“It was never alive,” he said.

Mr. Obama had just delivered an impassioned keynote address at the historic Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, Ala., and he was surrounded by hundreds of black men and women jostling each other for a chance to shake his hand or touch his jacket.

But while the majority of the crowds in Selma flocked around Mr. Obama, he was far from the only show in town. Down the street from the Brown Chapel, Hillary Clinton spoke to parishioners of the First Baptist Church, declaring by her very presence an intention to fight Mr. Obama for a significant stake of the black vote. To amplify her commitment, Bill Clinton, who has unparalleled appeal in the black community among white politicians, dropped in after her speech like a cotton-haired exclamation point.

Even an ostensible show of unity underscored the intensity of the competition. On Sunday afternoon, the Clintons and Mr. Obama stood together in the front line of a march retracing the steps that civil-rights activists took 42 years ago across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. In 1965, the marchers met with state troopers wielding billy clubs, bullwhips and tear gas. The savagery and bloodshed, broadcast live on national television, set the stage for the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

“We’re all amazed,” said Morgan Lewis, an 81-year-old veteran of the 1965 bridge crossing, who grinned when he added: “They are coming to the bridge crossing to gain more of our votes.”

MR. OBAMA ARRIVED FIRST.

On Saturday night, he visited the National Voting Rights Museum, where a wall of notes handwritten and signed by the original marchers reached from floor to ceiling. The uniforms and nightsticks of the Alabama state troopers hung in a showcase down the hall. The tattered shoes and plaster foot imprints of the men and women who marched lay under glass in rooms visited as piously as a chapel.

Outside the museum doors, a rollicking street fair cluttered Water Street, with booths selling everything from portraits of Martin Luther King Jr. to belt buckles and chicken-on-a-stick. Teenagers flirted and listened to Southern rap music. Many people said they were waiting to hear the next day’s speeches before making up their minds between the two candidates.

A few miles away, past many shuttered stores and dilapidated houses, previews of those speeches were already getting underway in the Elks Lodge, where U.S. Representative and civil-rights lion John Lewis was being honored.

Between poems and testimonials, and a singing performance by Dreamgirls chanteuse Jennifer Holliday, Mr. Obama’s surrogates argued his case. Kim Ballard, a white probate judge for the county with jurisdiction over Selma, told the crowd that he considered Mr. Obama the “No. 1 contender for the Presidency.”

Artur Davis, a Congressman whose district includes Selma, said that Mr. Obama’s election would give an incalculable boost to the country’s impoverished blacks.

After stepping off the stage and behind a partition, Mr. Davis said he thought it was a “smart strategic choice” for the Clinton campaign to have brought in the former President. But, he said, Mr. Obama’s campaign “was what that movement was about.”

The next morning, Mr. Obama wasted little time in making that point himself.

In a packed gym at the local community college, dressed in a dark suit and silver tie and standing a few feet away from an empty table reserved for Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama articulated his connection to the civil-rights movement in the clearest terms he has used so far.

“If it hadn’t been for Selma, I wouldn’t be here,” he said, referring to the movement that paved the way for his Kenyan father to come to the United States. “This is the site of my conception. I am the fruits of your labor. I am the offspring of the movement. So when people ask me if I have been to Selma before, I tell them, ‘I’m coming home.’”

The speech, which Mr. Obama’s campaign said he wrote himself, received shouts of “Preach!” and “Yes!” and repeated bursts of applause from the public. For the most part, he stayed away from matters of policy and focused more on establishing his civil-rights credentials with the audience at hand.

He called the Iraq War “ill-conceived” but left the overtly negative political rhetoric to Mr. Davis, who attempted to turn Mrs. Clinton’s superior experience against her. “Longevity,” Mr. Davis said pointedly, “can make you calculate when you cast your vote on the war.”

As noon approached, Mr. Obama sped over to the historic Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, where hundreds of people gathered outside, alternately chanting “Obama!” and “Let us in!” Dignitaries and select parishioners squeezed into the 11 pews, while the rafters sparkled with camera flashes when Mr. Obama entered.

Under an illuminated cross, gold organ pipes and hanging chandeliers, Mr. Obama closed his eyes and nodded to the hymns and prayers. He shook his head in a show of embarrassment when Bishop T. Larry Kirkland illustrated his point about racial equality by saying, “Show me a John Fitzgerald Kennedy and I’ll show you a Barack Obama.”

But for all his squirming, Mr. Obama seemed eager to encourage the comparison.

“It’s not enough just to ask what the government can do for us—it’s important for us to ask what we can do for ourselves,” he said. Later, he echoed Robert Kennedy when he talked about “ripples of hope.”

He spoke of a “poverty of ambition” to describe the lack of self-value among a consumerist black youth, an “empathy gap” to explain what he called the current administration’s lack of caring for the underprivileged, and a “Joshua generation” to characterize the inheritors of the original civil-rights activists. All of those phrases audibly resonated with the crowd.

At the end of the ceremony, he linked arms with Congressman Lewis, sang “We Shall Overcome” before greeting the masses outside.

“He has a living connection to the movement,” said Evelyn Dawson, of Atlanta, who watched Mr. Obama from the church’s pews. “That connection became clear today.”

Or, as Mr. Lewis said in a later interview about Mr. Obama’s weekend in Selma: “It tends to demonstrate more than ever before that he can, and did, relate deeply and strongly with the African-American community.”

SUNDAY ALSO SERVED AS A TESTAMENT to Mr. Clinton’s status among black voters—and to Mrs. Clinton’s willingness to use it, despite his tendency, as at the funeral of Coretta Scott King in February of last year, to overshadow her.

“Bill Clinton is an icon in the black community in the way no other white has ever been,” said Hank Sanders, a popular Alabama State Senator. “He cannot do anything but good for Hillary.”

Mrs. Clinton, dressed in a green pastel pantsuit and describing herself to parishioners of the First Baptist Church as the “beneficiary of what happened in Selma 42 years ago,” enjoyed a much more modest crush of supporters than Mr. Obama.

Neither of the Clintons was originally slated to attend.

On Feb. 26, several days after Mr. Obama announced his commitment to speak at the commemoration, the Montgomery Advertiser reported that Mrs. Clinton would speak at the church down the street from Mr. Obama and accept a civil-rights award on her husband’s behalf. On Feb. 28, a Washington Post–ABC News poll showed her lead evaporating among black voters. The following day, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign announced in a statement that she would “join President Clinton” as he accepted the award.

But on Sunday, as fans swarmed around Mr. Clinton, grasping at his hands and kissing his reddened cheeks, he told The Observer that he had committed to attend the commemoration right away—“as soon as I found out I was invited and they wanted to give me this award,” he said.

On Monday, Mrs. Clinton told Radio Iowa, “We were both invited—I to participate and he to receive the Voting Rights Hall of Fame honor—and originally he didn’t know if he could rearrange his schedule.”

Mrs. Clinton then added, “It worked out for us to be there together, and I’m glad it did.”

FOR BOTH CANDIDATES, IT WAS A WEEKEND rife with political maneuvering and posturing. Mr. Obama scored the point of sitting next to Mr. Lewis in the church, but Hillary held his hand during the march.

According to a briefing paper circulated among staffers of Mr. Clinton, the candidates intended to flank Mr. Lewis, with Mr. Obama on his right and Mrs. Clinton and then her husband on the honoree’s left. But the pandemonium surrounding the candidates rendered futile any attempt at political choreography.

Mr. Obama ended up six or, at times, eight bodies down the line from Mr. Lewis. Mrs. Clinton’s practiced press operation sensed an advantage and pounced. An aide grabbed photographers backtracking in front of the marchers and smuggled them forward, past the protesting security, so that they could get better pictures of the Clintons next to Mr. Lewis.

Mr. Obama’s press officers scrambled to get photographers to the other side of the line, and one of them actually complained at one point that Mrs. Clinton’s camp was stealing their press.

Mr. Obama, on the other hand, seemed to take it all in stride. As the marchers paused before turning left on Broad Street toward the bridge, he took off his jacket, popped a piece of Nicorette gum in his mouth and happily accepted a wheelchair carrying civil-rights pioneer Fred Shuttlesworth. He then pushed it, smiling widely, to the foot of the bridge.

Once across the Alabama River, the candidates climbed atop a small, tree-shaded stage, where organizers planned to honor Mr. Clinton with his award.

After a few minutes of standing around, Mr. Obama said his goodbyes to the dignitaries, including a quick embrace with Mr. Clinton. The pair indulged the delighted crowd with a wave and then somewhat guiltily dropped their arms off each other’s shoulders. Before Mr. Obama made his way offstage, Reverend Joseph Lowery, a founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and an Obama supporter, asked everyone to stop what they were doing and close their eyes as he gave a benediction.

A few seconds in, the prayer took a somewhat uncomfortable political turn for Mrs. Clinton.

“We want to support the troops, and we know the best way to support the troops is to bring them home right now,” Mr. Lowery said. “We don’t need any long-drawn-out, structured plan. The plan is to bring them home.”

In the back corner of the stage next to the steps, Mr. Obama—perhaps not coincidentally—started to chuckle.

Assessing their performances in Selma this weekend, Lewis said that both candidates convinced him of their civil rights chops, but, for the moment, neither is getting his endorsement.

Obama's enthusiastic reception by the largely black audiences this weekend, Lewis said, "tends to demonstrate more than ever before that he can, and did, relate deeply and strongly with the African American community, I think he made it very clear in his message at Brown Chapel A.M.E Church, he said in effect that without the civil rights movement and without the march 42 years ago that he wouldn't be where he is."

But he also said that Bill Clinton would continue to be a unique asset for Hillary in appealing to African-American voters.

"President Clinton is so well liked among a large segment of the American population but especially among African-Americans. There was somebody who hollered out at the foot of the bridge, 'I wish you could run again, Mr. President.' I hear that all the time when I'm around him," Lewis said. "Without any question, I think he is a tremendous asset to his wife. She is a beneficiary of the strong and positive standing of his in the African-American community."

Lewis denied a suggestion in Sunday's Times story that he had held off from endorsing Obama before this weekend because of a call from Bill Clinton.

"He never suggested to me that I should hold off," said Lewis. "He never, ever -- he just called me and had a very friendly chat about what was going on, and we talked about a little of everything."

Lewis said that when Clinton called, he had no intention of supporting either candidate.

"If I was going to endorse someone I wouldn't pick last weekend to do it," he said, adding, "It is very early and I will not publicly endorse anyone this early. It could be the end of this year and it could be of the beginning this year. I like them both. I like Mr. Obama but I also like Mrs. Clinton. They are both good and different."

Lewis, who was severely beaten on the Edmund Pettus bridge during the 1965 crossing, said that besides the obvious political overtones the candidates brought to the commemoration, Obama and Clinton's attendance signified something far more historic than just an intensifying campaign.

"More than anything else, 42 years later, to have an African-American and woman as the leading two contenders for the nomination is unheard of," said Lewis, adding that, along with Bill Richardson, a candidate of Hispanic origin, the 2008 election showed that "America had moved to the point where you could have three people from a group that wasn't even being considered just a few short years ago."

--Jason Horowitz

Judging by the host committee, the event, which has a "suggested" entrance price of $2300, seems geared toward a combination of prominent black businessmen and young mover-shakers.

Ray McGuire, a prominent Wall Street banker, is part of the host committee, as are fund manager Tracy Maitland and former Motown Records president Andre Harrell.

The list also features a number of prominent baby bundlers, including Jonathan Soros (son of George), James Rubin (son of Robert), Joshua Steiner (colleague of Steve Rattner), Wall Street wunderkind Eric Mindich and former John Kerry fund-raiser Jamie Whitehead.

Obama will be back this Friday for a reception (hosted by many of the same high-rollers) at the Grand Hyatt.

-- Lizzy Ratner

On Saturday evening, Bill Clinton donned his best-supporting husband hat and headlined a Hillary fund-raiser at the Fifth Avenue home of super market magnate John Catsimatidis. Tickets cost $4600 a person (in other words, it required donors to max out their contributions for both the primary and presidential election), and between 50 and 60 big spenders showed up. Contacted by phone, an unusually reticent Catsimatidis refused to talk specifics, but he did confirm that the event took place and that the food was good.

"Yes, we had the President at my home," he said. "How did you find out? Nobody found out."

As for who attended the shoulder-rubbing fest, Mr. Catsimatidis would only say, "We have a broad reach."

He predicted that he'll end up raising more than a million dollars for Hillary 08.

-- Lizzy Ratner

Rudy Giuliani's son, Andrew, told ABC he has "problems" with his father, but that he still might make a great President.

That's after Andrew told the Times that his relationship with his father has suffered and that he doesn't intend to campaign with him.

John Edwards will mail 70,000 campaign videos to people in Iowa.

Hillary's people "exploded" at Eliot Spitzer for being slow to endorse her, according to Fred Dicker.

In an op-ed piece, Eliot Spitzer said the state's health care system is in critical condition.

Spitzer is the target of another round of television ads, this one from the state's major teacher's union.

Al Sharpton is joining in, too.

Mike Bloomberg defended his education reforms during visits to two black churches yesterday.

In an op-ed piece on Sunday, Richard Brodsky said the legislature is doing well, and said, "We won't be steamrolled."

Al D'Amato is lobbying for on-line poker.

Christine Quinn said she'll march in a gay-friendly parade in Dublin.

A photographer honored by Councilman Hiram Monserrate is awaiting extradition from Colombia for child pornography.

NJ Governor Jon Corzine may have given more financial gifts to his ex-girlfriend, the head of a powerful union, than was disclosed earlier.

And Tom Suozzi hired five former campaign workers a year after announcing a hiring freeze for Nassau County.

-- Azi Paybarah

Artur Davis, the Alabama Congressman and Obama supporter who will be introducing the Illinois Senator in Selma on Sunday morning, gave me this version of the chronology:

"I invited Senator Obama to come very soon after he announced his exploratory committee, and reiterated the invitation after he made his formal announcement. I made it to him in person and he said this is something I want to do. And then we proceeded to work staff-to-staff, to work out the logistics. So Senator Obama accepted when I first put the request to him and I believe that was right after he announced in early February. So that's Senator Obama's end of it.

"Now, I know we learned through various sources on Sunday night that Senator Clinton was going to be coming. And that was in the press on Monday. So those facts speak for themselves."

(I asked the Clinton campaign how and when the invitation was extended to her and when she accepted. They haven't yet responded.)

Davis, whose district includes Selma, also made a prediction about the apparent shift in black support from Obama to Clinton:

"There has been significant movement towards Barack Obama in the black community, which is exactly what I expected, and it will become even more pronounced. The numbers are 44-33 now. I predict those numbers will be 60-something to 20-something by the summer."

--Jason Horowitz

After a pretentious and inexplicable overture to the film (as if it were an opera), the action begins with a rehearsal of an amateur production of The Sound of Music , with a bespectacled Selma oddly cast as Maria. Through her thick lenses, Selma looks and acts as if she is retarded, but when she takes the specs off she projects a wild, inarticulate beauty. Whatever she is, Björk is magnetic enough to carry a picture, even this one.

I had heard that Dancer in the Dark was a musical, but it seemed to take a long time for the musical numbers to commence. Meanwhile, Selma is shown in a factory in the middle of nowhere, or actually Norway, which doubles for Washington in Mr. von Trier's take on Franz Kafka's Amerika . Like Kafka, Mr. von Trier has never been to America, ostensibly because he doesn't fly.

The point is that I didn't believe anything in Dancer in the Dark on any level, but not because as an American I was offended by Mr. von Trier's professed pre–Berlin Wall Marxist orientation. Indeed, I would tag him less as a Marxist than as a sadist. Throughout his career, which includes Breaking the Waves (1996) and The Idiots (1998), he has made his protagonists suffer inordinately, painfully and, ultimately, tediously.

What fascinates me the most in the acclaim awarded to Dancer in the Dark is its implication that European intellectuals regard America as a perpetual never-never land where anything goes. In this respect, I am reminded of another Cannes Film Festival sensation, Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984), which never caught on in the States. What I can't understand is why American cinéastes-or indeed, anyone who understands English-can accept Dancer in the Dark as anything but incoherent babble.

I realize that think pieces are waiting to be written about von Trier and Brechtian distancing, about von Trier and the Central European operatic tradition of Janácek and others, about von Trier and the early musicals of Ernst Lubitsch and Rouben Mamoulian and their percussive cues from daily life and its machinery. In this context, it is fitting that Selma works in a factory that makes household appliances, since Mr. von Trier throws even the kitchen sink into his bizarre concoction.

Mr. von Trier manages to pile on so many layers of unreality that the captious critic feels silly calling attention to any single improbability. For example, it is hard enough to believe in a revival theater in the outlands playing nothing but old Busby Berkeley musicals. It is harder still to believe that Selma's best friend, Kathy (Catherine Deneuve), would "describe" the dance movements to Selma by running her fingers over Selma's hand. It is even harder to believe that a man would complain repeatedly about Kathy's explanations during the musical numbers. Finally, it is utterly impossible to understand where Kathy came from to be Selma's best friend, all the way to Selma's last moments on the gallows. Even George W. Bush, I suspect, would have commuted the death sentence of a blind woman, though he did snicker in response to a born-again Christian woman's plea to be spared the lethal injection.

Ms. Deneuve reportedly applied for the role of Kathy, and like Björk, she is iconically striking enough to distract us from the film's endless gaps in credibility. Curiously, the film gets more interesting and more Brechtian as it goes along. Yet if one could take it more seriously, it becomes more and more cruel. In the end, Selma sacrifices her life so that her son can receive an operation that will preserve his sight. She is thus a martyr without any religious consolation.

My own opposition to the death penalty makes me somewhat ambivalent toward all the contrivances and distancing musical diversions Mr. von Trier employs to get to his climactic death-house extravaganza. If only the dialogue were not so disconnected and the performances not so perfunctory. I am not familiar with the rest of the competition at Cannes, but Renée Zellweger in Nurse Betty was apparently never even remotely considered for Best Actress. All I know is that Ms. Zellweger acted in comprehensible English, and Björk doesn't act at all in any language. In the end, she is merely a song-and-dance cue waiting to happen. There are worse things in the world, but also much better things as well.

Some of the film's defenders, compelled to confront the plot's excessive sentimentality, have invoked the silent classics of D.W. Griffith (1875-1948), particularly Broken Blossoms (1919) and Orphans of the Storm (1922). In my estimation, however, Dancer in the Dark makes Griffith look like Anton Chekhov (1860-1904). Consider: When Selma is visited by her seemingly kindly policeman-landlord, Bill (David Morse), he asks her for a loan because his wife, Linda (Cara Seymour), is so extravagant that he is near bankruptcy. Nothing we have seen of Linda or her domicile or her drab surroundings suggests either the possibility or motivation for extravagance. What would a cop's wife expect in a factory town? Again, one unreality piled upon another.

Selma refuses Bill's request because she is saving all her money for an operation to save the sight of her son. Despite her own failing eyesight, she has taken to working double shifts at the factory and supplementing her income in her spare time by carding hairpins. Pretending that he has left her trailer, Bill takes advantage of Selma's failing eyesight to stay behind undetected and thus discover the hiding place for her savings, in a candy tin behind the ironing board.

Sure enough, after Selma has been fired from the factory and retrieves the tin to put away her last week's wages, she finds it empty, and knows immediately that Bill is the culprit. To make matters worse, Bill's wife angrily demands that Selma leave the premises, because Bill has covered up his theft by lying to Linda, telling her that Selma has made advances to him.

Instead of denying Bill's accusation, Selma insists on speaking to Bill personally. In her almost blind state, Selma begins to take on the appearance of a tortured dumb animal. Hence, when she confronts Bill, what ensues is an excruciating duet that ends up with Selma shooting Bill to retrieve her life's savings. But it's not that simple. The guilt-ridden Bill actually asks Selma to kill him-a fact that Selma will not be able to prove to a skeptical jury, which sees only a commie cop killer before it.

Before Bill is fatally shot, he asks his wife to "get" the police. Why "get"? Don't Bill and Linda have a phone, even in the Cold War era? Obviously, Mr. von Trier needed time to get Selma out of the house so that her incredibly patient suitor, Jeff (Peter Stormare), can pick her up in his truck and drop her off far enough from the scene of the crime that she has time to deposit her recovered savings with an eye surgeon (for the operation on her son some years hence), as well as to revisit the amateur theatrical troupe, where she is intentionally stalled with false promises until the police can finally grab her.

Her final betrayer, Joel Grey's Oldrich Novy, a legendary Czech tap dancer, ends up doing a number with the enraptured Selma. Her only two true friends-Kathy and Jeff-implore her to save her life by using her savings to pay for a good lawyer, but that money, Selma insists, is solely for her son's operation, making her a secular saint, but nonetheless a somewhat reluctant hanging victim.

People have also mentioned Dennis Potter as a trail-blazer for Dancer in the Dark , but Potter's mix of pop music and somber drama was much more accessible to a general audience. I must confess that Björk's musical compositions and Mr. von Trier's lyrics struck me as esoteric by comparison.

The Debate Over a 35-Hour Work Week

Laurent Cantet's Human Resources , from a screenplay by Mr. Cantet and Gilles Marchand, deserves an award as the least commercial title of the year. I'm surprised I even managed to see it, and yet it is well worth seeing for its insights into generational conflicts in a factory town between an upwardly mobile son named Frank (Jalil Lespert), and a contentedly status-quo father. The son takes on an intern's job with management in the human resources department of a factory in which his father has worked and sacrificed so that his son could climb up the social ladder.

The son is hung up on the idea of liberal reform in what turns out to be a Darwinian jungle. Frank takes as his point of departure the new proposals for a 35-hour week as a means of promoting the desirability of leisure among the workers-and especially his father, who has toiled away contentedly at his machine for 30 years, and wants nothing more out of life than his son's ascension to the realms of money and power.

When Frank proposes a questionnaire for the workers on the issue of the 35-hour week, he does not realize that he is undercutting the union and thus giving management a free hand to make personnel reductions, on the grounds that cost-cutting is the price of survival in the global market place.

The most amazing thing about the movie, however, is that except for Mr. Lespert, all the actors are non-professional-though you would never suspect it because they are all so convincing in their class-structured roles. Jean-Claude Vallod especially is a revelation as the father. He came close to making me cry with his steadfast conservatism in refusing to be "reformed," and also his fear that his son would blow his great opportunity to rise in the world by choosing to grandstand instead.

Pooches and Their Pamperers

Best in Show , a riotous soufflé written and directed by Christopher Guest, the clever man who made This Is Spinal Tap and Waiting for Guffman unexpected comedy classics, uses the same "mockumentary" style. Only this time he presents a savage look at the eccentric world of dog shows that has left me howling.

Tension mounts as zany dog lovers arrive to compete in the annual Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show in Philadelphia, with their whisker trimmers, Kibbles 'n' Bits, kinky obedience trainers, hair ribbons and liver treats in tow. Profiled by Mr. Guest's cruel candid cameras and played by his wacky repertory troupe, they are loaded with improvisational ideas and ready for bear.

From Illinois, neurotic yuppies Meg and Hamilton Swan (Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock) have a Weimaraner named Beatrice who suffers from total depression after watching them having sex doggie-style. They met in a Starbucks, talk in labels ("She made poopie in your Orvis shoes") and enjoy intimate evenings reading J. Crew catalogs. From Fern City, Fla., nerdy Gerry Fleck and his oversexed wife Cookie (Eugene Levy, who co-wrote the screenplay, and Catherine O'Hara) sing "God Loves a Terrier" to their Norwich terrier, Winky. Pine Nut, N.C., bait-and-tackle-store owner and amateur ventriloquist Harlan Pepper (played by director Guest) is convinced his bloodhound Hubert can talk. Scott and Stefan (John Michael Higgins and Michael McKean), a couple of flaming fairies from Tribeca, bring a flamboyant wardrobe and a preening, perfumed Shih Tzu named Agnes. Trashy bubble-brained gold digger Sherri Ann (Jennifer Coolidge), married to an ancient, catatonic, wheelchair-bound billionaire fossil, brings along her champion poodle, Rhapsody in White, and her lesbian trainer girlfriend, who runs a "cutting-edge kennel."

While they face the cameras for interviews, refreshingly unaware that they are all totally insane, the manager of the Taft Hotel (Ed Begley Jr.) takes us on a tour of the storage room and displays the cleaning fluids, odor eliminators and carpet protectors he stocks to deal with hygienic emergencies. Meanwhile, the palpable behind-the-scenes excitement is upstaged by the surreal observations of a raunchy television announcer (brilliantly played by deadpan comic Fred Willard), whose offhand comments are like Joe Garagiola's in baseball and seldom have anything to do with the event itself ("Interesting that in some countries these dogs are eaten"). He's so dumb he thinks Columbus landed the Mayflower in Philly-"or one of the three other ones, the Nina , the Pinta , or the Santa Maria ." When the judges check the rear ends of the prize entries, he yells: "Look at that! I don't think I could ever get used to being poked and prodded like that. I asked my proctologist, 'Why don't you take me out to dinner and a movie sometime?'"

Mr. Guest has a genius for performing colorful autopsies on American obsessions and phobias, and a talent for making you think everyone is making it up, unrehearsed. Dogs are always good for a laugh, but the wonderful four-legged stars assembled here are more intelligent than their owners (and sometimes just as comical), while the side-splitting, straight-faced actors expose every quirk with a relish that makes you bark for more. Best in Show does to lovers of canine pageants what Waiting for Guffman did to small-town thespians, but it's 10 times funnier.

Loved Björk, Not von Trier

A Danish musical is already an oxymoron, but Dancer in the Dark , a dreary, dopey and pretentious piece of junk by Lars von Trier (director of the abominable Breaking the Waves ) that is now playing commercially after getting the 38th New York Film Festival off to a depressing start, is an alleged musical about a pathetic Czech factory worker who goes blind, commits a brutal murder and ends up on Death Row while everybody sings along like sandhogs in a karaoke bar. An arrogant assault on every tradition the world has come to love in the cinematic canon, it's a desperate attempt to break new ground for the sake of being different by a man who claims to love movie musicals but has probably never seen one. The result is flat, ugly and more artificial than anything Hollywood turned out in the 1950's, and you don't even go away humming.

The centerpiece is Björk, the Icelandic pop singer with no acting experience (not much to do, I guess, in Reykjavik), who wrote the abysmal songs and plays Selma, a simple-minded but good-hearted Czech immigrant who suffers more cruel indignities than Pearl White in The Perils of Pauline . Selma has somehow landed in some godforsaken American landscape where she lives in a trailer, slaves in a gruesome tool-and-die factory that makes steel sinks, and escapes from harsh reality to a movie house that never seems to show anything but Ginger Rogers musicals.

Although Selma can't sing or dance, and suffers from a congenital eye disease that leads to terminal blackout, she has somehow managed to land the lead in an amateur production of The Sound of Music . Go figure. Between rehearsals, where she has to be led on and off the stage by her friend and fellow millworker Kathy (played by a woefully miscast Catherine Deneuve), and double shifts at the factory, where she can't see the machinery, she somehow manages to scrape up the money for an operation that might save her son from the blindness he's inherited.

Selma is a role invented for Lillian Gish on the silent screen. "Everything," as Thelma Ritter said in All About Eve , "but the bloodhounds snapping at her rear end." Not to worry. The bloodhounds are coming. The money she's hidden in a candy tin behind her ironing board is stolen by her landlord, a suicidally depressed cop driven to despair and bankruptcy, played by a wasted David Morse, an excellent American actor who looks like he's fallen into the hands of Martians. "Kill me," he begs. Blind and hysterical, Selma, the gentle ragamuffin who always follows directions, fires a round of bullets into her torturer and bashes his head in. Things go from rotten to worse, as Mr. von Trier shamelessly piles on every silent-movie cliché in the annals of melodrama. Selma, quite obviously, is fired from her job (what took them so long?), loses her role in The Sound of Music (the nuns chant "Climb Every Mountain" as she's dragged away by the sheriff in handcuffs), ends up homeless and marches to the hangman's noose in a stupefyingly overwrought finale that makes Susan Hayward's death scene in I Want to Live seem like a model of prim restraint. You don't know whether you should weep or laugh out loud, and at the screening I attended, most people did a little of both.

Since nothing about Dancer in the Dark is vaguely believable, it's hard to tell when Selma shifts from reality to fantasy. In her imagination, railroad workers dance atop moving boxcars, farmers waltz with sheep. At her murder trial, she tap dances with Joel Grey while the judge and jury sing along. It's incredibly crude and amateurish, the dialogue is as ludicrous as the plot, and the songs are unthinkable. (Perfect revenge gift for the people you hate: Send them the soundtrack.) For all the hype about revolutionizing movies, director von Trier has come up with nothing fresh. The same stylized tricks using songs to separate reality from imagination were done much better in The Singing Detective and Herbert Ross' Pennies from Heaven . This movie is, by contrast, chaotic and clumsily blocked. Much of it was shot with a camera mounted above the director's head and strapped to his back. It moves when his body does, spinning around in circles until you are faint with nausea. We go to movies for a variety of reasons, but motion sickness is not one of them.

The only redeeming virtue here is Björk. A singing sensation since the age of 11, she has no training as an actress, which gives the film a welcome hint of naturalism it lacks everywhere else. Her songs are funeral dirges, sung in a slow, precise Baby Snooks whine that grates, but her performance as a hapless waif has a suspended state of emotional isolation that connects in strange ways. Selma endures one crisis after another with squinty eyes peering from thick eyeglasses in a myopic glaze and a perpetually goofy grin on her face, until she and Björk become one entity. Her innocence is the only convincing (and appealing) thing on the screen that works. Everything else lacks form and focus.

In the movie morgue, Dancer in the Dark arrives D.O.A.

A Pageant Flick Short on Talent

Sally Field makes her directorial debut with Beautiful . Hold the hors d'oeuvres. Return the champagne. No cause for celebration: This synthetic first effort, which was unveiled to grim silence and massive walkouts at the Toronto Film Festival, falls into the category of So Bad It's Awful.

If Ms. Field, a conscientious feminist, had some idea in mind about the punishing myth that women must be beautiful to succeed, it fell apart on the way to the editing lab. Minnie Driver stars as a girl named Mona who wastes her entire life trying to be a beauty queen, selfishly destroying anyone who gets in her way to a crown, any crown. Mona sabotages rival contestants, lies about every salient fact in her life, sacrifices every chance for normalcy, even turns the raising of her daughter over to her roommate Ruby, a sweet nurse who has been Mona's loyal fan and best friend since childhood. Finally, on the eve of the Miss American Miss pageant in Long Beach, Calif., Ruby- who has acted as a rock to the self-centered Mona and pretended to be the mother of her child for years-is wrongfully sent to jail, and Mona is forced to drag the kid with her.

Focus shifts so often that one hour into the film, you still don't know what it's about. What begins as social commentary on the false values and superficial ideologies of the beauty business quickly crashes in a tub of suds. There's nothing else to do but make fun of beauty contests, which is no big challenge ( Smile did it better), and by the time Mona gets her priorities straight, nobody cares. The screenplay, by Jon Bernstein, is a routine hack job. Minnie Driver is neither young nor pretty enough to play a beauty contestant, and when she finally gets a crown, we are asked to believe she's willing to return it so her daughter will finally call her "Mommy"-a plot fabrication so phony even Sally Field couldn't play it convincingly.

The little girl who teaches Mona the error of her ways is Hallie Kate Eisenberg, the obnoxious moppet in hundreds of TV commercials who never stops yammering. Kathleen Turner appears in an embarrassing cameo, but it doesn't save the movie. The only sincere thing in the film is Joey Lauren Adams (a frightening Renée Zellweger look-alike) as Ruby, but she disappears from the plot just when we need her. That leaves everybody with a dull, clumsy and inconsequential flop that is no better than a routine made-for-TV Movie of the Week, and sometimes not as good.

On a chilly December afternoon at the Friars Club, Jeffrey Ross was eating chicken and rice for breakfast. The 32-year-old comedian had just arisen, and the sight of Abe Hirschfeld holding court at a nearby table did not please him. The eccentric mogul, fresh from his arrest for trying to have a business partner whacked, had the table of Friars laughing heartily.

"See," said Mr. Ross. "Now he's a joke. They didn't even have to tell one to laugh. I heard he's doing stand-up. You hear about that. I say, Butt out … Among the millionaires, he's the worst."

Mr. Ross, who holds the distinction of being one of the very few young Friars who can crack the oldsters up, is making a quiet move toward the mainstream. He told The Transom that he is writing a cartoon pilot for Comedy Central. He's also mulling an offer by Steven Chao, president of Barry Diller's USA Networks, to host a variety show. "I'm asking for a lot," Mr. Ross said. "Creative control, outs, options."

But it is the cartoon, tentatively titled Snowbirds , that has his attention. What's it about?

"An old Jewish couple–Seymour and Selma Snowbird–and an old black couple–Mo and Shirelle Houston–who live in a Boca Raton golf-cart retirement community," said Mr. Ross. "Sex, drugs and bingo. They're very hip old people. They'd rather watch MTV all day and try to decipher Madonna's new look than watch Fiddler on the Roof ." To visualize Seymour and Selma, said Mr. Ross, "Imagine if you put a closed-circuit camera on your grandparents."

Mr. Ross, a soft-spoken, curly-haired New Jersey native who broke into the New York stand-up scene nine years ago, said he modeled Seymour on one of his mentors, Buddy Hackett. "He's a little fat guy who permanently has white stuff on his nose, like sun block or something. He talks to his white patent-leather shoes, he talks to his golf clubs. Selma's the more violent mistress. His wife of a million years. Twice his size. She has a pocketbook permanently attached to her hand as a weapon. She doesn't take No for an answer. If you say you're not hungry, she'll physically open your mouth, put the food in, close your jaw and force you to chew it."

Mo and Shirelle? "He's like a Sammy Davis Jr., in the music business, real bitter. Always a day late and a dollar short. You ask him how he's doing, and he's like, 'Quincy Jones,' and you're like, 'What?' And he's like, 'Fuck Quincy Jones' and stammers off. His wife is a back-up singer. Shirelle. Like a girl from the Motown days."

Both couples fight a lot. "But they love each other very, very much."

In the pilot, Seymour and Selma make a video of their new house. "They've only been living there for three weeks; they decide they want to make a video for their grandchildren."

Mr. Ross said he came up with the idea for the cartoon with his friend Mark Chapin, whom he met while an undergrad at Boston University. "He's actually the man who talked me into being a comedian," said Mr. Ross. "He changed my life."

When asked if he minds taking a break from doing stand-up comedy to write Snowbirds , he said, "One helps the other. Look at the South Park guys. They weren't actors, they were writers, now they're actors."

Mr. Ross said he's also working on expanding a one-man show about his late grandfather.

"We were really close. Inseparable. If I went to the gym, he went with me. We'd go on vacations together. We smoked pot under the sky. The hippest guy ever."

–Julie Lipper

Something About Fernanda?

Have the 31 judges of the New York Film Critics Circle awards gone starry-eyed? Several critics are aghast that Cameron Diaz won the group's Best Actress Award on Dec. 16 for her gooey performance in the Farrelly brothers' There's Something About Mary , usurping Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro in Walter Salles Jr.'s Central Station . And some critics suspect that the leggy 26-year-old blonde won the prize over the 69-year-old Ms. Montenegro because the New York critics wanted some Hollywood glamour at the awards dinner at Windows on the World on Jan. 10.

"Voting for Cameron Diaz devalues the group in a pretty serious way," said The New York Times ' Janet Maslin. "The L.A. critics, they look a lot hipper and a lot smarter than we do … much more attuned to good work and we look a little silly. More than a little silly. Although I liked her performance a lot, I don't think she should have been voted best actress."

Thelma Adams of the New York Post is one who thinks Ms. Diaz won on the strength of her off-camera abilities. "Fernanda Montenegro was still winning after the third ballot," said Ms. Adams, "and when people were really faced with the idea of her coming to the dinner, her as the winner …" Time magazine critic Richard Schickel seconded this theory. "Not to be too cynical, but I think some people voted the party line. A middle-aged lady from Brazil …" He stopped there.

The chairman of the Film Critics Circle, the New York Press ' Godfrey Cheshire, said perhaps Ms. Diaz won because the "highbrows were using the lowbrows to block the middlebrows." In other words, people knew their first choices wouldn't win, so they cast their vote for a random other: Ms. Diaz.

"Cameron Diaz is the populist," said Entertainment Weekly 's Owen Gleiberman. "This was a year when there was no obvious choice for best actress like Holly Hunter in The Piano ."

Ms. Adams agreed. "The best actress category this year was not as exciting as it was last year. Helena Bonham-Carter as a cripple? I mean, excuse me."

Mr. Cheshire said he was perfectly comfortable with Ms. Diaz as the winner. "I don't think it's to the detriment of the public image of the group, because it's good to show that the tastes of the group are broad enough to include comedy." Concurred GQ 's Terrence Rafferty, "All this says more about the prejudice against comedy."

–Julie Lipper

Frank DiGiacomo is on vacation. He will be back next week.