brought back an era for his audience of faded glamour girls in their last 40 pounds of unhocked Bulgaris and aging Esquire covers who never wandered west of Fifth Avenue except to sail for Europe. Full of the old paprika, he gave them what they wanted: nostalgia and romance and take-home tunes they could hum. He was always worth the check. A soigné dresser and an eager consumer of the best life had to offer, Bobby was often accused of being too "swellegant" for words; but although he drank the best champagne and spent half of the year at his villa in the South of France, a stone's throw from the exclusive Moulin de Mougins restaurant, his three favorite words in the culinary legerdemain were "macaroni and cheese."

I never attended a Bobby Short dinner party that didn't serve fried chicken or meat loaf. And while it is impossible to imagine an elevator operator on his guest list, his snobbery had charm. He rubbed elbows with kings and queens, yet he told me one of the greatest events in his life was the night I took Alice Faye to the Café Carlyle. He played for her while she sang "You'll Never Know" seated at the table. He never recovered. Conversely, he was in high dudgeon the night he was invited to sing for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor at the Nixon White House. When Bobby was told his musicians would be served sandwiches and coffee in the kitchen, he was on his way to the exit door when they suddenly appeared-the royal couple, escorted along the corridor to the state dining room by Richard and Pat Nixon. They spotted Bobby, broke stride, ran to the kitchen door, swept him up in their arms and dragged him into the dinner, leaving a mortified First Family with their mouths wide open. It was one of Bobby's proudest moments.

One more anecdote: One cold winter weekend, when we were both house guests at Claudette Colbert's house in Barbados, Bobby and I were walking on the beach (a sight you don't want to see) when we passed one of those second-rate surfside motels that cater to the worst kind of British tourists. On the wooden deck, a pudgy woman red as a boiled lobster was waving frantically with one of those floppy straw hats you buy in Caribbean airport lounges. "She knows us," I said. "Oh, God, ignore her … too tacky for words," scowled Bobby, whose eyesight was so bad he sometimes mistook C.E.O.'s for head waiters. I moved closer. "My God, Bobby," I yelped. "It's Judi Dench!" His mood did an about-face. We took her home for tea.

He suffered from neuropathy, but although he limped to the piano with a cane, the minute the lights hit him, Bobby Short had sparkle and spruce. He made 32 bars sound like an overture. He made noises about retiring from show business, but he had just signed a new contract at the Carlyle. At Chita Rivera's opening, he was in pain, but we all thought it was the neuropathy. When she introduced him, he got a standing ovation and glowed with Cheshire-cat satisfaction. Last Wednesday, he was diagnosed with an irreversible blood count of white cells and died from leukemia five days later. Hours from death, he was still humming and running lyrics in his head for his next CD of Fred Astaire songs. His treasured legacy of song sheets, big-band records, orchestrations and other historically significant musical memorabilia will go to the Smithsonian, Lincoln Center and a dozen of the charities he generously supported. He left specific instructions that no memorial service was to be held. It's the one part of his last will and testament that seems unlikely to be honored. Above all, Bobby Short could never resist a good party.

Woody Is Back

I once wrote that Woody Allen on a bad day was better than everybody else on Sunday. In recent years, I've had to rescind that appraisal. In one bland, disappointing failure after another, he's proved that he can be just as bad as the next guy. That is why it gives me pleasure to report that with his charming new opus, Melinda and Melinda, Woody's got his groove back.

The renewed interest in portrait photography as art, channeled by the Diane Arbus exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum, has caused a revolution. Suddenly, everyone is looking at faces in a different way. Whether it's one of Ms. Arbus' tattooed carnival freaks or the Lewis Carroll photo of Alice Liddell, his model for Alice in Wonderland, the contours of the human countenance are open to diverse interpretations. This is what I was thinking as I sat enjoyably entertained by Melinda and Melinda, a bright, jaunty comedy in a jazz tempo that mirrors two opposing sides of a single personality, dramatized by two different writers with opposite takes on life.

We open in the trendy Pastis bistro in Greenwich Village, where two of the kind of playwrights you always want to eavesdrop on at a cafe table more interesting than your own are debating the relevance of their plays to real life, and debating the plot for a new piece about a disruptive figure named Melinda. The idea begins as an anecdote and ends as a full-scale production with different sets, characters and punch lines, proving the point that no two people ever see things the same way, onstage or in life. The comedy writer (the overworked Wallace Shawn, the only actor in history, to my knowledge, who has parlayed a speech impediment into a career), thinks laughs, while the other (Larry Pine), who specializes in darkness, sees tears. What follows for 90 blissful minutes (no movie should ever last one minute longer) is two stories about the same woman, interweaving wit and sadness like yellow and black yarns in a needlepoint rug.

In Plot 1, Melinda Robichaux (Radha Mitchell) arrives in the middle of a dinner party at the loft of an old friend named Laurel (Chloë Sevigny) and her husband, an alcoholic actor named Lee (Jonny Lee Miller), and proceeds to wreck the evening by guzzling expensive scotch and launching into an exhausting emotional tirade that drains the guests and wrecks the husband's chances at an acting job he covets. Ah, but the humorist sees a comedy here with Neil Simon overtones. In his spin, which we will call Plot 2, Melinda is the neurotic downstairs neighbor of a different couple-a bumbling actor and amateur chef named Hobie (Will Ferrell) and his wife Susan (Amanda Peet), who has written an independent film she is also going to direct; the film is about a shrink, and her husband has his heart set on the role. This Melinda, who has taken 28 sleeping pills in the downstairs sublet, crashes in just as the coquilles St. Jacques are being served, ruins the sea bass and wreaks havoc on the lives of everyone present. In both of the parallel plots, Melinda hacks her way through New York with an emotional machete, leaving a trail of misery and woe while you find yourself laughing aloud at her inexhaustible supply of oblivious self-absorption. Sometimes the stories are funny when they ought to be sad, and sometimes your mouth falls open during the sight gags at how horrible life can be when Melinda is around, spreading mischievous chaos.

The two plots play leap frog. Sometimes the transitions are smooth and you don't see the seams. Other times, they butt heads. But from start to finish, Woody's dialogue is both formally structural and wryly conversational. In Plot 1, Melinda is like the title character in All About Eve-"Everything," said Thelma Ritter, "but the bloodhounds snapping at her rear end." She succumbed to drugs and alcohol, left her husband and lost two children in a custody battle, killed a two-timing lover with a gun, served a prison sentence for murder and attempted suicide. In Plot 2, she is an accomplished but childless art historian whose husband left her for a beauty-contest winner. In both plots, her friends and neighbors set her up with every available single hunk they know while their own lives collapse, but both Melindas turn down upwardly mobile chances to rise in the Manhattan social dynamic, one Melinda falling for Hobie, of all people, and the other for a black musician named Ellis Moonsong (played by the unpronounceable Chiwetel Ejiofor, from Dirty Pretty Things). The Hobie role is the Woody surrogate, but Mr. Ferrell doesn't do much with it. After losing the leading role in his wife's movie and being demoted to the role of "the retarded elevator operator with the cleft palate," he goes to a shrink himself. The marriage has been in trouble for years ("The last time we made love she just lay there, staring into the darkness, like her parents had been killed in a fire.") So he tries something new and kinky-sex with a right-wing radical who posed nude for a Playboy spread on naked Republicans. This is Woody writing for himself, and Mr. Ferrell plays it with Woody's tics, vocal inflections and whining mannerisms, stuttering and talking to himself in funny asides nobody else hears, just like Woody. Too bad he has none of the charm or technique required to sustain the gimmick for 90 minutes. One sight gag, in which he gets his bathrobe caught in Melinda's front door while peeking through her keyhole, wouldn't even make it as far as a Saturday Night Live sketch. This is not a Woody Allen film full of all-star turns down to the smallest cameo. Most of the actors do their best without Woody to play off in the same shared camera space. For an actress required to be in almost every scene, Radha Mitchell is a Naomi Watts clone with range and appeal, but she may be the first movie star I've ever seen with a wart between her eyes.

But if Woody the actor is sadly missed here, Woody the director spreads his trademark flourishes everywhere. The music is rangy and wonderful, from Bach to "Take the A Train." No matter how depressed everyone gets, they all live in fabulous apartments with space and atmosphere and antiques and designer sheets. They hang out in all the places nobody in New York can afford except the tourists-and they can smoke anywhere! From Belmont Park to Bowling Green, it's a fairy tale New York, photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond like a lunar surface in a home show on Venus. Even the emergency room at Lenox Hill Hospital would be the envy of Elsie de Wolfe. But Woody transforms his settings into a part of the Manhattan dream you used to hear about in lyrics by Lorenz Hart. And best of all, Woody knows precisely when and how to end it all (as the final moment attests), with a snap of the fingers. No waiting around to feel your way into and out of things. The ignition starts in the beginning, the action cuts to split-timing black in the end. No bows, baby, just eight bars and out. Woody Allen films are like the short stories in The New Yorker back in the good old days of William Maxwell, Sally Benson and Hortense Calisher. It's a place I've never been, but I know I'm going to like it when I get there.

Very Sad Ballad

Small films about small lives trying vainly to intersect but falling miles apart can sometimes be rewarding. But The Ballad of Jack and Rose, an offbeat tone poem with an atonal dissonance written and directed by Rebecca Miller and starring her husband, Daniel Day-Lewis, is a curio that is just too self-consciously offbeat for its own good. In 1986, on an island off the East Coast, an aging hippie named Jack lives in the ruins of an abandoned commune from the 60's with his 16-year-old daughter Rose. Like the eccentrics from another recent rumination, Campbell Scott's Off the Map, Jack has sheltered Rose from the outside world and its evil influences, like newspapers, junk-food franchises, TV and sex. Most of their time is spent saving the wetlands and fighting off the developer (Beau Bridges) who is trashing the environment by erecting plastic pre-fab housing projects. But now Jack is dying of a mysterious cinematic heart ailment and realizes that Rose needs the influence of a woman around the house.

When he invites his trashy girlfriend Kathleen (Catherine Keener) and her two weird sons to join their privileged world of primitive seclusion, Rose feels betrayed and violated. One boy shapes and perms her hair, the other eradicates her virginity. To hurt her father, she hangs up the bloody sheet on the clothesline with a note that drives him to violence. To hurt his lady friend, she conceals a poisonous snake under the bed while you wait for something gruesome to happen. It does, and not a moment too soon. Jack, once a peace-loving man, bulldozes the model house for the new housing project and breaks the arms and legs of the boy who defiled Rose. Rose burns down the house. By the time all of this happens, I had pressed the snooze button, and so had the movie. I mean, Ms. Miller knocks herself out creating a miscellany of eccentrics, all right. But they are also something of a bore.

The actors struggle valiantly to work some three-dimensional energy into one-dimensional roles, but Ms. Miller's writing is as dusty as her direction is meager. It can't be easy to be a child of the late, great playwright Arthur Miller who wants to write. I admire the daughter for not emulating the father, but a few basic lessons in character development, cliche-avoidance dialogue and the architecture of trajectory are recommended. As Rose, teenager Camilla Belle looks older and wiser than the grownups. As the trashy, encroaching misfit, Catherine Keener is wasted. As Jack, Daniel Day-Lewis is creepier than his role. Sinewy and emaciated, with bones sticking through his skin like croquet mallets, he looks like he's auditioning for the insomniac zombie Christian Bale played in The Machinist. He's accomplished, goodness knows, but his choices here are bizarre. His heavy Scottish brogue, feral tattoos and dangling gypsy earring are dolorous enough, but would a leftover flower child from the grains-and-berries era go around wearing the kind of hat favored by the Marx Brothers? Actors directed by their own wives is a rare category in which I never expected to find the Oscar-winning star of My Left Foot, and I hope he doesn't make a habit of it. It's too late in the career of a respected artist like Daniel Day-Lewis to go around singing "What I Did For Love."

Huh?

For sewage in a cocktail shaker, there is Oldboy, a noxious helping of Korean Grand Guignol as pointless as it is shocking. What else can you expect from a nation weaned on kimchi, a mixture of raw garlic and cabbage buried underground until it rots, dug up from the grave and then served in earthenware pots sold at the Seoul airport as souvenirs? Directed by Chan-wook Park, a film-festival "comer" in this nation of emerging cinematic schlock, a cheerful drunk named Dae-su Oh disappears from the phone book and is sealed in a room for 15 years. Injected with drugs and forced to sleep every night with Valium gas that hisses through vents in the walls, he has no idea where he is, who put him there, or what he did to deserve such a fate in the first place. He keeps track of the time he's imprisoned in this hole by etching a tattoo on his body for every year. Suddenly, he's released in a field from the inside of a steamer trunk, more confused than ever. What follows is an extended two-hour nightmare in which he tries to track down his captors by tracing the takeout food they fed him in his cell, while the voices of his torturers contact him on cell phones and computer chat-room Web sites. What is going on here? Nobody knows. Meanwhile, he defeats an entire gang of killers with a knife sticking out of his back. He eats a live eel. A severed hand rips out a man's teeth, one by one, with a hammer. Blood flows, there is much vomiting and incest, and more screams than Japanese kabuki. Part kung fu, part revenge-theme Charlie Chan murder mystery, part metaphysical Oriental mumbo-jumbo, all of it incomprehensible. Dae-su Oh is played by Min-sik Choi. I walked out at the point where he grabbed a pair of sharp scissors and cut his tongue off in blood-splattering close-ups. Obviously the actor is still in one piece, but I'd be willing to bet there's some poor cow somewhere in Pusan who can no longer moo. Oldboy makes strange music, but it's like a three-hour concerto played on a theremin.