Enticed by the lure of colorful travel-magazine adverts promising a life of tranquility and luxury in the newly restored Marigold Hotel, seven senior citizens searching for a place to spend their golden years travel from the U.K. to India to enjoy their retirement. Bravely soldiering into the camel dung and curry of a country that is an open invitation to acid reflux, they find a resort in Jaipur that is nothing like what they were promised. The broken-down Marigold is not only misrepresented in the brochures, but is scarcely more than a ruin, where everything is badly in need of repair and nothing works, including cell-phone signals and plumbing. In this godforsaken place, a series of comic misadventures ensue that teach a diverse group of rough and randy retirees that no man is an island while they are transformed by shared experiences both sad and uplifting. The audience has the best time of anybody.

This is no pathetic gang of helpless elderly victims discarded by a society hooked on youth. Sure, they face the daunting problems of trying to figure out the new technology their grandchildren already understand, and they talk about buying panic buttons in case of sudden falls. But they’re crafty and brave and not yet ready for Ovaltine, rocking chairs and Metamucil. After newly widowed Evelyn Greenslade (Judi Dench) spends her late husband’s savings paying estate taxes, she finds herself financially bereft and in need of a new beginning. Cantankerous old dragon Mrs. Muriel Donnelly (Maggie Smith) needs a hip replacement, refuses to eat anything she can’t pronounce and is so cognizant of what little time she has left that she won’t even buy green bananas. Graham Dashwood (Tom Wilkinson) is a gay judge who has left the bench and returned to India to look up a long-lost lover he abandoned years earlier in an act of cowardice for fear of disgracing his family. Douglas Ainslie (Bill Nighy) is ready to jump-start his life, but his wife Jean (Penelope Wilton) is a quarrelsome pickle who hates India on sight—especially the heat, the squalor and the food that attacks her colon, leaving her husband to explore his new surroundings alone and form a warm friendship with Evelyn that sends Jean into jealous rages. Rounding out this motley crew of septuagenarian pioneers are Norman (Ronald Pickup), a horny bachelor looking for sexual fulfillment before he dies, and Madge (Celia Imrie, one of the stars of Downtown Abbey), a lonely multiple divorcee who has rebelled against her role as baby sitter and left her daughter’s home forever to look for her next husband. Some of them have sold out and walked away from the burdens of old age, announcing their own personal declaration of independence. Others, like Evelyn, have gone through their savings and must learn to make ends meet. All of them find themselves at the mercy of the naïve, clueless but cheerful manager (Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel) and all of them face the “assault on the senses” that is modern India, a land of so many dialects that even the people cannot communicate from one village to the next. The joy and passion of the movie is how they survive in the endless collision of colors, noise, car horns, traffic jams, smells, beggars, textiles, spicy foods and cultural challenges in order to cope and hopefully thrive. Some of their experiences are touching, others are hilarious. You haven’t lived until you see Maggie Smith, her face narrowed as a dried fig, surveying the chaos of India and saying, “I’m in hell.”

So many movies depict the elderly as gravely ignored, overlooked and forgotten that it’s a veritable thrill to see them treated with so much respect, humor and dignity. If nothing else, the rapture, pride and honest emotion in Judi Dench’s shifting expressions make the price of admission a privilege. The ensemble acting is of a monumental caliber seldom encountered in motion pictures, the wonderful screenplay by Ol Parker (adapted from Deborah Moggach’s best-selling novel These Foolish Things) captures the diverse characters with detailed reverie, and John Madden’s direction juxtaposes the manifold escapades with unerring vigilance. The theme is that it is never too late to find love, trust and a fresh beginning at any age. Some may find The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel too slow for its own good, and not because the cast is too old to move any faster. But I found it paced with the charm, heartbeat and optimism that make a true classic. There are many words to describe how I feel about it. Let’s start with gratitude.

rreed@observer.com

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL
Running Time 124 minutes
Written by Ol Parker (screenplay) and
Deborah Moggach (novel)
Directed by John Madden
Starring Judi Dench, Bill Nighy and Maggie Smith

'Battleship' star Rihanna (Getty Images)

The Hunger Games (Gary Ross) March 23

Your children have been refreshing Fandango daily to see if tickets are available yet for the movie based on Suzanne Collins’ kiddie novels—think of them as Twilight, except with actual murder instead of benign vampirism. Games promises a chaste love triangle and lots of angst for the tween set, but what’s in it for adults? Potentially, some solid acting. Jennifer Lawrence, last widely seen in her Oscar-nominated Winter’s Bone role, hopefully turns in another subtle and edgy performance as a young woman fighting to survive, and she’s accompanied by some tried-and-true character actors, like Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, and Donald Sutherland.

The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies) March 30

The long-absent Terence Davies returns with an adaptation of a play by another Terence—the late Rattigan, who wrote about the subtle emotionality of the British upper crust. This work is no exception, featuring as it does Rachel Weisz (and where has she been?) as the wife of a judge who is engaging in a dangerous liaison with a pilot. The cast also includes Tom Hiddleston, who was in just about every movie last year, of brows high and low (War Horse, Midnight in Paris, and Thor), but we’re more excited about the return of Mr. Davies, whose last narrative film, the moody The House of Mirth, came out way back in 2000.

Titanic 3D (James Cameron) April 4

To paraphrase Céline Dion, “It’s here—there’s nothing we fear.” Just in time for the centenary anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic comes the rerelease of the multiple Oscar winner. It’s been converted into 3D, too—so it’ll feel like Kate Winslet is throwing her diamond necklace right at you! Surely director James Cameron hopes he’ll break his own record by getting this film back to the #1 all-time box-office spot, but we suspect that, nearly 15 years after Titanic’s release, we’ll be among the rather limited number of Kate-and-Jack die-hards who simply can’t ever let go.

Damsels in Distress (Whit Stillman) April 6

Whit Stillman, who was hiding out with Terence Davies, is back too, with a drama that proves he’s still interested in what the kids are up to. The director who blew the lid off deb parties and disco dancing now examines a suicide-prevention mission undertaken by a WASPy queen bee whose idea of “It Gets Better” is introducing her classmates to tap dance. Sure, the notion of frolicsome young beauties put in “distress” by the men in their lives seems a bit fainting-couch-y, but, given that his previous films were all more or less period pieces, one exactly doesn’t go to Mr. Stillman for insights on the way we live now.

Darling Companion (Lawrence Kasdan) April 20

Every one of our favorites unites in a project that might be the Avengers of 1980s Oscar-ceremony attendees. Diane Keaton tries on a new Chico’s scarf-and-blazer combo as a woman who loves her dog a bit too much, and Kevin Kline is the husband who misplaces that dog. Throw Dianne Wiest and Sam Shepard into the mix, and you have a winner. We’re not sure why there’s so much hue and cry—it’s not like the dog is played by Uggie—but if there was ever an actress who seems like she’d be a little too into animals, it’d be Annie Hall herself!

The Five-Year Engagement (Nicholas Stoller) April 27

Jason Segel, tired of speaking to Muppets, has returned to romantic comedies about human beings. His Forgetting Sarah Marshall follow-up  costars Emily Blunt as a fiancée who has taken her sweet time making it to the altar—hey, it’s hard to plan a wedding! Between choosing a venue and bridesmaids’ dresses … Also featured are NBC Thursday-night comedians Chris Pratt, Alison Brie, the inescapable Mindy Kaling, and, for some reason, Oscar-nominated Aussie spitfire Jacki Weaver. We’re not sure why Mr. Segel keeps getting cast as a romantic lead—perhaps because he writes the parts for himself? (Aspiring actors who don’t resemble Channing Tatum, take note.)

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (John Madden) May 4

An all-star cast of Britain’s actors most likely to cluck “Well, I never!” trade their manor houses and cozy flats for India in this tale of white people encountering brown people. Characters played by Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, and Maggie Smith, among others, decide to retire to the subcontinent before realizing that “exotic” is an unalloyed positive only when applied to the term “dancer.” It is likely, though, that they will all learn, like, three lessons before dying—perhaps some of them taught by Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel!

The Avengers (Joss Whedon) May 4

The most anticipated film of the year among circles too young or too cool to remember Titanic unites Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man and a bunch of less popular and less charismatic superheroes in a quest to save the world from threats of an unclear nature. Scarlett Johansson is the lady who kicks and punches, Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth are the slabby studs, and moody blue Mark Ruffalo is the Incredible Hulk. (You wouldn’t like to see Mark Ruffalo when he’s angry—he brews some Kombucha to cool down then talks passionately about hydrofracking!). Unlike this summer’s noirish Dark Knight reprise, this promises to be big and bright and dopey—just what we want as rainy winter changes to overheated spring.

The Dictator (Larry Charles) May 11

Sacha Baron Cohen is back in character; apparently Bruno didn’t sate his appetite for foisting upon audiences a goulash of an accent and nightmarishly draggy scenes of his imposing himself upon unsuspecting people. The Dictator has him playing the Qaddafi-esque ruler of the fictitious nation Wadiya, one who gets to do fun things like shoot his subjects onscreen and seduce Megan Fox. We’re pretty sure that for all the Americans who were unaware of the Arab Spring, this will be a bit too insider-y, but who knows—everyone loves to laugh at Mr. Cohen when he impersonates an ethnic.

Battleship (Peter Berg) May 18

Rihanna makes her acting debut in a film about robotic aliens sent to destroy Earth—and despite her singing voice, she plays one of the humans defending us! This adaptation of the numbered-grid board game promises to be anything but B-9, with a cast that also includes the ever-more-grizzled Liam Neeson, Friday Night Lights star Taylor Kitsch, and Brooklyn Decker, who just finished playing Ophelia at the Old Vic (just kidding, she’s a bikini model!). We hope this one is successful—not due to partisanship for any of its stars, but because the deadline headlines about “sunken Battleship” are just too predictable.

To the already overcrowded list of year-end disappointments bringing 2009 to a sorry close, you can add Nine. With a legendary Broadway score; director Rob Marshall (Chicago) hoping to repeat his musical Midas touch; and an all-star cast that redefines that overused word “fabulous,” a lot of Christmas bonbons were expected from the anticipated movie version of the 1982 Broadway classic. Alas, the movie delivers thistles instead.

The original musical, based on Fellini’s largely autobiographical film 8½ and directed by Tommy Tune, was pure genius. The movie is boring, pretentious, empty, heartless, interminable, cold and as richly flavored as a hard-boiled egg. The basic premise remains the same: A stressed-out director without a single word on paper for his next film retreats to a spa for a rest cure. One by one, the female muses in his life appear among the white tiles to inspire him, dressed elegantly in black. Let the razzle-dazzle begin. But in the movie, Guido, a director with a phony accent (a hopelessly miscast Daniel Day-Lewis, about as decadently Italian as Mickey Rooney), pushes a cast of thousands all over the place: press conferences, the sound stages of Cinecittà, the Appian Way, the Fountain of Trevi, the Amalfi Coast and every historic monument in Rome. When he sings, he’s climbing scaffolds like James Bond doing chin-ups. Songs have been dropped and characters added, to no avail. There’s his long-suffering wife (Marion Cotillard); his suicidal mistress (a scantily clad Penélope Cruz); his butch costume designer (Dame Judi Dench in a wig with Buster Brown bangs the color of doggie-doo); his dead mother (a matronly and badly photographed Sophia Loren, of all people); a neurotic movie star (Nicole Kidman) in a strapless gown wading through fountains; a fat prostitute on the beach (pop diva Fergie), who tried to seduce Guido when he was 9; and enough noisy chorus lines to make you reach for a Valium.

They all sing … and sing … and sing! Covered with bling, and not always in tune. Ms. Cruz does an erotically charged number inspired by Jack Cole’s choreography for Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The musical numbers all look alike, but Dame Judi belts out “Folies Bergere” better than the others, trailing a mile of red feathers. In a senseless role added to the film for no valid reason, a clueless Kate Hudson plays a trashy journalist from Vogue dancing on a runway that looks like a rock video set. Busty, porcine Fergie, beating a tambourine, leads a stage full of sluts on a stage full of sand. Sophia Loren should sue. Doesn’t Mr. Marshall know you don’t shoot a woman nearing 80 from under her chin? Because Guido is reaching back inside his brain to pull out memories, real and imagined, the movie plays leapfrog with time frames, switching from color to black and white without purpose. Onstage, there was so much glamour I couldn’t decide whom to concentrate on. In the movie, they’re so obnoxious I just wanted them to shut up and go home. The movie is busy, but in their failed homage to Fellini, they’ve lost his mystery and humor.

The fragmented script, expanded to include an army of men, now features jealous husbands, nervous producers, doctors with stomach pumps and hypocritical, autograph-collecting Catholic cardinals from the Vatican who ban Guido’s movies but secretly adore the sex scenes. The writers (including director Anthony Minghella, who died before it was finished, which might explain some of the holes) never find the words to deliver Guido from his midlife crisis and describe the detritus of his messy life. The women who swirl through his dreams would make better studies if they added up to a form of therapy, but the deadly script uses them as nothing more than props. Regrettably, none of the fury and passion that made them so memorable onstage has made its way into this loud but lifeless film spectacle. Without the necessary insight into these flamboyant women that a coherent script would provide, you end up caring about none of them. The characters strut and screech and shake their butts in a sexual faux frenzy, but remain as one-dimensional as cardboard. They knock themselves out cold, but it’s like a greatest-hits assembly of pop tunes and dirty dancing from floor shows in Atlantic City, inserted to make you forget that nothing else is going on. Nine is giddy, empty-headed and loud, but it never manages to prevent the audience from snoring. It’s a musical train wreck.

rreed@observer.com

James Bond movies long ago outgrew the original fun and thrills invented by Ian Fleming, and they’ve been coasting on noise and luck ever since. Quantum of Solace, the 22nd entry in the interminable franchise, is one of the most pointless, chaotic and forgettable of them all. It is also one of the dullest.

The Bond checklist is always a bit like Mexican food—spicy and bloating for the moment, promising exotic locations, tech toys, outrageously expensive cars ready to be demolished at random, outrageous villains thinking up inhumanly monstrous tortures, secret agents navigating humanly impossible escapes, sexy girls wearing Band-Aids, and mindless satisfaction guaranteed. It’s not until later that you realize the ingredients are the same, you can’t remember what you had the night before, and no matter how they dress it up, an enchilada is just an enchilada.

With Quantum of Solace, which sports a senseless title destined to be forgotten before it even reaches the shelves at Blockbuster, you juggle the staples in Column A with the extras in Column B and you still come up with the same cogitation—a shabby, humorless disappointment with little to offer besides lazy setups with no story, character development or plot, and what thrills it has are stolen from old Bond films. Instead of the girl dipped in gold and left on the bed to die in Goldfinger, we get the girl dipped in crude oil and left on the bed to die. The boat chases are from Live and Let Die, and the opening eight-minute stunt-filled chase across the construction gangplanks and collapsing rooftops of Siena is like Casino Royale on rewind. And while you’re wondering what happened to imagination and originality, you might ponder the sad puzzle of what they’ve done to Bond himself. The 007 of ’07 introduced by newcomer Daniel Craig was a hunk with heart. Now he’s been morphed into a killing machine with a gene-spliced heart transplant, reduced to pure marble. Mr. Craig is a versatile actor who can play pretty much whatever they throw at him. But when there’s nothing to play, he’s an action comics wind-up toy with a furrowed brow.

Start with a premise instead of a plot. Bond is still smarting emotionally from the betrayal of Vesper Lynd, the woman he naïvely trusted and unwisely loved, who came to a particularly long, drawn-out and painful end in Casino Royale. This one picks up one hour later, and you better remember what happened. Questions will be asked. The evil organization that blackmailed Vesper is so complex that it spreads across the globe like Dijonnaise. Without an official assignment, Bond, heads in every direction, fueled by revenge. All roads lead to bug-eyed arch villain Dominic Greene, a phony environmentalist played by a wasted Mathieu Amalric from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Unafraid of dictators, military juntas or rampaging armies, this arch villain’s goal is to control the water supply of South America, so naturally Bond’s pursuit comes with a boarding pass. First stop: Haiti, where Bond smashes up a marina of speedboats and breaks the neck of another agent between rum fizzes. On to Austria, where he wipes out an important member of the special branch of Her Majesty’s Secret Service at the opera, during a performance of Tosca. Infuriated, M cancels his credit cards, secret IDs and travel permits, but Bond is now a lunatic unhinged, offing enemies, allies, Americans, even the secretary of the British prime minister. In Bolivia, the pretty agent dispatched to put him on the next plane to London ends up in his bed before sundown and in the morgue before dawn. Enter a new Bond girl played by curvy Olga Kurylenko. She’s as tough and cold-blooded as he is. They seem like sang-froid ciphers. He wants Greene. She wants the military general who raped and killed her mother and sister. What a fox. One minute she machine-guns an entire regiment in military fatigues, the next day she walks across the Bolivian desert in a cocktail dress, barefoot. Bolivia is played by Panama.

M is once again played by Judi Dench. The Bond films finance the serious part of her career, but this time she does more than drop by to lend a bit of class to the sweat and carnage. Unexpectedly, M develops a maternal instinct, forgiving Bond’s renegade revolt, and offering no stronger reprimand than “If you could avoid killing every possible lead, it would be deeply appreciated.” The new M stands for Mummy.

The new 007 is somewhat less tolerable. He’s gone through a lot of changes since he made his first appearance, in Dr. No (1962). He was so suave as Sean Connery that purists have never accepted anyone else. He was nothing anybody remembers—a zero—as George Lazenby. (Say who?) He was prettier in a tux than anything off the rack at Marks and Spencer as Roger Moore. As Timothy Dalton, he was just passing through. He was handsome but limited as Pierce Brosnan. If the scripts improve, he’s got a future as Daniel Craig, who does hard drinking, knuckle-slugging and slut-shtupping with equal aplomb. He’s the first actor who makes Bond look like a street punk. But the glamour is on hiatus, and all that’s left are the fists. I’m not craving much, but is it too much to ask for a small shred of what we used to call … purpose?

James Bond without wit and charm has a chromosome missing. With so much tightrope balancing, exploding vehicles, biplane dogfights and avoidance of hanky-panky in the Porthault, there’s no time for the sex, humor, style and gimmicks that have always been part of the Bond appeal. The new Bond is mean, lean, flavorless as green tea and too arrogant to be much fun. Daniel Craig is brutal, nasty and as short as Alan Ladd (who did love scenes with tall women as they stood in a ditch). In Quantum of Solace, there’s no time to even show off his artillery in the latest Speedo. Even with the furious pacing, Marc Foster’s direction is curiously without any kind of edge or tension, and where are those famous James Bond one-liners? The screenplay is deadly, despite the fact that it was partially written by Paul Haggis (Crash). I’ve been as happily distracted by the 007 movies as the next guy, but this time Bond really does seem bound. Let’s hope the bondage is temporary.

rreed@observer.com

In a rare loosening of one’s stiff upper-lip, Queen Elizabeth II and her hubby, the Duke of Edinburgh, chose to celebrate their 60^th wedding anniversary tonight on the Mediterranean island of Malta, where the crowned couple lived for two years after getting hitched. The private overnight visit will come just one day before the Queen and her main squeeze travel on tomorrow to Uganda for a commonwealth summit. “Malta is a special place for the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh,” said a Buckingham Palace spokesperson.

Yesterday, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip celebrated their diamond anniversary with a more traditional observance at London’s Westminster Abbey, where the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, presided over a service that was attended by, among others, Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Prince William and Judi Dench both gave readings at the ceremony, the latter quoting from renowned poet Andrew Motion, saying, "A life remote from ours because it asked each day, each action to be kept in view.”

Queen celebrates 60th wedding anniversary [Daily Telegraph]

There were more lesbians rocking the house at the 79th Academy Awards than at the Dinah Shore Open. And, trust me, they were not there just to rig lights and provide security. These gals were hosting, vamping, performing songs, being nominated for awards—and winning!—and they were positively chewing up that red carpet with their non-stop glamour. After initially seeming like a crazy fiction—something marginal produced merely for the delectation of straight men—The L-Word has now become a reality.

For whatever reason, the lesbian has become, virtually overnight, a culturally central symbol of power, glamour and success. This has huge implications for politics, and for Hillary Clinton in particular. Hil! Come out of the closet—right now! Or at least pretend to. As a grumpy hetero woman, your chances were always slim; as a power dyke, you could be a Hollywood-funded shoo-in. Just take a good hard look at what went down (pardon the expression) on Sunday night.

There were Oscar-winning glamour dykes in blue chiffon (Jodie Foster in Vera Wang) and siren dykes in backless, booty-cupping satin (Portia de Rossi in Zac Posen).

There were drop-dead femme dykes in red bustiered, beaded numbers—costume-designer nominee Patricia Field in her own creation—and Oscar-winning butches performing in Johnny Cash suits: Melissa Etheridge in Domenico Vacca. (Hillary! This would be a great inauguration look for you, luv!)

And then there was our magnificent hostess, Ellen DeGeneres, who kicked off the proceedings in a claret velvet Gucci Sammy Davis Jr.–style suit. Confident, casual and hilariously throwaway, Ellen made me feel as if a wacky and amusing lesbian neighbor had popped in unexpectedly for a coffee and a quick kibitz. As I watched her effortlessly work the Kodak Theater crowd, I kept asking myself: “How did we go from mocking gay women for their lack of humor--the shortest book in the world used to be The Lesbian Book of Jokes--to rocking with laughter at their bon mots?” Mocking to rocking?

And where, pray, were the gay men? André Leon Talley and Bill Condon were the only homosexualists with any profile. While out lesbian couples mingled with the Wills and Jadas and vied for awards with their heterosexual peers, we poofters were relegated to our traditional behind-the-scenes nelly roles of frock-making, hair-teasing and frothy-commentary-providing. (See this column.)

It’s our own fault. We totally had it coming. We gay men deserve this particular thin end of this particular wedge haircut. For years, we have promoted and leveraged our own stylishness and savoir-faire by contrasting it with lesbian frumpery. This nasty tactic has come back to bite us in the ass. Tired of being characterized by us as gargoyles and grotesques, the gals have taken back the night. We are now their employees. This is our punishment for decades of piss-taking.

Once a yardstick for excessive earnestness and anti-glamour, out lesbians are now synonymous with the shimmering world of entertainment. So tinged with Sapphic vibrations were Sunday night’s proceedings that even confirmed heterosexuals appeared to be wavering. Oscar winner Helen Mirren conjured up all kinds of wild lezzy scenarios by telling Barbara Walters that, during the course of filming The Queen, she had “fallen completely in love with Her Majesty.”

And if Best Actor nominee Leonardo DiCaprio isn’t a dead ringer for The L-Word’s Max, the F.-to-M. formerly known as Moira, then I’ll be a monkey’s F.-to-M. uncle.

Back to Mrs. Clinton: So, Hillary darling, back in the 1990’s, when Ellen’s career was spiraling down after she came out in front of 46 million people, lesbianism left a nasty taste in America’s collective mouth. During this period, you were often accused of being too strident and unfeminine. A decade has passed, during which time Ellen has gone from vilification to deification. Something shifted. The time is right. Seize the moment. Go for it. And don’t get sidetracked by whether or not you really are a lesbian. You need to fake it to make it. It’s no different from Dubya pretending to be a good ol’ boy. Hire Pat Field to pull your look together. Get newly self-outed financial guru Suze Orman to be your campaign manager. A fund-raiser on an Olivia Cruise—why not? An L-Word cameo? Totally!

PS, Hilary, something to ponder: I know it didn’t win anything, but please check out Notes on a Scandal. I think it will seem eerily familiar to you. The tortured relationship between the Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett characters is intriguingly reminiscent of an unsavory coupling that occurred during your time in the White House. Yes, I mean Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky.

Dyke Power!

Notes on a Scandal wins my prize for the best acting of the year. It’s a film of scalding intensity, with a hypnotic, detailed, three-dimensional performance by Judi Dench that is positively historic! Yes, everyone knows she is arguably the greatest actress alive today, but nothing she has ever done will prepare you for this. In a role unlike any she has ever tackled, Dame Judi plays Barbara Covett, the antagonist of Zoë Heller’s acclaimed novel What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal, a lonely, repressed, aging and embittered veteran history teacher with lesbian tendencies who lives an isolated and barren existence with only her sick cat for company. Barbara yearns so desperately for companionship that when a new arts teacher—a feisty, attractive free spirit named Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett at her best)—joins the faculty, Barbara likes what she sees and spins a deceptive web of seduction that takes both women to places dark, dangerous and beyond imagination. Let the emotional fencing begin.

The doughy, cynical spinster’s infatuation with the tweedy blond novice progresses gingerly at first, as Barbara weaves Sheba into her counsel, pouring tea and dispensing advice on everything from choosing the right friends to classroom strategy (“Teaching is crowd control”). Analyzing everyone within spitting distance with one withering glance, Barbara is so humorous and bitchy that the naïve Sheba becomes disarmingly friendly and candid, unloading her intimate feelings to Barbara too fast, unaware that her new mentor is writing it all down in a journal. Sheba is married to a gregarious lawyer (Bill Nighy), the mother of a son with Down syndrome, and too vulnerable for her own good. When she makes the mistake of having a secret sexual affair with one of her 15-year-old students, Barbara seizes her moment of superiority. First threatening, then protecting her younger friend by not telling the authorities, Barbara cleverly places Sheba in her debt. It proves to be the ultimate tool that a masterful control freak dreams about. By the time Sheba finally ends the affair for good, she’s totally under the influence of “trusty old Barb.” Under the guise of friendship, Barbara maps out her plans for a final sexual conquest like a general strategizing a battle, and extends her power to poisoning Sheba’s marriage, alienating her loyalty to her children and destroying her life, career, reputation and self-esteem. The result is as much a thriller as it is a character study. The finale will turn your knees to jelly.

Greatness informs every scene. The brilliant screenplay is by Patrick Marber, who wrote Closer. The sensitive, illuminating direction is by Richard Eyre, the former head of the National Theatre and one of the world’s leading theater and film directors. (He directed Stage Beauty and Dame Judi in Iris.) The camerawork by the legendary Chris Menges captures a mood of suspense that is visually unshakable. And the performances boil the blood in your veins and freeze the breath in your throat at the same time. Watching Judi Dench orchestrate the ultimate downfall of another human being with diabolical cruelty and endearing charm is devastating. Ms. Blanchett holds her own, building to the explosion within her heart with a rage that is shocking. The internal complexity of their performances will leave you shattered. In a weak year, everything about Notes on a Scandal is electrifying.

Army Surplus

To my surprise, nobody went to see Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers. Who do they think they’ll attract with Letters from Iwo Jima, the same director’s take on the flip side of the coin from the Japanese point of view? I admire the technical efficiency and well-intended sense of fairness that went into this black-and-white epic, but two and a half hours of Japanese mortar fire and hand-grenade explosions with English subtitles for a work that isn’t even a Japanese movie in the first place is just not my cup of combat duty. Mr. Eastwood shows the Japanese soldiers digging their trenches and wondering aloud if those trenches will be their graves. They say, “Damn this island—the Americans can have it!” They suffer the same hardships as the American G.I.’s, though with fewer men and less artillery. But they do have a kind and humane commander in Imperial Army Lt. Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi, played by the excellent Ken Watanabe, who stole The Last Samurai right out from under Tom Cruise. They also have a former gold-medal-winning horseback-riding champion from the Los Angeles Olympics. Their fleet has been destroyed, their remaining fighter planes ordered back to Tokyo. Some choose an honorable death by suicide, while others opt to survive—even though it means admitting a crushing defeat. Mr. Eastwood shows the courage and the carnage, and implies that the Japanese had a stronger compassion and sense of justice than the Americans, especially in their treatment of prisoners, and both films chronicle the dehumanizing effect that all wars have on the men who fight them. Still, I found Letters from Iwo Jima more bloodless and stagy than Flags of Our Fathers. And what, in the big picture, is the point?

I question the need for two World War II movies in the same year when most people don’t even want to see one. Young audiences don’t know what Iwo Jima was or what happened there that cost the lives of about 7,000 Americans and 20,000 Japanese. Anyone who cares, or anyone who remembers 1945, or anyone who lost a relative in the Pacific, doesn’t give a royal flying fig about anything concerning the Japanese point of view, and that is going to be the biggest problem in marketing this film. The wonderful acting, the human endurance test the Japanese went through, the letters they wrote home (yes, they had wives and children, too), and the fact that there are decent and humane people on both sides of every conflict are strong factors in selling both the movie’s value and Mr. Eastwood’s importance as a responsible filmmaker. Critics and historians will give the film high marks, but will the public care? Flags of Our Fathers had more action, and more of a narrative that followed those boys back to the American home front. Letters from Iwo Jima doesn’t have the same scope, or the same sense of excitement in the trenches, and there is no shameful postwar file about what the survivors went through after they got home. It is a noble attempt to tell the truth about a war that Hollywood has always mythologized, but I still think it is too long and too slow. Both films attempt to do for the battle of Iwo Jima what Saving Private Ryan did for the invasion of Normandy, but the quality and passion are continents apart.

Dopey Damon

Clocking in at nearly three hours, The Good Shepherd is a numbing history of the C.I.A. that leaves you Novocained. Jumping around in time like a frog with hiccups, it opens with the 1961 Bay of Pigs disaster, when preppy secret agent Edward Wilson, played by Matt Damon, learns that Fidel Castro was tipped off by an informer inside the C.I.A., which J.F.K. vows to break open in a house-cleaning purge. In the time it takes Mr. Damon’s character to find out who the spy is, you could read a book, call your mother, finish your crossword puzzle, do all of your Christmas shopping and pay the first installment on next year’s estimated income tax.

From Cuba in the 1960’s, flash back to the 1930’s, where Matt Damon sings and dances in drag in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta at Yale. Government creep Alec Baldwin approaches him to spy on his poetry professor, Dr. Fredericks (Michael Gambon), so Fredericks can be turned in to the F.B.I. for his Nazi sympathies. Cut to 1940, where Wilson runs into his pals at Yale at a Skull and Bones retreat, meets a powerful O.S.S. general named Bill Sullivan (played by Robert De Niro, hamming it up shamelessly by hobbling around with gout), who offers him a spot on the ground floor of a new top-secret government intelligence organization called the C.I.A. Wilson then knocks up the daughter of a U.S. Senator (a hopelessly miscast Angelina Jolie), followed by a shotgun wedding. As the story drags through the years in a trance, Mr. Damon’s Wilson just gets weirder and weirder. By the 1960’s, he doesn’t look a day older than he did in the 1930’s , although he does have a different hair color every year. Still haunted by the suicide of his father (Timothy Hutton), he loses himself in his work, lands in London in 1941 posing as a civil servant and stays for six years, becoming a total stranger to his wife and son. By 1946, he’s in Washington, gathering information on subversive operations among the Russians, destroying lives and trusting nobody, all in the name of patriotism and democracy. In the 1950’s, he has a reunion with a counterespionage agent (Billy Crudup) that he befriended in England, and the deaf girl (Tammy Blanchard) he deserted to marry his wife, who in the meantime has turned gray-haired and miserable (probably from the torture of tattoo removal). Through an interminable gallimaufry of internecine deals, double crosses, favors owed and refused, and a lot of time spent parking cars and unlocking doors, Mr. Damon’s character becomes a metaphor for all of the cold, heartless, secretive, clandestine and cadaverous people who work as U.S. surveillance operatives, security experts, prison wardens and Pinkerton guards, as well as the spooks in suits who work for the F.B.I., C.I.A. and Secret Service. I guess the movie means to show how shallow and uninteresting their lives are, without realizing that dull, gray people make for dull, gray movies. Reducing the value of human life to rote indifference, their betrayals and counter-betrayals bring nothing but grief to the ones they pretend to love the most. To make a short story long, by the time that Wilson finally uncovers the true identity of the mole responsible for the Bay of Pigs, it impales him on the horns of his life’s first dilemma, but I doubt if anyone will still be awake enough to care.

In addition to overacting, Mr. De Niro’s directing is a sloppy, truncated mess. The man simply doesn’t know the meaning of “less is more.” Anyone who knows anything about filmmaking can point out at least a dozen superfluous scenes that should have been cut for length and coherence. Eric Roth’s screenplay isn’t especially incoherent, but it does seem longer and less fluid than Mein Kampf. And Matt Damon never manages to look any older or bigger in stature than a high-school shortstop.

Venus Rises

Peter O’Toole is one of the last dinosaurs surviving the crunch, and Venus, a vehicle generating Oscar buzz for the indestructible septuagenarian, is his own personal Jurassic Park. Don’t be fooled by furtive sighs, hesitant steps or teeth that look like the apple won’t bite. He’s still got fangs.

In the delightful Venus, Mr. O’Toole plays Maurice, a second-tier old veteran actor in his “golden years” who is too old for Hamlet and too young for the cemetery. Maurice had a few good seasons, but now he ekes out a retirement income doing bit parts on trashy British television series. That is, when he’s lucky. Most of the time he hangs out with his two best pals, Ian and Donald (Leslie Phillips and Richard Griffiths), a pair of gay blades from the good old days who know where all the bodies are buried. This trio of semi-ancient old hams is set in their ways, but the banter between their daily breakfast ritual in a neighborhood café and their nightly alcoholic stupors in London pubs is an indication of how loyal, devoted and inseparable they are. Until, that is, the arrival of Ian’s niece’s teenage daughter Jessie (Jodie Whittaker), a slovenly country bumpkin utterly ignorant of all things cultural, who comes to London to take care of her uncle and shows no eagerness to leave. The old-maidish Ian is mortified that this cheeky, chip-munching tart has been dumped on his doorstep, but Maurice senses a revival of forgotten sensual pleasures undreamed of since Omar Khayyam. If she prefers MTV to Bach’s Passions, it’s only a temporary snag for Maurice, who may be old and gnarled but still is randy enough to smell an April-October romance when he sniffs one. To his friends’ dismay, Maurice is suddenly too busy to read the obits and get his prostate checked. He stops talking about his blood pressure, takes Jessie to the theater, and nicknames her Venus because she reminds him of the Velázquez painting in the National Gallery, while Jessie drags him to pop clubs and rekindles old lusts and longings he’s long since outgrown. Age introduces youth to the things it knows, and youth responds to the knowledge so joyfully shared. Then things get complicated when a single friendship moves up a notch to the double bed, and Venus becomes a pitiful portrait of a sad and lonely old has-been trying to recapture the essence of passion when the mind says yes and the body says no.

Vanessa Redgrave adds a glow of her own as the ex-wife that Maurice abandoned years earlier with three children to raise on her own. She, above all, understands his search for pleasure above responsibility. Their scenes together have real magic. Director Roger Michell (Notting Hill) and the sophisticated screenplay by Hanif Kureishi (My Beautiful Launderette) beautifully balance lighthearted insouciance with a vein of deeper feeling, and Peter O’Toole gives the kind of beautifully measured performance—funny, charming, biting and achingly sad—that cements his stature as one of the most beguiling of the acting profession’s great icons.

The 10 Best Films of 2006

1. Babel

2. Notes on a Scandal

3. The History Boys

4. The Painted Veil

5. The Queen

6. ‑Flags of Our Fathers/Letters from Iwo Jima

7. The Illusionist

8. Infamous

9. Dreamgirls

10. Volver

Honorable Mentions: Water, Scoop, Find Me Guilty, Deliver Us from Evil, The Last King of Scotland, Kinky Boots, Our Daily Bread

THE 10 WORST FILMS OF 2006

1. Borat

2. The Fountain

3. Apocalypto

4. Lucky Number Slevin

5. The Black Dahlia

6 All the King’s Men

7. Lady in the Water

8. Brick

9. Inland Empire

10. Fur

Extra hisses and boos to: The Da Vinci Code, A Prairie Home Companion, Déjà Vu, The Prestige, Rumor Has It, Freedomland, For Your Consideration, Perfume

I would like to offer a hearty mazel tov to Joseph V. Melillo, executive producer of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, who has been awarded the Order of the British Empire (or O.B.E.) from Queen Elizabeth II for “showcasing British art in America.”

Only duty compels me to ask, however: What's wrong with the picture?

Mr. Joe Melillo, O.B.E., is, of course, an American who runs a leading American theater. For him to receive the Order of the British Empire—motto: “For God and Empire”—for services to British theater doesn't look quite right.

Apart from the fact that the British Empire no longer exists, particularly in America, what concerns me is that the O.B.E. is one of the most junior British orders of chivalry. It's just typical of the Brits to think Americans will settle for anything British. If I were Mr. Melillo, I would say, “How dare you!” and turn down the lowly O.B.E.

A Commander of the British Empire (C.B.E.) would be better, though not as good as a knighthood. An O.B.E. makes you a mere Member of the Order of the British Empire, as opposed to a Commander. Even so, David Bowie recently spurned a C.B.E. Are you surprised? He's obviously holding out for a knighthood.

After all, Mick Jagger is now proudly Sir Mick, of all ludicrous things. Small wonder the outraged Keith Richards called him “a disgrace” for accepting the “paltry honor.” In selling out, Sir Mick, the former rock outlaw, had become what he'd always wanted to be: a fine, upstanding gentleman of the Establishment. Not that I'm suggesting Mr. Melillo, O.B.E., and his Next Wave Festival are heading in the same direction, but you can't be too careful.

The first actor to reject a knighthood in modern times was Paul Scofield, God love him. Many years ago, I was fortunate to interview the sculptor Henry Moore, then thought of as the greatest living Englishman. He was a plain-speaking Yorkshireman of transparent modesty, and when I asked him why he refused a knighthood, he replied, “'Enery Moore has been my name for 70 years, and 'Enery Moore it shall remain.”

Mr. Melillo, O.B.E., kindly take note: The cool thing to do nowadays is to turn down any honor that harks back to the glories of Empire and Britain's imperial past. Michael Frayn turned down a C.B.E. and, recently, a knighthood. Harold Pinter and Alan Bennett have both firmly rejected knighthoods. Albert Finney has long since made it known that he never wants to be known as “Sir Albert.” Helen Mirren, a declared socialist, declined a C.B.E., but recently succumbed to a Damehood. On the other hand, the committed socialist Vanessa Redgrave accepted a C.B.E. before she became political and later declined a Damehood.

I've never understood British socialists who can't wait to kneel in abeyance before Her Majesty. No doubt Sir David Hare had his reasons. My friend, Sir Harold Evans, was rightly knighted for his services to journalism and ping-pong, but I still call him “Harry,” except, of course, on black-tie occasions. The first actor in history to be made a lord, incidentally, was Laurence Olivier. But it suited him: “Lord Larry.”

Does the Order of the British Empire suit Joe Melillo of Brooklyn, I wonder? He can proudly display the medal—or gong, as the British call it—on his lapel next Fourth of July. Meanwhile, let's all take heart from the following true story:

One of the finest actors in England never to be offered a knighthood was the late Michael Bryant, who for many years was a brilliant staple of the National Theatre. On the night that Judi Dench was elevated to her Damehood, he was playing Enobarbus to her Cleopatra. As they turned upstage together, the slightly deaf Mr. Bryant was heard to say to Dame Judi in a loud stage whisper: “I suppose a fuck's completely out of the question now?”

Soledad! ¡Ole!

I must admit I wasn't too keen when a friend of mine asked me to join her for an evening of flamenco at Theatre 80, St. Marks Place. All that drama. Then again, the last person I saw stamping and preening a lot was an ex-wife of mine. Suppose she was in the show?

I'm afraid my experience—or ignorance—of flamenco goes back to childhood, when exotic performers who looked like Antonio Banderas, only taller, came to town. They were costumed as glittering bullfighters and did this very angry dance that made a lot of noise. And the women were also exotic and very angry, too. And then we all went for an ice cream.

Obviously, when it comes to flamenco, I'm no expert. But, feeling guilty, I joined my friend Wendy to see the troupe she admires so much, who are known as Noche Flamenca. “What's the essence of flamenco?” I asked her earnestly.

She thought for a moment. “Oh, love, sex, death and God. That's about it. What else is there?”

Nothing. There is nothing else. And that's what I found in the company of this wonderful troupe, for the whole of life was held within their staggering skills. It was the most fantastic thing. We go to the theater sometimes to escape, we go expectantly or skeptically or not even in the mood. Not quite there. But when the truly remarkable happens onstage, we're immediately shaken out of our everyday mood. And then we're unmistakably, gladly, always there.

I would say that to my untutored eyes, the Noche Flamenca achieved the miraculous. Within four or five minutes, they took me into another world—their world. Martin Santangelo, the artistic director of the 10-member troupe led by the masterful dancer Soledad Barrio, has firstly created an extraordinary sense of timelessness. The Noche Flamenca belong uncannily to history, and they belong uncannily to the present, like a surreal dream we can never solve. To see Ms. Barrio perform is to witness a dancer in awe of life who isn't quite human. She transcends the human like some ecstatic animal, a pure instinct, a spirit speaking to spirit. The percussive energy is phenomenal, of course. But what ultimately transpires is the grave beauty of a dark lament.

To be sure, there are the virtuoso set pieces of joyful release. But it is the depths of the soul and its unfathomable mystery to which these fine artists aspire. They confront nothing less than the mystery of life. Life does not defeat them. It humbles them.

Soledad Barrio possesses the near-secret knowledge called the duende—which Goethe defined when he attributed to Paganini “a mysterious power that everyone feels but no philosopher has explained.”

"All that has dark sounds,” wrote Lorca in Theory and Function of the Duende, “has duende. It is not a matter of ability, but of real live form; of blood; of ancient culture; of creative action. To help us seek the duende there is neither map nor discipline. All one knows is that it turns the blood like powdered glass, that it exhausts, that it rejects all the sweet geometry one has learned, that it breaks with all styles, that it compels Goya, master of greys, silvers and of those pinks in the best English paintings, to paint with his knees and with his fists horrible bitumen blacks.”

Try to see Noche Flamenca if you can. You will be astonished.

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.