Peter Gallagher, a natural replacement for Jimmy Stewart (RKO, Getty)

Considering the other male lead in this stage adaptation is Bryan Cranston, you have to wonder why Peter "Remember How I was Creepier than James Spader In Sex Lies and Videotape?" Gallagher snagged the lead over the Breaking Bad star. We know that Mr. Cranston can do the Bailey's conflicting emotions of simultaneously confused, suicidal, and goofy: just look at him as the dad as Malcolm in the Middle.

Annette Bening will also costar as Mrs. Mary Bailey, proving that in an alternate universe, Carolyn Burnham finally got her King of Real Estate.

It's a Wonderful Life, adapted by Tony Palermo and directed by Bart DeLorenzo, set for Dec. 10 at the Gil Cates Theater.

Conviction, directed by Tony Goldwyn, is the inspirational true-life story of a high-school dropout named Betty Anne Waters (Hilary Swank) who devoted 20 years of her life to becoming a lawyer in order to prove the innocence of her brother Kenny (Sam Rockwell), who was wrongfully accused and sentenced to life in prison for a murder he did not commit. Her unshakable belief in his innocence and her determination to expose and reverse a travesty of justice provides the raw material for an expertly detailed, soundly constructed film about family love that is undeniably powerful.

Betty Anne, a Massachusetts wife and mother of two from the wrong side of the tracks, and Kenny, who has neither an education nor a solid family background, were deserted by their father and raised by a trashy, self-absorbed mother who shipped them both off to a string of foster homes. Practically joined at the hip, they learn at an early age to depend solely on each other, but although they both eventually marry and start their own families, Kenny is always a rowdy prankster--violent, wild and impulsive--who spends most of his time on the wrong side of the law. So, in the rural hick town where they lived, when the body of a woman is found in a bloodstained trailer house in 1980, he is a natural suspect, but because of a lack of evidence, he is cleared and released. Two years later, two so-called "witnesses" come forward to testify they heard Kenny confess to the brutal slaying. With the relentless push of a crooked, man-hating cop (the excellent Melissa Leo), the case is reopened and Kenny is sentenced to life without parole. Betty Anne's world falls apart, but her faith in her sibling remains undiminished. While working as a waitress in a pub and trying to raise two sons, she gets her high-school diploma and earns a B.A. degree, neglecting her husband and wrecking her marriage in the process, but somehow manages to save enough money to enter law school and pass the bar exam.  Fueled by unconditional love, she intends to overturn Kenny's conviction while acting as his lawyer. 

With the aid of her best friend (Minnie Driver), she pulls every lever in the legal system, only to find the evidence in the case has disappeared. Appealing to famed lawyer Barry Scheck (Peter Gallagher) and his newfound knowledge of miraculous DNA testing to exonerate Kenny, Betty Anne pores over every shred of the investigation from start to finish, searching for blood work from the first trial to force an acquittal, bending a few laws herself to reach the truth. Meticulously examining every clue to piece together the missing elements of the puzzle, director Goldwyn and screenwriter Pamela Gray build a film of crime, suspense and adventure with breathless pacing and all the earmarks of a first-rate mystery story. Ms. Swank, who specializes in roles of bravery and true grit, and the always colorful and versatile Mr. Rockwell, one of the screen's youngest and most appealing character actors, exude amazing chemistry as the brother and sister living through two decades of hell. It's a thrill to watch his transformation from cocky young stud to hardened convict without hope, showing the cruelty and indifference of the American prison system at work. The flawless supporting cast includes a juicy performance by Juliette Lewis as a brainless witness whose lies under oath for personal reasons in order to ruin Kenny's life. 

Filled with nuance, intricate emotion and a refreshing absence of melodramatics, Conviction is a moving exploration of light and love shining through the darkness of despair. Its impact cannot easily be shaken. 

CONVICTION
Running time 106 minutes
Written by Pamela Gray
Directed by Tony Goldwyn
Starring Hilary Swank, Sam Rockwell, Melissa Leo, Minnie Driver, Peter Gallagher, Juliette Lewis

3/4

Based on a true story, Conviction stars Swank as Betty Ann Waters, a Massachusetts woman who quits her job and goes to law school in an attempt to get her wrongfully convicted brother out of jail (hey, Sam Rockwell!). And that means tin-eared Boston accents! And tears! And dramatic music that sounds ripped out of The Lovely Bones trailer! And, well, we just got tired of seeing this kind of performance from Swank around the time of Amelia.

That said, it's all perfect Oscar-bait — though if the trailer gave away any more of the movie, it would have shown the closing credits. And any film that tracks Sam Rockwell's looks from "used car salesman" to "cast member on Oz" can't be all bad, even one directed by actor-turned-director Tony Goldwyn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCwlaLyjtcA

Charm that isn’t forced and wit without contrivance are such rare ingredients in today’s so-called comedies that when I come across either, I tend to go overboard. There is plenty of both in Adam, a touching and engaging film about a likable and attractive young man who suffers from Asperger’s syndrome. Now there’s a fresh subject guaranteed to stir debate. And a riveting performance by the gifted Hugh Dancy in the title role is just the thing to shake and stir it.

Far from just another exotic Disease of the Week, Asperger’s is an incurable neurological disorder similar to autism that turns outwardly normal-looking people into high-class idiot savants. I know at least two people with Asperger’s. They are incapable of thinking of anyone or anything outside of themselves. Challenged by social interactions and given to obsessive routines that revolve around a single subject of interest, they do not like to be touched, they feel incapable of explaining things and they cannot cope with people in general. Emotionally blocked, they say things that hurt and sting without meaning to be rude, and are weak at understanding, receiving or exchanging the emotions of others. They cannot look you in the eye. Adam is a fascinating study of a rare affliction in which all of these qualities are evident, in carefully researched scenes that are humorous and touching. It is lethal to get involved romantically with any person with Asperger’s syndrome, since they care nothing about other people’s feelings, needs or priorities. Almost without exception, they leave you perplexed, riddled with doubt and totally depressed.

Adam is a brilliant, handsome, 29-year-old electronics engineer who loses his job as a toy designer after the death of his beloved father and now fears losing his apartment unless he can find a way to pay the mortgage. This is a daunting task since Adam doesn’t have a clue how to behave on a job interview. His alarmingly empty life is so devoid of passion that he can go to a funeral and feel nothing. His kitchen cupboard is stocked with rows of boxes containing only macaroni and cheese. Adam designs toys but his real interest is astronomy. He requires an enormous amount of care and patience, which his new upstairs neighbor, Beth (Rose Byrne), discovers the hard way. Beth is an elementary-school teacher who takes it upon herself to mentor Adam as potential husband material and gets more than she bargained for. Adam can babble incessantly on galaxies, the speed of light and the expansion of the universe, but he doesn’t know the first thing about a good-night kiss. Beth knows his relationship skills are dim, but she’s attracted to him anyway, especially after he builds enough trust to show her the private planetarium he has designed from scratch in his New York bachelor flat. In their private world, safe as a hermetically sealed jar, friendship is hard, and sexual intimacy is impossible. It doesn’t take long for the romance to hit the shoals, but the characters persevere. Adam even summons a determination and a will he never knew he had, finding his way to Beth’s family home in Westchester in a snowstorm, only to be forced to confront the disapproval of her parents (Amy Irving and Peter Gallagher), who preferred the stability of their daughter’s former fiancé, an investment banker. The film veers off course with a subplot about the father’s trial for a corporate crime that is never fully specified. At best, this scandal seems inserted for no other purpose than to shock Adam into the realization that he is no longer Beth’s sole priority. She’s worked overtime to help him find his hidden self-confidence, but when she faces her own dilemma, Adam cannot empathize, he can only imitate.

Eschewing spoiler alerts, I will simply say Adam faces the ultimate test of his ability to surmount the perils of Asperger’s when he is at last offered the perfect job, in a conservatory in California. Can he cope with a new environment, new people and a new life? Will Beth go with him? She loves him, but what’s in it for her? How they work it out makes for one of the warmest and most satisfying films of the year. The presumption that a handsome man can be either brainy or bountiful with his emotions, but not both, is a bit primitive, but writer-director Max Mayer makes everything believable. His guidance is mature, steady and without artifice—and the settings cover a wide variety of wonderful New York locations, from the Upper West Side restaurant Cesca to the Cherry Lane Theater in Greenwich Village. The movie has tenderness to spare, thanks largely to a subtle, endearing and naturalistic performance by Mr. Dancy. A British actor on his way to superstardom, he has range and discipline, and his American accent is perfect. (Ms. Byrne is equally good; she sounds so much like a New York native that you’d never believe she’s from Australia.) Mr. Dancy is always prettier than his leading ladies, but it doesn’t impede his power. Even in films that are flawed (like Evening and The Jane Austen Book Club), his craft and versatility overwhelm. He’s not everyone’s model of the perfect Mr. Right, like Hugh Jackman, but he seems to have untapped dimensions of sensitivity that are far more intriguing. Adam is, at last, a movie that deserves him.

On a happier note, hurry on over to Feinstein’s at the Regency, where the cabaret debut of actor Peter Gallagher is a fresh departure from the usual nightclub fare. He’s handsome, warm-hearted and camera-ready, the embodiment of a movie star who never really became a household name. But he’s got something more important than a house charge at the Beverly Hills Hotel Polo Lounge: He’s down-to-earth and real as breathing. With a solid career already behind him (lots of movies, from sex, lies and videotape to American Beauty, starring roles in Broadway musicals, and four years on TV’s popular series The O.C.), the move to a supper-club spotlight seems a natural. This is not really an “act.” It’s more like a party in Mr. Gallagher’s living room with close chums and a few beers. But oh, Mama, can he sing. On Cy Coleman’s swinging “The Best Is Yet to Come,” he’s about five feet away from a finger-snapping, open-collared, hairy-chested ring-a-ding Vegas vulture. From the dazzling Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls, in which he brought a romantic new life to the role of Damon Runyon’s Sky Masterson, he transplants a whole medley of Frank Loesser masterpieces that builds to a rousing “Luck Be a Lady.” And on Anthony Newley’s beautiful ballad “This Dream,” he croons in his lush lower register like a Dick Haymes. Well, why not? When the other kids were playing air guitar, he was doing Dean Martin imitations. Now he’s packaged what he knows in a delightful show that delivers entertainment and versatility with a silver bow.

There are reservations. Some of his patter—teaching Peter O’Toole how to sing “Goin’ to the Chapel,” Lamaze classes with his wife—is irrelevant and disorganized. A discourse on his mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s that serves as a long-winded lead-in to Randy Newman’s “Every Time it Rains” is worthy of a career rethink. On a night when it’s 90 degrees, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” might not be a great idea. Changing the gender point of view in lyrics like “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” from Pal Joey is equally questionable. (Sorry, but “Worship the trousers that cling to her” really loses something in translation.) And finally, “Danny Boy” as an encore? I never want to hear “Danny Boy” again as long as I live, unless it’s sung by a 12-year-old boy tenor in the ruins of a church in Northern Ireland.

If this sounds churlish, my apologies. It’s just that a performer this charismatic deserves to be better. From Lyle Lovett to Rodgers and Hart, Mr. Gallagher’s material lives up to the word “eclectic”: The show is charming for its lack of perfection, and the only glue that holds it all together is his personality. But it’s quite a winning personality. You feel you’ve spent valuable time in the presence of a decent, hard-working guy getting through life doing the best work he can and accomplishing everything with enough élan to make himself comfortable in his own skin. You go away from Peter Gallagher wanting more.

Fearing a medieval response from the New York critics is hardly paranoiac. After all, the considerable commercial success that Mr. Gallagher has enjoyed over the last four years at Fox was backed by Hollywood and, perhaps thusly, produced mostly by Middle America. Moreover, his 2005 album 7 Days in Memphis—something he calls “that completely improbable record”—garnered its share of churlish criticism. (The idea for the album resulted from his performance of Dan Penn’s “Don’t Give Up On Me” in an episode of The O.C.) In a review of the soul album for the Chicago Sun-Times, Thomas Conner went so far as to take aim at legendary guitarist and Blues Brother Steve Cropper, who plays on the record: “Now he’s apparently a hack for hire by any dork who stumbles into the Bluff City hoping to strike a blow for luvah men,” Mr. Conner seethed.

For Mr. Gallagher, acting and singing have always been two sides of the same coin. “It’s just a very exciting thing when you’re in this sort of storytelling business, and you contribute to the storytelling whatever way you do. And if that story you’re telling sort of captures the imagination of people, and finds a place in the world that you’re living in—it just doesn’t get better than that.”

For whatever reason, in many of the better-known films starring Mr. Gallagher, his lusty appearance seems to hinder him from entering any enduring relationships. In Steven Soderbergh’s 1989 cult smash sex, lies and videotape—the film credited with making Mr. Gallagher truly famous—he played an unfaithful husband. A few years later, in While You Were Sleeping, a popcorn rom-com co-starring Sandra Bullock, he fell for Ms. Bullock’s character just before falling into a coma. Even “King of Real Estate” Buddy Kane, Mr. Gallagher’s dramatis persona in the 1999 Academy Award darling American Beauty, wound up in bed with Annette Bening’s already-hitched character. And then there’s To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday, the 1996 Michael Pressman film that gave Mr. Gallagher what he calls “the best part I ever had.” Co-starring Michelle Pfeiffer and a young Claire Danes, the film centers on the refusal of a man to move on after the death of his wife, which happened exactly two years before.

But for all his flouters, Mr. Gallagher is hardly new to the blood sport of singing live. In the late 70’s, having recently graduated from Tufts University with a degree in economics, he stood out at an open call for Hair on Broadway; and only a few weeks after landing that gig, he was drafted by legendary Great White Way casting director Vinnie Liff to play the role of Zuko in a traveling production of Grease. Mr. Gallagher said that he’s always been drawn to actors who could bring the house down with a song.

Jeff Rowland, a television and theater producer and the man in charge of booking talent for Feinstein’s, remembers the first time he saw Mr. Gallagher perform live, in a 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls. Mr. Rowland explained how seeing that performance showed him that Mr. Gallagher had more to offer than his striking onscreen presence. And so, immediately after joining the Park Avenue cabaret club last January, Mr. Rowland made it his business to bring Mr. Gallagher to New York. “Unhappily for him, but happily for me, The O.C. was winding down and I caught him,” he recalled, before adding: “He’s got great style and charm. He’s an interesting guy, and obviously he’s very talented as an actor and a singer. I think, as much as anything else, it’s the range that he has—the range of experience and the range of abilities is very unusual.”

It is precisely this virtual plethora of talent and history that promises to give “Songs and Stories” a slightly unexpected tone. While the set list will mostly come from musicals like Guys and Dolls and Pal Joey, Mr. Gallagher also plans to draw material from more soulful climes. Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye are two of his favorites, and the routine will undoubtedly include a couple numbers from 7 Days in Memphis. Musing on his own listening tastes, Mr. Gallagher said, “I just really believe that all great music is soul music, and all great music really works together because it’s great—because it captures something that feels ultimately true about life. And especially in this day and age, when something speaks to you and it feels true, it’s a rare and wonderful thing.”

In addition to soul and R&B, Mr. Gallagher professes an appreciation for rock music—something he said was honed by listening to bands like Cream and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young on the radio as a young man. These influences, too, have already worked their way into the show. A formidable cluster of instrumentalists—all with rock ’n’ roll roots—is already booked. Ted Baker, a pianist who tours with Steely Dan when he’s not in the pit at Broadway’s forever-running The Lion King, is slated to play the keys. (Messrs. Baker, Gallagher and Rowland once attempted to bring Psychoderelict, a concept album written by the Who’s Pete Townsend, to the stage.) And perhaps most surprisingly of all, Pete Thomas, Elvis Costello’s longtime drummer and a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, will keep the beat while Davey Farrager, another Costello alum, plays the bass.

During the hour-long show, Mr. Gallagher will also regale the audience with a few stories—most of which, he offered, will revisit the earlier half of his prolific and varied acting career. For better or worse, he will probably not delve too deeply (if at all) into his aforementioned movie and television roles. (Mr. Gallagher seemed aware of the fact that a good chunk of his cabaret audience might not even know who Sandy Cohen is.) “It’s going to be like a glimpse backstage, or at least if I had a backstage area—however unpleasantly that could be misconstrued,” he laughed. “I’ll mostly be talking about other people. I’ll tell some stories about working with [Peter] O’Toole”—on the 1988 film High Spirits—“and hopefully we’ll illuminate something about something.”

Mr. Gallagher seems fascinated with a kind of mythic, sepia-tinted version of Old Hollywood—a place where leading men were themselves first and actors second. Before he quoted the iconic Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni in order to describe the “luxury-tourist” experiences had by film stars abroad, Mr. Gallagher half-jokingly explained how “every part I play has me in it. No matter how hard I may try, I just can’t seem to escape myself.”

As it happens, Peter Gallagher actually is quite adept at escaping himself, if only with his voice. Over the phone, he offered up a few trailer tales fro
m the past that revealed his remarkable gift for mimicry. From Mr. O’Toole to Jimmy Cagney, Mr. Gallagher’s spot-on impressions fly forth without hesitation. He plans to tell stories about working with the comedic actor Stubby Kaye and, of course, with Robert Altman, who directed Mr. Gallagher in The Player and Short Cuts. He will undoubtedly resurrect the likes of Jack Lemmon, who also appeared in the latter film. “I had extraordinary experiences with Jack Lemmon; he was like a father to me,” said Mr. Gallagher, who soon after acted out a hysterical run-in with the two-time Academy Award winner that involved, among other things, the Queen of England.

Preparing to leave L.A. for a few weeks reminded Mr. Gallagher of a time before The O.C., when his work would often take him away from his family in his native New York. “What’s great about out here is, it’s the closest thing to a civilian life that we’ve ever had, because when I was [on The O.C.], I was working where I lived,” he said. On top of everything else, the TV series showed him that “a steady job is a very powerful thing,” but he added that his wife and two kids ultimately accept the consequences of his career. “At the end of the day, we’ve got to admit who we are, which is: We’re gypsies, and it’s what we do—it’s what I do,” he recalled telling them.

“This is the first time in four years that my horizon is wide open, and it’s very exciting,” he continued with audible emotion, “So I thought, if I don’t put together some kind of a show soon, I’ll just be lying on my deathbed thinking, ‘Why didn’t you, jerk?!’” Mr. Gallagher mentioned the future several times during his interview with The Observer, but when asked if he had any plans after “Songs and Stories” ends in June, the actor didn’t hesitate in looking to the past: “I’ve been around the block long enough to know that the grass isn’t greener really anywhere. And if you have something that’s good and that’s working, it’s a rare, wonderful thing.”