Sea of chaos and despair

Sea of chaos and despair for African refugees | The Australian Sea of chaos and despair for African refugees | The Australian A refugee boat intercepted in the Mediterranean last year.	The public still wants an end to the chaos - The Drum (Australian. The public still wants an end to the chaos - The Drum (Australian. Photo: Tony Abbott is closely aligned with the chaos of the past six or	Migrant ship washes up on Greek island in second tragedy hours. Migrant ship washes up on Greek island in second tragedy hours. Relief and despair: Rescuers	Dolphinarium in Sydney Australia, a 40 foot swimming pool in a. Dolphinarium in Sydney Australia, a 40 foot swimming pool in a. in the artificial sea
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Sea of chaos and despair for African refugees | The Australian Sea of chaos and despair for African refugees | The Australian relation to an alleged Islamic State-inspired attack plan in Australia.	Haiti Earthquake anniversary: Still in the grip of despair and. Haiti Earthquake anniversary: Still in the grip of despair and. and white across the city	11 Photos: Hope in the sea of despair - A journey into the. 11 Photos: Hope in the sea of despair - A journey into the. And I saw hope shine from	SFRevu Column SFRevu Column Sword of Fire and Sea: The

NY Rap Beats - (beat, freestyle, instrumental beats. NY Rap Beats - (beat, freestyle, instrumental beats. Mountain moves, better known as MCs Christ moved seas, now even the blind.. I recently.	Rob reports on : Finding Nemo (movie) Ending. Rob reports on : Finding Nemo (movie) Ending. The two escape from Bruce but the mask falls into a trench in the deep sea.. Upon leaving the.	5 Reasons Why Australia Is Facing Economic. 5 Reasons Why Australia Is Facing Economic. Australia may have little choice but to adopt ���bail-in��� rules that expose bank creditors to... Youre.	Asian Responses to Imperialism: Crash Course. Asian Responses to Imperialism: Crash Course. I care about the current international situation in the South China Sea, you pretentious myopic.
(1of2) Two Reasons Expats Leave Their Country for. (1of2) Two Reasons Expats Leave Their Country for. +Mike Anderson waiting to see the new, annual black friday chaos.. for a majority of my.	Will Islam Come To An End? Why Are People. Will Islam Come To An End? Why Are People. Perhaps some people are looking for some kind of order in this chaotic world,. the quran you.	Dota 2 Treasure Keys Hack Ultimate Latest Version. Dota 2 Treasure Keys Hack Ultimate Latest Version. Sea Lion joins family on Santa Barbara kayak - ORIGINAL VIDEOJoe Buttitta Dog walks other.	Anime Fire - On The Wings Of Hope - YouTube Anime Fire - On The Wings Of Hope - YouTube Origin : Perth, Australia. Everywhere, faces I see stare back in despair. storm as lightning.
Flying Whales - Gojira Live At Soundwave 2014. Flying Whales - Gojira Live At Soundwave 2014. . Whales - Gojira. Live in February at Soundwave 2014 in Sydney, Australia. Front row is the.	What do you want from Us? - YouTube What do you want from Us? - YouTube -A trickle of good will in a sea of despair. ). When We were lost in Chaos and Rampage, You.	Babylon The Great Has Fallen - YouTube Babylon The Great Has Fallen - YouTube How many will fall into chaos when our light goes out.. The sea (or water) in prophecy refers.	Decode the Scene GAME - Johnny Depp Traci Lords. Decode the Scene GAME - Johnny Depp Traci Lords. In the depths of his despair appears goody-goody girl Allison (Amy. for the chaos, and Cry.
Atlantic City Cops Caught on Video Viciously. Atlantic City Cops Caught on Video Viciously. Another disgusting show of police abuse was caught on surveillance camera, showing five.	Drowning the Light - Oppression and Tyranny - YouTube Drowning the Light - Oppression and Tyranny - YouTube Band: Drowning the Light Genre: Black Metal from Australia Titel:. Despair in the hearts of.	Eldritch Horror - Turn 2 - Lets Play - YouTube Eldritch Horror - Turn 2 - Lets Play - YouTube Are all Australians so badass when they fight demons? :) In this. Tremble and despair.	New super missile to outclass competitors - YouTube New super missile to outclass competitors - YouTube . its completed developing a superior sea-based missile called Liner.. would have to.

NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE YEAR

LEAD: This list has been selected from books reviewed since the Christmas issue of December 1987. It suggests only high points in the main fields of reader interest and it does not include the titles chosen by the editors of The Book Review as the Best Books of 1988. Books are arranged alphabetically under subject headings.

THE LISTINGS: MARCH 3 - MARCH 9

Selective listings by critics of The New York Times of new and noteworthy cultural events in the New York metropolitan region this week. * denotes a highly recommended film, concert, show or exhibition. Theater Approximate running times are in parentheses. Theaters are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of current shows, additional listings, show times and tickets: nytimes.com/theater. Previews and Openings MEASURE FOR MEASURE Opens Sunday. The resourceful Pearl Theater tries to provide an answer to this problem play (2:30). Theater 80, 80 St. Marks Place, East Village, (212) 598-9802. BERNARDA ALBA Opens Monday. The Tony winner Phylicia Rashad (A Raisin in the Sun) plays another formidable matriarchal figure with an iron will in Lincoln Center Theaters musical version of Lorcas House of Bernarda Alba. Michael John LaChiusa, who already has one musical to his name this season, See What I Wanna See, contributes music and lyrics (1:30). Mitzi Newhouse Theater, 150 West 65th Street, Lincoln Center, (212) 239-6200. THE MUSIC TEACHER, A PLAY/OPERA Opens Monday. This artistic hybrid by Wallace Shawn and his brother, Allen, is a drama about the making of an opera that features -- are you still following? -- operatic flashbacks (1:50). Minetta Lane Theater, 18 Minetta Lane, Greenwich Village, (212) 307-4100. GREY GARDENS Opens Tuesday. Maybe the biggest question mark of the musical season, this intriguing show is an adaptation of the cult documentary about the eccentric relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (2:30). Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 279-4200. FAMILY SECRETS Opens Wednesday. Sherry Glaser plays her entire family in this revival of her 1993 autobiographical solo show about moving from the Bronx to Southern California (1:30). 37 Arts, 450 West 37th Street, (212) 307-4100. MEASURE FOR PLEASURE Opens Wednesday. A new play by David Grimm (Kit Marlowe) that is part Restoration comedy, part modern sex comedy (2:30). Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, at Astor Place, East Village, (212) 239-6200. GEORGE M. COHAN TONIGHT! Previews start tonight. Opens 9Thursday. Its been almost four decades since Joel Grey starred on Broadway as the complex, brilliant composer in George M! -- more than enough time for another look at the author of Yankee Doodle Dandy. In this version, which includes the songs of Mr. Cohan, Jon Peterson stars (1:30). Irish Repertory Theater, 132 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, (212) 727-2737. ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE Opens March 16. Alec Baldwin stars in Joe Ortons jet-black comedy about a handsome stranger who seduces everyone else onstage (2:00). Laura Pels Theater at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theater, 111 West 46th Street, (212) 719-1300. HARD RIGHT Previews start Tuesday. Opens March 12. In David Barths dark comedy, a slacker college student takes his girlfriend home to meet his parents, and a family trauma interrupts everything (1:30). Players Theater, 115 Macdougal Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 352-3101. JACQUES BRIEL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS Previews start Sunday. Opens March 27. Something of a phenomenon in the late 1960s, the French singers romantic music returns to New York in this musical, which features tangos, ballads, boleros and rock n roll (2:00). Zipper Theater, 336 West 37th Street, (212) 239-6200. RING OF FIRE Opens March 12. Johnny Cash hits form the backbone of this musical about three couples. So far, its received surprisingly good buzz. Richard Maltby Jr. directs (2:00). Ethel Barrymore Theater, 243 West 47th Street, (212) 239-6200. SIDD Opens March 15. Herman Hesses novel Siddhartha, the musical version (2:15). Dodger Stages, 340 West 50th Street, Clinton, (212) 239-6200. Broadway BAREFOOT IN THE PARK For a work that celebrates the liberating force of spontaneity, this revival of Neil Simons 1963 comedy doesnt have one scene that feels organic, let alone impromptu. Directed by Scott Elliott, and starring Patrick Wilson and a miscast Amanda Peet as newlyweds in Greenwich Village, this barefoot has the robotic gait of Frankensteins monster (2:20). Cort Theater, 138 West 48th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Ben Brantley) * BRIDGE & TUNNEL This delightful solo show, written and performed by Sarah Jones, is a sweet-spirited valentine to New York City, its polyglot citizens and the larger notion of an all-inclusive America. In 90 minutes of acutely observed portraiture gently tinted with humor, Ms. Jones plays more than a dozen men and women participating in an open-mike evening of poetry for immigrants (1:30). Helen Hayes Theater, 240 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Charles Isherwood) THE COLOR PURPLE So much plot, so many years, so many characters to cram into less than three hours. This beat-the-clock musical adaptation of Alice Walkers Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about Southern black women finding their inner warriors never slows down long enough for you to embrace it. LaChanze leads the vibrant, hard-working cast (2:40). Broadway Theater, 1681 Broadway, at 53rd Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS On paper this musical tale of two mismatched scam artists has an awful lot in common with The Producers. But if you are going to court comparison with giants, you had better be prepared to stand tall. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, starring Jonathan Pryce and Norbert Leo Butz, never straightens out of a slouch (2:35). Imperial Theater, 249 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) DOUBT, A PARABLE (Pulitzer Prize, Best Play 2005, and Tony Award, Best Play 2005) Set in the Bronx in 1964, this play by John Patrick Shanley is structured as a clash of wills and generations between Sister Aloysius (Eileen Atkins), the head of a parochial school, and Father Flynn (Ron Eldard), the young priest who may or may not be too fond of the boys in his charge. The plays elements bring to mind those tidy topical melodramas that were once so popular. But Mr. Shanley makes subversive use of musty conventions (1:30). Walter Kerr Theater, 219 West 48th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) JERSEY BOYS From grit to glamour with the Four Seasons, directed by the pop repackager Des McAnuff (The Whos Tommy). The real thrill of this shrink-wrapped bio-musical, for those who want something more than recycled chart toppers and a story line poured from a can, is watching the wonderful John Lloyd Young (as Frankie Valli) cross the line from exact impersonation into something far more compelling (2:30). August Wilson Theater, 245 West 52nd Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA Love is a many-flavored thing, from sugary to sour, in Adam Guettel and Craig Lucass encouragingly ambitious and discouragingly unfulfilled new musical. The show soars only in the sweetly bitter songs performed by the wonderful Victoria Clark, as an American abroad (2:15). Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) THE ODD COUPLE Odd is not the word for this couple. How could an adjective suggesting strangeness or surprise apply to a production so calculatedly devoted to the known, the cozy, the conventional? As the title characters in Neil Simons 1965 comedy, directed as if to a metronome by Joe Mantello, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick reprise their star performances from The Producers, and its not a natural fit. Dont even consider killing yourself because the show is already sold out (2:10). Brooks Atkinson Theater, 256 West 47th Street, (212) 307-4100. (Brantley) * THE PAJAMA GAME Sexual chemistry in a Broadway musical? Isnt that illegal now? If it were, then Harry Connick Jr. and Kelli OHara -- the white-hot stars of Kathleen Marshalls delicious revival of this 1954 musical -- would be looking at long jail terms. This intoxicating production, which features a charming supporting cast led by Michael McKean, allows grown-up audiences the rare chance to witness a bona fide adult love affair translated into hummable songs and sprightly dance (2:30). American Airlines Theater, 227 West 42nd Street, (212) 719-1300. * RABBIT HOLE Thanks to a certain former American president, it has become almost impossible to say that you feel someone elses pain without its sounding like a punch line. Yet the sad, sweet release of David Lindsay-Abaires wrenching play, about the impact of the death of a small child, lies precisely in the access it allows to the pain of others, in its meticulously mapped empathy. With an emotionally transparent five-member cast led by Cynthia Nixon and Tyne Daly, directed by Daniel Sullivan, this anatomy of grief doesnt so much jerk tears as tap them (2:10). Biltmore Theater, 261 West 47th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) SPAMALOT (Tony Award, Best Musical 2005) This staged re-creation of the mock-medieval movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail is basically a singing scrapbook for Python fans. Such a good time is being had by so many people that this fitful, eager celebration of inanity and irreverence has found a large and lucrative audience (2:20). Shubert Theater, 225 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) * SWEENEY TODD Sweet dreams, New York. This thrilling new revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheelers musical, with Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone leading a cast of 10 who double as their own musicians, burrows into your thoughts like a campfire storyteller who knows what really scares you. The inventive director John Doyle aims his pared-down interpretation at the squirming child in everyone who wants to have his worst fears both confirmed and dispelled (2:30). Eugene ONeill Theater, 230 West 49th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) Off Broadway * ABIGAILS PARTY Scott Elliotts thoroughly delectable production of Mike Leighs 1977 comedy about domestic discord among the British middle classes. Jennifer Jason Leigh leads a superb ensemble cast as a party hostess who wields the gin bottle like a deadly weapon, resulting in an evening of savagely funny chaos (2:15). Acorn Theater at Theater Row, 410 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 279-4200. (Isherwood) ACTS OF MERCY: PASSION-PLAY If there is a coherent story to Michael John Garcés Acts of Mercy: passion-play, it is resolutely kept from the audience. As the efforts of two brothers to reconcile with a dying father progress, it seems possible that viewers are meant to discern the consequences of family trauma from punchy monosyllabic combat and repeated expletives, but their efforts to connect are continually frustrated (2:15). Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, 224 Waverly Place, west of Seventh Avenue, West Village, (212) 868-4444. (Honor Moore) * ALLS WELL THAT ENDS WELL This Theater for a New Audience production inspires a quiet prayer of thanks to the theater gods. Here is that rare Shakespeare production in which there is nary an incompetent, misjudged or ineffective performance in a significant role. Darko Tresnjak and his cast find a way to make the plays troubled romance, between the adoring Helena and the disdaining Bertram, psychologically credible and even touching (2:30). The Duke on 42nd Street, 229 West 42nd Street, (212) 239-6200. (Isherwood) CHRISTINE JORGENSON REVEALS Bradford Louryk meticulously lip-syncs a fascinating hourlong interview about gender and sexuality with Ms. Jorgenson, whose sex change operation in the 1950s was big news (1:00). The Studio Theater at Theater Row, 410 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 279-4200. (Jason Zinoman) CLEAN ALTERNATIVES Brian Dykstras improbable comedy details the good fight fought by a businesswoman turned environmental activist taking on a toxin-spreading megacorporation. The play also depicts the moral transformation of a rapacious lawyer into a love-smitten puppy dog. Call it a fairy tale for our time (2:00). 59E59 Theaters , 59 East 59th Street, (212) 279-4200. (Isherwood) CONFESSIONS OF A MORMON BOY Steven Fales, a sixth-generation Mormon, describes leaving his family and becoming a gay escort in this fairly conventional, although admittedly compelling, piece of confessional theater (1:30). SoHo Playhouse, 15 Vandam Street, between Avenue of the Americas and Varick Street, (212) 691-1555. (Zinoman) DEFIANCE The second play in John Patrick Shanleys cycle of morality dramas that began with Doubt, this ambitious tale of racial relations and the military mindset on a North Carolina marine base feels both overcrowded and oddly diffuse. If Doubt has an elegant and energy-efficient sprinters gait, Defiance progresses with a flustered air of distraction. The excellent Margaret Colin, as an officers wife, provides a welcome shot of credibility (1:30). Manhattan Theater Club, Theater 1, 131 West 55th Street, (212) 581-1212. (Brantley) DOG SEES GOD: CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE BLOCKHEAD The Peanuts characters grow up, do drugs and have sex in this dark, disposable parody. Good grief (1:30). Century Center for the Performing Arts, 111 East 15th Street, Flatiron district, (212) 239-6200. (Zinoman) DRUMSTRUCK This noisy novelty is a mixed blessing. Providing a two-foot drum on every seat, it offers an opportunity to exorcise aggressions by delivering a good beating, and, on a slightly more elevated level, it presents a superficial introduction to African culture, lessons in drumming and 90 minutes of nonstop music, song and dancing by a good-natured cast. So, while literally and figuratively giving off many good vibes, it adds up to lightweight entertainment that stops just short of pulverizing the eardrums (1:30). Dodger Stages, Stage 2, 340 West 50th Street, Clinton, (212) 239-6200. (Lawrence Van Gelder) FANNY HILL Its a musical version of the scandalous John Cleland novel, but its not scandalous, very. It is, however, sometimes pretty funny, thanks to the incongruous eye of Ed Dixon, who wrote the book, lyrics and music (2:10). York Theater, at St. Peters Lutheran Church, 619 Lexington Avenue, at 54th Street, (212) 868-4444. (Neil Genzlinger) * FORBIDDEN BROADWAY: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT This production features the expected caricatures of ego-driven singing stars. But even more than usual, the show offers an acute list of grievances about the sickly state of the Broadway musical, where, as the lyrics have it, everything old is old again (1:45). 47th Street Theater, 304 West 47th Street, Clinton, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) * I LOVE YOU BECAUSE The plot line -- single New Yorkers in search of love -- couldnt be more familiar, but somehow this fluffy, funny musical makes it refreshing, helped along by an engaging six-member cast, with David A. Austin making a particularly hilarious impression. An impressive start for Ryan Cunningham (book and lyrics) and Joshua Salzman (music), both still in their 20s (2:00). Village Theater, 158 Bleecker Street, near Sullivan Street, East Village, (212) 307-4100. (Genzlinger) INDOOR/OUTDOOR A comedy by Kenny Finkle about a housecat torn between affection for her human companion and a sexy tomcat promising a tour of the great outdoors. Directed by Darren Goldstein and energetically performed by a cast of four, its essentially just another dysfunctional relationship tale, with little kitty whiskers drawn on (1:50). DR2 Theater, 103 East 15th Street, Flatiron district, (212) 239-6200. (Isherwood) * THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE Please turn off your political correctness monitor along with your cellphone for Martin McDonaghs gleeful, gory and appallingly entertaining play. This blood farce about terrorism in rural Ireland, acutely directed by Wilson Milam, has a carnage factor to rival Quentin Tarantinos. But is also wildly, absurdly funny and, even more improbably, severely moral (1:45). Atlantic Theater, 336 West 20th Street, Chelsea, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) RED LIGHT WINTER A frank, occasionally graphic story of erotic fixation and the havoc it can wreak on sensitive types. Written and directed by Adam Rapp, the play is both a doomy romantic drama and a morbid comedy about the anxieties of male friendship. Although somewhat contrived, it features a lovely performance by Christopher Denham as a lonely soul starved for intimacy (2:25). Barrow Street Theater, 27 Barrow Street, West Village, (212) 239-6200. (Isherwood) * THE SEVEN The wild ride of luckless ol Oedipus -- accidentally offing Dad, marrying Mom, being dissed by the kids -- gets pimped to the nines in this frisky and funny new riff on the classic story. Written by Will Power and directed by Jo Bonney, the show is a freewheeling adaptation of one of the more static, less revered Greek tragedies, Aeschylus Seven Against Thebes: a hip-hop musical comedy-tragedy (2:00). New York Theater Workshop, 79 East Fourth Street, East Village, (212) 239-6200. (Isherwood) SOLDIERS WIFE When this play first opened on Broadway, World War II was shuddering to a close, and those on the home front wanted to feel good. Despite flaws in the work, the Mint Theater Companys revival of Rose Frankens 1944 comedy is highly entertaining (2:00). Mint Theater, 311 West 43rd Street, Clinton, (212) 315-0231. (Moore) * [TITLE OF SHOW] Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell are the authors, stars and subject matter of this delectable new musical about its own making. The self-consciousness is tempered by a wonderful cast performing with the innocence of kids cavorting in a sandbox. Its a worthy postmodern homage to the classic backstage musicals, and an absolute must for show queens (1:30). Vineyard Theater, 108 East 15th Street, Flatiron district, (212) 353-0303. (Isherwood) * THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL Led by Lois Smith in a heart-wrenching performance, the cast never strikes a false note in Harris Yulins beautifully mounted revival of Horton Footes drama, finding an emotional authenticity in a work largely remembered as a tear-jerking chestnut. This is not to say you should neglect to bring handkerchiefs (1:50). Signature Theater, 555 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 244-7529. (Brantley) THE WOODEN BREEKS The line dividing inspired whimsy from tedious nonsense can be a fine one, and much of this new play by Glen Berger falls on the wrong side of it. An elaborately conceived comedy seeking to celebrate the consolations of storytelling, it unfolds the tale of a Scottish tinker who dreams up imaginary worlds to keep despair at bay. The cast is colorful, but the play is pallid, despite an intricate -- make that convoluted -- narrative (2:00). MCC Theater, at the Lucille Lortel Theater, 121 Christopher Street, West Village, (212) 279-4200. (Isherwood) Off Off Broadway BELLY OF A DRUNKEN PIANO In this splendidly imperfect cabaret, Stewart DArrietta howls and growls convincingly through Tom Waitss three-decade song catalog, backed by a snappy trio. His patter and his piano playing are variable, but Mr. DArrietta makes a genial tour guide through Mr. Waitss wee-hours world (1:45). Huron Club at SoHo Playhouse, 15 Vandam Street, between Avenue of the Americas and Varick Street, (212) 691-1555. o.e. (Rob Kendt) 25 QUESTIONS FOR A JEWISH MOTHER This is the comedian Judy Golds fiercely funny monologue, based on her own life as a single Jewish lesbian mother and interviews with more than 50 other Jewish mothers (1:10). Ars Nova, 511 West 54th Street, Clinton, (212) 868-4444. (Phoebe Hoban) * ZOMBOID! (FILM/PERFORMANCe PROJECT #1) O, the heresy of it! Richard Foreman has introduced film into the realm of exquisitely artificial, abstract theater in which he has specialized for four decades. As it turns out, juxtaposing two art forms allows Mr. Foreman to underscore in resonant new ways what he has been saying for years: reality is, well, relative. And he continues to work in a style guaranteed to infect your perceptions for hours after (1:15). Ontological-Hysteric Theater, 131 East 10th Street, East Village, (212) 352-3101. (Brantley) Long-Running Shows * ALTAR BOYZ This sweetly satirical show about a Christian pop group made up of five potential Teen People cover boys is an enjoyable, silly diversion (1:30). Dodger Stages, Stage 4, 340 West 50th Street, Clinton, (212) 239-6200.(Isherwood) AVENUE Q R-rated puppets give lively life lessons (2:10). Golden, 252 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) BEAUTY AND THE BEAST Cartoon made flesh, sort of (2:30). Lunt-Fontanne Theater, 205 West 46th Street, (212) 307-4747. (Brantley) CHICAGO Irrefutable proof that crime pays (2:25). Ambassador Theater, 219 West 49th Street, (212) 239-6200.(Brantley) HAIRSPRAY Fizzy pop, cute kids, large man in a housedress (2:30). Neil Simon Theater, 250 West 52nd Street, (212) 307-4100. (Brantley) THE LION KING Disney on safari, where the big bucks roam (2:45). New Amsterdam Theater, 214 West 42nd Street, (212) 307-4100. (Brantley) MAMMA MIA! The jukebox that devoured Broadway (2:20). Cadillac Winter Garden Theater, 1634 Broadway, at 50th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA Who was that masked man, anyway? (2:30). Majestic Theater, 247 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) THE PRODUCERS The ne plus ultra of showbiz scams (2:45). St. James Theater, 246 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) RENT East Village angst and love songs to die for (2:45). Nederlander Theater, 208 West 41st Street, (212) 307-4100. (Brantley) SLAVAS SNOWSHOW Clowns chosen by the Russian master Slava Polunin are stirring up laughter and enjoyment. A show that touches the heart as well as tickles the funny bone (1:30). Union Square Theater, 100 East 17th Street, Flatiron district, (212) 307-4100.(Van Gelder) WICKED Oz revisited, with political corrections (2:45). Gershwin Theater, 222 West 51st Street, (212) 307-4100. (Brantley) Last Chance BACK OF THE THROAT An Arab-American playwright (Yussef El Guindi) addressing the harassment of Arab-Americans after 9/11? Interesting. But the play would have been even more interesting if the harassers were something other than cardboard characters out of the J. Edgar Hoover closet (1:15). Flea Theater, 41 White Street, TriBeCa, (212) 352-3101, closing Wednesday. (Genzlinger) THE RIGHT KIND OF PEOPLE Satire sans teeth by Charles Grodin about internecine warfare within a Fifth Avenue co-op board. Directed by Chris Smith, the show has the embarrassed air of someone who has just been served a choice steak and misplaced his dentures (1:30). Primary Stages, at 59E59, 59 East 59th Street, (212) 279-4200, closing Sunday. (Brantley) Movies Ratings and running times are in parentheses; foreign films have English subtitles. Full reviews of all current releases, movie trailers, show times and tickets: nytimes.com/movies. AQUAMARINE (PG, 109 minutes) In this sweet comedy for the crowd that has outgrown The Little Mermaid, two likable pals (Emma Roberts and Joanna Levesque) try to help a mermaid (Sara Paxton) find love and learn how to use her feet properly. (Neil Genzlinger) BATTLE IN HEAVEN (No rating, 94 minutes, in Spanish) An alternatingly mesmerizing and off-putting story about sex, class, God, soccer, an ugly man, a beautiful woman, a dead baby, the dirt below them and the wide sky above. The talented Mexican director Carlos Reygadas (Japón) strives to say something about his country, to tap into the spiritual and material desperation of its people, but doesnt seem especially committed to his material. (Manohla Dargis) BIG MOMMAS HOUSE 2 (PG-13, 98 minutes) Martin Lawrence is back in fat-lady drag in this inconsequential sequel for undemanding moviegoers. Mr. Lawrence makes the most of the incongruity of a manly F.B.I. agent posing as a nanny in floral-print dresses, but the humor doesnt go much beyond oversize underwear and a tequila-drinking dog. (Anita Gates) * BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (R, 134 minutes) Annie Proulxs heartbreaking story of two ranch hands who fall in love while herding sheep in 1963 has been faithfully translated onto the screen in Ang Lees landmark film. Heath Ledger (in a great performance worthy of Brando at his peak) and Jake Gyllenhaal bring them fully alive. (Stephen Holden) * CACHÉ (HIDDEN) (R, 121 minutes, in French) Michael Haneke, one of the most elegantly sadistic European directors working today, deposits his audience at the intersection of voyeurism and paranoia in this tense, politically tinged psychological thriller about vengeance and injustice. Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil are in top form as an affluent Parisian couple menaced by mysterious drawings and videotapes. (A. O. Scott) * CURIOUS GEORGE (G, 90 minutes) In a refreshing departure from the animal heroes of most recent childrens movies, this Curious George doesnt rap, punch out bad guys or emit rapid-fire commentary on pop culture. George is all monkey -- a quality that will not only appeal to children, but also come as a great relief to parents who grew up with the classic stories by Margret and H. A. Rey. With top-drawer voice talent, including Will Ferrell, Drew Barrymore and Dick Van Dyke; original songs by Jack Johnson; and old-fashioned two-dimensional animation, Curious George is an unexpected delight. (Dana Stevens) DIRTY (R, 97 minutes) Cuba Gooding Jr. steps over to the bad side in a nihilistic, profanity-packed melodrama of corrupt Los Angeles cops that wants to be Training Day with street cred. It misses by a mile. (Holden) FINAL DESTINATION 3 (R, 92 minutes) Its more dead teenagers and lunatic determinism in this grim third installment of the enjoyably preposterous Final Destination franchise. (Nathan Lee) FIREWALL (PG-13, 100 minutes) A thrill-challenged thriller starring Harrison Ford and directed by Richard Loncraine that manages to entertain mildly only because it traffics in all the familiar action-movie clichés, giving filmgoers ample opportunity to test their action-movie I.Q.s. (Dargis) FREEDOMLAND (R, 113 minutes) This inept, lethally dull drama directed by Joe Roth and written by Richard Price, from his novel, involves a white child who may have gone missing in a New Jersey public housing complex, where the residents are all black. A loud Samuel L. Jackson and a miscast Julianne Moore star. (Dargis) * GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK. (PG, 90 minutes) George Clooney, with impressive rigor and intelligence, examines the confrontation between the CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow (a superb David Strathairn) and Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (himself). Plunging you into a smoky, black-and-white world of political paranoia and commercial pressure, the film is a history lesson and a passionate essay on power, responsibility and the ethics of journalism. (Scott) * HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE (PG-13, 150 minutes) Childhood ends for the young wizard with the zigzag scar in the latest addition to the Potter saga, even as the director Mike Newell keeps its British eccentricity, fatalism and steady-on pluck irresistibly intact. (Dargis) HOME (No rating, 91 minutes) In Home, the debut feature from the writer and director Matt Zoller Seitz, a party in a Brooklyn brownstone is peopled by familiar types: the sensitive music geek, the slutty ex-girlfriend, the pretentious European writer. As dreams are interpreted, hearts are bruised, and a loudmouth in a velour tracksuit gets undeservedly lucky, Home accumulates a blurry, on-the-fly atmosphere spiked with moments of unexpected sweetness. (Jeannette Catsoulis) * LITTLE FISH (R, 114 minutes) In this tough, savvy Australian film, Cate Blanchett sinks deeply into the role of a 32-year-old recovering heroin addict trying to rebuild her life and fighting the temptation to relapse. (Holden) * LOVE (No rating, 93 minutes) Cool, mysterious and defiantly foreign, Love plays out on the immigrant fringes of an indifferent New York City. A Yugoslavian hit man, his German ex-wife and her cop boyfriend form a love triangle that propels a cosmopolitan cast into a violent game of cat and mouse. In these bleak, isolated neighborhoods, exquisitely shot by the Serbian cinematographer Vladimir Subotic, love and politics are inseparable, and the gleam of Manhattan is a million miles away. (Catsoulis) * MATCH POINT (R, 124 minutes) Woody Allens best in years, and one of his best ever. Beneath the dazzling, sexy surface, this tale of social climbing in London (brilliantly acted by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Scarlett Johansson and Emily Mortimer) is ice cold and pitch black, which curiously enough makes it a superior diversion. (Scott) THE MATADOR (R, 96 minutes) Pithy remarks put into the mouth of a star (Pierce Brosnan) playing against type impart a greasy sheen of sophistication to this weightless, amoral romp about a professional hit man facing a midlife crisis. (Holden) MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA (PG-13, 144 minutes) Think As the Geisha Turns, with devious rivals, swoonworthy swains, a jaw-dropping dance number recycled from Madonnas Drowned World tour and much clinching, panting and scheming. Directed by Rob Marshall from the Arthur Golden book, and starring Ziyi Zhang, Gong Li and Michelle Yeoh. (Dargis) * MUNICH (R, 164 minutes) With his latest, Steven Spielberg forgoes the emotional bullying and pop thrills that come so easily to him to tell the story of a campaign of vengeance that Israel purportedly brought against Palestinian terrorists in the wake of the 1972 Olympics. An unsparingly brutal look at two peoples all but drowning in a sea of their own blood, Munich is by far the toughest film of the directors career, and the most anguished. (Dargis) NANNY McPHEE (PG, 99 minutes) In the endearing but somewhat scatterbrained British film Nanny McPhee, Emma Thompson creates an indelible character reminiscent of the pre-Disney Mary Poppins working benign magic to shape up an unruly brood of children. (Holden) PINK PANTHER (PG, 92 minutes) Steve Martin steps into the shoes of Peter Sellers in this intermittently witty revival of a vintage comedy franchise. Though finely honed, Mr. Martins portrayal of the idiotic French police inspector Jacques Clouseau cant match Sellerss viscerally funny one. (Holden) * PRIDE & PREJUDICE (PG, 128 minutes) In this sumptuous, extravagantly romantic adaptation of Jane Austens 1813 novel, Keira Knightleys Elizabeth Bennet exudes a radiance that suffuses the movie. This is a banquet of high-end comfort food perfectly cooked and seasoned to Anglophilic tastes. (Holden) ROVING MARS (G, 40 minutes) Mars. IMAX. If you want to grow up to be an astronaut, prepare to bliss out. (Lee) RUNNING SCARED (R, 122 minutes) The idea here is meta-movie to the max, a deconstructed modern action flick by way of the brothers Grimm, in which few live happily ever after, and most dont even make it to the next day. Too bad that the director Wayne Kramer proves blood simple. (Dargis) * SOPHIE SCHOLL: THE FINAL DAYS (No rating, 117 minutes, in German) The gripping true story of Sophie Scholl, an anti-Nazi student activist arrested and executed for distributing leaflets at Munich University, challenges you to gauge your own courage and strength of character should you find yourself in similar circumstances. (Holden) SORRY, HATERS (No rating, 83 minutes) Shamelessly drawing on post-Sept. 11 anxieties, Sorry, Haters follows the increasingly irrational involvement of a New York cab driver (Abdellatif Kechiche), who is also a Syrian Muslim, and a disturbed fare (Robin Wright Penn). Yet despite the impressive commitment of the two leads, the movie unfolds with such utter looniness that the final, horrible moments are more likely to inspire laughter than shock. Apparently, the worst threat facing America today is not Islamic extremists but lonely young women with low self-esteem. (Catsoulis) * SYRIANA (R, 122 minutes) Ambitious, angry and complicated, Stephen Gaghans second film tackles terrorism, American foreign policy, global trade and the oil business through four interwoven stories. There are at least a half-dozen first-rate performances, and Mr. Gaghan, who wrote and directed, reinvents the political thriller as a vehicle for serious engagement with the state of the world. (Scott) TAMARA (R, 98 minutes) Low in budget as well as ambition, this Carrie knockoff is a movie of few innovations but one genuine surprise: the inability of the title character, an evil sorceress, to manage in high heels. (Lee) TRANSAMERICA (R, 103 minutes) Felicity Huffmans performance as a preoperative transsexual on a cross-country journey with her long-lost son is sensitive and convincing, and helps the movie rise above its indie road-picture clichés. (Scott) * TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY (R, 91 minutes) Michael Winterbottom both confirms and refutes the assumption that Laurence Sternes 18th-century masterpiece of digression could never be made into a movie by making a movie about the making of such a movie. Steve Coogan is wonderful as Tristram, Tristrams father and himself, though Rob Brydon steals more than a few of Mr. Coogans scenes. (Scott) TSOTSI (R, 94 minutes) Written and directed by Gavin Hood, from a novel by Athol Fugard, this South African film centers on a 19-year-old thug who steals a baby and finds redemption. You dont have to read crystal balls to see into Tsotsis future; you just need to have watched a couple of Hollywood chestnuts. (Dargis) UNKNOWN WHITE MALE (PG-13, 88 minutes) The British filmmaker Rupert Murray tells the bizarre story of his old friend Doug Bruce, who in 2003 walked into a Coney Island hospital claiming not to know who he was, thereupon becoming either a heart-wrenching casualty of a medical anomaly or the prime suspect in a mystery yet to be solved. (Dargis) UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION (R, 106 minutes) In this sequel to Underworld (2003), the writer and director Len Wiseman and the writer Danny McBride pick up the story of the vampire Selene (Kate Beckinsale) and the vampire/werewolf hybrid Michael (Scott Speedman) as they race to prevent the release of an imprisoned über-werewolf. With leads who strain to manage one facial expression between them, and a cinematographer who shoots everything through the same steel-blue filter, Underworld: Evolution is little more than a monotonous barrage of computer-generated fur and fangs. (Catsoulis) WALK THE LINE (PG-13, 138 minutes) Johnny Cash gets the musical biopic treatment in this moderately entertaining, never quite convincing chronicle of his early years. Joaquin Phoenix, sweaty, inarticulate and intense as Cash, is upstaged by Reese Witherspoon, who tears into the role of June Carter (Cashs creative partner long before she became his second wife) with her usual charm, pluck and intelligence. (Scott) * NEIL YOUNG: HEART OF GOLD (PG, 103 minutes) Filled with country memories, bluesy regret and familiar and piercing sentiment, Jonathan Demmes concert film sounds like quintessential Neil Young, which, depending on your home catalog, will be either an enormous turn-on or turnoff. (Dargis) Film Series ANNA MAY WONG (Through April 16) Wong, the first Chinese-American movie star, would have turned 100 last year. (She died in 1961.) The Museum of the Moving Images extensive seven-week retrospective of her work begins tomorrow with The Toll of the Sea (1922), a silent color feature based on Madama Butterfly; and Piccadilly (1929), in which Wong plays a scullery maid who moves up to nightclub stages. Both films will be accompanied by live music. 35th Avenue at 36th Street, Astoria, Queens, (718) 784-0077; $10. (Gates) DOCUMENTARY FORTNIGHT EXPANDED (Through March 13) The Museum of Modern Arts exhibition of contemporary nonfiction films runs five weeks this year. It continues this weekend with The Other Side (2005), Natalia Almadas portrait of a young Mexican man trying to sing his way out of poverty; and A Model for Matisse: The Story of the Vence Chapel (2005), about Henri Matisses friendship and special project with a French Dominican nun. 11 West 53rd Street, Manhattan, (212) 708-9400; $10. (Gates) ISRAEL FILM FESTIVAL (Through Thursday) This 21st annual festival continues this weekend with films including Eyal Ilans Comrade (2005), about an adolescent boys relationship with his sisters Communist neighbor; and Thorold Dickinsons Hill 24 Doesnt Answer(1955), the personal stories of four young Zionists guarding a strategic spot outside Jerusalem. Clearview Cinema, 62nd Street and Broadway, (877) 966-5566; $10. (Gates) MAN IN THE DUNES: DISCOVERING HIROSHI TESHIGAHARA (Through March 19) BAMcinémateks tribute to Teshigahara (1927-2001), the artist, filmmaker and flower arranger, continues this weekend with Pitfall (1962), his first feature, about a mysterious killer and a small mining town. 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, (718) 636-4100; $10. (Gates) PRIX JEAN VIGO (Through Dec. 30) The Museum of Modern Art is honoring Jean Vigo (1905-34), the French filmmaker, with a series of 41 films from directors who have won the prize that bears his name. This weekends films are Le Beau Serge (1958), Claude Chabrols drama about a man who returns to his hometown to find a childhood friend in bad shape; and Le Bleu du Ciel (2000), Christian Dors short about a teenage boy home from a psychiatric hospital. 11 West 53rd Street, Manhattan, (212) 708-9400; $10. (Gates) SOME KIND OF HORROR SHOW (Through March 30) BAMcinémateks annual festival of horror movies begins on Monday with Dario Argentos Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971), about a rock musician with a stalker. Other films in the series will include John Landiss Innocent Blood (1992), the adventures of a modern-day vampire who bites only bad people; Nicholas Roegs Witches (1990), about a covens convention; and Twisted Nerve (1968), a splatter movie with a Bernard Hermann score. 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, (718) 636-4100; $10. (Gates) Pop Full reviews of recent concerts: nytimes.com/music. BELLE AND SEBASTIAN/NEW PORNOGRAPHERS (Tonight) The deceptively gentle rock of the Scottish group Belle and Sebastian continues to find the exquisite balance between loll and lash. The New Pornographers are a revved-up Vancouver outfit whose smart power-pop grandeur builds with a sort of time-release tension, until Neko Cases voice cuts through like a skywriter. 8:30 p.m., Nokia Theater, 1515 Broadway, at 44th Street, ticketmaster.com or (212) 307-7171; $30 (Sold out). (Laura Sinagra) BLEEDING THROUGH, EVERY TIME I DIE (Thursday) Sidestepping the cookie-cutter emo punk stereotype, Bleeding Through plays speedy thrash metal. The Buffalo rockers Every Time I Die inject their version of hard-charging punk-metal with country swagger and gutter sleaze. 7:30 p.m., Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, at 15th Street, Manhattan, (212) 777-6800; $16.75 in advance, $18 at the door. (Sinagra) MICHAEL BUBLÉ (Tomorrow) The crooner Michael Bublé has Bobby Darin as a polestar and Frank Sinatra to crib from. He also has looks, and tips his hat to modern styles, even rap, in ways that assure 50-year-old fans that theyre not 80-year-old fans. 8 p.m., Radio City Music Hall, (212) 632-4000; $49.50 to $104.50. (Sinagra) CLOUD ROOM (Tomorrow) The new-wave-influenced naïf rockers the Cloud Room garnered wild, though deeply underground, buzz when their best song, Hey Hey Now, written in the throes of the frontmans grave illness, was given lots of wish-you-wells but never broke into larger indie-pop consciousness. The indie-rock band Film School also plays. 9 p.m., Maxwells, 1039 Washington Street, Hoboken, N.J., (201) 798-0406; $8 in advance, $10 at the door. (Sinagra) COMMON, FLOETRY (Sunday) The Chicago rapper Common has at times deserved the stigma attached to the label conscious rap -- preachiness and lackluster execution. On his latest material, though, he meets the challenge by working with the it producer Kanye West. The two women of Floetry mix the tough and the gentle amid a spirit of jazzy uplift. 8 p.m., Nokia Theater, 1515 Broadway, at 44th Street, ticketmaster.com or (212) 307-7171; $38.50 to $40. (Sold out.) (Sinagra) EBONY ECUMENICAL ENSEMBLE (Tomorrow) This community choral group celebrates its 27th year with a repertory spanning what it calls the African-American religious experience. 7:30 p.m., Riverside Church, Riverside Drive at 122nd Street, Morningside Heights, (212) 870-6722; $15 to $35. (Sinagra) DONALD FAGEN (Tonight and Tuesday) Steely Dans jaded jazz-rocker tours in support of his first solo album since 1993, Morph the Cat (Reprise), on which, among other things, he focuses his recognizable leer on a hot airport security babe. Tonight at 8, North Fork Theater at Westbury Music Fair, 960 Brush Hollow Road, Westbury, N.Y., (516) 334-0800; $60 to $85. Tuesday at 8 p.m.., Beacon Theater, 2124 Broadway, at 74th Street, (212) 496-7070; $53.50 to $92. (Sinagra) GOGOGO AIRHEART, JAI-ALAI SAVANT, SUBTITLE (Monday) The Mars Volta guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez put together this tour to showcase bands on his record label, GSL, including the punky Gogogo Airheart, the reggae-punk Jai-Alai Savant and the Los Angeles rapper Subtitle. 8:30 p.m., Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston Street, at Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, (212) 260-4700; $10. (Sinagra) DARYL HALL AND JOHN OATES (Tomorrow) The Philadelphia pop duo has always relied on the blue-eyed-soul crooner Daryl Halls ability to emote within tight rhythmic constraints while John Oates harmonizes urgently above. 8 p.m., Beacon Theater, 2124 Broadway, at 74th Street, (212) 496-7070; $40 to $93.50. (Sinagra) HAMELL ON TRIAL (Tonight and tomorrow night) The songwriter Ed Hamell whips up intense ditties commenting on the hypocrisies of modern life. The cultural climate, rife with saccharine displays and religious and moral piety, leaves the composer of Songs for Parents Who Enjoy Drugs no shortage of inspiration. 8, Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard Street, TriBeCa, (212) 219-3132; $12. (Sinagra) BILLY JOEL (Tomorrow) The iconic piano man recently released a boxed set celebrating four decades of his music. From Just the Way You Are to Allentown, its the trademark mix of real confidence and false bravado in both his playing and his delivery that keeps him compelling. 8 p.m., Madison Square Garden, (212) 465-6741; $54 to $89.50. (Sinagra) THE KLEZMATICS: 20TH ANNIVERSARY (Sunday) The Klezmatics love the laughing, moaning melodies of traditional klezmer music. They also love jazz, rock and downtown improvisation, and they bring all those styles to bear on their music, which can be raucous, hypnotic, reverent and dizzying, sometimes all in one quick-changing piece. They carry klezmers itinerant, idea-gathering spirit all the way into present-day New York City. 4 p.m., Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, Manhattan, (212) 840-2824; $32.50 to $37.50. (Jon Pareles) SERENA MANEESH (Monday) This Norwegian band takes a lighthearted approach to distorted, textured rock blare. Its alternately screeching and orchestral atmospherics are mismatched with vocal purr and squawk. 8 p.m., Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, near the Bowery, Lower East Side, (212) 533-2111; $13 in advance, 15 at the door. (Sinagra) DAVE MASON (Monday) The singer-guitarist Dave Mason, maybe best known for his work with Traffic, is the distinctive voice behind songs like Feelin Alright and We Just Disagree. 8 p.m., B. B. King Blues Club and Grill, 243 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, (212) 997-4144; $27.50 in advance, $30 at the door. (Sinagra) MASTERS OF PERSIAN MUSIC (Sunday) Playing the music of Irans Persian classical tradition and celebrating the heritage of Sufi poetry, this group features the vocalist Mohammad Reza Shajarian, with Hossein Alizadeh on the lute and Kayhan Kalhor on the spike fiddle. Shajarians son Homayoun accompanies on the tombak drum and vocals. 7 p.m., Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $30 to $50. (Sinagra) MATISYAHU (Monday and Tuesday) Matisyahus Hasidic dancehall blends the rabbinical and the Rastafarian, combining a kind of Deadhead playfulness with resolute moralism as he chants -- sometimes in English, sometimes in Yiddish, sometimes in Caribbean patois. He is promoting a new album, recorded with the producer Bill Laswell. 8 p.m., Hammerstein Ballroom, 311 West 34th Street, Manhattan, (212) 279-7740; $25.50 in advance, $27.50 at the door. (Sinagra) MOGWAI (Monday) This majestic Glasgow outfit has mixed heavy rock intensity with flowing atmospheric beauty for a decade now. Its new material is some of its best. 7:30 p.m., Avalon, 662 Avenue of the Americas, at 20th Street, Chelsea, (212) 807-7780 or ticketmaster.com or (212) 307-7171; $20. (Sold out.) (Sinagra) LE MYSTÈRE DES VOIX BULGARES (Tonight) Started 50 years ago with the goal of expanding the scope of Bulgarian folk music, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares explores the possibilities of close harmonies, dissonance, unexpected rhythms and vocal tones that move from haunting to jarringly pointed. This performance, falling on Bulgarian Independence Day, is the groups first in the city in more than a decade. 7:30 p.m., Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, at 95th Street, (212) 864-5400; $23 to $28. (Sold out.) (Sinagra) NADA SURF, ROGUE WAVE (Wednesday) The Brooklyn alt-rockers Nada Surf tumbled into obscurity after a mid-90s MTV hit, then re-emerged in 2002 with the lovingly fashioned Let Go (Barsuk), which squints nostalgically at imagined childhood bliss through a snowy pane. Subsequent albums have continued in this style. Rogue Wave is a meditative band that plays the kind of wishing-well rock that, when done right, adds gravitas to your flakiest concerns. 8 p.m., Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, East Village, (212) 533-2111; $20. (Sinagra) OF MONTREAL (Tonight) Part of the tail end of the mid-90s heyday of the Athens, Ga., indie-rock collective Elephant 6, the band Of Montreal has outlived lots of its other acts and continues to make fanciful melodic pop. 8, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, near the Bowery, Lower East Side, (212) 533-2111; $14. (Sold out.) (Sinagra) AMY RIGBY (Tonight) This singer-songwriter ponders romance and decline with biting wit. She gave Nashville a try, but shes back home in New York, where her brand of real-life feistiness has always been a better fit. 7 p.m., Joes Pub at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, at Astor Place, East Village, (212) 539-8778; $20. (Sinagra) THE ROGERS SISTERS, CELEBRATION (Thursday) The Brooklyn power trio the Rogers Sisters have plied their perky new-wave craft during the recent spate of 80s revivalism in Williamsburg, though they seem to take themselves less seriously than most. Celebrations noisy rock is a vehicle for the vocalist Katrina Fords guttural acrobatics. 8 p.m., Northsix, 66 North Sixth Street, Brooklyn, (718) 599-5103; $10 in advance, $12 at the door. (Sinagra) THE STROKES, EAGLES OF DEATH METAL (Tonight and tomorrow night) Six years ago, with its exaggerated Tom Petty-like jitters and rich hipster slumming, the Strokes convinced jaded late-1990s clubbers that rock was back. The Eagles of Death Metal is the side project of the Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, who indulges some of his funkier impulses. 6:30 p.m., Hammerstein Ballroom, 311 West 34th Street, Manhattan, (212) 564-4882; $35. (Sinagra) THE WEDDING PRESENT, SALLY CREWE AND THE SUDDEN MOVES (Monday and Wednesday) After spending the late 90s in relative domestic bliss and putting out records with the band Cinerama, David Gedge has returned to his previous band the Wedding Present, and to the dirty-strummed electric bitterness that made it so beloved. Sally Crewe, a spunky Briton, unpins her lyrical wit with elemental guitar rock punch. Monday at 9 p.m., Maxwells, 1039 Washington Street, Hoboken, N.J., (201) 653-1703; $tk. (Sold out.) Wednesday at 8 p.m., Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, near the Bowery, Lower East Side, (212) 533-2111; $16. (Sinagra) WOLF EYES, PIG DESTROYER (Tomorrow) Wolf Eyes is a noise band from Montreal; Pig Destroyer plays grindcore metal. 11:30 p.m., Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard Street, TriBeCa, (212) 219-3132; $12 in advance, $15 at the door. (Sinagra) THE WOOD BROTHERS (Tuesday) The Wood Brothers are Oliver and Chris Wood, musical siblings reared in the Northwest, whose divergent paths led Oliver to blues-rock bands in Atlanta and Chris to New York, where he ended up in Medeski, Martin and Wood. Together they make roots rock. 9:30 p.m., Joes Pub at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, at Astor Place, East Village, (212) 539-8778; $15. (Sinagra) Cabaret Full reviews of recent cabaret shows: nytimes.com/music. * THE BROADWAY MUSICALS OF 1930 (Monday) The sixth-season opening concert of Scott Siegels ebullient and informative Broadway by the Year series will feature Nancy Anderson, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Marc Kudisch, Deven May, Emily Skinner, Mary Testa, Jennifer Simard and Michael Winther, among others. 8 p.m., Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, Manhattan, (212) 840-2824; $40 and $45. (Stephen Holden) BARBARA CARROLL (Sunday) Even when swinging out, this Lady of a Thousand Songs remains an impressionist with special affinities for Thelonious Monk and bossa nova. 2 p.m., Algonquin Hotel, Oak Room, 59 West 44th Street, Manhattan, (212) 419-9331; $55, including brunch at noon. (Holden) KITTY CARLISLE HART (Tonight and tomorrow night) New Yorks grande dame of the performing arts is ageless, regal, entertaining and, at 95, can still sing. 8:30, Feinsteins at the Regency, 540 Park Avenue, at 61st Street, (212) 339-4095; $60, with a $40 minimum. (Holden) ANNIE ROSS (Tomorrow) Cool, funny, swinging and indestructible, this 75-year-old singer and sometime actress exemplifies old-time hip in its most generous incarnation. 7 p.m., Dannys Skylight Room, 346 West 46th Street, Clinton, (212) 265-8133; $25, with a $12 minimum. (Holden) Jazz Full reviews of recent jazz concerts: nytimes.com/music. BARRETT/WALDEN QUINTET (Tonight) The trumpeter Darren Barrett and the saxophonist Myron Walden are forward-thinking hard-bop heirs with rhythm on their minds; they have strong support in the pianist Aaron Parks, the bassist Vicente Archer and the drummer Kendrick Scott. 9 and 10:30, Jazz Gallery, 290 Hudson Street, at Spring Street, South Village, (212) 242-1063; cover, $15.(Nate Chinen) BAUHAUS QUARTET (Thursday) Kevin Norton is a probing drummer, vibraphonist and composer, although not always in that order; his Bauhaus Quartet, with Dave Ballou on trumpet, Tony Malaby on tenor saxophone and John Lindberg on bass, exemplifies the taut intellectualism of jazzs far-left wing. 8 and 10 p.m., Jimmys Restaurant, 43 East Seventh Street, East Village, (212) 982-3006; cover, $10, with a one-drink minimum. (Chinen) TAYLOR HO BYNUM SEXTET (Monday) Mr. Bynum is a strong cornetist and serious-minded composer with experimental tendencies; polyphony is the chief emphasis in his sextet, which includes Matt Bauder on tenor saxophone and clarinets, Mary Halvorson and Evan OReilly on guitars, Tomas Fujiwara on drums and Jessica Pavone on viola and bass. 8 p.m., Tonic, 107 Norfolk Street, near Delancey Street, Lower East Side, (212) 358-7501; cover, $8. (Chinen) MUSIC OF DONALD BYRD AND PEPPER ADAMS (Tuesday through March 12) The trumpeter Donald Byrd and the baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams made a passel of good hard-bop albums together from the late 1950s to the early 60s. This tribute features Jeremy Pelt on trumpet and Gary Smulyan on baritone, with a combo that includes the veteran drummer Jimmy Cobb. 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., with an 11:30 p.m. set Fridays and Saturdays, Dizzys Club Coca-Cola, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60th Street and Broadway, (212) 258-9595; cover, $30, with a minimum of $10 at tables, $5 at the bar. (Chinen) JAMES CARTER ORGAN TRIO (Wednesday through March 12) Mr. Carter, the irrepressibly charismatic saxophonist, leads a sturdy and occasionally surprising soul-jazz unit with the Hammond B-3 organist Gerard Gibbs and the drummer Leonard King. 8 and 10 p.m., Iridium, 1650 Broadway, at 51st Street, (212) 582-2121; cover, $27.50 and $30, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) CYRUS CHESTNUT QUINTET (Through Sunday) Mr. Chestnut is a stalwart, straight-ahead pianist, especially when it comes to gospel and the blues; here, as on his strong new album, Genuine Chestnut (Telarc), the guitarist Mark Whitfield is a guest. 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., with an 11:30 set tonight and tomorrow night, Dizzys Club Coca-Cola, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60th Street and Broadway, (212) 258-9595; cover, $30, with a minimum of $10 at tables, $5 at the bar. (Chinen) DOMINICK FARINACCI (Tonight) A promising young trumpeter and recent Juilliard graduate, Mr. Farinacci leads a quartet consisting of Dan Kaufman, pianist; Marco Panascia, bassist; and Quincy Davis, drummer. 7 p.m., Rubin Museum of Art, 150 West 17th Street, Chelsea, (212) 620-5000, ext. 344, www.rmanyc.org; $15. (Chinen) 4 GENERATIONS OF MILES (Through Sunday) The rapid permutation of Miles Daviss working bands makes it theoretically possible for four former sidemen to claim connection to four separate phases of his career; the musicians in question are the drummer Jimmy Cobb, the tenor saxophonist George Coleman, the bassist Buster Williams and the guitarist Mike Stern. 8, 10 and 11:30 p.m., Iridium, 1650 Broadway, at 51st Street, (212) 582-2121; cover, $32.50 and $35, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) JERRY GONZALEZ AND THE FORT APACHE BAND (Tonight) The Afro-Caribbean jazz master Jerry Gonzalez and his band set their improvisations to driving Latin rhythms. 8, Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, Manhattan, (212) 840-2824; $32.50 and $37.50. (Laura Sinagra) * FRED HERSCH (Through Sunday) Mr. Herschs solo piano recitals are transcendent affairs, as evidenced most recently by an excellent album called Fred Hersch in Amsterdam: Live at the Bimhuis (Palmetto). He is the first solo pianist ever to headline a weeklong Village Vanguard engagement. 9 and 11 p.m., Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, West Village, (212) 255-4037; cover, $20 to $25, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) * ANDREW HILL QUINTET (Tonight and tomorrow night) Time Lines, Mr. Hills new Blue Note recording, updates his visionary work of the 1960s with a patiently exploratory brand of post-bop. This engagement features the same superb ensemble as on the album: Mr. Hill on piano, Charles Tolliver on trumpet, Greg Tardy on tenor saxophone and clarinets, John Hebert on bass and Eric McPherson on drums. 9 and 11 p.m., Birdland, 315 West 44th Street, Clinton, (212) 581-3080; cover, $30, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) I LOVE A PIANO (Thursday) The latest installation of Jack Kleinsingers Highlights in Jazz series features three good pianists: Barbara Carroll and Eric Reed, each with a trio, and Junior Mance, playing solo. 8 p.m., Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Borough of Manhattan Community College, 199 Chambers Street, Lower Manhattan, (212) 220-1460; $30; $27.50 for students. (Chinen) AHMAD JAMAL TRIO (Tuesday and Wednesday) A touchstone of jazz piano since the 50s, Mr. Jamal still has his broad dynamic range and signature touch; his highly sympathetic rhythm section consists of the bassist James Cammack and the drummer Idris Muhammad. 8 and 10:30 p.m., Blue Note, 131 West Third Street, West Village, (212) 475-8592; cover, $35 at tables and a $5 minimum or $20 at the bar and a one-drink minimum. (Chinen) JOE LOVANO QUARTET (Wednesday through March 11) Mr. Lovano has become one of the stalwart saxophonists in modern jazz, equally inspired by John Coltranes harmonic inquiry, Ornette Colemans off-kilter lyricism and Ben Websters heart-rending croon. This band, his newest, includes James Weidman on piano, Esperanza Spalding on bass and Francisco Mela on drums. 9 and 11 p.m., Birdland, 315 West 44th Street, Clinton, (212)581-3080; cover, $30, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) EIVIND OPSVIKS OVERSEAS (Monday) Mr. Opsvik is a Norwegian bassist and composer who balances avant-gardism against poplike lyricism, as he demonstrates here in a band with Tony Malaby on tenor saxophone, Jacob Sacks on piano and Kenny Wollesen on drums. 9:30 p.m., Mundial, 505 East 12th Street, East Village, (212) 982-1282, mundialnyc.com; no cover. (Chinen) CHRIS POTTERS UNDERGROUND (Tuesday through March 12) The saxophonist Chris Potter has an improvisational approach thats intellectual and athletic in equal measure; his band Underground dives headlong into edgy fusion, with Adam Rogers on guitar, Craig Taborn on Fender Rhodes piano and Nate Smith on drums. 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-2232; cover, $20 and $25.(Chinen) WALLACE RONEY SEXTET (Tuesday through March 12) On his recent album Mystikal (High Note), Mr. Roney advanced a variety of Afrocentric futurism inherited and adapted from his trumpet mentor, Miles Davis. He explores similar territory in an ensemble with his wife, Geri Allen, on piano; his brother, Antoine Roney, on tenor and soprano saxophones; and the unrelated rhythm section of Val Jeanty on turntables, Clarence Seay on bass and Eric Allen on drums. 9 and 11 p.m., Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, at 11th Street, West Village, (212) 255-4037; cover, $20 to $25, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) PONCHO SANCHEZ (Through Sunday) Mr. Sanchez, a high-spirited conga player, has been one of the leading figures in Latin jazz for more than 20 years, in large part because of this effervescent working band. 8 and 10:30 p.m., Blue Note, 131 West Third Street, West Village, (212) 475-8592; cover, $35 at tables with a $5 minimum or $20 at the bar and a one-drink minimum. (Chinen) JENNY SCHEINMAN QUARTET (Tuesday) Ms. Scheinman is that rare jazz violinist who embraces her instruments folksier side without making concessions to genre; she performs with the pianist Art Hirahara, the bassist Danton Boller and the drummer Mark Ferber. 7 p.m., Barbès, 376 Ninth Street, at Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 965-9177; cover, $8. (Chinen) TONE COLLECTOR (Wednesday) This experimental acoustic threesome, made up of the tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby, the bassist Eivind Opsvik and the drummer Jeff Davis, released a bristling debut last year on Norways Jazzaway label; theyre joined here by the trombonists Ben Gerstein (at 8 p.m.) and Brian Allen (at 10 p.m.). 8 and 10 p.m., Barbès, 376 Ninth Street, at Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 965-9177; cover, $8. (Chinen) DAVID WEISS QUINTET (Tuesday through March 11) Mr. Weiss, a literate and industrious trumpeter-composer-arranger, leads a post-bop outfit featuring the powerful tenor saxophonist J. D. Allen. 11 p.m., Dizzys Club Coca-Cola, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60th Street and Broadway, (212) 258-9595; cover, $10, with a minimum of $10 at tables, $5 at the bar. (Chinen) Classical Full reviews of recent music performances: nytimes.com/music. Opera AIDA (Tomorrow and Sunday) The Amato Operas reputation is that it conveys the spirit and love of Italian opera, though the full impact is impossible to achieve in a 102-seat theater with a cast that changes at every performance. And against the odds, all the principals at a recent performance of Aida managed to make it through to the end, demonstrating a true love of the piece if not always of the pitch. Tomorrow at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 2:30 p.m., 319 Bowery, at Second Street, East Village, (212) 228-8200; $30; $25 for students and 65+. (Anne Midgette) CYRANO DE BERGERAC (Wednesday) Alfanos amiable, ambling version of Cyrano continues its Met run, and Plácido Domingo is expected to return, after vocal problems, to the title role. 8 p.m., Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6200; $26 to $175. (Bernard Holland) DARKLING (Tonight, tomorrow, Tuesday and Thursday) In an adventurous move, American Opera Projects is presenting a brave and sensitive, if at times frustrating, multimedia work. With a score by Stefan Weisman, Darkling is an operatic fantasia on themes of emotional fragmentation, in the words of the director Michael Comlish, who conceived the idea of adapting for the stage Anna Rabinowitzs book-length poem about a restless Polish couple who marry hastily before the invasion of the Nazis. 8 p.m., East 13th Street Theater, 136 East 13th Street, East Village, (212) 279-4200; $30 to $45. (Anthony Tommasini) LA FORZA DEL DESTINO (Tomorrow and Tuesday) Its tempting to say that Forza has the most numbingly ludicrous libretto of any Verdi opera, but with such stiff competition, who can say? Giancarlo del Monacos drab staging, first seen in 1996 and hidden away in storage since then, offers little help, but the Met does have a solid cast, with Deborah Voigt, Salvatore Licitra and Mark Delavan. 8 p.m., Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000; $150 to $220 remaining tomorrow; $26 to $175 on Tuesday. (Allan Kozinn) * MAZEPPA (Monday) The Metropolitan Opera has never before staged Tchaikovskys Mazeppa, although the Kirov Opera brought it to the stage here in 1998. The Kirov has a strong role in this brand-new staging: its a co-production with the Met, conducted by the Mets principal guest conductor and Kirov head, Valery Gergiev, with Olga Guryakova, Larissa Diadkova, Nikolai Putilin and Paata Burchuladze in leading roles. 8 p.m., Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000; $35 to $250. (Midgette) THE MOST HAPPY FELLA (Tomorrow, Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday) For the 50th anniversary of Frank Loessers wonderful musical, the New York City Opera opens its spring season with its production, by Philip Wm. McKinley. Though the company has had mixed success with presenting musicals, this production looks intriguing. The compelling actor Paul Sorvino takes the title role of Tony, an aging immigrant vineyard owner who courts a struggling young waitress through the mail. Loessers rich and tuneful score is more sophisticated than many an opera. George Manahan conducts. Tomorrow at 1:30 and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday at 1:30 p.m. (previews); Tuesday at 6:30 p.m., and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $45 to $120. (Tommasini) ROMÉO ET JULIETTE (Tomorrow and Thursday) The big news from the Mets new production of this Gounod opera is the French coloratura soprano Natalie Dessay. Singing with uncanny agility and lyrical elegance, she touchingly embodies the tragically impulsive young Juliette. The tenor Ramón Vargas, though a stiff actor, delivers a vocally impassioned Roméo. Bertrand de Billy conducts a refined account of Gounods most sophisticated score. (For the final performance on Thursday, Maureen OFlynn replaces Ms. Dessay.) Tomorrow at 1:30 p.m., Thursday at 8 p.m., Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000; sold out tomorrow, $26 to $175 on Thursday. (Tommasini) LA TRAVIATA (Tonight) José Luis Duval as Alfredo joins Angela Gheorghiu in this successful revival at the Met. 8, Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000; sold out. (Holland) TREEMONISHA (Thursday) The enterprising and top-rate Collegiate Chorale, with Robert Bass conducting, presents a semistaged performance of Scott Joplins 1911 opera, Treemonisha, conceived by Roger Rees. To appreciate this humane and musically beguiling work, you have to look past what contemporary audiences might see as stereotyped depictions of former slaves during Reconstruction. Still, the story is told from the perspectives of the newly freed slaves, who turn to a modest and educated young girl, Treemonisha, as their leader. And Joplins wistful music is subtle and affecting. Anita Johnson sings the title role. 8 p.m., Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500: $25 to $60. (Tommasini) Classical Music ANNE AZÉMA, JOEL COHEN and SHIRA KAMMEN (Sunday) The lutenist Joel Cohen has assembled many an inventive program for his Boston Camerata, and he brings his latest -- Chanson du Désert: The Heroic Deeds of Guillaume dOrange -- to the Cloisters for two performances. The performance, to be sung by Anne Azéma and Shira Kemmen, centers on works about the eighth- and ninth-century warrior who fought for Charlemagne and is the subject of four medieval epic poems. 1 and 3 p.m., Fort Tryon Park, (212) 650-2290; $35. (Kozinn) * MAYA BEISER (Thursday) Formerly the cellist of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Ms. Beiser has spread her wings into an even more eclectic and distinctive solo career. Her recital at Zankel Hall presents four world premieres, including a new work by Eve Beglarian, with accompanying video by the acclaimed artist Shirin Neshat. The other new works are by Michael Gordon, Joby Talbot and Brett Dean. 7:30 p.m., Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $30 and $35. (Midgette) BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (Monday) Its no doubt just a coincidence, but on Monday, when the Metropolitan Opera presents its premiere production of Tchaikovskys Mazeppa with Valery Gergiev, James Levine, the Mets music director, will be at Carnegie Hall conducting this orchestra in Beethovens Ninth Symphony. If you choose to go with Beethoven and Mr. Levine, you will also hear Schoenbergs breakthrough work, the Chamber Symphony No. 1. And the roster of vocal soloists for the Beethoven, topped by the soprano Christine Brewer, looks enticing. 8 p.m., Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $52 to $175. (Tommasini) IAN BOSTRIDGE (Wednesday) This elegant, brainy British tenor is joined by a handful of colleagues -- including the countertenor Bejun Mehta and the tenor Nathan Gunn -- for an installment in his Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall. His subject this time is Britten, who will be explored by way of his Winter Words, as well as all five Canticles. 7:30. Zankel Hall, at Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $40 to $48. (Kozinn) PAUL GALBRAITH (Tomorrow) By using an eight-string guitar, played as if it were a cello -- held vertically, and resting on a peg connected to a resonating box -- Mr. Galbraith has been able expand the volume, range and harmonic possibilities available to him. He is also a thoughtful player, and his program includes his own arrangements of Bachs Cello Suite No. 4, Ravels Mother Goose Suite -- a stretch for the guitar, but his solutions should be fascinating -- and works by Rameau, Martin and Mozart. 8 p.m., 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue, (212) 415-5500; $40. (Kozinn) * HESPÈRION XXI AND LA CAPELLA REIAL DE CATALUNYA (Tomorrow) As part of an extended visit with his various ensembles that includes performances all over Manhattan, Jordi Savall leads his remarkable Hespèrion XXI ensemble and his vocal group in works by Spanish composers, among them, Gaspar Sanz, Luis Milán, Santiago de Murcia and Matheo Flecha. 8 p.m., Church of St. Paul the Apostle, Columbus Avenue at 60th Street, (212) 854-7799; $40. (Kozinn) JERUSALEM SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (Tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday) Leon Botstein has carved out a career as a conductor on a combination of erudition and crack fund-raising skills. This weekend he comes to the New York area on tour with one of his orchestras in an uncharacteristically mainstream program that includes Coplands Appalachian Spring and Prokofievs Fifth. (The orchestra comes to Carnegie Hall on March 12.) Tomorrow at 8 p.m., Tilles Center at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University, Brookville, N.Y., (516) 299-3100; $48 to $88. Wednesday at 8 p.m., Bergen Performing Arts Center, Englewood, N.J., (201) 816-8160; $10 to $50. Thursday at 8 p.m., Community Theater, Morristown, N.J., (973) 539-8008; $40 to $47. (Midgette) LA LÉGENDE DEER (Tonight) For the 1978 opening of the Pompidou Center in Paris, the composer Iannis Xenakis created this multimedia piece, which combined music, architecture, light imagery and texts and played for three months. Last year Mode Records released a DVD and CD of the work, and tonight, in the second of two performances, it will be recreated live. 8, Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue, at Second Street, East Village, (212) 979-1027; $12. (Tommasini) MUSICIANS FROM MARLBORO (Tonight and tomorrow) Every season this renowned festival in Vermont sends rosters of performers, both veteran artists and young talents, on tour across the country. Two different groups are performing in New York this weekend. Tonight the pianist Gilbert Kalish is joined by several impressive wind players in works by Nielsen, Schubert, Carter and Beethoven. Tomorrow the Peoples Symphony Concerts series presents a roster of string players and the pianist Jeremy Denk in works by John Harbison, Ravel and Schubert. Tonight at 8, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, (212) 570-3949; $40. Tomorrow at 8 p.m., Washington Irving High School, Irving Place at 16th Street, Manhattan, (212) 586-4680; $9. (Tommasini) NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC (Tonight, tomorrow and Tuesday) Ludovic Morlot will make his Philharmonic conducting debut with music by Elliott Carter and Schumann, as well as the Brahms Violin Concerto with Frank Peter Zimmermann. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8, Tuesday night at 7:30, Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $26 to $94. (Holland) RUSSIAN NATIONAL ORCHESTRA (Sunday, Monday and Wednesday) Three concerts of Russian music played by Russians. The conductor Vladimir Jurowski brings Yefim Bronfman to play Tchaikovskys First Piano Concerto on Sunday, and continues with some Stravinsky and much more Tchaikovsky. Sunday at 3 p.m., Monday and Wednesday at 8 p.m., Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $35 to $69. (Holland) DORA SERES (Tuesday) The organization Young Concert Artists often presents New York recital debuts by its latest audition winners, but this weeks recital by Dora Seres, a young Hungarian flutist, definitely does not appear to be more of the same -- at least on paper -- because of striking programming that includes works by Toru Takemitsu and Lowell Liebermann, Carl Reinecke and Paul Taffanel, Sigfrid Karg-Elert and Carl Maria von Weber. 7:30 p.m., Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $25 and $35. (Midgette) MIHAELA URSULEASA (Sunday) This young Romanian-born, Vienna-trained pianist performs a recital of Shostakovich, Scriabin, Beethoven and Brahms. 5 p.m., Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, Manhattan, (212) 288-0700; $20.(Jeremy Eichler) * VIENNA PHILHARMONIC (Tonight through Sunday) Riccardo Muti leads one of the worlds premium orchestras in three programs that, conservative as they are, at least put a toe into the last century. Tonight, Hindemiths Nobilissima Visione Suite and the Schubert Ninth. Tomorrow, Schuberts Fourth and Rosamunde Overture, Mozarts Sinfonia Concertante and Strausss Death in Transfiguration should let listeners revel in the orchestras uncommonly rich string sound. And on Sunday, Mr. Muti draws on what must seem like spicy exoticism to the Viennese, with Bartoks Two Pictures, Ravels Rapsodie Espagnole and Fallas Three-Cornered Hat, all preceded by music from the orchestras home turf, Mozarts Haffner Symphony. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8, Sunday at 2 p.m., Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $58 to $195. (Kozinn) OXANA YABLONSKAYA (Tonight) This forceful Russian-born pianist plays a recital of Chopin, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff and Weinberg, presented by the Chopin Society of New York. 7:30, Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $35. (Eichler) YING QUARTET (Thursday) The four Ying siblings have been playing together well since long before marketers went to town with the 5 Browns. Here they survey recent jazz-tinged chamber music by the New York composer Patrick Zimmerli. 7:30 p.m., the Thalia at Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, at 95th Street, (212) 864-5400; $21. (Eichler) Dance Full reviews of recent performances: nytimes.com/dance. AMDAT (Tonight and tomorrow night) With the aid of dance and video, Andrea Haenggis Escalator transforms lobbies and moving stairways into four magical theaters, each evoking a mood of its own. 7 and 8:30, World Financial Center, 220 Vesey Street, Lower Manhattan, (212) 945-0505 or www.worldfinancialcenter.com; free. (Jack Anderson) ASUNDER (Tonight and tomorrow night) Three choreographers -- Jen Abrams, Clarinda Mac Low and Tara OCon -- set peoples inner and outer lives clashing. (Through March 18.) 8, Wow Cafe Theater, 59-61 East Fourth Street, fourth floor, East Village, (212) 696-8904; $12; students, $10. (Anderson) IVY BALDWIN DANCE AND KATE WEARE (Tonight and tomorrow night) Ms. Baldwin presents Gone Missing, a dance-theater piece featuring weary travelers lost in a winter forest. Ms. Weare explores bodily impulses and longing in Wet Road. 7:30, Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 924-0077 or www.dtw.org; $12 and $20. (Erika Kinetz) BELLYDANCE SUPERSTARS (Tonight) The only professional touring group of its kind celebrates various tribal, Egyptian and cabaret styles of belly dancing. 8, Colden Center, Queens College, Kissena Boulevard and the Long Island Expressway, Flushing, Queens, (800) 594-8499, www.bellydancesuperstars.tickets.musictoday.com; $35 and $45. (Anderson) DANCE AT DIXON PLACE: MOVING MEN (Tuesday) Arthur Aviles has chosen Jeffrey Peterson, Baraka de Soleil and David Kieffer for this series of choreography by men, with Afua Hall holding down the fort for the opposite sex. 8 p.m., Dixon Place, 258 Bowery, between Houston and Prince Streets, SoHo, (212) 219-0736 or www.dixonplace.org; $12 or T.D.F.; students and 65+, $10. (Jennifer Dunning) DANCEBRAZIL (Tonight through Sunday) Two programs explore the rich cultures of Bahia, Brazil, in choreography that merges Afro-Brazilian dance, live music and the martial arts form of capoeira, including a new dance by the company director Jelon Vieira to music by Tuze de Abreu. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8, Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 242-0800, www.Joyce.org; $42. (Dunning) DRASTIC ACTION (Tonight through Sunday) Aviva Geismar and her company will present new and recent dances that explore group dynamics and communication. They feature a woman in a rocking chair, and a mythical creature that is part bird, part snake and part masquerade performer. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8:30, Sunday at 2 p.m., West End Theater, 263 West 86th Street, Manhattan, (212) 337-9565; $10 and $12. (Dunning) DONNA SCRO GENTILE/FREESPACE DANCE (Thursday) Ms. Gentile, who has danced with Sean Curran and Murray Louis, will present choreography set to music by Daniel Bernard Roumain, Glen Fittin, Tigger Benford and Peter Jones, performed by the resident company at Montclair State University. (Through March 11.) 8:30 p.m., St. Marks Church, 131 East 10th Street, East Village, (212) 674-8194; $15. (Dunning) REBECCA KELLY BALLET (Thursday through March 11) The company celebrates its 25th anniversary with performances featuring two guest artists: Jared Matthews of American Ballet Theater and Duncan Cooper of Dance Theater of Harlem. 8 p.m., John Jay Theater, 899 10th Avenue, at 58th Street, Clinton, (212) 279-4200 or http://www.ticketcentral.com. $40. (Anderson) KIDS CAFE FESTIVAL: A CELEBRATION OF FLAMENCO MUSIC AND DANCE (Tomorrow and Sunday) This weekend of performances by children and teenagers from all over the city will include Doug Varones Democracy. 3 p.m., Kumble Theater, Long Island University Brooklyn Campus, Flatbush and DeKalb Avenues, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, (718) 522-4696 or www.dancewave.org; $20; $12 for children 12 and younger. (Dunning) ASHLEIGH LEITE (Thursday through March 11) Autopsy, an emotionally charged evening of dance, light and sound, follows the interior journeys of five women. 8 p.m., Joyce SoHo, 155 Mercer Street, (212) 334-9907; $15. (Anderson) SUSAN MARSHALL & COMPANY (Wednesday through March 18) A skilled choreographic storyteller offers Cloudless, a collection of danced short stories, some explosive, others quietly intimate. Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 924-0077 or www.dtw.org; $15 and $25. (Anderson) MOMIX (Tomorrow) Moses Pendletons Lunar Sea creates its own fantastic world with the aid of dance, props, lights and shadows. 7:30 p.m., New Jersey Performing Arts Center, 1 Center Street, Newark, (888) 466-5722; $47. (Anderson) NEW YORK THEATER BALLET (Today through Sunday) The Alice in Wonderland Follies romps through Lewis Carrolls classic childrens story with the aid of dance forms ranging from classical ballet to Irish step dancing and African Juba. Today at 10 a.m., noon and 7:30 p.m.; tomorrow and Sunday at 11 a.m. and 1 and 3:30 p.m. Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street, Manhattan, (212) 307-4100; $30, ages 12 and younger, $25. (Anderson) 92nd STREET Y HARKNESS DANCE FESTIVAL (Wednesday through March 12) An annual event concludes with the Francesca Harper Project in Modo Fusion, a multimedia work that Ms. Harper, a dancer, singer and choreographer, conceived in collaboration with Brian Reeder, a former dancer with American Ballet Theater. Wednesday, Thursday and March 11 at 8 p.m.; March 12 at 2 and 7 p.m. Ailey Theater, 405 West 55th Street, Clinton, (212) 415-5500 or www.92Y.org/harknessfestival; $20; $15 for students and 65+. (Dunning) PAPPA TARAHUMARA (Tonight) This performance group makes its New York debut with Island, a tragic, multidisciplinary adaptation of Gabriel García Márquezs story A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings. 7:30 p.m., Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, Manhattan, (212) 715-1258 or www.japansociety.org; $30; members, $25. (Kinetz) * LAURA PAWEL DANCE (Tonight through Sunday) Ms. Pawel and her dancers and musicians, some of them grizzled, longtime presences on the citys modern-dance scene, are content to make and perform small, plain dances about the everyday, often seasoned with wry reminiscences that reveal the everyday as not so ordinary. And their contentment is infectious. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8; Sunday at 5 p.m. Dance Forum, 20 East 17th Street, Manhattan, (212) 212-633-7202; $15.. (Dunning) CIE. MARTINE PISANI (Tonight through Sunday) From Paris, this modern-dance company will present sans, which merges comedy and minimalism in the presences and movement styles of three company members. Tonight at 8; tomorrow at 7 and 10 p.m.; Sunday at 8 p.m. Joyce SoHo, 155 Mercer Street, (212) 242-0800 or www.joyce.org; $20. (Dunning) * REBECCA RICE DANCE (Tomorrow) Ms. Rice comes from an august modern-dance family that includes Carolyn Brown and Marion Rice. In this New York debut, she will present pieces set to music by John Harbison and Elena Ruehr, as well as Bach played live by the cellist Emmanuel Feldman. The Boston reviewer Marcia B. Siegel described her work as drawing from the theatricality of Denishawn dance, the extroverted skills of ballet and the physical investment of modern dance. Tomorrow at 8:30 p.m., Merce Cunningham Studio, 55 Bethune Street, at Washington Street, West Village, (978) 852-3863; $20 and $35; $15 for students. (Dunning) PEGGY SPINA TAP (Tonight and tomorrow) Ms. Spina celebrates 25 years of performing and choreographing tap in a program of dances set to music performed live by the Joel Forrester Quartet. Tonight at 8, tomorrow at 6 and 8:30 p.m., Spina Loft, 115 Prince Street, SoHo, (212) 674-8885; $20. (Dunning) * PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY (Tonight through Sunday, and Tuesday through Thursday) The companys annual City Center season continues with repertory programs all week. Tonights offers the New York premiere of Banquet of Vultures and also includes a revival of Oh, You Kid! (last seen here in 2001). Spring Rounds, the other New York premiere, is scheduled for tomorrow night and Tuesday. Other notable revivals for the week will be Arabesque on Sunday, last seen in 2001; Dust on Tuesday (1997); Brandenburgs on Wednesday (1997); and Speaking in Tongues on Thursday (2002). Tonight, tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday at 8 p.m.; tomorrow at 2 p.m.; Sunday at 3 p.m.; and Tuesday at 7 p.m. City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan, (212) 581-1212 or www.nycitycenter.org; $15 to $80. (John Rockwell) Art Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art. Museums * AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM: SURFACE ATTRACTION: PAINTED FURNITURE FROM THE COLLECTION, through March 26. The remarkable images, abstract patterns and floral motifs that flutter across the 30 or so tables, chairs, cabinets and blanket chests in this beautiful, convention-stretching show confirm that from the late 1600s to the late 1800s, quite a bit of American painting talent and ambition was channeled into the decoration of everyday wood objects. The combination of imagination and utility, of economic means and lush effects, defines the human desire for beauty as hard-wired. 45 West 53rd Street, (212) 265-1040. (Roberta Smith) * BROOKLYN MUSEUM: SYMPHONIC POEM: THE ART OF AMINAH BRENDA LYNN ROBINSON, through Aug. 14. This prodigious show, by an artist born and still living in Columbus, Ohio, celebrates her heritage in paintings, drawings, sculpture, stitchery, leather work and less classifiable forms of expression. Besides its sheer visual wizardry, using materials like leaves, twigs, bark, buttons and cast-off clothes, her art is compelling in that it ruminates on the history of black migration to, and settlement in, the United States, from early times to the present, in a garrulous, very personal way. One particularly intense work, based on the belief that Abubakari II, ruler of Mali, crossed the Atlantic nearly 200 years before Columbus to discover the Americas, links the past with the present and Africa with the beloved Columbus of Ms. Robinsons childhood. Her works do not lend themselves to easy deciphering, but her magic with materials and her daring compositional imagination draw you in. Her art rings true. 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park, Brooklyn (718) 638-5000. (Grace Glueck) * COOPER-HEWITT NATIONAL DESIGN MUSEUM: FASHION IN COLORS, through March 26. Drawn from the collection of the Kyoto Costume Institute in Japan, this sumptuous show arranges 68 often lavish Western gowns and ensembles according to the colors of the spectrum and reinforces their progress with a posh, color-coordinated installation design. For an experience of color as color, it is hard to beat, but it also says a great deal about clothing, visual perception and beauty. 2 East 91st Street, (212) 849-8400.(Smith) * SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM: DAVID SMITH: A CENTENNIAL, through May 14. David Smith is best known for his worst work, bulky sculptures of the important kind that museums and banks like to buy. Much (though not all) of that material has been excised from this survey in favor of smaller, earlier, nonmonumental pieces that the curator, Carmen Gimenez, presents with plenty of air and light. The result is exemplary as a David Smith experience, an American Modernism experience and a Guggenheim Museum experience. 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, (212) 423-3500. (Holland Cotter) JEWISH MUSEUM: SARAH BERNHARDT: THE ART OF HIGH DRAMA, through April 2. This exhibition is devoted to the flamboyant 19th-century actress whose name was once invoked by mothers as a warning to melodramatic daughters: Who do you think you are, Sarah Bernhardt? Its almost overstuffed roster of items includes original Félix Nadar photos of Bernhardt at 20 and the human skull presented to her by Victor Hugo, the costumes she wore as Cleopatra and Joan of Arc, her own accomplished sculptures and relics of lovers and American tours. 1109 Fifth Avenue, at 92nd Street, (212) 423-3200. (Edward Rothstein) METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: ART OF MEDICINE IN ANCIENT EGYPT, through May 7. Egypt was no picnic 5,000 years ago. The average life span was about 40 years. Wild animals were ever-present. Childbirth was perilous. Prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness were shots in the dark. Doctors were priests. Medicine was a blend of science, religion and art. The 65 or so objects in this beautiful show functioned as all three. Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, (212) 535-7710. (Cotter) * MET: ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG: COMBINES, through April 2. Big and handsome almost to a fault. Theres something weird about seeing once joyfully rude and over-the-top contraptions from the 1950s and 60s lined up like choirboys in church, with their ties askew and shirttails out. But even enshrined, the combines still manage to seem incredibly fresh and odd, almost otherworldly. I thought of a medieval treasury -- all the rich colors and lights and intricate details. The most beautiful tend to be the early ones: large but delicate, with a subtle, fugitive emotional pitch. (See above.) (Michael Kimmelman) THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: EDVARD MUNCH: THE MODERN LIFE OF THE SOUL, through May 8. This affecting, full-scale retrospective is the first survey of this Norwegian painter in an American museum in almost 30 years. Its more than 130 oils and works on paper cover Munchs entire career, from 1880 to 1944. It also includes a large selection of prints -- many ingeniously adapted from his oils -- that played an important role in his art. 11 West 53rd Street, (212) 708-9400. (Glueck) THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: ON SITE: NEW ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN, through May 1. Since the early 1970s, when Spain began to awaken from the isolation of a four-decade dictatorship, Spanish architects have produced designs of unusual depth, often with a firm connection to the land, a sense of humility and a way of conveying continuity with the past while embracing the present. Packed with pretty images and elegant models, this exhibition lacks the scholarly depth you might have hoped for on such a mesmerizing subject. (See above.)(Nicolai Ouroussoff) THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: JOHN SZARKOWSKI: PHOTOGRAPHS, through May 15. A kind of homecoming, this beautiful show surveys the pictures taken by Mr. Szarkowski before and after his influential 29-year term at the helm of the Moderns photography department. The best show him combining the styles of the photographers he has long admired with his native ground -- the architecture and landscape of the upper Midwest. (See above.) (Smith) P.S. 1: JESSICA STOCKHOLDER: OF STANDING FLOAT ROOTS IN THIN AIR, through May 1. A soaring, cannily designed installation -- made of airborne plastic bins, electric lights, orange extension cords and an old armchair topping a wooden tower -- by a sculptor known for orchestrating productive collisions of formalism and consumerism. 22-25 Jackson Avenue, at 46th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, (718) 784-2084. (Ken Johnson) P.S. 1: RICKY SWALLOW: METICULOUS, through March 20. Extraordinarily realistic and symbolically portentous sculptures carved from wood by Australias representative to last summers Venice Biennale, in which three of the five works on view here were included. (See above.) (Johnson) * STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM: FREQUENCY, through March 12. Despite some marked unevenness, this display of new and recently emerged talent confirms the current vitality of black art, contemporary art and midsize New York museums. Names to look out for include Kalup Linzy, Leslie Hewitt, Jeff Sonhouse, Shinique Smith, Demetrius Oliver, Michael Paul Britto, Nick Cave, Mickalene Thomas and Michael Queenland, but dont stop there. 144 West 125th Street, (212) 864-4500. (Smith) Galleries: 57th Street STEPHEN GREENE: PLEASURE DOME In abstract paintings from late in his career, Greene (1917-1999) created shimmering mindscapes in which fiery reds and oranges and electric blues and greens glow through areas of muddy browns and grays. Made with a touch that is sometimes brusque and sometimes exquisitely sensitive, the paintings combine sensuous immediacy and visionary romanticism. Jason McCoy, 41 East 57th Street, (212) 319-1996, through March 11. (Johnson) Galleries: Chelsea NATALIE FRANK: UNVEILING Still in graduate school (at Columbia) but already the subject of considerable media attention, Ms. Frank paints expansive, Eric Fischl-like pictures in which nude bodies and lavish floral arrangements combine to create anxiously erotic daydreams. Briggs Robinson, 527 West 29th Street, (212) 560-9075, through March 11. (Johnson) AMY GRANAT: SCRATCH FILMS/STARS WAY OUT (FOR O.K.) A beautiful installation using three looped projections of manipulated black-and-white film that create an animated but slightly sinister environment of shifting geometric motifs: parallel lines, blocks and spots. It might have been made at almost any time during the last 40 years, but the percussive soundtrack provides a modicum of newness. More is needed. Oliver Kamm/5BE, 621 West 27th Street, (212) 255-0979, through March 11. (Smith) JERRY KEARNS: FOREVER MORE For many years Mr. Kearns has been making illustrative paintings combining Pop-Surrealist style, leftist politics and anti-consumerist social commentary, with humor and obviousness often battling to a draw. His new paintings feature muscle-bound Jesus figures, hysterical hermaphrodites, creepy children, magical birds, fast-food products and heavenly blue skies. Michael Steinberg, 526 West 26th Street, (212) 924-5770, through March 11. (Johnson) JAMES RIECK: FLOWER GIRLS Working from old bridal catalogues, Mr. Rieck paints silvery cropped images of angelic girls wearing white dresses, shoes and gloves. Lyons Wier, 511 West 25th Street, (212) 242-6220, through March 11. (Johnson) MIMI SMITH: DRAWINGS FROM THE 60S TO THE PRESENT Known for witty feminist sculptures based on womens clothing, Ms. Smith here presents drawings sampling her five-decade career, including a large, three-dimensional paper house covered with fine writing protesting environmental pollution and recent sets of finely made images of shoes and underwear representing stages in a womans life from infancy to old age. Kustera Tilton, 520 West 21st Street, (212) 989-0082, through March 4. (Johnson) Other Galleries * DO YOU THINK IM DISCO Theres a big story to be told about disco culture of the 1970s, which had roots in rhythm and blues, African-American church music, 1960s drug culture, gay liberation and all manner of anti-establishment politics. This modest group show touches on all of these elements, however glancingly and unsystematically, by considering the trickle-down effect of discomania on some new art today. Longwood Art Gallery@Hostos, 450 Grand Concourse, at 149th Street, Mott Haven, the Bronx, (718) 518-6728, through March 18. (Cotter) * THE DOWNTOWN SHOW: THE NEW YORK ART SCENE, 1974-1984 The real down-and-dirty downtown art scene, when the East Village bloomed, punk and new wave rock assailed the ears, graffiti spread like kudzu and heroin, along with extreme style, raged, is the subject of this wild and woolly show. Its a humongous time warp of more than 450 paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, videos, posters, ephemera and things in between by artists, writers, performers, musicians and maestros of mixed media, from a photograph of the transvestite Candy Darling as she posed on her deathbed to a small, painted sculpture made of elephant dung by David Hammons. With so many clashing ideologies, points of view and attitudes toward art-making, this no-holds-barred hodgepodge generates the buzz and stridency of, say, Canal Street on payday. New York University, Grey Art Gallery, 100 Washington Square East, (212) 998-6780; and Fales Library, 70 Washington Square South, (212) 988-2596, Greenwich Village; through April 1. (Glueck) * ANYA GALLACCIO: ONE ART The viscerally poetic single work occupying Sculpture Centers spacious main gallery is a 50-foot weeping cherry tree that was cut up and reassembled in the gallery, where it is held in place by steel cables and bolts. Sculpture Center, 44-19 Purves Street, at Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, (718) 361-1750, through April 3. (Johnson) THE STUDIO VISIT The studio visit, a time-honored ritual that everyone in the art world has both endured and learned from, is taken to its limit in Exit Arts latest exhibition marathon. Each of the 160 mostly short videos represents one artists idea of, play on, or substitute for, a studio visit. It is a show that often cries out for a fast-forward button, but there are some notable gems -- for example, by Joyce Pensato, Cynthia von Buhler, Ida Applebroog, Bruce Pearson, Lance Wakeling, Taylor McKimens, Paul Wirhun, Elisabeth Kley, Christy Gast and Kim Jones. Exit Art, 475 10th Avenue, at 36th Street, Manhattan, (212) 966-7745, through March 25. (Smith) ZOO STORY A clay gorilla by Daisy Youngblood, a bronze she-wolf by Kiki Smith, a flock of concrete sheep by Françoise-Xavier Lalanne and works about animals by more than 20 other artists, including John Baldessari, Katharina Fritsch, Ross Bleckner and Rebecca Horn, turn the first floor of this sleek, three-story private museum into a diverting menagerie. Fisher Landau Center for Art, 38-27 30th Street, Long Island City, Queens, (718) 937-0727, through June 12. (Johnson) Last Chance CAITLIN ATKINSON: CHAPTERS Comical and touching staged photographs portray the artist herself in moments of anxiety and disappointment: contemplating a dish of lasagna she burned; apparently abandoned in an empty grocery store parking lot; and starting to disrobe at a nude beach. Foley, 547 West 27th Street, (212) 244-9081, closes tomorrow. (Johnson) JOE BRADLEY: KURGAN WAVES Large, blocky men assembled from flimsy, brusquely painted canvases seem to have convened for a mysterious tribal ritual in Mr. Bradleys sharp sendup of Minimalist orthodoxy. Canada, 55 Chrystie Street, between Hester and Canal Streets, Lower East Side, (212) 925-4631, closes tomorrow. (Johnson) CHUCK CLOSE, ANNIE LEIBOVITZ, VIK MUNIZ: INVENTIVE FASHION PHOTOGRAPHS Photographs of the silhouettes of fashion models, shaped in bent wire and based on fashion photographs by Vik Muniz; daguerreotype pictures of a naked Kate Moss; and fashion spreads by Annie Leibovitz based on Alice in Wonderland. Danziger, 521 West 26th Street, (212) 629-6778, closes tomorrow. (Johnson) * METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: ANTONELLO DA MESSINA, This small, focused show presents the work of a Sicilian master (about 1430-1479) regarded as the greatest painter to emerge from southern Italy in the 15th century. His signature work, shown here, is The Virgin Annunciate (about 1475-76), depicting Mary as a young Sicilian girl at the moment of the Annunciation, when she is told by the angel Gabriel that she will bear Jesus. The genius of the work lies in the way a traditional icon has been imbued with the life force of a flesh-and-blood human being. Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, (212) 535-7710, closes Sunday. (Glueck) ROBERT S. NEUMAN: FIFTY YEARS With good-humored generosity and a skillful, sensuous touch, Mr. Neuman has painted his way through several different genres over the course of his five-decade career, including Abstract Expressionism, geometric formalism, funky allegorical narrative and painterly landscapes that mourn the losses of the American Indians. Allan Stone, 113 East 90th Street, (212) 987-4997, closes Monday.. (Johnson) * P.S. 1: PETER HUJAR, When Peter Hujar died in 1987, he was a figure of acute interest to a small group of fans, and unknown to practically everyone else. His photographs of desiccated corpses in Sicilian catacombs and studio portraits of New Yorks downtown demimonde were a gorgeous shock, and their cocktail of Nadar, Weegee and Vogue shaped the work of many younger artists. This surveyish sampling includes several of his recurrent themes: portraits of people and animals, landscapes, still lifes and erotica. Sensuality and mortality are the binders throughout, inseparable. 22-25 Jackson Avenue, at 46th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, (718) 784-2084, closes Monday. (Cotter) * MATT SAUNDERS The work of this young Berlin-based American artist falls midway between Robert Ryman and Andy Warhol in its acute awareness of paintings physical constitution and its love of movie stars and glamour. The slick, illustrational painting style is a big problem, but the use of light, space, film projectors and the moving image (in a hand-drawn animation) has considerable potential. Harris Lieberman, 89 Vandam Street, South Village, (212) 206-1290, closes tomorrow. (Smith) MACRAE SEMANS This New York debut introduces a promising bricoleur whose sculptures are carefully worked-out vortexes of abject and elegant and found and made that make rich asides to the histories of art and design but need to distinguish themselves from the work of several other artists mining the same vein. Taxter & Spengemann, 504 West 22nd Street, (212) 924-0212, closes tomorrow. (Smith) SITE 92 The second exhibition in this nonprofit gallerys impressive big, new space presents site-specific works by more than 25 artists. Highlights include a colorful column of hovering butterflies made of candy wrappers by Luisa Caldwell; fanciful architectural elements painted on the wall by Amy Yoes; people imitating the sounds of pigeons in an audio-video work by Beth Krebs; and, by Virginia Poundstone, a tableau representing a satellite that has crashed in the jungle. Smack Mellon, 92 Plymouth Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn, (718) 834-8761, closes Sunday. (Johnson) SPACE BOOMERANG This darkly theatrical show includes sculptures like Cubist bathtubs by Mike Bouchet; a bicycle with endlessly spinning wheels by Jonathan Monk; a Minimalist wall sculpture dented on purpose by Bruno Peinado; a wall that intermittently vibrates violently by Loris Gréaud; a magical light and smoke sculpture by Ann Veronica Janssens; a video documenting Gianni Mottis walk through a particle accelerator; a motorcycle immersed in the wax of burning candles by Mark Handforth; and a long, sleek wall of black plastic-shaded lights by Lang/Baumann. Swiss Institute, 495 Broadway, near Broome Street, SoHo, (212) 925-2035, closes Thursday. (Johnson)

Mordor - TV Tropes

One does not simply walk into Mordor. Its black gates are guarded by more than just orcs. There is evil there that does not sleep, and the Great Eye is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire, ash, and dust.

The Divestment Distraction and A Positive Vision of Sustainability

The environmental community has long needed to stop bad things from happening and over time has developed the mindset that the job of environmental protection is to avert damage and destruction. Emerging naturally from that mindset is the tactic that.

The Smurfs of Chaos are upon us.. behold and despair.

Gallery Votes: 2266. Posts: 1206. Joined: 2009/04/20 06:52:56. Location: Australia Offline Filter Thread �� Direct Link This Post. Love it. Nice painting too - nice whites (loads of texture and depth), and good smurf blues. The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity; and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The Call of Cthulhu��.

Refugee Nation, why? ��� Quadrant Online

Conservative commentator Janet Albrechtsen wrote in The Australian this week that there ���is a strong case for Australia to settle more than the 13,770 refugees��� accepted in 2009-10. Why is there a strong case you might ask,. It is plainly ridiculous that we are expected to continually pick up the pieces for dysfunctional, corrupt, backward, culturally-deficient societies that continually create chaos and despair for their own people. When is it going to stop? When is��.

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Climate change is a disaster ��� it has to be the cause of all humanity. Photograph: Alamy. Contact author. @Freedland. Friday 6 March 2015 14.07 EST Last modified on Monday 9 March 2015 06.57 EDT. Share on Facebook · Share on Twitter · Share via .

NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE YEAR: 1994

This list has been selected from books reviewed since the Christmas Books issue of December 1993. The list suggests only high points in the main fields of reader interest, and it does not include titles chosen by the editors of the Book Review as the Best Books of 1994. Books are arranged alphabetically under subject headings. Biographies and memoirs of people known for their contributions in fields other than literature and history are listed in appropriate categories. Art, Music & Popular Culture AS SEEN ON TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s. By Karal Ann Marling. (Harvard University, $24.95.) Themes of the mythic decade -- Disneyland, tail fins, Elvis and others -- shrewdly observed by a witty, rompish historian.

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Fresh tales of chaos emerge from early in Fukushima.

Desdemona Despair is the clearinghouse for all of the very worst news about the future of life on Earth, such as global warming, climate change, deforestation, overfishing, acidification, oil spills, resource depletion, drought,��.

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A Mix of Pattern and Chaos | Alunas Travel the World Blog

A little more pressure there, a bit faster jet streams aloft, just a tad more moisture in the air, and your existence flips from being one of peaceful contemplation and smooth progress to a freaking freefall into chaos and despair.. Then they all agreed that there would be a low-pressure system forming off Australias Northeast in the Coral Sea, head out into the Pacific on a standard easterly course, slowly fill in and then eventually cross our path by day six or seven as a��.

Protesters make city peak hour chaos - Herald Sun

PROTESTERS have brought the city to a standstill, causing traffic and tram chaos in the CBD.. A sperm whale has delighted scientists during a deep-sea exploration of the Gulf of Mexico... THE revolutionary drug that saved Ron Walkers life has been approved for Australians with advanced melanoma, as a new trial reveals it significantly boosts survival rates.. ANNE of Green Gables fans are in the depths of despair after news of Jonathan Crombies death.

The Listings

A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy Broadway and Off Broadway shows this weekend. Approximate running times are in parentheses. * denotes a highly recommended show. + means discounted tickets were available at the Theater Development Funds TKTS booth for performances last Friday and Saturday nights. ++ means discounted tickets were available at the TKTS booth for last Saturday night. Full reviews of current shows, additional listings, showtimes and tickets: nytimes.com/theater. Theater Broadway + BROOKLYN THE MUSICAL. The enterprising design team of Mark Schoenfeld and Barri McPhersons aggressively maudlin show has come up with all sorts of ideas for converting everyday urban detritus into glamorous props and accessories, from traffic cones into megaphones to garbage bags into evening gowns. But the whole production, directed by Jeff Calhoun, is a kind of cultural recycling of discarded showbiz forms. An urban fairy tale told by street singers, Brooklyn is a throwback to the simple and whimsy-laden little musicals that blossomed off Broadway several decades ago. Try to imagine a sanitized Hair or a secular Godspell, with a helping of funky 70s disco, all filtered through the throat-stretching vocal pyrotechnics of American Idol. If that hybrid appeals to you, youre welcome to it. If not, you may find yourself feeling like a cranky commuter in a subway car, trapped with a perky team of harmonizers who say they just want to leave you with a smile on your face (1:45). Plymouth, 236 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays at 7 p.m.; Wednesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m. Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $25 to $96.25. BEN BRANTLEY ++ LA CAGE AUX FOLLES. This alternately pallid and garish revival of the 1983 musical, with songs by Jerry Herman and a book by Harvey Fierstein, comes to life only when its cross-dressing chorus line takes over. This story of a gay couple who run a nightclub in St.-Tropez has two bright stars in Daniel Davis (as the manly part of the couple) and the wonderful but slightly miscast Gary Beach (as the womanly one). But Jerry Zakss production often gives the impression of merely going through the motions, amiably but robotically, of its gag-laden, sentimental plot. What makes La Cage worth visiting for people whose diet does not include canned corn and packaged sugar is the plumed and spangled all-male ensemble of dancers. Each one emerges as a saucy individual, and as a team they have been choreographed by Jerry Mitchell with a feisty sense of humor and an athletic verve that should make Arnold Schwarzenegger think twice about using girly men as a pejorative term (2:30). Marquis Theater, 1535 Broadway, between 45th and 46th Streets, (212) 307-4100. Tuesdays at 7 p.m.; Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $25 to $100. BRANTLEY *++ DAME EDNA: BACK WITH A VENGEANCE! It was nearly a half-century ago that Edna Everage (damehood still awaited her) was invented by a young Australian drama student named Barry Humphries, whose body the mauve-haired entertainer continues to take over for public appearances. Rather like the plant in The Little Shop of Horrors, the initially blowsy Edna kept becoming larger, glitzier and hungrier as she fed on the adulation of fans over the years. As her exhaustingly funny new show makes clear, that growth process hasnt stopped. When she last appeared on Broadway five years ago, she was merely a megastar, Dame Edna condescendingly tells her audience; now she is a glittering gigastar. In this singing, dancing shrine to herself, she proves it by brilliantly exploiting our cultures masochistic obsession with the rich and famous (2:30). Music Box Theater, 239 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays at 7 p.m.; Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $67.50 to $87.50. BRANTLEY *++ DEMOCRACY. Michael Frayns glorious study of the mutations of politics and the men who practice it, directed by Michael Blakemore, is one of those rare dramas that dont just dare to think big but that fully translate their high aspirations to the stage, with sharp style and thrilling clarity. For New York theatergoers who have endured the recent spate of dutiful revivals and misconceived star vehicles, watching this gripping study of the fraught glory years of Chancellor Willy Brandt of West Germany and the spy who loved him is like riding a wave after dog paddling in shallow waters (2:30). Brooks Atkinson Theater, 256 West 47th Street, (212) 307-4100. Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $60 to $95. BRANTLEY ++ GEM OF THE OCEAN. Theatergoers who have followed the work of August Wilson will find in this grandly evangelical drama a touchstone for his great cycle of plays chronicling the African-American experience in the 20th century. Set in 1904 in Pittsburgh, Gem is chronologically the first chapter in the cycle. As such, it is a swelling overture of things to come, a battle hymn for an inchoate republic of men and women just beginning to discover the price of freedom. It is also the least dramatically involving of Mr. Wilsons plays. Directed by Kenny Leon, with a strong cast led by Phylicia Rashad as a former slave who is more than 280 years old, Gem has passages of transporting beauty. But the metaphorical resonance of events and relationships eclipses dramatic immediacy here (2:30). Walter Kerr Theater, 219 West 48th Street, (212) 239-6200. Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m. Tickets: $25 to $86. BRANTLEY ++ PACIFIC OVERTURES. The director Amon Miyamoto dazzled New Yorkers at the Lincoln Center Festival two years ago with his visiting Japanese-language production of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidmans 1976 musical about American gunboat diplomacy as visited on 19th-century Japan. Now Mr. Miyamoto has revisited the show with an English-speaking, predominantly Asian-American cast, including B. D. Wong as the wryly omniscient narrator. The shows scenic and conceptual elements are essentially the same. including the amusing representation of Commodore Perry as a feral barbarian. But something has definitely been lost in the retranslation. The production does give beguiling due to Mr. Sondheims silken, silvery score with orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick. But an uneasy tentativeness pervades the stage like a mist of perspiration (2:30). Studio 54, 254 West 54th Street, (212) 719-1300. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets: $36.25 to $91.25. BRANTLEY + THE RIVALS. Here she is at last! Dear old Mrs. Malaprop! The delightful Mrs. M, who, with a disdainful nod to Richard Brinsley Sheridan, misspoke her way to immortality in the pages of the Oxford English Dictionary. You know the word, youve probably made the mistake, and now, courtesy of the new Broadway revival of The Rivals, Sheridans celebrated 1775 comedy of manners, you can finally make the acquaintance of the famous dame who generously bequeathed her name to a linguistic error. As personified by Dana Ivey, an actress of blissfully well-honed comic instincts, Mrs. Malaprop is indeed the main event in Mark Lamoss plumply upholstered production. But despite a largely zesty cast and a first-class production, the uncomfortable truth is Sheridans comedy is one of those approved-and-certified classics that require unexpected reserves of patience and fortitude. Intermittently adorable, it is also, and not infrequently, tedious (2:30). Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $55 to $85. CHARLES ISHERWOOD 700 SUNDAYS. This one-man memoir of a play by Billy Crystal, the beloved comic actor and perennial Oscar host, has been carefully set up to suggest a night of home movies with a buddy from your high school days who is equal parts attention-grabbing showoff and softhearted sweetie pie. In resurrecting the boy he was and the parents who made him the man he is, Mr. Crystal does indeed show flickering faded films from his childhood, projected onto the windows of a replica of the house on Long Island where he spent his youth. You would be hard-pressed to find a Broadway show with a more artfully calculated comfort factor. Directed by Des McAnuff, 700 Sundays makes the characters in Neil Simons domestic comedies look as tortured as figures out of Eugene ONeill. And Mr. Crystal has a way of making even the ostensibly exotic feel as wholesome as apple blintzes (2:20). Broadhurst Theater, 235 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200 Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 p.m. Tickets: $71.25 to $91.25; extremely limited. BRANTLEY *TWELVE ANGRY MEN. This stage adaptation of Reginald Roses celebrated television drama from 1954 (made into a film in 1957) suggests that sometimes the best way to present a fossil is just to polish it up and put it on display without disguise, annotation or apology. As a tidy portrait of clashing social attitudes in a jury room, it definitely creaks with age. But somehow the creaks begin to sound like soothing music, a siren song from a period of American drama when personalities were drawn in clean lines, the moral was unmistakable and the elements of a plot clicked together like a jigsaw puzzle without a single missing piece. Even those who like their theater hip and cerebral might want to lower their eyebrows for this 90-minute production. With an ensemble that includes Boyd Gaines, Philip Bosco, Mark Blum and Peter Friedman, this is a showcase for some of New Yorks finest character actors, who all manage to chew the scenery without smacking their lips (1:30). American Airlines Theater, 227 West 42nd Street, (212) 719-1300. Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets: $46.25 to $86.25. BRANTLEY WHOOPI. Whoopi Goldberg has been working in Hollywood for two decades now. Presumably she has met a lot of directors out there. But scan the program for Ms. Goldbergs solo show, which has returned to Broadway for a 20th-anniversary engagement, and youll find none listed. This movie star and television personality has chosen to dispense with one in remounting her collection of monologues, just as she did when this career-igniting show made its debut on Broadway. Twenty years ago the omission could be forgiven as the boundless confidence of a bright young talent. At 49 Ms. Goldberg is an established performer and the oversight looks more like folly. Ms. Goldbergs most ardent fans may be happy to make the acquaintance of the half-dozen characters she portrays here. But even the funniest monologues would benefit from judicious editing (1:30). Lyceum Theater, 149 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 7 and 10 p.m.; Sundays at 3 and 7 p.m. Tickets: $26.25 to $76.25. ISHERWOOD *+ WONDERFUL TOWN. (Tony winner for choreography). Standing on high heels that transform her into the tallest, most self-conscious figure onstage and mugging with the rubbery animation of Desilu-vintage Lucille Ball, Brooke Shields is game, gawky, a little unsteady and supremely likable as Ruth Sherwood, the man-scaring writer from Ohio who arrives in Manhattan in 1935 as green as a spring tomato. In this delicious revival of the 1953 musical, Ms. Shields is an unexpected and unpretentious delight, adding a goofy sweetness to a production whose charms have only mellowed since it opened last fall. No, she doesnt rival the impeccable polish of her predecessor, Donna Murphy. But Ms. Shields appealingly emphasizes the inner naif of a character whose worldly sophistication keeps slipping off like an ill-fitting cocktail hat. Leonard Bernsteins happiest score is played as ravishingly as ever by the onstage orchestra. And the crackerjack supporting cast includes the appealingly relaxed Gregg Edelman and the honey-voiced Jennifer Hope Wills, as Ruths luscious sister, Eileen (2:30). Al Hirschfeld Theater, 302 West 45th Street, Clinton, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $51 and $101. BRANTLEY Off Broadway + THE BALTIMORE WALTZ. Paula Vogel is indisputably the author of The Baltimore Waltz, but a decade of collective grief, rage and confusion surely played a part in its authorship, too. Ms. Vogel began work on the play shortly after her brothers death from AIDS in 1988. It was a deeply personal, even idiosyncratic expression of sorrow and love. But in the dozen years since its premiere at Circle Repertory, emotion surrounding the AIDS epidemic has inevitably cooled, and the play now must stand up to less emotionally inflected scrutiny. Sadly, on the evidence of Mark Brokaws smart but dry production, the second in the Signature Theaters season devoted to Ms. Vogels work, it mostly sags. This is partly due to a crucial piece of miscasting. Kristen Johnston is a talented actress, but she doesnt do poignancy convincingly. She makes all the right noises, but the submerged emotional charge that should bind the jumbled gambits of Ms. Vogels comedy never fully emerges (1:25). Signatures Peter Norton Space, 555 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 244-7529. Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $55. ISHERWOOD * DOUBT, A PARABLE. This tight, absorbing and expertly acted play by John Patrick Shanley is far more complex than surface descriptions might suggest. Set in the Bronx in 1964, it is structured as a clash of wills and generations between Sister Aloysius (Cherry Jones), the head of a parochial school, and Father Flynn (Brian F. OByrne), the young priest who may or may not be too fond of the boys in his charge. The plays balance of conflicting viewpoints, its austere institutional setting and its sensational front-page subject at first bring to mind those tidy topical melodramas of truth and falsehood that were once so popular. But Mr. Shanley makes subversive use of musty conventions. Doubt hews closely to its reassuringly sturdy, familiar form, the better to explore aspects of thought and personality that are anything but solid. And under the eloquently reserved direction of Doug Hughes, Ms. Jones and Mr. OByrne, both superb, find startling precision in ambiguity (1:30). Manhattan Theater Club, at New York City Center Stage I, 131 West 55th Street, (212) 581-1212. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m. Tickets: $60. BRANTLEY FAT PIG. Neil LaButes latest work is on one level yet another demonstration that men are paragons of bad faith and cowardice, a judgmental tradition that this writer established with his screenplay for In the Company of Men. Yet Fat Pig, directed by Jo Bonney, is also the most emotionally engaging and unsettling of Mr. LaButes plays since Bash five years ago. A show that might have been merely a point-proving exercise is immeasurably enriched by Mr. LaButes empathy and by the skill and honesty of Jeremey Piven (of The Entourage on HBO) as a charming rising executive, and Ashlie Atkinson, the overweight woman he falls for. Andrew McCarthy and Keri Russell (late of Felicity) round out the taut ensemble (1:40). Lucille Lortel Theater, 121 Christopher Street, West Village, (212) 279-4200. Mondays and Tuesdays at 7 p.m.; Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2:30 and 8 p.m. Tickets: $50. BRANTLEY *++ FORBIDDEN BROADWAY: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT. Gerard Alessandrini, the writer and creator of the 22-year-old Forbidden Broadway series of satirical revues, would seem to be as steamed-up and homicidal as Dirty Harry in a den of crooked cops. This means he is in particularly good form. The New York theaters favorite practitioner of tough love has put on the brass knuckles for this round. The production features the expected caricatures of ego-driven singing stars (Patti LuPone, Hugh Jackman). But even more than usual, the show offers an acute list of grievances about the sickly state of the Broadway musical, where, as Mr. Alessandrinis lyrics have it, everything old is old again (1:45). Douglas Fairbanks Theater, 432 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 239-6200. Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:15 p.m.; Wednesdays at 2:30 p.m.; Saturdays at 4 p.m.; Sundays at 3:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $49.50 to $57. BRANTLEY ++ JEWTOPIA. In a word, oy. Actually, even that small but spectacularly useful Yiddish word, with its infinite capacity for inflection, wont suffice to register the proper dismay at this slapdash, feeble-witted comedy. Written by and starring Bryan Fogel and Sam Wolfson, the cheerfully vulgar Jewtopia is aimed squarely at Jewish audiences not above indulging in a little lowbrow ribbing of their common ground. Make that a lot of lowbrow ribbing, most of it is about as fresh as a kugel from last years Seder. Mr. Fogel and Mr. Wolfson flail away at hoary old stereotypes with a lack of ingenuity and a coarseness that are as numbing as they are dispiriting. The director John Tillinger, hired to polish the production for its New York engagement (it ran for more than a year in Los Angeles), has done little to tame its tacky excesses or shore up its slipshod construction (2:00). Westside Theater (Downstairs), 407 West 43rd Street, Clinton, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays at 7 p.m.; Wednesdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $59.50 for Tuesdays through Thursdays; $65 for Fridays through Sundays. ISHERWOOD *++ NINE PARTS OF DESIRE. The voices are a study in contrasts: vivid and subdued, sophisticated and naïve, seductive and standoffish. But they cohere to form a powerful collective portrait of suffering and endurance in Heather Raffos impassioned theatrical documentary about the lives of contemporary Iraqi women. A solo piece written and performed by Ms. Raffo, an actress of Iraqi and American heritage, the play is a welcome reminder that the costs of tyranny and violent conflict are borne not by some amorphous, insentient collective population but by individuals, in this case women whose lives have been frayed and fractured, sometimes beyond repair, by the tortured history of their country (1:30). Manhattan Ensemble Theater, 55 Mercer Street, SoHo, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 3 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $55; limited number of $20 student rush tickets available at box office one hour before the show. ISHERWOOD * A NUMBER. Since the 1970s, Caryl Churchill has produced studies of a world quaking under constant siege in which style somehow always uniquely mirrors content. In this stunning, elliptical play about a fathers experiment with genetic engineering, this invaluable dramatist considers a threat to the very cornerstone of Western civilization since the Renaissance: the idea of human individuality, a subject she manages to probe in depth in a mere 62 minutes of spartan sentences and silences. Every word, gesture and pause in this dramatic fugue for two actors -- meticulously directed by James MacDonald and performed by Sam Shepard (yep, that one) and Dallas Roberts -- sets off echoes of multiple meaning. The play trenchantly makes the point that we no longer have the apparatus, verbal or psychological, to accommodate the changes in a time when science is moving faster than society. It is hard to think of another contemporary playwright who combines such economy of means and breadth of imagination (1:05). New York Theater Workshop, 79 East Fourth Street, East Village, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays at 7 p.m.; Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m. Tickets: $65. BRANTLEY A SECOND HAND MEMORY. Woody Allens unrelentingly glum new play at the Atlantic Theater Company is a drama about two generations of defeated dreamers in 1950s Brooklyn. As the play opens, Eddie Wolfe (Nicky Katt) has been called home from Hollywood to help turn around the family jewelry business, for which he never had much affection. Eddie has an unwanted new wife and a baby on the way, but his permanently darkened brow telegraphs despair and a burning desire to escape. Eddies moral quandary -- should he stay or should he go? -- generates little suspense. The actors provide some leavening warmth, but its hard to escape the feeling that Mr. Allens characters are simply serving out their sentences, railing against an unjust fate by incessantly flailing away at one another (2:15). Atlantic Theater Company, 336 West 20th Street, Chelsea, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $60. ISHERWOOD *++ SLAVAS SNOWSHOW. A giggle of clowns chosen by the Russian master Slava Polunin is stirring up laughter and enjoyment at the Union Square Theater. As audiences shuffle in through the snowlike rectangles of white paper that blanket the floor and seats, prompting immediate attempts at artificial snowball throwing, this show announces itself as something unusual. And so it is. Before the night is over, in a show that touches the heart as well as tickles the funnybone, members of the audience are likely to find themselves covered by a giant cobweb, spritzed with water, providing a lap for a wandering clown and stung by the snow of the title. (1:30). Union Square Theater, 100 East 17th Street, (212) 307-4100. Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 4 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 and 5:30 p.m. Tickets $59.90 to $64.90. LAWRENCE VAN GELDER + WHITE CHOCOLATE. Think of it as Black Like Moi. William Hamiltons play about a rich white couple who wake up to discover theyve turned black is a shrill, sporadically funny situation comedy that is at heart nothing more than its central situation. Mr. Hamilton is famous for his cartoons in The New Yorker, which portray willowy, patrician figures poised over cocktails and crudités. Throughout White Chocolate, which is directed by David Schweizer as if it were a traffic jam, there are sharp, shiny lines that might work as captions for Hamilton cartoons. But they are lines that tell you less about character than class. And as a comedy of social identity, White Chocolate never looks far beneath the veneers it pretends to be peeling away. With Lynn Whitfield and Reg E. Cathey as the transformed spouses (2:15). Century Center for the Performing Arts, 111 East 15th Street, Manhattan, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $55 to $60. BRANTLEY Last Chance + BELLE ÉPOQUE. The époque doesnt seem so very belle in Martha Clarke and Charles L. Mees ambitious attempt to distill onstage the seedy, absinthe-tinted glamour that Toulouse-Lautrec captured in oils and pastels in late 19th-century Paris. Mark Povinelli, an actor whose small stature belies a sizable force, plays Toulouse-Lautrec. He is surrounded by an eccentric array of performers who plied their trade in the clubs of Montmartre. With the aid of Jane Greenwoods plush, gorgeously detailed costumes and Christopher Akerlinds invigorating lighting, the production casts a seductive visual spell. But the musical and visual enticements of Belle Époque are encumbered by Mr. Mees text, which often strikes an arch, discordant note (1:25). Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 239-6200. Tonight at 8; tomorrowat 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets: $70. ISHERWOOD ++ NIGHT, MOTHER. As your grandmother or therapist probably told you, there is something to be said for staying busy in a time of crisis. Playing a pair of women whose shared life is about to be torn asunder, Edie Falco and Brenda Blethyn have an ocean of household chores to swim through in the strangely uninvolving revival of Marsha Normans Night, Mother. Putting candy in jars, cleaning out the refrigerator, bagging garbage: such tasks are sometimes enough even to eclipse the harsh awareness of Thelma Cates (Ms. Blethyn) that her daughter, Jessie (Ms. Falco), has announced that she will be killing herself in a couple of hours. On the other hand, all that domestic industry only rarely disguises our suspicion that these first-rate actresses are never quite at home in their roles. Or the uneasy realization that Ms. Normans Pulitzer-winning drama is looking more artificial than it did 20 years ago (1:30). Royale Theater, 242 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. Tonight at 8; tomorrow at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 3 and 8 p.m. Tickets: $66.25 to $86.25. BRANTLEY Movies A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy movies playing this weekend in the New York metropolitan region. * denotes a highly recommended film. Ratings and running times are in parentheses. Full reviews of all current releases, movie trailers, showtimes and tickets: nytimes.com/movies. Now Playing THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON Starring Sean Penn, Don Cheadle, Jack Thompson and Naomi Watts. Directed by Niels Mueller (R, 95 minutes). On Feb. 22, 1974, Samuel Byck, a onetime tire salesman and failing family man, entered the ranks of pseudo-celebrity by trying to commandeer a commercial airliner and crash it into the White House. He didnt get far, which is why the man who would be Booth is a footnote to history rather than a chapter. Earlier this year, three decades after Bycks flameout, this provocatively titled film had its premiere at the Cannes festival. Directed by a first-timer, it stars Mr. Penn as a character inspired by the man who hoped to drop a 747 on the White House and incinerate Dick Nixon. Mr. Penn, as is his wont, acts up a storm with the aid of some facial embellishment, in this case a mustache that broadcasts the fanfare for the common man with all the discretion of Aaron Copland. MANOHLA DARGIS THE AVIATOR Starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Directed by Martin Scorsese (PG-13, 169 minutes). The famously eccentric and reclusive empire builder Howard Hughes was born alone and died alone, the two times in his life when he was no different from anyone else. For the rest of his life, the high-flying Hughes seemed to have drifted in from some distant aerie where exotic birds hatch far from everyday worries. At the age of 18, he was both an orphan and a millionaire, and while he could never be called ordinary, in the following two decades his wealth and all that it afforded brought him a very American kind of celebrity. It is that celebrity, fueled by money, stoked by matinee looks and playboy style, which preoccupies The Aviator, Mr. Scorseses visually sumptuous if disappointingly hollow account of Hughess early life. Written by John Logan, the story principally covers the late 20s through the 40s, when Hughes, played by Mr. DiCaprio, was gadding about both Hollywood and the aviation world. DARGIS * BAD EDUCATION Starring Gael García Bernal, Fele Martínez and Javier Cámara. Directed by Pedro Almodóvar (NC-17; 110 minutes; in Spanish, with English subtitles). This Spanish directors newest film is a delirious, headlong immersion and reinvention of film noir, a style that has lured countless filmmakers onto its treacherous shoals. Mr. Almodóvar, unlike other filmmakers who lose their bearings, fully understands the degree to which the genre is synonymous with fantasy and a primal longing for the forbidden. The coup de grâce of Bad Education is that here the femme fatale is a predatory transsexual named Ignacio. Bad Education contemplates the wonder of storytelling and the human instinct to embroider reality to make the tales we tell more real and conclusive, if less strictly factual. STEPHEN HOLDEN BEYOND THE SEA Starring Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth and John Goodman. Directed by Mr. Spacey (PG-13, 118 minutes). The matching of two slithery chameleons, the singer Bobby Darin (who died in 1973 at the age of 37) and his latter-day doppelgänger, Mr. Spacey (now 45), sparks a weird bluish flame that suggests a wax yule log posing as wood in the seasons teeming fireplace of movie biographies. When ignited, it releases acrid, waxy fumes that feel queasily chemical. The movie, which the star directed and helped write and in which he sings (wonderfully), smacks of the same kind of obsession that brought Bob Fosses All That Jazz to creepy reptilian life. Its vision of show business in the 50s and 60s is as tawdry as Fosses and as incisive in suggesting its a grubby rags-to-riches circus. (Ms. Bosworth plays Sandra Dee, the bimbo movie princess Darin strenuously wooed and married.) The movie also touches on the ugly reality of show business mothers who force their children to act out their dreams and line their pocketbooks. HOLDEN BLADE: TRINITY Starring Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson and Jessica Biel. Directed by David S. Goyer (R, 114 minutes). Mr. Snipes may have achieved the Hollywood dream of starring in a comic-book franchise that doesnt require real acting, but he doesnt seem to appreciate his good fortune in the disjointed, overlong Blade: Trinity, which bills itself as the series finale. The Blade movies demand only that the 42-year-old actor stay pumped up and ready for kung-fu action. But the only emotion his character, a glowering half-human, half-vampire hunter of the undead, can muster in the third installment is a sense of mild irritation at having to go through the hassle. This episode is a choppy, forgetful, suspense-free romp that substitutes campy humor for chills. HOLDEN CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS Starring Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis. Directed by Joe Roth (PG, 94 minutes). Lockstep suburban conformism enforced with a fascist rigor is the ugly (but admittedly sometimes funny) joke driving this family comedy. The movie is as slick and treacherous as the sheet of ice its Scrooge-like protagonist (Mr. Allen) freezes in the yard of his lawn to discourage holiday panhandlers. For all you fancy-schmancy snobs who jet off to St. Barts for the holidays, the movie has an important message, and youd better pay attention. If you shirkers refuse to stay home and celebrate Christmas like the rest of us, we dont want you in our community. HOLDEN CLOSER Starring Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Julia Roberts and Clive Owen. Directed by Mike Nichols (R, 110 minutes). Four characters in search of an objective correlative for their needy, angry, compulsive states of feelings. Mr. Nicholss smooth, nimble direction improves Patrick Marbers verbose, pretentious play yet exposes some of its flaws. Two American women (Ms. Portman and Ms. Roberts) are entangled with two Englishmen (Mr. Law and Mr. Owen) in a four-handed game of deception, self-delusion and betrayal that skips and leaps over a period of several years. The formal trickiness of the narrative strips the characters of any daily context that would give their emotions meaning, and the movie is a succession of scenes, some quite powerful on their own, that dont really add up to much. The actors work hard to give their schematic, overwritten roles some nuance and individuality, but only Mr. Owen -- raw, brash and witty -- succeeds. A. O. SCOTT FAT ALBERT Starring Kenan Thompson and Kyla Pratt. Directed by Joel Zwick (PG, 93 minutes). One of the truisms of contemporary pop culture is that just when you think it couldnt get any worse, its purveyors any more shameless, you are proved decisively wrong. Based on Bill Cosbys corpulent charmer and his band of brothers, the Fat Albert movie opens just days after the release of the DVD compilations of the original show. DVDs for the program are featured so prominently in the movie and the movie feels so much like an extended-play sitcom, I half expected Mr. Cosby to pop up on-screen to sell me the discs along with a Coke. From 1972 through 1984, the animated television series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids enjoyed enormous success. The cartoon was austere but eminently watchable and featured one of those sitcom tunes that etch a permanent groove in your head. Just as memorable was Mr. Cosbys basso-profundo delivery of Fat Alberts trademark hey, hey, hey, a mantra that signaled that no matter what happened, all would be right in the end. In Fat Albert, that trademark is resurrected to depressingly diminished ends. DARGIS FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX Starring Dennis Quaid, Tyrese Gibson and Giovanni Ribisi. Directed by John Moore (PG-13, 115 minutes). The moth-eaten plane-crash-in-the-desert yarn, a cynical update of the far superior 1965 movie, directed by Robert Aldrich and starring James Stewart and Richard Attenborough, throws in every cheap trick in the manual to pump up your heartbeat. Watching it is the equivalent of having the soles your feet tickled; you react, but involuntarily. The setting has been moved from the Sahara to the Gobi Desert and the revamped characters make up a cunningly chosen and unlikely mosaic of types that include a pretty woman, a one-eyed African-American guitarist, a Mexican-American chef and a Saudi. Mr. Quaid is the brawny, hard-bitten pilot and Mr. Ribisi the brainy airplane designer who, against all odds, supervises the reconstruction of the downed plane into an aeronautical phoenix. HOLDEN * HOTEL RWANDA Starring Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Joaquin Phoenix and Nick Nolte. Directed by Terry George (PG-13, 121 minutes). This wrenching political thriller performs the valuable service of lending a human face to an upheaval so savage it seemed beyond the realm of imagination when news of it filtered to the West. The movie certainly isnt the first screen depiction of a nation consumed by ethnic strife. But its vision of the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis by the ruling Hutu tribe in Rwanda during a 100-day bloodbath in 1994 offers a devastating picture of media-driven mass murder left unchecked. The story is based on the real-life experiences of Paul Rusesabagina (Mr. Cheadle), the soft-spoken Hutu manager of the Hotel des Mille Collines, in Kigali, who with his Tutsi wife, Tatiana (Ms. Okonedo), and children, narrowly escapes death several times. Mr. Rusesabagina was directly responsible for saving the lives of more than 1,200 Tutsis and Hutu moderates by sheltering them in the hotel and bribing the Hutu military to spare them. The movie, which is squeamish about showing the full extent of savagery, hammers every button on the emotional console. HOLDEN * HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS Starring Zhang Ziyi. Directed by Zhang Yimou (PG-13, 119 minutes; in Mandarin, with English subtitles). In the latest chapter of Mr. Zhangs triumphant reinvention as an action filmmaker, Ms. Zhang plays Mei, a blind courtesan who turns out to be a member of the Flying Daggers, a shadowy squad of assassins waging a guerrilla insurgency against the corrupt and decadent government. She is pursued by two government deputies, Leo (Andy Lau) and Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro), whose loyalties come into question as the chase turns into a love triangle. Everyone is engaged in several layers of deceit, and some of the third-act revelations are more likely to provoke laughter than gasps of amazement. But realism is as irrelevant a criterion here as it would be in an Italian opera. The movie is about color, kineticism and the kind of heavy-breathing, decorous sensuality that went out of American movies when sexual candor came in. Though it is in constant, breathtaking motion, the picture is not especially moving. Unlike the greatest operas (in whatever medium), it inspires you to gasp, but not to weep. SCOTT IN GOOD COMPANY Starring Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace and Scarlett Johansson. Written and directed by Paul Weitz (PG-13, 106 minutes). This gently revisionist fairy tale about good versus evil is set on the battlefield of contemporary corporate culture, a site of our leading blood sport. Mostly, though, the movie is about men. The two men at the storys engaging center are Carter Duryea (Mr. Grace), a young executive who has been promoted beyond his abilities to run the advertising department of a magazine with the resonant name of Sports America. The man whom Carter is meant to make redundant is the 51-year-old Dan Foreman, a ruggedly appealing adult who brings out the best in everyone. Dan has a picture-perfect family and is the kind of unabashedly old-fashioned masculine type Mr. Quaid has been slow-cooking to perfection over the years and which, on American screens at least, has lately gone missing. DARGIS LEMONY SNICKETS A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS Starring Jim Carrey, Liam Aiken, Emily Browning, Kara Hoffman and Shelby Hoffman. Directed by Brad Silberling (PG, 108 minutes). Since the publication of the first installment in Lemony Snickets (a k a Daniel Handlers) charmingly malignant book cycle A Series of Unfortunate Events, the three Baudelaire children -- Violet, Klaus and Sunny -- have been trying to find safe harbor in a world fraught with danger. For 11 consecutive books, the children have passed from the care of one well-intentioned adult to another, braving the sort of peril usually faced by silent-screen heroines named Pauline and leaving a trail of corpses in their wake. To date, the cause of their misfortunes has been their onetime guardian, Count Olaf, who hopes to steal their fortune. But now the characters have embarked on one of the most dangerous adventures known in literature: their story has been turned into a major Hollywood movie -- and with Jim Carrey, no less. DARGIS THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU Starring Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Willem Dafoe and Jeff Goldblum. Directed by Wes Anderson (R, 118 minutes). More elaborate whimsy from Mr. Anderson, who confected a parallel-universe Manhattan in The Royal Tenenbaums and who now goes even further, inventing tropical islands and species of exotic fish when the mood strikes him. Somehow, though, this movie is more charming than irritating, partly thanks to Mr. Murrays performance -- a tour de force of comic minimalism -- as Steve Zissou, an ocean adventurer with a boatload of problems. The Life Aquatic is thick with potential narrative complications -- involving, for starters, Zissous long-lost son (Mr. Wilson), estranged wife (Ms. Houston), slimy archrival (Mr. Goldblum) and needy first mate (Mr. Dafoe) -- but Mr. Anderson is less a storyteller than a curator of odd specimens and curious situations. The pleasures of this movie are like those of a beautifully illustrated, haphazardly plotted picture book, which precocious children (and nostalgic adults) can linger over, feeding their reveries and fantasies. SCOTT A LOVE SONG FOR BOBBY LONG Starring John Travolta and Scarlett Johansson. Directed by Shainee Gabel (R, 119 minutes). In this first feature directed by Ms. Gabel, Mr. Travolta delivers a hammed-up scenery-chewing variation of the brainy good ol boy he played in Primary Colors. This is the story of a down-at-the-heels former star professor and his protégé rotting in the New Orleans house bequeathed them by a legendary folk-blues singer and their partial redemption when the singers alienated daughter comes to live with them. The film dawdles along aimlessly for two hours before coming up with a final revelation that is no surprise. The movies hokey solemnity suggests The Mundane Secrets of the Ya-Ya Brotherhood or The Notebook Goes to the Big Easy. The movie is another example of Hollywood going soft and squishy when it goes South. HOLDEN MEET THE FOCKERS Starring Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Blythe Danner, Teri Polo and Owen Wilson. Directed by Jay Roach (PG-13, 114 minutes). Like Meet the Parents, the follow-up new comedy Meet the Fockers hinges on the well-traveled idea that theres something comic about being Jewish in America. Not the Philip Roth, take-no-prisoners funny, in which Jewish identity is good, bad, happy, sad, a historical chip on the shoulder, a sign of radical difference. Rather, the post-Borscht Belt funny of the genial sitcom Jew whose difference is amorphous enough to be thoroughly unthreatening; the Jew as an ethnic accessory that non-Jews on both sides of the camera can enjoy without anxiety, like the cute cabala string Madonna likes to wear. And so, just as Bernie loved Bridget, and Rhoda loved Mary, so does Greg Focker (Mr. Stiller) love Pam Byrnes (Ms. Polo). And because Greg loves Pam, Pams father, Jack (Mr. De Niro), doesnt love Greg. Not because no man could ever be good enough for his daughter, but because Greg doesnt look like Pams old squeeze, the fair-haired Kevin (Mr. Wilson). DARGIS * THE MERCHANT OF VENICE Starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes and Lynn Collins. Directed by Michael Radford (R; 127 minutes). Shakespeares most problematic play -- at least with respect to modern sensitivities -- receives an intelligent intepretation from Mr. Radford and from a superb cast. Mr. Pacino, showing welcome restraint after a series of overdone stage and screen performances, emphasizes Shylocks grief and estrangement, turning him into a fragile monster. But his villainy, however much it smacks of blood libel, cannot be discarded without compromising the plays complex ideas about justice and duty, and Mr. Radford does not try to wash away the stain of anti-Semitism that is woven into the heart of his source. He does remind us how much more is going on in the play, and along with his talented production designer and cinematographer, he renders Venice as a series of Renaissance paintings -- tableaus that immerse us in the ferment of early modern Europe. Mr. Irons is quietly mesmerizing in the title role, a creature of mysterious melancholy whose soul seems at once pure and rotted. The movie really belongs to Ms. Collins, who gives Portia her rightful wit and charisma, and makes her the plays cruel and lovely moral center. SCOTT * MILLION DOLLAR BABY Starring Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman. Directed by Mr. Eastwood (PG-13, 135 minutes). Mr. Eastwood takes what appears to be a conventional boxing-melodrama plot about a crusty old trainer whose heart is melted by a spirited young fighter and turns it into a glowing, somber meditation on friendship, ambition and death. The pictures scale is small, and its pacing leisurely, which gives you a chance to savor three lovely performances: from Ms. Swank as the young boxer, Mr. Freeman as a world-weary former contender and Mr. Eastwood as the trainer, Frankie Dunn. At 74, Mr. Eastwood has achieved a level of mastery that leaves him with nothing to prove, and so, unafraid of sentiment and willing to risk cliché, he has made a graceful, lyrical, devastating masterpiece -- the best film released by a major Hollywood studio this year. SCOTT NATIONAL TREASURE Starring Nicolas Cage. Directed by Jon Turteltaub (PG, 125 minutes). Maybe, just maybe, an 8-year-old could pick up an interest in American history from watching National Treasure, that is if the child can stay awake through this sluggish two-hour trudge through landmarks in Washington, Philadelphia and New York. Its far more likely, however, that a child who can stay awake through the movie will come away believing the bogus mythology that detonates this fanciful reality game show with a squishy thud. That mythology, derived from Freemasonry, holds that a map, drawn in invisible ink on the back of the Declaration of Independence, contains clues to the whereabouts of the Greatest Treasure Ever Told About. A more cynical (and witless, shoddy) chase for Hollywood gold is hard to imagine. HOLDEN * OCEANS TWELVE Starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle and Scott Caan. Directed by Steven Soderbergh (PG-13, 120 minutes). At a certain point in the enjoyable, unabashedly trivial caper flick Oceans Twelve, crooks played by Mr. Damon, Mr. Cheadle and Mr. Caan start running through the different ways they can get out of their immediate jam. Things have gone badly for these likable rogues and now most of their crew -- including the smooth piece of work who gives the film its title, Danny Ocean -- played by the equally silky Mr. Clooney -- has landed in the clink. The crooks are looking for a get-out-of-jail-free card, which given the films criminally underdone plot and smog of self-satisfaction is something that Mr. Soderbergh may have wanted to stash up his own sleeve. As anyone within spitting distance of a television set knows, Oceans Twelve is the high-profile sequel to Mr. Soderberghs big box office entertainment Oceans Eleven. Once again Mr. Clooneys Danny is the leader of the pack, Mr. Pitt plays his second in command, Rusty Ryan, and Mr. Damon plays Linus, a puppy that desperately wants to be a dog but may not have sprouted the requisite fangs. DARGIS THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA Starring Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum and Minnie Driver. Directed by Joel Schumacher (PG-13, 143 minutes). Far too many notes for my taste, a minor character remarks, apropos of the threatening letters being sent by the micromanaging phantom. That pretty much sums up the problems with Andrew Lloyd Webbers bombastic score, which is well matched by Mr. Schumachers production. For all the invocations of the angel of music, this film, adapted from the curiously popular stage musical, will most likely leave you with a devilish headache. The songs are unlistenable, which also makes them hard to sing, but Ms. Rossum and Mr. Butler show some impressive vocal technique, and Ms. Rossum, in addition to being lovely, has enough movie star luminosity to avoid being buried in the busy sets and elaborate costumes. This 2-hour-and-20-minute barrage may drive you back to the 1925 version of Phantom, which starred Lon Chaney and which has many virtues. For one thing, it is short. For another, its silent. SCOTT THE SEA INSIDE Starring Javier Bardem and Belén Rueda. Directed by Alejandro Amenábar (PG-13, 125 minutes; in Spanish with English subtitles). As the camera restlessly circles the sky and the ocean, taking in the radiance of northern Spain, the story of a quadriplegic activist fighting for the right to die, struggles to transcend the disease-of-the-week genre to which it belongs. Yet there is no escaping the fact that the true story of Ramón Sampedro, a former ships mechanic seeking a final exit after three decades of agonizing immobility, is defined by its theme. To its credit it avoids becoming a formulaic dialogue that pits religious and secular cheerleaders against each other in predigested arguments. Sensitively portrayed by the great Spanish actor Javier Bardem, Ramón, 55, regards his life in the wake of a crippling accident in his mid-20s as a cruel, cosmic joke. In the emotional kernel of the movie, Ramón contemplates the impossibility of consummating his passion for his beautiful new lawyer (Ms. Rueda) who suffers from a debilitating disease. HOLDEN SPANGLISH Starring Adam Sandler, Téa Leoni and Paz Vega. Directed by James L. Brooks (PG-13, 110 minutes). Mr. Brooks, one of the smartest and sunniest men in Hollywood, turns his attention to class division, cultural misunderstanding and marital discord in Los Angeles, all subjects ripe for the kind of warm-hearted comedy in which he specializes and all treated with astonishing smugness and dishonesty. Mr. Sandler plays John Clasky, a successful chef who almost falls for his maid, Flor (Ms. Vega), a situation that Mr. Brooks rescues from sleaziness by making Jacks wife, Deborah (Ms. Leoni), a thoroughgoing monster: irredeemably selfish, vain and ridiculous. Deborah, a bad mother and a useless wife, serves as the films scapegoat, and her demonization contrasts with the idealization of Flor in a way that manages to be both overtly misogynist and implicitly racist. Mr. Sandler smiles through it all, playing a nice guy who unwittingly personifies the films self-adoring liberal bad faith. SCOTT THE SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS MOVIE With the voices of Tom Kenny, Clancy Brown and Rodger Bumpass. Directed by Steven Hillenburg (PG, 88 minutes). If nautical nonsense is something you wish for, then this big-screen expansion of the popular Nickelodeon show will be just the ticket. SpongeBob and his best pal Patrick set off on a rambling quest to recover a stolen crown and prevent Plankton from taking over Bikini Bottom and driving poor Mr. Krabs out of business. If none of this makes sense to you, fear not; it wont necessarily make any more after the movie is done. In any case, the point of SpongeBob is not sense but nonsense, and the film, like the series, is a giddy celebration of pure childishness, which makes it a refreshing antidote to the glowering machismo that dominates so much pop culture. SCOTT A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT Starring Audrey Tautou. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (R, 133 minutes; in French, with English subtitles). If you like battleground carnage delivered with aesthetic brio, the kind that ensures that when a soldier explodes into confetti, his flesh will dapple a trenchmate as decoratively as pink rosettes on a cake, this new French film will serve you nicely. Set during World War I and its immediate aftermath, the film follows the adventures of a young woman, Mathilde (Ms. Tautou), who holds fast to the hope that her young soldier fiancé will return home from his apparent grave. Even when death seems to part them, the cord of her love remains unbroken. Best known for Amélie, a modern fairy tale also starring Ms. Tautou, Mr. Jeunet is in the possession of a distinctive visual style thats part Rube Goldberg, part F. A. O. Schwarz, and generally enjoyable for about 15 minutes. But unlike children who bring even the most chewed-up teddy bear to life, however, Mr. Jeunet shows no interest in animating the characters in his dollhouse world. DARGIS THE WOODSMAN Starring Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick. Directed by Nicole Kassell (R, 87 minutes). Ms. Kassell directs this story of a paroled child molester struggling to re-enter society after 12 years in prison in a lean, unassuming style, which suits the subject matter and gives the fine cast room to explore their complicated, unhappy characters. The story is not always plausible, and the atmosphere sometimes feels programmatically grim, but the film is a serious, compassionate attempt at psychological realism, anchored by Mr. Bacons precise, unsettling performance as a man trying to untangle his decent impulses from his destructive, predatory urges. SCOTT Rock/Pop A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy rock and pop concerts in the New York metropolitan region this weekend. * denotes a highly recommended concert. Full reviews of recent concerts: nytimes.com/music. * ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS, Joes Pub, 425 Lafayette Street, East Village, (212) 539-8770. Like many of the most compelling singers, Antony is a little bit off-putting: a beautiful warbler whose extravagant songs sound less bathetic the more you listen to them. He brings his band of misfits to Joes Pub on Sunday night; expect to hear a clutch of songs from his beautiful new album, I Am a Bird Now (Secretly Canadian), due out on Feb. 15. Sunday night at 9:30; tickets are $15 with a 2 drink or $12 food minimum at a table. KELEFA SANNEH * EVA AYLLON, KEKELE, EMELINE MICHEL, GENO DELAFOSE, S.O.B.s (Sounds of Brazil), 204 Varick Street, South Village, (212) 243-4940. A world-music smorgasbord features Eva Ayllon, a Peruvian singer who has updates traditional songs; Kekele, a Congolese soukous band; Emeline Michel, a Haitian singer whose repertory traverses the whole islands traditions and modern twists; Geno Delafose, a Louisiana zydeco accordionist and his band, along with the Argentine singer Sandra Luna and the Cuban duo Alma y Niurka. Sunday night at 7:30; tickets are $20 in advance, $25 Sunday. JON PARELES * CYRO BAPTISTA AND BEAT THE DONKEY, the Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard Street, TriBeCa, (212) 219-3006. Cyro Baptista, a Brazilian percussionist whos fond of melody and humor as well as rhythm, leads a troupe of percussionists and dancers in Beat the Donkey, his 10-member mini-carnival, playing instruments and rhythms that are both traditional and newly concocted. Tonight, two sets starting at 7; admission is $12. PARELES * BEAR IN HEAVEN, Sin-é, Attorney Street, at Stanton Street, Lower East Side, (212) 388-0077. Bear in Heaven is Jon Philpot, a singer and producer who specializes in dense but delicate little clouds of sound. He headlines an enticing concert full of rock- and folk-influenced musicians who gently (or not-so-gently) court chaos. Also on the bill: the incantatory quartet Akron/Family, the noisy texturalists from Mouthus and the digressive duo of Carlos Giffoni and Chuck Bettis. Sunday night at 7, with Dirty Churches; tickets are $8. SANNEH * MARC COHN/SUZANNE VEGA/KAKI KING, Town Hall, 123 West 43d Street, Manhattan, (212) 840-2824 or (212) 545-7536. For two songwriters wielding acoustic guitars, Marc Cohn and Suzanne Vega are a disparate double bill. Mr. Cohns 1991 hit, Walking in Memphis, sums up his style: smoothly rolling chords, a supple, soul-inflected voice and a kindly outlook. He has been known to sing not only his songs but his stage patter. Suzanne Vegas songs, by contrast, are as clear and pointed as her voice, with a way of refracting large emotions through finely noted details. Kaki King explores her acoustic guitar in instrumentals that can be tautly syncopated or serene and limpid. Tomorrow night at 7; tickets are $30 to $45. PARELES GENO DELAFOSE AND FRENCH ROCKIN BOOGIE, Satalla, 37 West 26th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-1155 and S.O.B.s (Sounds of Brazil), 204 Varick Street, at Houston, South Village, (212) 243-4940. Geno Delafose, the son of the zydeco accordionist John Delafose, holds on to the traditions of an older generation, pumping waltzes and two-steps on his button accordion. Like Clifton Chenier, he also dips deeply into the blues and rhythm-and-blues but keeps the musics old bayou flavor. At Satalla tomorrow night at 7:30 and 9:30, with dance lessons at 6:30; admission is $22 and a one-drink minimum. At S.O.B.s, with Eva Ayllon (see above) and others, Sunday night at 7; tickets are $20 in advance, $25 Sunday. PARELES ROBERT GORDON, B.B. King Blues Club and Grill, 237 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, (212) 997-4144. After a short flirtation with 1970s punk, Robert Gordon fell in love with rockabilly and had a hit with a remake of Red Hot. Hes still twanging, and for this show, celebrating Elvis Presleys birthday, he reaches back to the best-known rockabilly of them all, backed by members of the Rockats. Tonight at 8; tickets are $15 with a $10 minimum. PARELES HAMELL ON TRIAL, Fez (downstairs at the Time Cafe), 380 Lafayette Street, East Village, (212) 533-2680. A solo performer with the force of a hard-rock band, Ed Hamell quick-strums his acoustic guitar and delivers torrents of words, sometimes funny, sometimes furious. Tomorrow night at 8; admission is $10 with a two drink minimum. PARELES * MORY KANTE, S.O.B.s (Sounds of Brazil), 204 Varick Street, South Village, (212) 243-4940. Mory Kante, who comes from a long line of Mande griots, was born in in Kissidougou, Guinea, and became a singer in the Rail Band in Bamako, Mali. He grew up playing balafon (marimba) and went on to play kora (harp-guitar) and electric guitar in a career of fusions with funk, dance music and music from across Africa, including one of African musics biggest worldwide hits, the million-selling Yeke Yeke. Tonight at 11; tickets are $20. PARELES B.B. KING, Bergen Performing Arts Center, 30 North Brunt Street, Englewood, N.J., (201) 227-1030. B.B. King and his latest guitar called Lucille can, on a good night, summon all the tribulation and joy and resilience of the blues. Sunday night at 7; tickets are $55 to $75. PARELES ME FIRST AND THE GIMME GIMMES, Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, at 15th Street, Union Square, (212) 777-6800. As if punk-rock wasnt funny enough by itself, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes gathers moonlighting musicians from punk bands (including NOFX and Lagwagon) to blast through everything from showtunes to bubblegum to soft-rock hits to I Belive I Can Fly. Sunday night at 9, with Jericho opening; tickets are $16. PARELES * LUCIA PULIDO, Satalla, 37 West 26th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-1155. Lucia Pulido, a singer from Colombia, merges traditional Colombian songs with modern jazz. As Susana Baca has done with Afro-Peruvian songs, Ms. Pulido holds on to the rawness of the original melodies while giving them a sophisticated new context. Tonight at 7:30; admission is $12 plus a one drink minimum. PARELES MIKE RAFFERTY, Glucksman Ireland House at New York University, 1 Washington Mews, near Fifth Avenue at Washington Square, (212) 998-3950. Irish music runs in the Rafferty family. Mike Rafferty, who plays flute and uilleann pipes, went on to teach his daughter Mary, who was in the group Cherish the Ladies. Mr. Rafferty, who has been playing traditional music since the 1930s, has just released his first solo album, and for this show he will be joined by Mary Rafferty, Donal Clancy on guitar, Joe Madden on button accordion and Willie Kelly on fiddle. Tonight at 9; tickets are $15. PARELES * THE SILENT LEAGUE, Northsix, 66 North Sixth Street, Williamburg, Brooklyn, (718) 599-5103. Brian Wilsons legacy shimmers through the songs of the Silent League, which uses a handful of musicians to create grandly expansive orchestral pop. Tonight at 9, with My Way My Love, the Vibration and No One and the Somebodies opening; admission is $10. PARELES SOUTHSIDE JOHNNY AND THE ASBURY JUKES, B.B. King Blues Club and Grill, 237 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, (212) 997-4144. While his friend Bruce Springsteen left behind the Jersey Shore and went on to write all-American anthems and parables, Southside Johnny Lyon stuck to the old bar-band basics: rolling R & B vamps and raspy-voiced, good-natured soul plaints, complete with horn section. Through the years, Mr. Springsteen and Miami Steve Van Zandt have customized some songs for their former bandmate, who draws loud and loyal fans. Tomorrow and Sunday night at 8 p.m.; tickets are $35 with a $10 minimum. PARELES Cabaret A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy cabaret shows in Manhattan this weekend. * denotes a highly recommended show. Full reviews of recent cabaret shows: nytimes.com/music. * SINGING ASTAIRE, Birdland, 315 West 44th Street, Clinton, (212) 581-3080. With Eric Comstock, Hilary Kole and Christopher Gines. The vocal trio that created the smart revue Our Sinatra has outdone itself with this lightly swinging, 70-minute compendium of songs and lore associated with Fred Astaire. Suave and dry, and fleet on the piano, Mr. Comstock is a close stylistic relative of his idol, while Ms. Koles pop-jazz singing has a Ginger Rogersesque edge. Mr. Gines fills in the difference with creamy vocal custard: witty, informative and fast-paced. Through tomorrow. Tomorrow at 2:30 and 5:30 p.m. Cover: $40. STEPHEN HOLDEN Jazz A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy jazz concerts in the New York metropolitan region this weekend. * denotes a highly recommended concert. Full reviews of recent jazz concerts: nytimes.com/music. * HAN BENNINK AND GUESTS, Tonic, 107 Norfolk Street, Lower East Side, (212) 358-7501. In the 1960s, Mr. Bennink, a ferociously gifted drummer from Amsterdam, helped found the Instant Composers Pool, one of the hubs of modern European jazz. But in practical terms, in this town hes known for lightning visits that last a few days, during which time he hunkers down at a club to play with dozens of American colleagues, creating manic, comic performances, pleasing audiences with antics that resemble Mr. Hulot after a quart of coffee. Hes here for two nights, and tomorrow he performs with the pianist Uri Caine, the trumpeter Dave Douglas, the bassist Mark Helias and the violinist Mary Oliver; Sunday he performs with the saxophonist John Zorn, the bassist Mark Helias and the pianists Michiel Borstlap and Matthew Shipp. Tomorrow and Sunday night at 8 and 10; admission is $12 plus a one drink minimum. BEN RATLIFF TERENCE BLANCHARD, Iridium, 1650 Broadway, at 51st Street,(212) 582-2121. Mr. Blanchard totally changed his group around a few years ago, and with his recent album, Bounce (Blue Note), he added Lionel Loueke, a guitarist from Benin who uses finger tapping and electronic techniques that bring something new to the straight-ahead jazz context. Sets tonight and tomorrow are at 8, 10, and 11:30;Sunday, sets are at 8:45 and 10:30; cover charge is $32.50 for each show with a $10 minimum. RATLIFF REGINA CARTER, Sweet Rhythm, 88 Seventh Avenue South, West Village, (212) 255-3626. Ms. Carter, the classically trained violinist, has been pretty successful at mixing virtuosity with popular appeal: when she makes blues and gospel figures out of portamento swoops, its hard not to like her. Sets are tonight and tomorrow at 8, 10 and midnight; cover charge is $35 plus a $10 minimum. RATLIFF * JACK DEJOHNETTE QUARTET, Birdland, 315 West 44th Street, Clinton, (212) 581-3080. Its a new band for the drummer Jack DeJohnette, who is looking ever more like one of the most important musicians in the last 40 years of jazz -- a supremely imaginative colorist who manages to make rhythms swing and fragment as the situation demands. Mr. DeJohnettes regular touring with Keith Jarrett makes it hard for him to lead bands as often as he should; lets hope this one works out. It includes the pianist Danilo Perez and the bassist John Patitucci (half of the Wayne Shorter quartet that has been slaying audiences for the last three years) and the guitarist Jerome Harris. Sets are tonight and tomorrow at 9 and 11; cover is $40 with a $10 minimum at a table. RATLIFF * SHIRLEY HORN, Le Jazz Au Bar, 41 East 58th Street, Midtown, (212) 308-9455. At 70, Shirley Horns voice is thinner and airier; she has become a master of fragility and resignation, and one of her specialties is a tempo so slow that the song almost dissolves in the air. But she gives the impression that she has lived closely with each song in her repertory, and within the fairly intimate dimensions of Le Jazz Au Bar you can really absorb her honest, understated, but inherently dramatic performance style. Sets are at 8 and 10:30 tonight and tomorrow and 8 on Sunday; cover charge is $50. RATLIFF * STACEY KENT, Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-2232. Ms. Kent, a youngish American who made her name in Europe, plays with a band that includes her tenor saxophonist husband, Jim Tomlinson. Her high, mentholated, accurate voice has a quick-snap vibrato and a conversational honesty; she knows how to broadcast her strengths in performance. Sets through Sunday night are at 7:30 and 9:30; cover charge is $25. RATLIFF LITTLE HUEY CREATIVE MUSIC ORCHESTRA, Clemente Soto Velez Gallery, 107 Suffolk at Rivington, Lower East Side, (212) 260-4080. A 13-piece band led by the bassist William Parker, gathering up some of New Yorks best free-jazz musicians including Rob Brown, Sabir Mateen and Matt Lavelle. Its the latest concert presented by Vision Club, the floating series of concerts produced by Arts for Art. Tomorrow at 7:30 and 9; tickets are $15 per set or $20 for both. RATLIFF DANNY MOORE BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION, Smoke, 2751 Broadway, at 106th Street, (212) 864-6662. The trumpeter Danny Moore, whos in his mid-60s, isnt a household name or even a name with many listings in the Penguin Guide to Jazz. But he has been a mainstream-jazz sideman on the New York scene since the 1960s; his solid group includes the tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander and the pianist Harold Mabern, and he has made a habit over the last five years or so of celebrating his birthday in public, at Smoke. Sets are tonight and tomorrow at 9, 11, and 12:30; cover charge is $20 with a $10 minimum. RATLIFF * NEW YORK CITY WINTER JAZZFEST, Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard Street, TriBeCa, (212) 219-3132. The Association of Performing Arts Presenters (A.P.A.P.) is putting on a rather extraordinary jazz marathon for its own interested parties -- concert bookers, presenters, etc. -- but also for the average person who would like to get up to speed quickly with the best emerging (or recently emerged) artists in jazz (or music related to jazz). The schedule includes Gretchen Parlato, James Carters Organ Trio, the Bad Plus, Jason Moran and the Bandwagon and the Claudia Quintet. Sunday from 5 to midnight; tickets are $25. Call for the schedule, or visit www.knittingfactory.com for details. RATLIFF JEREMY PELT QUARTET, Fat Cat, 75 Christopher Street, West Village, (212) 675-7369. Jeremy Pelt is an impressive, forthright young trumpeter who has taken bits and pieces of style from Clifford Brown, Freddie Hubbard and others. But he frequently manages to get at the thing about jazz that transcends the matter of influences: though he might raid past players for their musical grammar, swing is personal, and Mr. Pelt wants to reveal its mystical properties, its feeling of floating. Sets are tonight and tomorrow at 10:30, midnight, 1:30 and 2:30; cover charge is $10. RATLIFF * ERIC REED TRIO, Dizzys Club Coca-Cola, Frederick P. Rose Hall, 60th Street at Broadway, (212)258-9595. Always alert and fluent, Mr. Reed, the pianist, has gospel and bebop and a lot of post-50s modernism in him, too. Hes a combination of assiduous writer, arranger and fast-thinking improviser, and hes working with a group this week that includes the pianist Buster Williams and drummer Al Foster. Sets through Sunday night are at 7:30 and 9:30; cover charge is $30 with a $10 minimum at a table and a $5 minimum at the bar. RATLIFF ADAM ROGERS GROUP, Jazz Gallery, 290 Hudson Street, South Village, (212) 242-1063. One of the most adept new jazz guitarists, making sense of the tradition of the instrument in jazz from its early days to beyond Pat Metheny; he performs this weekend with an excellent rhythm section, the bassist Scott Colley and the drummer Clarence Penn. Sets are tonight and tomorrow at 9 and 10:30; cover charge is $15. RATLIFF WALLACE RONEY, HIROMI, Blue Note, 131 West Third Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 475-8592. A show that promises a lot of fast and flashy playing, including the young pianist Hiromi, the electric bassist Tony Grey, the trumpeter Wallace Roney and the percussionist Martin Valhora. Sets through Sunday night are at 8 and 10:30; cover charge is $25 with a $5 minimum at the tables, $15 cover and 1 drink minimum at the bar. RATLIFF JEFF (TAIN) WATTS, Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, at 11th Street, West Village, (212) 255-4037. Mr. Watts, who played with Wynton Marsaliss group through the 1980s, is one of the most influential, important and complete drummers of the last two decades. His attack can be monsoonlike, but he knows the value of open space, and he can take over a band with a simple, slow-building pattern. Sets through Sunday night are at 9 and 11; cover charge is $30. RATLIFF Classical A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy opera and classical music events this weekend in the New York metropolitan region. * denotes a highly recommended event. Full reviews of recent music performances: nytimes.com/music. Opera LES CONTES DHOFFMANN The Metropolitan Opera continues its current run of Offenbachs Contes dHoffmann tomorrow night. Hoffmann is either a dark comedy or a deeply despairing tragedy with a lot of laughs. Or maybe it is both. There are new faces in the cast, but happily Ramón Vargas remains in place in the title role. Among the changes are Jennifer Welch-Babidge as Olympia, Patricia Racette as Antonia and Dean Peterson playing the four villains. Once again the excellent Frédéric Chaslin conducts. Tonight at 8. Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000. Tickets: $40 to $215. BERNARD HOLLAND OTELLO Opera buffs who are counting on Ben Heppner to be the Heldentenor of our time were understandably worried when he endured some vocal troubles in recent seasons. So his vocally splendid performance in the daunting title role of Verdis Otello on the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera was something to cheer about. His clarion top notes and dusky-toned middle-range singing easily soared over the orchestra, and he shaped Verdis melodies with an elegant suppleness. From all reports, as the run progressed Mr. Heppners opening-night jitters, that had rendered his dramatic performance tentative, passed. So the expectations are high for his return to the role in tomorrows matinee, which will be broadcast on the radio. Also returning are the soprano Barbara Frittoli, whose singing as Desdemona on opening night was sumptuous but a little bland, and the baritone Carlos Guelfi, who was a vocally robust but blunt and stiff Iago. James Levine, who brought such organic sweep, excitement and nuance to his conducting of this colossal score, will again be in the pit. Tomorrow at 1:30 p.m., Metropolitan Opera House, (212) 362-6000. Sold out, but returns may be available at the box office. ANTHONY TOMMASINI THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE Every Gilbert and Sullivan fan has his or her own favorite, but The Pirates of Penzance tops a lot of lists. The New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players, the citys preeminent G & S troupe, while it may not have Kevin Kline, brings back its production for the first of three weekends with a bona fide television star to enhance sales: Hal Linden will be the very model of a model Major General. Tonight at 8, tomorrow at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday afternoon at 3, City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan, (212) 581-1212. Tickets: $40 to $85. ANNE MIDGETTE TURANDOT The American soprano Andrea Gruber takes on the daunting title role of Puccinis Turandot in the Metropolitan Operas revival of Franco Zeffirellis gargantuan and glittering 1987 production, so popular its critic-proof. Ms. Gruber has been singing some formidable repertory since returning to the fold of the Met in 2001, and her enormous voice shows signs of wear and stridency. Still, her singing is fearless and impassioned, and through sheer force of will she excels in the role. The tenor Johan Botha is a heroic Calaf; the soprano Krassimira Stoyanova brings affecting vulnerability and throbbing richness to the role of Liu. Bertrand de Billy conducts a colorful and exciting account of Puccinis final opera. Tonight at 8, Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000. Tickets: $35 to $200. TOMMASINI Classical Music BARGEMUSIC Moored in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, this intimate floating concert hall is a charming place to hear solo recitals and chamber music while rocking gently on the waves of the East River. After a rare holiday break from its routine, the barge has returned to its busy year-round concert-presenting schedule. Tonight, the cellist Inbal Segev and the pianist Benjamin Hochman perform music by Bloch, Mendelssohn, John Williams and others. Tomorrow night and Sunday afternoon, Ms. Segev returns with Gil Morgenstern (violin) and Reiko Uchida (piano) for trios by Smetana, Dvorak and others. Tonight and tomorrow night at 7:30 and Sunday afternoon at 4, Fulton Ferry Landing, under the Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn, (718) 624-2083. Tickets: $35; students, $25. JEREMY EICHLER DANIEL GORTLER Given the notoriously long brunch lines on the Upper West Side, its no surprise that Lincoln Center has found an eager audience for its series of short Sunday morning concerts followed by a reception with the artists. This weekend, the Israeli pianist Daniel Gortler brings an all-Mendelssohn program featuring the composers Songs Without Words. Sunday at 11 a.m., Walter Reade Theater, Rose Building, 165 West 65th Street, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500. Tickets: $20. EICHLER ANDREW HENDERSON St. Ignatius Loyola offers one of the best church-music programs in the city, with its concert series Sacred Music in a Sacred Space offering everything from fine choral singing to programs showing off the churchs impressive Mander pipe organ. Andrew Henderson, the churchs award-winning assistant organist, offers a beautiful early piece by Olivier Messiaen, nine meditations on the birth of Jesus called La Nativité du Seigneur. Sunday afternoon at 4, St. Ignatius Loyola, 980 Park Avenue, at 84th Street, (212) 288-2520. Tickets: $15 and $20. MIDGETTE * AUDRA McDONALD Pushing the envelope is becoming something of a trademark at the events Lincoln Center presents itself. This weekend, its American Songbook series moves over to Jazz at Lincoln Centers new Rose Theater in the Time Warner building, showcasing an artist many people will be happy to follow anywhere. Audra McDonald, the gifted singer, will do her thing in a program that involves a chamber ensemble, the stage director Lonny Price, the music director Ted Sperling and composers from Stevie Wonder to Adam Guettel. Tonight and tomorrow at 8, Rose Theater, Broadway and 60th Street, (212) 721-6500. Tickets: $50 and $75. MIDGETTE MET ORCHESTRA Thematic programming? This is just perverse. After a tame first half (Webers Euryanthe Overture and Brahmss Violin Concerto, with Gil Shaham as soloist), all hell breaks loose with the rip-roaring Amériques by Edgard Varèse (a Parisian in America), a concert closer if ever there was one. But James Levine follows that pulverizing music with Gershwins ditzy American in Paris. (Get it?) Evidently he likes the little joke, because he is ending a Boston Symphony program in Symphony Hall in March with the same odd coupling. Sunday at 3 p.m., Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800. Tickets: $39 to $155. JAMES R. OESTREICH METROPOLITAN MUSEUM ARTISTS IN CONCERT Sensing correctly that some fresh energy was needed to enliven its chamber music offerings, the Metropolitan Museum founded its own official resident ensemble last year, consisting mostly of young New York-based musicians in the early stages of their careers. The ensemble has been scheduled for just three concerts this season -- a very modest number for a resident ensemble -- but the first of these three takes place tonight. Several of the ensembles members will no doubt be drawing on their past experience with Yo-Yo Mas Silk Road Project for tonights program: Yan Yongs River Songs for erhu and cello and Chen Yis Fiddle Suite for erhu and string quartet. Haydn and Mendelssohn are also on the bill. Tonight at 7 , Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, (212) 570-3949. Tickets: $20; students, $5 at the door. EICHLER MUSIC FROM ASTON MAGNA The early-music scene in the Northeast, which has long shuttled between New York and Boston, finds a pleasant middle ground in the summer, as this venerable Boston-tinged group holds forth in the Berkshire foothills, in Great Barrington, Mass., and Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. And now it briefly gravitates to New York, in a program of quintets by Mozart, Weber and Onslow, with Eric Hoeprich as clarinetist. Sunday at 5 p.m., Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, Manhattan, (212) 288-0700. Free, but tickets are required. OESTREICH NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC Daniele Gatti, one of the attractive recent arrivals in the conducting world, is busy on the international circuit of guest appearances. He alights at Avery Fisher Hall tonight in a concert with the New York Philharmonic. A long-established and consistently strong colleague at the piano will be Yefim Bronfman. Schumanns Manfred Overture and the Brahms Fourth Symphony provide the beginning and end of this program. At the core is Bartoks Second Piano Concerto. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8. Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500. Tickets: $25 to $90. HOLLAND NORTH/SOUTH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA The composer, pianist and conductor Max Lifchitz has long been on a mission to bring contemporary music to mainstream audiences. This season the North/South Consonance Ensemble, which he directs, is offering a series of free programs at the acoustically splendid Christ and St. Stephens Church. On Sunday afternoon the North/South String Orchestra a roster of instrumental soloists and the narrator Robert Sherman present a New Years celebration with works by Mary Jeanne van Appledorn, Allan Crossman, Harold Schiffman, Ricardo Tacuchian and Ernst Bacon. Sunday at 3 p.m., Christ and St. Stephens Church, 120 West 69th Street, Manhattan, (212) 663-7566. Free. TOMMASINI TAKACS QUARTET String quartets and chamber music presenters cant really justify their places in the music world without periodic returns to the Beethoven quartets, complete. The Takacs Quartet is attached to the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center this season, and it will be the current carriers of Beethovens message. There will be six concerts and chronology is not being observed. The first installment is on Sunday afternoon, To be played are the G-major Quartet from Opus 18, the F-minor Serioso (Op. 95) and the late, great B-flat Quartet (Op. 130). Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, 5 p.m., (212) 875-5788. Tickets: $30 and $42. HOLLAND Dance A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy dance events this weekend in the New York metropolitan region. * denotes a highly recommended event. Full reviews of recent dance performances: nytimes.com/dance. YANIRA CASTRO In Ms. Castros new Beacon, an abandoned Brooklyn bathhouse serves as the setting for a rather brutal-sounding evocation of tension and unease, created in part by a light installation by Roderick Murray. Audience members will be separated from friends in curtained, intentionally claustrophobic viewing pens. Bring that hip flask. Tonight and tomorrow (and Fridays and Saturdays through Jan. 22) at 7 and 9 p.m.; Sunday (and Sundays through Jan. 23) at 6 p.m. Brooklyn Lyceum, 227 Fourth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (212) 924-0077. Tickets: $20. JENNIFER DUNNING CONTEMPORARY DANCE FROM TAIWAN The Japan Society and the Taipei Cultural Center unite to present the Legend Lin Dance Theater of Taiwan in Anthem to the Fading Flowers, a tribute to the cycle of the year and religious rituals celebrating the rhythms of nature. Sunday at 7 p.m., Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, Turtle Bay. Free admission but reservations required: (212) 697-6188, ext. 105. JACK ANDERSON * DANCE ON CAMERA FESTIVAL Produced by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Dance Films Association, the festival will present 13 programs of premieres and revivals over three weekends. Highlights in this first weekend include a centennial tribute to Michael Powell, the director of The Red Shoes, and a new documentary on Geoffrey Holder and Carmen de Lavallade. An exhibition of paintings, designs and photographs by Mr. Holder will run though January. The festival opens with Robert Snyders 1952 Gods of Bali, introduced by Allegra Fuller Snyder, with a documentary by Anna Ivara about Balinese child dancers (today and Jan. 21 at 1 p.m.); The Red Shoes (today at 3 p.m.; Jan. 21 at 6:15 p.m.); Carmen and Geoffrey, a documentary by Linda Atkinson and Nick Doob, introduced by Ms. de Lavallade and Mr. Holder. Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, Lincoln Center Plaza, (212) 875-5600 or www.filmlinc.com. Tickets: $10; $7 for students; $5 for 65+ for weekday matinees. DUNNING EISENHOWER DANCE ENSEMBLE AND AMY MARSHALL DANCE COMPANY Sister modern-dance companies from Detroit and New York City, the Eisenhower ensemble will perform pieces by Laurie Eisenhower and Steven Iannacone and the Marshall troupe will dance three works by Amy Marshall. Tomorrow at 8 p.m. Haft Auditorium, Fashion Institute of Technology, Building C, West 27th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, Chelsea, (718) 267-7194. Tickets: $15; $7.50 for students with identification. DUNNING FIRST WEEKENDS: NEW DANCE AND PERFORMANCE DISCUSSION SERIES Dances exploring a womans self-discovery, intimacy and human suffering -- choreographed by Kelly Bartnik, Maré Hieronimus and Kayoko Sakoh -- will be performed and then discussed with the audience. Tonight and tomorrow at 8 p.m. Brooklyn Arts Exchange, 421 Fifth Avenue, at 8th Street, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 832-0018. Tickets: $15. DUNNING * CLASSICAL SAVION Savion Glover returns. Need we say more? But this time, in a show that runs through Jan. 23, the tap stylist is performing to classical music. Tonight (and Tuesdays through Fridays through Jan. 21) at 8; tomorrow (and Saturdays through Jan. 22) at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 242-0800 or www.joyce.org. Tickets: $42. DUNNING DANIEL LÉVEILLÉ DANSÉ A Montreal choreographer offers The Modesty of Icebergs, in which naked bodies move through an unadorned space in a series of interactions that celebrate the power of movement. Tonight, tomorrow and Sunday at 8:30, Danspace Project, St. Marks Church, Second Avenue at 10th Street, East Village, (212) 674-8194. Tickets: $15. ANDERSON * NEW YORK CITY BALLET The holidays are over. A new year has begun. For those who havent the energy for anything but juicy sentimentality, a trip is in order to the City Ballet, which is performing Jerome Robbinss high-caloric Im Old Fashioned, with live dancers moving below a giant screen filled with images of Astaire and Hayworth dancing (tonight and tomorrow night). Another highlight of this first weekend back from The Nutcracker may well be the premiere, tonight, of Peter Martinss Todos Buenos Aires, starring Julio Bocca of American Ballet Theater fame. The repertory also includes ballets by George Balanchine and Christopher Wheeldon, as well as Boris Eifmans Musagète, complete with wheeled chair. Tonight at 8; tomorrow at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 3 p.m. New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 870-5570 or www.nycballet.com. Tickets: $30 to $83. For availability of Student Rush tickets at $12 check the company Web site or call (212) 870-7766. DUNNING THIRD RAIL DANCE In Screaming Shrubbery, inspired by mystery novels and collaboratively created by Jennine Willett, Tom Pearson and Zach Morris, six dancers and one dummy portray 99 characters. Murder and mayhem abound during a weekend celebration in which topiary sing, British aristocrats dance with drunken abandon and tea and crumpets will be served to the audience. Tonight at 9, tomorrow at 8 and 10 p.m., Sunday at 8 p.m., Merce Cunningham Studio, 55 Bethune Street, West Village, (718) 871-3932. Tickets: $15. ANDERSON * UNDER THE RADAR: BIG DANCE THEATER Another chance to see the companys Plan B, one of last seasons most fascinating and disturbing theater dance pieces, whose characters feature President Richard M. Nixon and Kaspar Hauser, the famous wild child of 19th-century Germany. Sunday and Monday at 7 p.m., DUMBO Stable, 16 Main Street, at Water Street, Brooklyn, (718) 422-7875. Tickets: $15. DUNNING * UNDER THE RADAR: MARC BAMUTH JOSEPHI In Word Becomes Flesh, Mr. Joseph explores the commercialization and exploitation of the black male body, drawing on language and tap, West African, hip-hop and jazz movement. Tomorow at 5 p.m.; Monday at 8 p.m., St. Anns Warehouse, 38 Water Street, Brooklyn, (718) 254-8779 or stannswarehouse.org. Tickets: $15. DUNNING * ROS WARBY Ms. Warby is a small, inscrutable but shamelessly abandoned performer. With a little luck, her new Swift will be as irresistible. The solo examines the layers of a female character in a world of fairytale and transformation, framed by enlarged fragments of her moving body seen on 12 video projections created by the filmmaker Margie Medlin, a fellow Aussie. Swift is set to cello music composed and performed live by Helen Mountfort. Tonight and tomorrow at 7:30 p.m., Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 924-0077. Tickets: $20. DUNNING Art A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy art, design and photography shows at New York museums and galleries this weekend. At many museums, children under 12 and members are admitted free. Addresses, unless otherwise noted, are in Manhattan. Most galleries are closed on Sundays and Mondays, but hours vary and should be checked by telephone. Gallery admission is free unless noted. * denotes a highly recommended show. Full reviews of recent shows: nytimes.com/art. Museums * THE AZTEC EMPIRE, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, (212) 423-3500, through Feb. 13. When a big survey of Aztec art opened in London in 2002, everybody flipped out. It was one of the hottest ancient-art events since Tutankhamen. Now an expanded version of the London show is at the Guggenheim, and its a stunner. Objects from pre-Aztec Mexico set the stage, but it is material from the bloody-minded, deity-besotted Aztec culture that fills the museums darkened ramps. Set on jutting platforms and dark recesses are a skull-headed earth goddess in a skirt of writhing snakes, a warrior metamorphizing into a bird and a god of spring and fertility shedding his skin. Funky clay images of domestic life alternate with ultrasophisticated gold jewelry. The show may be a little too heavy on theater and too light on information, but its totally mesmerizing. Hours: Saturdays through Wednesdays, 10 a.m. to 5:45 p.m.; Fridays, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Admission: $18; $15, students and 65+. HOLLAND COTTER BLUE, American Folk Art Museum, 45 West 53rd Street, (212) 265-1040, through March 6. This cool, offbeat little show is made up of all-blue or mostly blue objects from the permanent collection, including, ceramics, quilts, Shaker gift drawings and some attractive portraits. In one dated around 1768, a proud young Newport, R.I., belle wears pricey pale blue silk. In another, a chap named Jonathan Knight cuts a Romantic figure in an indigo dress coat and yellow striped pants, an outfit identified with the hero of Goethes Sorrows of Young Werther. An 1830 watercolor of a boy named Frederick Buxton was done on the cheap. But while his blue suit has faded with time, his big, candid eyes are as blue as the day they were painted. They make a perfect conclusion to this chromatic take on American social history. Hours: Tuesdays through Sundays, 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Fridays, 10:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Admission: $9; students, 62+, $7. COTTER * RALPH EUGENE MEATYARD, International Center of Photography, 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at 43rd Street, (212) 857-0000, through Feb. 27. Maybe the most oddball of all the photographers of the ordinary, Meatyard gives reality a flip that often puts it into the realm of surreality. His creepy, staged shots of family and friends in strange masks but homey settings, or unmasked in derelict places that turn spooky, are weirdly unsettling while at the same time involved with the familiar actions of everyday life. His idea of family photographs was to take his wife and three children to broken-down houses around Lexington, Ky., the town they lived in, and depict them playing, jumping and rolling around, wearing masks or making faces, in dank interiors with broken windows or standing aimlessly in front of ruined facades. Wanting to convey the mysterious, inexpressible ties among people, Meatyard did not coax smiles or pleasing body language or any sentiment at all from his subjects. Vacant stares and brooding countenances are more the rule. Hours: Tuesdays through Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Fridays, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission: $10; $7, students and 65+. GRACE GLUECK * WILD: FASHION UNTAMED, the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, (212) 535-7710, through March 13. This sumptuous assemblage of fur, feathers, leather and such used to keep humans warm, make them look good and ratchet up their social status displays more than 100 costumes and accessories by big-name designers, from the House of Worth to Karl Lagerfeld. The symbols of wealth, status and sexuality run from the maximal white swans-down coat, plucked from male swan breasts and owned by Marlene Dietrich, to the minimal bikini recently wrought of badger fur by Jordan Betten, a reprise of the next-to-nothing get-up that revealed most of Raquel Welch in the 1966 film One Million Years B.C. The show, certainly one of the most politically incorrect exhibitions the Met has ever mounted, confidently assures us in its catalog that animal-rights protests peaked in the 1980s and that since the mid-90s we have seen a revival of wearer interest in fur in its natural state. Hmmm. Hours: Sundays, Tuesdays through Thursdays, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays until 9 p.m. Admission: $12; students and 65+, $7. GLUECK Galleries: Uptown ROSWELL ANGIER, Gitterman, 170 East 75th Street, (212) 734-0868, through Jan. 29. In the early 1970s, this photographer explored a Boston netherworld called the Combat Zone where strip joints and other sex-related businesses flourished. His documentary pictures of strippers and pimps are not sensational but matter-of-fact, tender and sad. A more recent series studying street and bar life in Native American border towns in the Southwest is similarly humane and visually poetic. KEN JOHNSON ROGER BROWN, Adam Baumgold, 74 East 79th Street, (212) 861-7338, through Jan. 15. Roger Brown (1941-1997) was one of the most original artists to emerge from Chicago after World War II. He blended influences from Indian miniature painting, Giorgio DiChirico, Grant Wood, outsider art and old comics to create mysteriously enchanting landscapes and cityscapes populated by tiny, silhouetted people. The nine canvases dating from 1968 to 1982 on view here are the first Brown exhibition to be presented in New York in 10 years. JOHNSON Galleries: SoHo SU-MEI TSE, Peter Blum, 99 Wooster Street, (212) 343-0441, through Jan. 22. This exhibition features the work that won the prize for best national pavilion -- Luxembourgs -- at the 2003 Venice Bienale. It consists of a white neon sign that reads [E:r] conditionné, and two dreamlike video projections. In one, the artist plays the cello on a grassy, alpine prominence; in the other, men in green janitorial uniforms in a desert use green-bristled brooms to sweep sand into small piles. JOHNSON Galleries: Chelsea ROZ CHAST: SEASONS GREETINGS, Julie Saul, 535 West 22nd Street, (212) 627-2410. through Jan. 29. For her first New York gallery exhibition, this brilliant cartoonist presents recent cartoons, many of which have appeared in The New Yorker, and a set of eggs brightly painted according to a traditional Ukrainian craft. The eggs bearing images of funny-looking people are amusing, but they dont compete with the cartoons hilarious and uncannily acute take on the conflicted psychic life of ordinary, white, liberal Americans. JOHNSON CONSTRUCTED IMAGE, Kent, 541 West 25th Street, (212) 627-3680, through Jan. 29. Though not quite convincing as a theme show, this 15-artist exhibition presents some compelling works, including a small, extraordinarily life-like bronze head with glass eyes by Elizabeth King; a haunting Pop-surrealist painting of an old boxer by Llyn Foulkes; a large collage portrait of a woman made of neatly inlaid pieces of road maps by Matthew Cusick and a bizarrely erudite, diagrammatic painting about the Grand Guignol Theater by Paul Laffoley. JOHNSON AMY ELLINGSON: SEMPER AUGUSTUS, Charles Cowles, 537 West 24th Street, (212) 741-8999, through Jan. 15. This California-based artists first New York solo show presents paintings that are optically enthralling and sensuously tactile. Ms. Ellingson generates complex, layered patterns of gridded ovals on a computer, and converts them into satiny, subtly color-coordinated oil-painted fields, on top of which she applies grids of thick, white or black ovals made in encaustic. JOHNSON KEITH HARING, Alona Kagan, 540 West 29th Street, (212) 560-0670, through Jan. 29. If you liked the New Museums lively survey of the East Village scene of the 1980s, you will appreciate this selection of paintings and sculptures by one of the best artists to emerge from that cauldron of antic creativity. It includes subway drawings in chalk on black paper; large, dizzyingly patterned canvases and brightly enameled, cut-metal characters. Barking dogs, radiant babies, flying saucers, mythic monsters and all kinds of hyperactive humans animate Harings delirious cosmic comedy. JOHNSON MATERIAL AS METAPHOR, Tanya Bonakdar, 521 West 21st Street, (212) 414-4144, through Jan. 15. An exhibition of works that are emphatically physical yet poetic includes comically anthropomorphic sculptures by Miroslaw Balka; a darkly surrealistic sculptural landscape by Mark Manders; an arrangement of mostly yellow found and hand-made objects by Ian Kiaer; roses wrapped in spirals of puffy white cotton by Valeska Soares; elegantly spare fabric works by Helen Mirra; and lumps of fat in a cardboard box by Joseph Beuys. JOHNSON * NANCY REXROTH, IOWA, Robert Mann, 210 11th Avenue, near 25th Street, (212) 989-7600, through Jan. 8. Ms. Rexroths small black-and-white photographs of empty bedrooms, clapboard houses, children at play and views of a small town are blurry and often awkwardly framed as though theyd been made by a child in the 50s experimenting with a camera for the first time. In fact, she created the series between 1971 and 1976, when she was herself in her late 30s, using a toy camera called a Diana. The powerfully nostalgic images could illustrate a volume of Alice Munros short stories. JOHNSON Other Galleries * A. BALASUBRAMANIAM, Talwar Gallery, 108 East 16th Street, (212) 673-3096, through Jan 22. The work of this exceptional young artist, based in India, is about the play of material solidity and illusion. His first show at Talwar two years ago included a full-size human form that seemed to pass through a gallery wall; for the current show he has cast his own head in an opaque, waxy substance of a kind used to produce air fresheners, so that the self-portrait will dissolve through slow evaporation. Time and change are also the subjects of other work here. And the whole, spare, resonant show comes together in a sculpture of a single slender branch bristling with sharp thorns and cast in solid gold; the more alluring illusion is, the more be painful it can be. COTTER Last Chance * THE ART OF ROMARE BEARDEN, Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue, at 75th Street, (212) 570-3600, closing on Sunday. Its a pity only that this retrospective is so big. Art like Beardens -- mostly small, intense and intricate -- deserves close scrutiny. His genius, aside from his poetic knack for piecing scraps of photographs and other tiny tidbits together, was to see collage as an inherent social metaphor: that its essence was to turn nothings into something, making disparate elements cohere, a positivist enterprise. His collages celebrated black culture and personal history, combined elements of East and West, high and low, old and new: African masks with ancient Greek art, Matisse with patchwork quilts. Literature and music shaped the work no less than Picasso, George Grosz and Vermeer did. Hours: Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Fridays, 1 to 9 p.m. Admission: $12; $9.50, students and 62+. MICHAEL KIMMELMAN * BILL BRANDT: THE NUDE: A CENTENARY EXHIBITION, Edwynn Houk Gallery, 745 Fifth Avenue, at 57th Street, (212) 750-7070, closing tomorrow. Though he earned enormous respect as a photojournalist, making memorable studies of British life and class contrasts among other achievements, Brandt (1904-1983) liked to say that his photographs of nudes were the works by which he wanted to be remembered. This show pays tribute to his quirky, not conventionally erotic nude images from the early post-World War II days in which he photographed them melodramatically in dark, sparsely furnished interiors to later 1950s studies that were near abstractions. In these he closed in on parts, distorted or exaggerated by odd angles of focus and perspective and lighted for sharp contrasts of black and white. They often took on a surreally sensuous quality remote from the everyday. But their artifice blends with that of the natural world to create a poets vision. GLUECK FLIPSIDE, Artists Space, 38 Greene Street, (212) 226-3970, closing tomorrow. This lively and messy group show presents artists who have participated in programs organized by Artslink, which has worked to promote contemporary art in Eastern Europe. It includes a few Americans, but the interest is mainly in the Eastern Europeans, who employ conceptualist and often sardonically ironic strategies to address the flipside of history: a post-Soviet time of declining hope for socialist and utopian possibilities. JOHNSON JOAN FONTCUBERTA: PIN ZHUANG, Zabriskie Gallery, 41 East 57th Street, (212) 752-1223, closing tomorrow. Prompted by a 2001 incident in which an American spy plane that crashed in China was thoroughly picked over and returned to the United States in pieces, this show depicts model planes carefully misconstructed by the mischievous Spanish artist Joan Fontcuberta. Photographed against backdrops suggesting outer space, the planes look like flying piles of engineered debris but also suggest advanced weapon systems, NASA-conceived orbiters and techy sculptures by the American constructivist Theodore Roszak. Starfighter, for one, a fearsome assemblage of miscellaneous parts with a terrifying needle nose, hovers like a hungry bird of prey over a vast stretch of vulnerable terrain. GLUECK JULIO LARRAZ, Marlborough, 40 West 57th Street, (212) 541-4900, closing tomorrow. Mr. Larraz, who came to the United States from Cuba as a teenager in 1961, produces a generously painterly realism that often veers into surrealistic fantasy. His canvases record scenes of ordinary beauty, like the images of a melting block of ice or potted bougainvilleas for sale on a sunlighted boat deck. Then there is Vincent van Gogh visiting a modern aquarium in which a big shark hovers behind the thick glass. JOHNSON KERRY JAMES MARSHALL, ONE TRUE THING: MEDITATIONS ON BLACK AESTHETICS, the Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 West 125th Street, (212) 864-4500, closing on Sunday. Partly to provoke a discussion about freedom and Black Aesthetics, the MacArthur fellowship-winning, Chicago-based Mr. Marshall is exhibiting recent works in a variety of media, including photographs, videos and installation. Painting is still his strong suit, however. Among the exhibitions high points are a huge, Hopperesque street scene in which a few people seem to be waiting for a warehouse-size liquor store to open, and a satiric vision of ecstatic Afro-centrism featuring a black couple running joyfully naked through a pastoral landscape. Hours: Wednesdays through Fridays and Sundays, noon to 6 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission, $7; 65+ and students, $3. JOHNSON * MARTHA ROSLER, Photomontages: 1965-2004, Gorney Bravin & Lee, 534 West 26th Street, (212) 352-8372, closing tomorrow. Martha Rosler made her first series of photomontages in the 1960s and 70s as responses to the Vietnam War, sexism and Americas consumer culture, phenomena that she presented as closely related. This year she returned to collage and the same subjects, the difference being that the war is now in Iraq. Both old and new series are brought together in this major show. And the fact that they form a seamless flow has every bit as much to say about the consistencies of American political history as it does about the vigilant career of one of our most astute commentarial artists. COTTER ANTOINE VOLLON: A PAINTERS PAINTER, Wildenstein, 19 East 64th Street (212) 879-0500, closing today. The realist painter Antoine Vollon (1833-1900) was a technical wiz, known as the Chardin of his day for his skill at still lifes. A steady exhibitor at the annual salons in Paris, he also did all-but-Impressionist country and urban scapes. At his best he was a master of the paint medium, slathering on pigment in quick Manet-like strokes. Complex still lifes are devoted to writhing fish, dead rabbits and compositions rife with fruit, flowers and vessels that evoke the bravura extravaganzas of Dutch masters. Vollons work smacks too much of other artists to make him Truly Important, but his sensuous wallows in paint are well worth wider notice. GLUECK

Solar eclipse: grey skies part for lucky star-gazers

The sun also eclipses, to misquote Ernest Hemingway. After hours of near-despairing reports insisting the clouds were too thick, sky-gazers at Newquay in Cornwall ��� positioned to be among the first in the UK to glimpse a phenomenon that has thrilled.

The Listings: March 10 - March 16

Selective listings by critics of The New York Times of new and noteworthy cultural events in the New York metropolitan region this week. * denotes a highly recommended film, concert, show or exhibition. Theater Approximate running times are in parentheses. Theaters are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of current shows, additional listings, show times and tickets: nytimes.com/theater. Previews and Openings RING OF FIRE Opens Sunday. Johnny Cash hits are the backbone of this musical about three couples. So far, it has received surprisingly good buzz. Richard Maltby Jr. directs (2:00). Ethel Barrymore Theater, 243 West 47th Street, (212) 239-6200. HARD RIGHT Opens Sunday. In David Barths dark comedy, a slacker college student takes his girlfriend home to meet his parents, and a family trauma interrupts everything (1:30). Players Theater, 115 Macdougal Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 352-3101. SIDD Opens Wednesday. Herman Hesses novel Siddhartha, the musical version (2:15). Dodger Stages, 340 West 50th Street, Clinton, (212) 239-6200. ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE Opens Thursday. Alec Baldwin stars in Joe Ortons jet-black comedy about a handsome stranger who seduces everyone onstage (2:00). Laura Pels Theater at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theater, 111 West 46th Street, (212) 719-1300. FARENHEIT 451 Previews start Thursday. Opens March 21. Ray Bradbury cult vision of the future is adapted for the stage (1:30). 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street, (212) 279-4200. JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS Opens March 27. Something of a phenomenon in the late 1960s, the French singers romantic music returns to New York in this musical, which features tangos, ballads, boleros and rock n roll (2:00). Zipper Theater, 336 West 37th Street, (212) 239-6200. A NIGHT IN NOVEMBER Previews start Tuesday. Opens March 17. A revival of the comedy by Marie Jones (Stones in His Pockets) about a Protestant clerk in a Belfast, Ireland, welfare office who for the first time in his life does something really crazy (1:30). Irish Arts Center, 553 West 51st Street, Clinton, (212) 868-4444. THE PROPERTY KNOWN AS GARLAND Previews start Monday. Opens March 23. Another year, another Judy. This time, the 1970s sexpot Adrienne Barbeau -- Rizzo from the original Grease -- plays Judy Garland backstage at her final concert (1:30). The Actors Playhouse, 100 Seventh Avenue South, at Fourth Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 239-6200. SHOW PEOPLE Previews start Thursday. Opens April 6. A new comedy by Paul Weitz (Privilege) about two actors who are hired by a banker to impersonate his parents. Debra Monk stars (2:00). Second Stage Theater, 307 West 43rd Street, Clinton, (212) 246-4422. TRIAL BY WATER Previews start Tuesday. Opens March 26. The Ma-Yi Theater Companys allegorical work by Qui Nguyen about two Vietnamese brothers who set off for America. John Gould Rubin directs (1:30). Culture Project, 45 Bleecker Street, at Lafayette Street, East Village, (212) 352-3101. WALK THE MOUNTAIN Previews start Wednesday. Opens March 19. Jude Narita performs monologues by Vietnamese and Cambodian women in this solo show, which was created from interviews with real people (1:00). 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street, (212) 279-4200. WELL Previews start tonight. Opens March 30. After a successful run at the Public Theater, Lisa Kron and her mom, played by Jayne Houdyshell, come to Broadway in this metadrama about theater, sickness and family (1:40). Longacre Theater, 220 West 48th Street, (212) 239-6200. Broadway BAREFOOT IN THE PARK For a work that celebrates the liberating force of spontaneity, this revival of Neil Simons 1963 comedy doesnt have one scene that feels organic, let alone impromptu. Directed by Scott Elliott, and starring Patrick Wilson and a miscast Amanda Peet as newlyweds in Greenwich Village, this Barefoot has the robotic gait of Frankensteins monster (2:20). Cort Theater, 138 West 48th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Ben Brantley) * BRIDGE & TUNNEL This delightful solo show, written and performed by Sarah Jones, is a sweet-spirited valentine to New York City, its polyglot citizens and the larger notion of an all-inclusive America. In 90 minutes of acutely observed portraiture gently tinted with humor, Ms. Jones plays more than a dozen men and women participating in an open-mike evening of poetry for immigrants (1:30). Helen Hayes Theater, 240 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Charles Isherwood) THE COLOR PURPLE So much plot, so many years, so many characters to cram into less than three hours. This beat-the-clock musical adaptation of Alice Walkers Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about Southern black women finding their inner warriors never slows down long enough for you to embrace it. LaChanze leads the vibrant, hard-working cast (2:40). Broadway Theater, 1681 Broadway, at 53rd Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) DOUBT, A PARABLE (Pulitzer Prize, Best Play 2005, and Tony Award, Best Play 2005) Set in the Bronx in 1964, this play by John Patrick Shanley is structured as a clash of wills and generations between Sister Aloysius (Eileen Atkins), the head of a parochial school, and Father Flynn (Ron Eldard), the young priest who may or may not be too fond of the boys in his charge. The plays elements bring to mind those tidy topical melodramas that were once so popular. But Mr. Shanley makes subversive use of musty conventions (1:30). Walter Kerr Theater, 219 West 48th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) JERSEY BOYS From grit to glamour with the Four Seasons, directed by the pop repackager Des McAnuff (The Whos Tommy). The real thrill of this shrink-wrapped bio-musical, for those who want something more than recycled chart toppers and a story line poured from a can, is watching the wonderful John Lloyd Young (as Frankie Valli) cross the line from exact impersonation into something far more compelling (2:30). August Wilson Theater, 245 West 52nd Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA Love is a many-flavored thing, from sugary to sour, in Adam Guettel and Craig Lucass encouragingly ambitious and discouragingly unfulfilled new musical. The show soars only in the sweetly bitter songs performed by the wonderful Victoria Clark, as an American abroad (2:15). Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) THE ODD COUPLE Odd is not the word for this couple. How could an adjective suggesting strangeness or surprise apply to a production so calculatedly devoted to the known, the cozy, the conventional? As the title characters in Neil Simons 1965 comedy, directed as if to a metronome by Joe Mantello, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick reprise their star performances from The Producers, and its not a natural fit. Dont even consider killing yourself because the show is already sold out (2:10). Brooks Atkinson Theater, 256 West 47th Street, (212) 307-4100. (Brantley) * THE PAJAMA GAME Sexual chemistry in a Broadway musical? Isnt that illegal now? If it were, then Harry Connick Jr. and Kelli OHara -- the white-hot stars of Kathleen Marshalls delicious revival of this 1954 musical -- would be looking at long jail terms. This intoxicating production, which features a charming supporting cast led by Michael McKean, allows grown-up audiences the rare chance to witness a bona fide adult love affair translated into hummable songs and sprightly dance (2:30). American Airlines Theater, 227 West 42nd Street, (212) 719-1300. (Brantley) * RABBIT HOLE Thanks to a certain former American president, it has become almost impossible to say that you feel someone elses pain without its sounding like a punch line. Yet the sad, sweet release of David Lindsay-Abaires wrenching play, about the impact of the death of a small child, lies precisely in the access it allows to the pain of others, in its meticulously mapped empathy. With an emotionally transparent five-member cast led by Cynthia Nixon and Tyne Daly, directed by Daniel Sullivan, this anatomy of grief doesnt so much jerk tears as tap them (2:10). Biltmore Theater, 261 West 47th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) SPAMALOT (Tony Award, Best Musical 2005) This staged re-creation of the mock-medieval movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail is basically a singing scrapbook for Python fans. Such a good time is being had by so many people that this fitful, eager celebration of inanity and irreverence has found a large and lucrative audience (2:20). Shubert Theater, 225 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) * SWEENEY TODD Sweet dreams, New York. This thrilling new revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheelers musical, with Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone leading a cast of 10 who double as their own musicians, burrows into your thoughts like a campfire storyteller who knows what really scares you. The inventive director John Doyle aims his pared-down interpretation at the squirming child in everyone who wants to have his worst fears both confirmed and dispelled (2:30). Eugene ONeill Theater, 230 West 49th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) * THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE The happy news for this happy-making little musical is that the move to larger quarters has dissipated none of its quirky charm. William Finns score sounds plumper and more rewarding than it did on Off Broadway, providing a sprinkling of sugar to complement the sass in Rachel Sheinkins zinger-filled book. The performances are flawless. Gold stars all around (1:45). Circle in the Square, 1633 Broadway, at 50th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Isherwood) Off Broadway * ABIGAILS PARTY Scott Elliotts thoroughly delectable production of Mike Leighs 1977 comedy about domestic discord among the British middle classes. Jennifer Jason Leigh leads a superb ensemble cast as a party hostess who wields the gin bottle like a deadly weapon, resulting in an evening of savagely funny chaos (2:15). Acorn Theater at Theater Row, 410 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 279-4200. (Isherwood) * ALLS WELL THAT ENDS WELL This Theater for a New Audience production inspires a quiet prayer of thanks to the theater gods. Here is that rare Shakespeare production in which there is nary an incompetent, misjudged or ineffective performance in a significant role. Darko Tresnjak and his cast find a way to make the plays troubled romance, between the adoring Helena and the disdaining Bertram, psychologically credible and even touching (2:30). The Duke on 42nd Street, 229 West 42nd Street, (212) 239-6200. (Isherwood) BERNARDA ALBA Michael John LaChiusas musical adaptation of Federico García Lorcas tragedy of sexual repression often feels wan and weary, though not for want of erotic imagery. The ominous, oppressive atmosphere that makes Lorcas play so much more than a potboiler is mostly missing in inaction. Graciela Daniele directs a game ensemble led by a miscast Phylicia Rashad (1:30). Mitzi Newhouse Theater, 150 West 65th Street, Lincoln Center, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) CONFESSIONS OF A MORMON BOY Steven Fales, a sixth-generation Mormon, describes leaving his family and becoming a gay escort in this fairly conventional, although admittedly compelling, piece of confessional theater (1:30). SoHo Playhouse, 15 Vandam Street, between Avenue of the Americas and Varick Street, (212) 691-1555. (Zinoman) DEFIANCE The second play in John Patrick Shanleys cycle of morality dramas that began with Doubt, this ambitious tale of racial relations and the military mindset on a North Carolina marine base feels both overcrowded and oddly diffuse. If Doubt has an elegant and energy-efficient sprinters gait, Defiance progresses with a flustered air of distraction. The excellent Margaret Colin, as an officers wife, provides a welcome shot of credibility (1:30). Manhattan Theater Club, Theater 1, 131 West 55th Street, (212) 581-1212. (Brantley) GREY GARDENS As the socialite in limbo called Little Edie Beale, Christine Ebersole gives one of the most gorgeous performances ever to grace a musical. Unfortunately, shes a pearl of incalculable price in a show that is mostly costume jewelry. Adapted from the Maysles brothers 1975 cult documentary movie, a camp favorite, and directed by Michael Greif, with the excellent Mary Louise Wilson as Edies bedridden mother (2:40). Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 279-4200. (Brantley) HEDDA GABLER In the title role of Ibsens destructively dissatisfied heroine, Cate Blanchett is giving roughly a dozen of the liveliest performances to be seen this year, all at the same time, in the Sydney Theater Companys visiting production. A mere one or two at this level of intensity would have been enough. But she remains compellingly watchable in Robyn Nevins hyped-up, spasmodic production (2:25). Brooklyn Academy of Musics Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton Street, Fort Greene, (718) 636-4100. (Brantley) * I LOVE YOU BECAUSE The plot line -- single New Yorkers in search of love -- couldnt be more familiar, but somehow this fluffy, funny musical makes it refreshing, helped along by an engaging six-member cast, with David A. Austin making a particularly hilarious impression. An impressive start for Ryan Cunningham (book and lyrics) and Joshua Salzman (music), both still in their 20s (2:00). Village Theater, 158 Bleecker Street, near Sullivan Street, East Village, (212) 307-4100. (Neil Genzlinger) INDOOR/OUTDOOR A comedy by Kenny Finkle about a housecat torn between affection for her human companion and a sexy tomcat promising a tour of the great outdoors. Directed by Darren Goldstein and energetically performed by a cast of four, its essentially just another dysfunctional relationship tale, with little kitty whiskers drawn on (1:50). DR2 Theater, 103 East 15th Street, Flatiron district, (212) 239-6200. (Isherwood) THE MUSIC TEACHER, A PLAY/OPERA A pair of interlocking monologues surrounding a little parody of an opera, with text by Wallace Shawn and music by his brother Allen. Written two decades ago and shelved when the authors failed to find a producer, this is a minor-key, underrealized work that hits a few elegiac notes but steps too gingerly around the psychosexual trauma at its core (1:45). Minetta Lane Theater, 18 Minetta Lane, Greenwich Village, (212) 307-4100. (Isherwood) RED LIGHT WINTER A frank, occasionally graphic story of erotic fixation and the havoc it can wreak on sensitive types. Written and directed by Adam Rapp, the play is both a doomy romantic drama and a morbid comedy about the anxieties of male friendship. Although somewhat contrived, it features a lovely performance by Christopher Denham as a lonely soul starved for intimacy (2:25). Barrow Street Theater, 27 Barrow Street, West Village, (212) 239-6200. (Isherwood) SOLDIERS WIFE When this play first opened on Broadway, World War II was shuddering to a close, and those on the home front wanted to feel good. Despite flaws in the work, the Mint Theater Companys revival of Rose Frankens 1944 comedy is highly entertaining (2:00). Mint Theater, 311 West 43rd Street, Clinton, (212) 315-0231. (Honor Moore) * [TITLE OF SHOW] Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell are the authors, stars and subject matter of this delectable new musical about its own making. The self-consciousness is tempered by a wonderful cast performing with the innocence of kids cavorting in a sandbox. Its a worthy postmodern homage to the classic backstage musicals, and an absolute must for show queens (1:30). Vineyard Theater, 108 East 15th Street, Flatiron district, (212) 353-0303. (Isherwood) * TRANSATLANTIC LIAISON A play fashioned from Simone de Beauvoirs love letters to the American novelist Nelson Algren and scenes from her novel The Mandarins (which tells the story of their affair). Wonderful performances by Elizabeth Rothan as de Beauvoir in love, and Matthew S. Tompkins as the emotional Algren (1:30). Harold Clurman Theater on Theater Row, 412 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 279-4200. (Moore) Off Off Broadway EL QUIJOTE Sancho Panza is the real star of this often rollicking but uneven adaptation of Cervantess Don Quijote. Caution: no windmills. In Spanish with simultaneous English translation (1:40). Repertorio Español, at the Gramercy Arts Theater, 138 East 27th Street, (212) 225-9920. (George Hunka) THE TRAVELING LADY A small but affecting production of Horton Footes 1954 play, produced by Ensemble Studio Theater in association with Baylor University, where Marion Castleberrys staging originated. Like The Trip to Bountiful, of roughly the same vintage, this is a delicately drawn portrait of an anxious spirit in search of home, in this case a young wife looking to reunite with her neer-do-well husband (1:30). Ensemble Studio Theater, 549 West 52nd Street, Clinton, (212) 352-3101. (Isherwood) 25 QUESTIONS FOR A JEWISH MOTHER This is the comedian Judy Golds fiercely funny monologue, based on her own life as a single Jewish lesbian mother and interviews with more than 50 other Jewish mothers (1:10). Ars Nova, 511 West 54th Street, Clinton, (212) 868-4444. (Phoebe Hoban) * ZOMBOID! (FILM/PERFORMANCe PROJECT #1) O, the heresy of it! Richard Foreman has introduced film into the realm of exquisitely artificial, abstract theater in which he has specialized for four decades. As it turns out, juxtaposing two art forms allows Mr. Foreman to underscore in resonant new ways what he has been saying for years: reality is, well, relative. And he continues to work in a style guaranteed to infect your perceptions for hours after (1:15). Ontological-Hysteric Theater, 131 East 10th Street, East Village, (212) 352-3101. (Brantley) Long-Running Shows AVENUE Q R-rated puppets give lively life lessons (2:10). Golden, 252 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) BEAUTY AND THE BEAST Cartoon made flesh, sort of (2:30). Lunt-Fontanne Theater, 205 West 46th Street, (212) 307-4747. (Brantley) CHICAGO Irrefutable proof that crime pays (2:25). Ambassador Theater, 219 West 49th Street, (212) 239-6200.(Brantley) HAIRSPRAY Fizzy pop, cute kids, large man in a housedress (2:30). Neil Simon Theater, 250 West 52nd Street, (212) 307-4100. (Brantley) THE LION KING Disney on safari, where the big bucks roam (2:45). New Amsterdam Theater, 214 West 42nd Street, (212) 307-4100. (Brantley) MAMMA MIA! The jukebox that devoured Broadway (2:20). Cadillac Winter Garden Theater, 1634 Broadway, at 50th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA Who was that masked man, anyway? (2:30). Majestic Theater, 247 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) THE PRODUCERS The ne plus ultra of showbiz scams (2:45). St. James Theater, 246 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) RENT East Village angst and love songs to die for (2:45). Nederlander Theater, 208 West 41st Street, (212) 307-4100. (Brantley) WICKED Oz revisited, with political corrections (2:45). Gershwin Theater, 222 West 51st Street, (212) 307-4100. (Brantley) Last Chance ACTS OF MERCY: PASSION-PLAY If there is a coherent story to Michael John Garcés Acts of Mercy: passion-play, it is resolutely kept from the audience. As the efforts of two brothers to reconcile with a dying father progress, it seems possible that viewers are meant to discern the consequences of family trauma from punchy monosyllabic combat and repeated expletives, but their efforts to connect are continually frustrated (2:15). Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, 224 Waverly Place, west of Seventh Avenue, West Village, (212) 868-4444; closing Sunday. (Moore) CLEAN ALTERNATIVES Brian Dykstras improbable comedy details the good fight fought by a businesswoman turned environmental activist taking on a toxin-spreading megacorporation. The play also depicts the moral transformation of a rapacious lawyer into a love-smitten puppy dog. Call it a fairy tale for our time (2:00). 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street; closing Sunday. (212) 279-4200. (Isherwood) * THE SEVEN The wild ride of luckless ol Oedipus -- accidentally offing Dad, marrying Mom, being dissed by the kids -- gets pimped to the nines in this frisky and funny new riff on the classic story. Written by Will Power and directed by Jo Bonney, the show is a freewheeling adaptation of one of the more static, less revered Greek tragedies, Aeschylus Seven Against Thebes: a hip-hop musical comedy-tragedy (2:00). New York Theater Workshop, 79 East Fourth Street, East Village, (212) 239-6200; closing Sunday. (Isherwood) * THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL Led by Lois Smith in a heart-wrenching performance, the cast never strikes a false note in Harris Yulins beautifully mounted revival of Horton Footes drama, finding an emotional authenticity in a work largely remembered as a tear-jerking chestnut. This is not to say you should neglect to bring handkerchiefs (1:50). Signature Theater, 555 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 244-7529; closing tomorrow. (Brantley) THE WOODEN BREEKS The line dividing inspired whimsy from tedious nonsense can be a fine one, and much of this new play by Glen Berger falls on the wrong side of it. An elaborately conceived comedy seeking to celebrate the consolations of storytelling, it unfolds the tale of a Scottish tinker who dreams up imaginary worlds to keep despair at bay (2:00). MCC Theater, at the Lucille Lortel Theater, 121 Christopher Street, West Village, (212) 279-4200; closing Sunday. (Isherwood) Movies Ratings and running times are in parentheses; foreign films have English subtitles. Full reviews of all current releases, movie trailers, show times and tickets: nytimes.com/movies. AQUAMARINE (PG, 109 minutes) In this sweet comedy for the crowd that has outgrown The Little Mermaid, two likable pals (Emma Roberts and Joanna Levesque, a k a the singer JoJo) try to help a mermaid (Sara Paxton) find love and learn how to use her feet properly.(Neil Genzlinger) * BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (R, 134 minutes) Annie Proulxs heartbreaking story of two ranch hands who fall in love while herding sheep in 1963 has been faithfully translated onto the screen in Ang Lees landmark film. (Mr. Lee won the Academy Award for best director.) Heath Ledger (in a great performance worthy of Brando at his peak) and Jake Gyllenhaal bring them fully alive. (Stephen Holden) * CAPOTE (R, 114 minutes) Philip Seymour Hoffmans portrayal of Truman Capote is a tour de force of psychological insight. (Mr. Hoffman won the Academy Award for best actor.) Following the novelist as he works on the magazine assignment that will become In Cold Blood, the film raises intriguing questions about the ethics of writing. (A. O. Scott) CRASH (Academy Award, Best Picture) (R, 107 minutes) A gaggle of Los Angeles residents from various economic and ethnic backgrounds collide, sometimes literally, within an extremely hectic 36 hours. Well-intentioned, impressively acted, but ultimately a speechy, ponderous melodrama of liberal superstition masquerading as realism. (Scott) DAVE CHAPPELLES BLOCK PARTY (R, 103 minutes) The setup is blissfully simple: a free block party on a dead-end street in Bed-Stuy, with a lineup of musicians, some of whom, like Kanye West and Mos Def, have put in appearances on Chappelles Show. The nominal idea, Mr. Chappelle explains on camera, was the concert Ive always wanted to see. The result, which ping-pongs between Brooklyn and Mr. Chappelles hometown in Ohio, is a tantalizing sketch-portrait of the artist amid an outpouring of hard beats and soul. (Manohla Dargis) * GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK. (PG, 90 minutes) George Clooney, with impressive rigor and intelligence, examines the confrontation between the CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow (a superb David Strathairn) and Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (himself). Plunging you into a smoky, black-and-white world of political paranoia and commercial pressure, the film is a history lesson and a passionate essay on power, responsibility and the ethics of journalism. (Scott) * LITTLE FISH (R, 114 minutes) In this tough, savvy Australian film, Cate Blanchett sinks deeply into the role of a 32-year-old recovering heroin addict trying to rebuild her life and fighting the temptation to relapse. (Holden) MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA (PG-13, 144 minutes) Think As the Geisha Turns, with devious rivals, swoon-worthy swains, a jaw-dropping dance number recycled from Madonnas Drowned World Tour and much clinching, panting and scheming. Directed by Rob Marshall from the Arthur Golden book, and starring Ziyi Zhang, Gong Li and Michelle Yeoh. (Dargis) * MUNICH (R, 164 minutes) With his latest, Steven Spielberg forgoes the emotional bullying and pop thrills that come so easily to him to tell the story of a campaign of vengeance that Israel purportedly brought against Palestinian terrorists in the wake of the 1972 Olympics. An unsparingly brutal look at two peoples all but drowning in a sea of their own blood, Munich is by far the toughest film of the directors career, and the most anguished. (Dargis) * PRIDE & PREJUDICE (PG, 128 minutes) In this sumptuous, extravagantly romantic adaptation of Jane Austens 1813 novel, Keira Knightleys Elizabeth Bennet exudes a radiance that suffuses the movie. This is a banquet of high-end comfort food perfectly cooked and seasoned to Anglophilic tastes. (Holden) THE SHAGGY DOG (PG, 98 minutes) Tim Allen is a prosecutor who is going, as it were, to the dogs in this revisiting of the old Disney film, which is far livelier than its namesake. Scenes in which Mr. Allen tries to fight off his inner canine while a no-nonsense judge played by Jane Curtin is holding a trial are comic gems.(Genzlinger) 16 BLOCKS (PG-13, 105 minutes) If Richard Donners presence suggests that his new action flick, 16 Blocks, is a throwback to the 1980s, so does one of the names holding pride of place above the title, Bruce Willis. Mr. Willis has always been an acquired taste, but for those who did acquire that taste, its a pleasure to see him doing what comes naturally. Which means holding a gun and fending off bad guys with as few words as possible. (Dargis) * SOPHIE SCHOLL: THE FINAL DAYS (No rating, 117 minutes, in German) The gripping true story of Sophie Scholl, an anti-Nazi student activist in the 1940s, arrested and executed for distributing leaflets at Munich University, challenges you to gauge your own courage and strength of character should you find yourself in similar circumstances. (Holden) * SYRIANA (R, 122 minutes) Ambitious, angry and complicated, Stephen Gaghans second film tackles terrorism, American foreign policy, global trade and the oil business through four interwoven stories. There are at least a half-dozen first-rate performances, and Mr. Gaghan, who wrote and directed, reinvents the political thriller as a vehicle for serious engagement with the state of the world. (Scott) TRANSAMERICA (R, 103 minutes) Felicity Huffmans performance as a preoperative transsexual on a cross-country journey with her long-lost son is sensitive and convincing, and helps the movie rise above its indie road-picture clichés. (Scott) * TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY (R, 91 minutes) Michael Winterbottom both confirms and refutes the assumption that Laurence Sternes 18th-century masterpiece of digression could never be made into a movie by making a movie about the making of such a movie. Steve Coogan is wonderful as Tristram, Tristrams father and himself, though Rob Brydon steals more than a few of Mr. Coogans scenes. (Scott) Tsotsi (R, 94 minutes) (Academy Award winner for best foreign film.) Written and directed by Gavin Hood, from a novel by Athol Fugard, this South African film centers on a 19-year-old thug who steals a baby and finds redemption. You dont have to read crystal balls to see into Tsotsis future; you just need to have watched a couple of Hollywood chestnuts. (Dargis) ULTRAVIOLET (PG-13, 80 minutes) The latest in movies structured around eyewear and abdominals, Ultraviolet stars Milla Jovovich as a genetically modified human -- part vampire, part chameleon, all model -- and one of the many victims of a government experiment to improve on nature. Directed by Kurt Wimmer with a fine eye for the preferences of 12-year-old boys, Ultraviolet cleaves faithfully to its comic-book genealogy with a plot unobstructed by big words and images that rarely breach two dimensions. Ultrasilly.(Jeannette Catsoulis) Unknown White Male (PG-13, 88 minutes) The British filmmaker Rupert Murray tells the bizarre story of his old friend Doug Bruce, who in 2003 walked into a Coney Island hospital claiming not to know who he was, thereupon becoming either a heart-wrenching casualty of a medical anomaly or the prime suspect in a mystery yet to be solved. (Dargis) UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION (R, 106 minutes) In this sequel to Underworld (2003), the writer and director Len Wiseman and the writer Danny McBride pick up the story of the vampire Selene (Kate Beckinsale) and the vampire/werewolf hybrid Michael (Scott Speedman) as they race to prevent the release of an imprisoned über-werewolf. With leads who strain to manage one facial expression between them, and a cinematographer who shoots everything through the same steel-blue filter, Underworld: Evolution is little more than a monotonous barrage of computer-generated fur and fangs. (Catsoulis) WALK THE LINE (PG-13, 138 minutes) Johnny Cash gets the musical biopic treatment in this moderately entertaining, never quite convincing chronicle of his early years. Joaquin Phoenix, sweaty, inarticulate and intense as Cash, is upstaged by Reese Witherspoon (winner of the Academy Award for best actress), who tears into the role of June Carter (Cashs creative partner long before she became his second wife) with her usual charm, pluck and intelligence. (Scott) * NEIL YOUNG: HEART OF GOLD (PG, 103 minutes) Filled with country memories, bluesy regret and familiar and piercing sentiment, Jonathan Demmes concert film sounds like quintessential Neil Young, which, depending on your home catalog, will be either an enormous turn-on or turnoff. (Dargis) Film Series ANNA MAY WONG (Through April 16) Wong, the first Chinese-American movie star, would have turned 100 last year. (She died in 1961.) The Museum of the Moving Images extensive seven-week retrospective of her work continues this weekend with two silents directed by Richard Eichberg: Song (1928), in which Wong plays a dancer in love with a knife thrower, and The Pavement Butterfly, about a woman who runs away to the French Riviera after she is framed for murder. Both films will be accompanied by live music. 35th Avenue at 36th Street, Astoria, Queens, (718) 784-0077; $10. (Anita Gates) DOCUMENTARY FORTNIGHT EXPANDED (Through Monday) The Museum of Modern Arts exhibition of contemporary nonfiction films, which has run five weeks this year, concludes on Monday with A Model for Matisse: The Story of the Vence Chapel (2005), about Henri Matisses friendship and special project with a French Dominican nun. This weekends films include The Tenth Planet: A Single Life in Baghdad (2004), about an Iraqi secretarys everyday life; Bachelor Farmer (2005), about gay men in small-town Idaho; and Les Petits Soldats (2004), about children who fought during civil unrest in Liberia. 11 West 53rd Street, Manhattan, (212) 708-9400; $10. (Gates) MAN IN THE DUNES: DISCOVERING HIROSHI TESHIGAHARA (Through March 19) BAMcinémateks tribute to Teshigahara (1927-2001), the artist, filmmaker and flower arranger, continues this weekend with Summer Soldiers (1972), a drama about two American soldiers who go AWOL while on leave in Tokyo, and The Face of Another (1966), a psychological thriller starring Tatsuya Nakadai as an accident victim who is given an artificial face. 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, (718) 636-4100; $10. (Gates) PRIX JEAN VIGO (Through Dec. 30) The Museum of Modern Art is honoring Vigo (1905-34), the French filmmaker, with a series of 41 films from directors who have won the prize that bears his name. This weekends feature is Qui Êtes-Vous, Polly Maggoo? (1965), William Kleins satire about the French fashion world, shown with Des Filles et des Chiens (1991), Sophie Fillièress short about adolescent friendship. 11 West 53rd Street, Manhattan, (212) 708-9400; $10. (Gates) RECENT FILMS FROM FINLAND (Through March 22) Scandinavia House continues its four-month program of Scandinavian films with a series of Finnish features. Anastasia Lapsui and Markku Lehmuskallios Fata Morgana (2004), a documentary about the indigenous people of the Chukchi Peninsula, will be shown on Wednesday. 58 Park Avenue, at 38th Street, (212) 879-9779; $8. (Gates) SOME KIND OF HORROR SHOW (Through March 30) BAMcinémateks annual festival of horror movies continues on Monday and Tuesday with Kaneto Shindos Kuroneko (1968), about the murderous spirits of two women killed by samurai in feudal Japan. On Thursday, Innocent Blood (1992), the adventures of a modern-day vampire who bites only bad people, will be shown, along with Michael Jacksons 13-minute Thriller video (1983). John Landis, who directed both, will hold a question-and-answer session afterward. 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, (718) 636-4100; $10. (Gates) Pop Full reviews of recent concerts: nytimes.com/music. ALASH ENSEMBLE WITH KONGAR-OOL ONDAR (Monday) These Tuvan musicians stretch the definition of throat singing, the traditional, polyphonic technique, by adding some Western music elements. 9:30 p.m., Barbès, 376 Ninth Street, at Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 965-9177; $12. (Laura Sinagra) THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND (Tonight, tomorrow, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday) The archetypal Southern rock band is still on the road. Gregg Allman, the bands keyboardist and main singer, is more than ever its center, since its co-founder Dickey Betts is estranged from the group. His replacement, Warren Haynes, shares the twin-guitar passages with Derek Trucks, the drummer Butch Truckss nephew and a jam-band leader in his own right. 8 p.m., Beacon Theater, 2124 Broadway, at 74th Street, (212) 496-7070; $49.99 to $84.99. (Jon Pareles) THE BATS (Sunday and Wednesday) Having just released its first album in a decade, this pastoral New Zealand guitar pop band continues to make the loose yet ornately pretty music that defined Kiwi-pops 1980s heyday. 9 p.m., Maxwells, 1039 Washington Street, Hoboken, N.J., (201) 653-1703; $10. (Sinagra) JAMES BLUNT (Tuesday and Wednesday) With a Rod Stewart vocal tone that can also flip into transporting falsetto, this British artist writes songs in the ethereal but angsty Elliott Smith vein, only with more forceful alt-pop production. His song No Bravery is an antiwar lament that clings. 8 p.m., Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, East Village, (212) 533-2111; $25 in advance, $30 at the door. (Both shows sold out.) (Sinagra) CRISTINA BRANCO (Tomorrow) The Portuguese songs called fado (fate) balance sorrowful melodies and lyrics about tragic destiny in a gleaming cats cradle of finger-picked Portuguese guitars. Its music that frames a singers voice while it mercilessly exposes every nuance of sorrow and determination. Cristina Branco is one of Portugals most celebrated young fadistas. 8 p.m., Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, 566 LaGuardia Place, at Washington Square South, Greenwich Village, (212) 992-8484; $32. (Pareles) ISOBEL CAMPBELL (Monday) This feather-voiced former member of Belle and Sebastian has made her own music as the Gentle Waves but also does so under her own name; she recently collaborated on some atmospheric music with Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees. 7:30 p.m., Joes Pub at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, at Astor Place, East Village, (212) 539-8778; $15. (Sinagra) THE CLOUD ROOM, FILM SCHOOL (Tomorrow) The new-wave-influenced naïf rockers the Cloud Room garnered wild, though deeply underground, buzz when their best song, Hey Hey Now, written during the frontmans grave illness, was given lots of wish-you-wells but never broke into larger indie-pop consciousness. The wistful rock band Film School also plays. 9 p.m., Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston Street, at Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, (212) 260-4700; $12. (Sold out.) (Sinagra) DILATED PEOPLES, LITTLE BROTHER (Wednesday and Thursday) The straightforward rap of the Los Angeles group Dilated Peoples tries to offer a tough-guy corrective to gangsta bullying and shallow pop hip-hop. The result is short on fun. Little Brothers soul-grounded Carolina rap forgoes Southern crunk in favor of blending the free-form experimentation of Outkast with the kind of jazzy tracks that characterized East Coast hip-hop of the mid-1990s. 8 p.m., S.O.B.s, 204 Varick Street, at Houston Street, South Village, (212) 243-4940; $25. (Sinagra) TOM DUNNE AND FRIENDS: A TRIBUTE TO PADDY CRONIN (Tonight) The Irish music traditionalist and multi-instrumentalist Tom Dunne pays tribute to the County Kerry fiddle legend Paddy Cronin. He is joined by the guitarist John Dillon and other musicians. 9, Glucksman Ireland House at New York University, 1 Washington Mews, Greenwich Village, (212) 998-3950; $15; free to Ireland House members and N.Y.U. students. (Sinagra) EARLY MAN, PRIESTESS, THE SWORD (Tomorrow) The Ohio band Early Man is a heavy-metal duo that harks back to genre polestars like Judas Priest. Likewise, the Texans in the Sword do a great approximation of Black Sabbaths slow menace, at points also revealing hard-core punk underpinnings with intermittent thrash bravura. 9 p.m., Maxwells, 1039 Washington Street, Hoboken, (201) 653-1703; $10 in advance, $12 at the door. (Sinagra) DEBORAH GIBSON (Tomorrow) Back in the 1980s she was Debbie Gibson, a teenage pop star correlate to Molly Ringwald, charming her way up the charts with hits like Shake Your Love and Lost in Your Eyes. Now shes a grown-up who does Broadway and hosts VH1 shows about, what else, teenage stars. 8 p.m., Canal Room, 285 West Broadway, at Canal Street, SoHo, (212) 941-8100; $30. (Sinagra) HOT CHIP (Tomorrow) Londons literate electro-poppers Hot Chip find room in their techno-savvy spectrum for wiseacre hat-tips to rap, R&B, indie rock and hip, wispy folk. 8:30 p.m., Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, near the Bowery, Lower East Side, (212) 533-2111; $15. (Sinagra) JANIS IAN (Tuesday) The singer-songwriter Janis Ian is still most famous for the folkie lament Societys Child and the ugly-duckling anthem At Seventeen, but the work of this rich-voiced musician is more varied than these, never shying away from the painful nuances of aging and loss, but always seeking redemption. Tuesday, she celebrates the release of her 20th major-label album, Folk Is the New Black. 7 and 9:30 p.m., Joes Pub, 425 Lafayette Street, at Astor Place, East Village, (212) 239-6200; $20 in advance, $22 at the door. (Sinagra) NISHAT KHAN (Tonight) The sitar player Nishat Khan comes from a long line of Indian virtuosos, including his father, Ustad Imrat Khan. The tabla player Abhijit Banerjee will join him in his performance of various ragas tonight. 8:30, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, (212) 501-1390, (212) 247-7800; $30 and $42. (Sinagra) BETTYE LaVETTE, MARCIA BALL (Thursday) Bettye LaVette of Detroit released her first recording when she was 16, and soldiered on through a career that carried her through 15 labels, minor rhythm-and-blues hits like He Made a Woman Out of Me and years in Europe. But her tough, knowing voice and sense of drama could rival Tina Turners. Marcia Ball plays two-fisted New Orleans barrelhouse piano and sings in a husky, knowing voice about all the trouble men and women can get into on the way to a good time. 8 p.m., B. B. Kings Blues Club and Grill, 243 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, (212) 997-4144; $26.50 in advance, $30 at the door. (Pareles) SONDRE LERCHE, PAUL BRILL (Tonight) Since making an indie cabaret-rock splash in 2002, the music of the Norwegian guitarist-crooner Sondre Lerche has suggested life experience beyond its confident purveyors tender years. Lately he has taken a break from the baroque, applying his breathy yet urgent voice to a batch of lighthearted, stripped-down jazzy tunes. The local songwriter Paul Brill opens. 7:30, Housing Works Bookstore Café, 126 Crosby Street, between Houston and Prince Streets, SoHo, (212) 334-3324; $25. (Sinagra) LES SAVY FAV (Tonight) The rockers Les Savvy Fav play revved-up punk with coiffed and stylish contours. 8, Warsaw at the Polish National Home, 261 Driggs Avenue, at Eckford Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, (212) 645-5156; $16.50. (Sinagra) LILYS (Tomorrow) This Philadelphia indie rock band is rendered consistently fascinating by the mercurial nature of its frontman (and only constant member), Kurt Heasley, who has exuded recalcitrant charisma as both an early-1990s shoe gazer and, later, an Anglophilic retro-rocker. 8 p.m., Magnetic Field, 97 Atlantic Avenue, near Henry Street, Brooklyn Heights, (718) 834-0069; $10. (Sinagra) SAMARA LUBELSKI, MI & LAU (Tonight) Samara Lubelski, best known for her collaborations with the psychedelic outfits Hall of Fame and Tower Recordings, goes solo here. The Finnish singer Mi and the French musician Lau, after becoming a couple in Paris, moved to the woods in Finland to record what they will showcase here, a cache of austere, wintery bedroom folk. 8, Tonic, 107 Norfolk Street, near Delancey Street, Lower East Side, (212) 358-7503; $10. (Sinagra) MARAH (Tonight) This Philly-bred band has, in its decade-plus existence, pushed beyond scruffy alt-country into the realms of quirky bar rock and lo-fi 70s folk. 9, Maxwells, 1039 Washington Street, Hoboken, N.J., (201) 653-1703; $12. (Sinagra) METRIC (Tonight) Led by the vibrant, articulate singer Emily Hanes, this band finds fresh uses for new-wave brio. Ms. Haness shuddering alto functions alternately as a weapon and a whip-cracking come-on. 6 p.m., Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, East Village, (212) 353-1600; $20. (Sold out.) (Sinagra) THE POGUES (Thursday) Before every beer-brewing ethnicity spawned a punk band modernizing its traditionals with lashing, distorted guitar and aggressive, often hilarious howls, there was Irelands Pogues. Its leader, Shane MacGowan, a man of tossed-off wit, ubiquitous slurring and few teeth, picked up in the 00s where he left off before the bands 90s hiatus. 8 p.m., Nokia Theater, 1515 Broadway, at 44th Street, ticketmaster.com or (212) 307-7171; $50. (Sinagra) QUEEN WITH PAUL ROdGERS (Sunday) Paul Rodgers, the swaggering lead singer of Free, Bad Company and the Firm, cant scale the falsetto highs of Queens histrionic legend, Freddie Mercury, so he doesnt try. What results is a more democratized and meaty take on the bands worthy hits. 8 p.m., Nassau Coliseum, 1255 Hempstead Turnpike, Uniondale, N.Y., (631) 888-9000; $35 to $125. (Sinagra) Jane Siberry (Tomorrow) Jane Siberry is always trying another collaboration or another musical strategy. Her sweetly tousled voice, her sly intelligence, her determination to explore and her playful fascination with family, archetype and myth can all lead to intimate epiphanies. 8:30 p.m., Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, (212) 501-1390; $32 to $38. (Pareles) ALLEN TOUSSAINT: NEW ORLEANS BENEFIT BRUNCH (Sunday) The legendary New Orleans songwriter, producer and pianist Allen Toussaint, at one point rumored missing after Hurricane Katrina, performs for the benefit of continuing hurricane relief efforts in the Crescent City. Noon, Joes Pub, at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Avenue, at Astor Place, East Village, (212) 239-6200; $30 for adults; $15 for children under 12. (Sinagra) JERRY JEFF WALKER (Tonight and tomorrow night) Jerry Jeff Walker wrote the hit Mr. Bojangles, but around his home-stomping grounds of Texas, hes the easygoing, gruffly avuncular icon of the cosmic cowboy mentality, all about spacing out in the wide-open spaces. 8, B. B. King Blues Club and Grill, 243 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, (212) 997-4144; $35 in advance, $40 at the door. (Pareles) WALTER (WOLFMAN) WASHINGTON (Wednesday) Mr. Washington, a New Orleans guitarist, has been a trusty funky collaborator for the likes of Bobby (Blue) Bland and Irma Thomas. His shows are usually rump-shaking affairs. 9 p.m., Coda, 34 East 34th Street, Manhattan, (212) 685-3434; $17.50 in advance, $20 at the door. (Sinagra) Cabaret Full reviews of recent cabaret shows: nytimes.com/music. BARBARA CARROLL (Sunday) Even when swinging out, this Lady of a Thousand Songs remains an impressionist with special affinities for Thelonious Monk and bossa nova. 2 p.m., Algonquin Hotel, Oak Room, 59 West 44th Street, Manhattan, (212) 419-9331; $55, including brunch at noon. (Stephen Holden) * Barbara Cook (Tonight and tomorrow, and Tuesday through Thursday) This Broadway legend is loose and down-home and, as always, magnificent singing a 25-year retrospective of songs she has performed at the Café Carlyle. 8:45 p.m., with additional shows tonight and tomorrow night at 10:45, Carlyle Hotel, 35 East 76th Street, Manhattan, (212) 744-1600; $100; dinner required at the 8:45 shows. (Holden) ANNIE ROSS (Tomorrow) Cool, funny, swinging and indestructible, this 75-year-old singer and sometime actress exemplifies old-time hip in its most generous incarnation. 7 p.m., Dannys Skylight Room, 346 West 46th Street, Clinton, (212) 265-8133; $25, with a $12 minimum. (Holden) Samantha Sidley (Tonight and tomorrow night) This budding 20-year-old winner of the Oak Rooms young artist competition, accompanied by fellow students from the Berklee College of Music, is a charmingly sunny but still half-formed jazz interpreter. 9 and 11:30, Algonquin Hotel, 59 West 44th Street, Manhattan, (212) 419-9331; $50, with a $50 prix fixe dinner at the early shows, or $20 minimum at the late shows. (Holden) Jazz Full reviews of recent jazz concerts: nytimes.com/music. J. D. ALLEN (Wednesday) Mr. Allen is a probing tenor saxophonist, but hes not averse to digging into a groove; his rhythm section here includes the bassists Meshell Ndegeocello and Neal Caine and the drummer Gerald Cleaver. 10 p.m., Fat Cat, 75 Christopher Street, at Seventh Avenue, West Village, (212) 675-7369; cover, $20. (Nate Chinen) RAN BLAKE/CHARLES GAYLE (Tonight) Mr. Blake is a pianist with an attraction to cinematic imagery and spooky silence; Mr. Gayle, better known as a fiery saxophonist, has his own rumbling touch at the keys. Each has a new solo piano album on Tompkins Square Records, and each plays in that format here. 8 (Mr. Blake and Mr. Gayle) and 10 (Mr. Gayle alone), the Stone, Avenue C and Second Street, East Village, www.thestonenyc.com; cover, $10. (Chinen) * CELEBRATING THE MAGIC OF TOOTS THIELEMANS (Thursday) Early in his 60-year career, the Belgian harmonica virtuoso Toots Thielemans invented an improvisational voice for his instrument. This tribute concert emphasizes the flexibility of his lyrical style, with a roster of special guests, including the saxophonists Joe Lovano and Paquito DRivera, the singers Al Jarreau and Ivan Lins, the guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves and the pianists Herbie Hancock, Eliane Elias and Kenny Werner. 8 p.m., Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $18 to $66. (Chinen) GERALD CLEAVERS UNCLE JUNE (Wednesday) Dealing less in rhythm than in pulse, Mr. Cleavers drumming perfectly suits the fluid requirements of jazzs post-everything avant-garde; this ruminative project features the tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby, the violinist Mat Maneri, the keyboardist Craig Taborn and the bassist Drew Gress. 10 p.m., Barbès, 376 Ninth Street, at Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 965-9177; cover, $8. (Chinen) SHANE ENDSLEY GROUP (Thursday) Mr. Endsley, a progressive-minded but lyrical trumpeter, pursues a floating pop sensibility in this ensemble, with Matt Moran on vibraphone, Erik Deutsch on keyboards and Todd Sickafoose on bass, among others. 8 p.m., Barbès, 376 Ninth Street, at Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 965-9177; cover, $8. (Chinen) LIBERTY ELLMAN, VIJAY IYER, STEVE LEHMAN (Tomorrow) Texture and tonality are malleable properties in this collective trio, with Mr. Ellman on guitar, Mr. Iyer on piano and Mr. Lehman on saxophones. 10 p.m., the Stone, Avenue C and Second Street, East Village, www.thestonenyc.com; cover, $10. (Chinen) BEN GERSTEIN COLLECTIVE (Monday) The trombonist Ben Gerstein has led this free-improvising ensemble since 2000, enlisting some of the brightest young inside-outside players in the city; here the group consists of seven pieces, including the saxophonist David Binney, the trombonist Jacob Garchik and the keyboardist Jacob Sacks. 7 p.m., 55 Bar, 55 Christopher Street, West Village, (212) 929-9883; no cover. (Chinen) ROY HARGROVE QUINTET + 1 (Tuesday through March 19) Mr. Hargrove, a sharp and energetic trumpeter, has led this hard-bop combo for years; as on a forthcoming album, Nothing Serious (Verve), its ranks are augmented here by the veteran trombonist Slide Hampton. 8 and 10:30 p.m., Blue Note, 131 West Third Street, West Village, (212) 475-8592; cover, $30 at tables and a $5 minimum, or $20 at the bar with a one-drink minimum. (Chinen) * ROY HAYNES QUARTET (Tuesday through March 19) Now in his 80s, Mr. Haynes is irrefutably an elder statesman, but his drumming, like his sartorial sense, evinces a boldly contemporary swagger. He has lost nothing, it seems, to the years; what he has gained is unmatched experience and a legend commensurate with his talent. 9 and 11 p.m., Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, at 11th Street, West Village, (212) 255-4037; cover, $25, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) JACOB FRED JAZZ ODYSSEY (Tonight and tomorrow) This groove-minded piano trio put out a spacey but solid album, The Sameness of Difference (Hyena), last year; they boost their considerable jam-band appeal here with a pair of guests, the percussionist Mike Dillon and the saxophonist known as Skerik. 12:30 a.m., Blue Note, 131 West Third Street, West Village, (212) 475-8592; cover, $15, with a $5 minimum. (Chinen) JUILLIARD JAZZ QUINTET (Tuesday through March 19) Commemorating a century of music education at Juilliard, this ensemble is led by the tenor saxophonist Victor Goines and the trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, conductors of the five-year-old Juilliard Jazz Orchestra; the pianist Ted Rosenthal, the bassist Ben Wolfe and the drummer Carl Allen make up the rhythm section. 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., with an 11:30 set Fridays and Saturdays, Dizzys Club Coca-Cola, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60th Street and Broadway, (212) 258-9595; cover, $30, with a minimum of $10 at tables, $5 at the bar. (Chinen) DAVE LIEBMANS DIFFERENT BUT THE SAME (Tonight) An incantatory saxophonist working in the post-Coltrane idiom, Mr. Liebman digs in with several fellow adventurers: the saxophonist Ellery Eskelin, the bassist Tony Marino and the drummer Nasheet Waits. 10 p.m., 55 Bar, 55 Christopher Street, West Village, (212) 929-9883; cover, $15, including two drinks. (Chinen) JOE LOVANO QUARTET (Tonight and tomorrow night) Mr. Lovano has become one of the stalwart saxophonists in modern jazz, equally inspired by John Coltranes harmonic inquiry, Ornette Colemans off-kilter lyricism and Ben Websters heart-rending croon; this band, his newest, includes James Weidman on piano, Esperanza Spalding on bass and Francisco Mela on drums. 9 and 11, Birdland, 315 West 44th Street, Clinton, (212) 581-3080; cover, $30, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) ORCHESTRA SLANG (Monday through March 18) This ensemble has as many pieces as a conventional big band, but looks well beyond big-band conventions (or any others). Its chief architects are the drummer Kenny Wollesen, the trumpeter Jonathan Haffner and, in the role of philosophical guide, the conductor and cornetist Lawrence (Butch) Morris. 7 and 9 p.m., Zebulon, 258 Wythe Avenue, near North Third Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, (718) 218-6934; no cover. (Chinen) MARIO PAVONES ORANGE BAND (Thursday) Mr. Pavone, a bassist-composer with an expansive worldview, leads a cadre of fellow colorists: Ron Horton on trumpet, Tony Malaby on saxophones, David Berkman on piano and Gerald Cleaver on drums. 10 p.m., 55 Bar, 55 Christopher Street, West Village, (212) 929-9883; cover, $10. (Chinen) PHILADELPHIA: CITY OF BROTHERLY JAZZ (Tonight and tomorrow night) Continuing its salute to American jazz cities, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra looks to the vibrant legacy of Philadelphia. Special guests include the saxophonist Jimmy Heath and his brother, the drummer Albert (Tootie) Heath; the post-bop guitar hero Pat Martino; the Hammond B-3 organ whiz Joey DeFrancesco; and the trumpeter Duane Eubanks. 8, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60th Street and Broadway, (212) 721-6500, www.jalc.org; $105.50 and $135.50.(Chinen) CHRIS POTTERS UNDERGROUND (Through Sunday) The saxophonist Chris Potter has an improvisational approach that is intellectual and athletic in equal measure; his band Underground dives headlong into edgy fusion, with Adam Rogers on guitar, Craig Taborn on Fender Rhodes piano and Nate Smith on drums. 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-2232; cover, $20 and $25. (Chinen) TO PREZ WITH LOVE, 2006 (Sunday) The Lester Young Memorial Celebration, an annual benefit for the Jazz Ministry at St. Peters Church, is a sprawling affair by design; this edition, the 22nd, boasts a lineup of several dozen musicians and advocates, like the pianists Billy Taylor and Hank Jones, the clarinetist Don Byron and the historian and radio personality Phil Schaap. 7 p.m., St. Peters Church, Lexington Avenue at 54th Street, (212) 935-2200; suggested donation, $15. (Chinen) MARCUS PRINTUP (Tonight) Mr. Printups trumpet style has more than a little in common with that of Wynton Marsalis, his bandleader in the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra; out on his own, he goes for flashier, more avowedly modern exertions. 7 p.m., Rubin Museum of Art, 150 West 17th Street, Chelsea, (212) 620-5000, ext. 344, www.rmanyc.org; $15. (Chinen) MARC RIBOT AND HENRY GRIMES (Thursday) Mr. Ribot is a vagabond poet on solo electric guitar, as he proved with the album Saints (Atlantic) five years ago. Here he plays both solo and in a duo with Mr. Grimes, a bassist and long-lost titan of the avant-garde; theres no knowing which setting will sound better. 8 p.m., Issue Project Room, 400 Carroll Street, between Bond and Nevins Streets, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, (718) 330-0313, issueprojectroom.org; cover, $10. (Chinen) EDWARD SIMONS VENEZUELAN PROJECT (Wednesday and Thursday) Mr. Simon, a pianist whose most recent credits include work with the Brazilian singer Luciana Souza, turns his focus here toward the country of his birth. His serious sextet consists of the saxophonist Mark Turner, the flutist Marco Granados, the cuatro and guitar player Aquiles Báez, the bassist John Patitucci and the drummer Adam Cruz. 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-2232; cover, $25.(Chinen) * BOBO STENSON TRIO (Wednesday through March 18) With Goodbye (ECM), the Swedish pianist Bobo Stenson offered one of last years most beautifully somber piano trio recordings. Here he plays his only live performances with the same personnel from the album: his longtime bassist Anders Jormin, a fellow Swede, and the august and inscrutable New York drummer Paul Motian. 9 and 11 p.m., Birdland, 315 West 44th Street, Clinton, (212) 581-3080; cover, $30, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) YOSVANY TERRY GROUP (Tonight and tomorrow night) Mr. Terry, a saxophonist and percussionist, chases contemporary post-bop ideals without fighting the rhythmic pull of his native Cuba; this seven-piece ensemble is only slightly smaller than the one on his excellent new album, Metamorphosis (Kindred Rhythm), and no less fierce. 9 and 10:30, Jazz Gallery, 290 Hudson Street, at Spring Street, South Village, (212) 242-1063; cover, $15. (Chinen) THE TUBA PROJECT (Tomorrow) Though the name may suggest otherwise, theres only one tuba player in this ensemble; given that its Bob Stewart, the instruments greatest improviser, one should be enough. As on the new album The Tuba Project (CIMP), hes joined by the pianist Lucian Ban, the baritone saxophonist Alex Harding, the tenor saxophonist J. D. Allen and the drummer Derrek Phillips. 9 p.m., Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street, West Village, (212) 989-9319; cover, $10, with a one-drink minimum. (Chinen) DAVID WEISS (Tonight and tomorrow; Wednesday) This weekend, Mr. Weiss, a literate and industrious trumpeter, leads his post-bop quintet; on Wednesday, he assembles Endangered Species, a 12-piece ensemble stocked with serious talent and dedicated to the music of Wayne Shorter. Tonight and tomorrow at 12:30 a.m. , Dizzys Club Coca-Cola, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60th Street and Broadway, (212) 258-9595; cover, $10, with a minimum of $10 at tables, $5 at the bar. Wednesday at 8 and 10 p.m., Iridium, 1650 Broadway, at 51st Street, (212) 582-2121; cover, $25, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) Classical Full reviews of recent music performances: nytimes.com/music. Opera AIDA (Tonight, tomorrow and Sunday) The Amato Operas reputation is that it conveys the spirit and love of Italian opera, though the full impact is impossible to achieve in a 102-seat theater with a cast that changes at every performance. And against the odds, all the principals at a recent performance of Aida managed to make it through to the end, demonstrating a true love of the piece, if not always of the pitch. Tonight and tomorrow night at 7:30, Sunday afternoon at 2:30, 319 Bowery, at Second Street, East Village, (212) 228-8200; $30; $25 for students and 65+. (Anne Midgette) LA BOHÈME (Sunday and Thursday) City Opera has a refreshing take on Puccinis perennial classic, updating it to the eve of World War I and presenting some of its regulars, including Kelly Kaduce and Shannah Timms. Sunday at 1:30 p.m., Thursday at 7:30 p.m., New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $45 tickets remaining on Sunday; $16 to $120 on Thursday. (Midgette) DARKLING (Tonight, tomorrow, Tuesday and Thursday) In an adventurous move, American Opera Projects is presenting a brave and sensitive, if at times frustrating, multimedia work. With a score by Stefan Weisman, Darkling is an operatic fantasia on themes of emotional fragmentation, in the words of the director Michael Comlish, who conceived the idea of adapting for the stage Anna Rabinowitzs book-length poem about a restless Polish couple who marry hastily before the invasion of the Nazis. 8 p.m., East 13th Street Theater, 136 East 13th Street, East Village, (212) 279-4200; $30 to $45. (Anthony Tommasini) LA FORZA DEL DESTINO (Tomorrow and Wednesday) Its tempting to say that Forza has the most numbingly witless libretto of any Verdi opera, but with such stiff competition, who can say? Giancarlo del Monacos drab staging, first seen in 1996, offers little help, but the Met has a solid first cast, with Deborah Voigt as Leonora, Salvatore Licitra as Don Alvaro and Mark Delavan as Don Carlo. On Wednesday, Elena Zelenskaya replaces Ms. Voigt, and Mark Rucker takes over for Mr. Delavan. Tomorrow at 1:30 p.m., Wednesday at 8 p.m., Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000; sold out tomorrow, $26 to $175 on Wednesday. (Allan Kozinn) LUISA MILLER (Monday) None of Verdis Schiller operas are very Schiller-like; this one becomes melodrama in the silent-movie sense, with the millers beautiful daughter, an evil henchman and thwarted love. The Mets casting doesnt preserve much of the fresh-faced innocence of the story, but offers established singers: Veronica Villarroel as Luisa, and Neil Shicoff as Rodolfo. 8 p.m., Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000; $26 to $175. (Midgette) MAZEPPA (Tonight and Tuesday) Tchaikovskys epic 1884 opera, about the ruthless 17th-century Ukrainian separatist Ivan Mazeppa, is an anguished, probing and noble work. The Met deserves thanks for presenting its first production of this inexplicably neglected masterpiece, inspiringly conducted by Valery Gergiev. A cast of mostly Russian singers brings conviction and palpable authority, especially the baritone Nikolai Putilin as the wizened Mazeppa, and the soprano Olga Guryakova as his adolescent and impressionable wife. The musical performance is so compelling that you can almost ignore Yuri Alexandrovs jumbled and trashy production, which clutters the opera with symbolism. Tonight at 8, Tuesday at 7:30 p.m., Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000; $26 to $205. (Tommasini) THE MOST HAPPY FELLA (Tonight and tomorrow) Frank Loesser thought of his 1956 masterpiece as a musical with a lot of music, not as an opera. Still, this sophisticated and disarming musical is a good fit for the New York City Opera, which has opened its spring season with a vibrant and charming production by Philip Wm. McKinley. Paul Sorvino, making his City Opera debut, inhabits the title role of Tony Esposito, the paunchy, insecure but good-hearted Italian immigrant vineyard owner in the Napa Valley of the 1920s. His voice, though, is pretty raw and shaky. Hes at his best when he doesnt care about how he sounds and just lets go. The rest of the cast, mostly from the musical theater world, is wonderful. Tonight at 8, tomorrow at 1:30 and 8 p.m., New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $45 to $120. (Tommasini) Classical Music KATE ALDRICH (Monday) Tapping exciting young singers is a tradition the Opera Orchestra of New York hopes to continue. This one is a strong young mezzo-soprano who has already appeared with the group, offering a recital of Berlioz, Britten, Chausson, Dvorak, Mozart and Strauss. 8 p.m., Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $35. (Midgette) ATLANTA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (Tomorrow) Between Lincoln Centers Golijov festival and his recent appearances leading the New York Philharmonic, Robert Spano seems to be spending nearly as much time in New York as with his own orchestra in Atlanta. He gets to have it both ways tomorrow, when he leads the Atlanta Symphony and its chorus in the Verdi Requiem. The vocal soloists are Andrea Gruber, Stephanie Blythe, Frank Lopardo and Greer Grimsley. 8 p.m., Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $23 to $79. (Kozinn) BARGEMUSIC (Tonight, tomorrow, Sunday and Thursday) Tonight, the Waterville Trio plays music by Rachmaninoff, Chopin and Lachert. Tomorrow and Sunday, the veteran cellist Colin Carr is joined by the pianist Thomas Sauer for a recital of works by Prokofiev, Beethoven and Chopin. Thursday, the versatile folk-jazz-classical fiddler Mark OConnor brings his Edgeffect Ensemble (a piano trio) for its first New York performance, featuring his own compositions. Tonight, tomorrow night and Thursday night at 7:30; Sunday at 4 p.m.; Fulton Ferry Landing next to the Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn, (718) 624-2083; $35. (Eichler) JONATHAN BISS AND THE MENDELSSOHN STRING QUARTET (Tonight) The Mendelssohn Quartet opens with the Andante and Scherzo (Op. 81) by its namesake and also plays Beethovens Harp in E flat. The superb pianist Jonathan Biss -- whose mother, Miriam Fried, is one of the Mendelssohn players -- joins for the Dvorak A major Piano Quintet. 8, Metropolitan Museum of Art, (212) 570-3949; $40. (Kozinn) JESSE BLUMBERG (Sunday) The Marilyn Horne Foundation, in its continuing effort to keep the tradition of the song recital flourishing, presents young singers in a monthly series of informal recitals. Mr. Blumberg, a New Jersey-born baritone who recently appeared as Papageno with the Milwaukee Opera Theater, will sing a varied program with the pianist Martin Katz. 3 p.m., St. Bartholomews Church, Park Avenue and 50th Street, (212) 378-0248; $20; $15 for 65+; free to students. (Tommasini) CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER (Wednesday) The Orion String Quartet performs Mendelssohns Quartet No. 6 and Ellen Taaffe Zwilichs Quartet No. 2. But the most ear-opening score on the program may be the String Sextet of Erwin Schulhoff, a German-speaking Czech Jew and victim of Nazism, whose fantastically eclectic body of work includes a Dadaist Sonata Erotica and a cantata setting of The Communist Manifesto. 7:30 p.m., Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 875-5788; $30 to $52. (Eichler) VLADIMIR FELTSMAN (Tomorrow) The Peoples Symphony Concerts are a great deal if youre looking to hear big-name performers without breaking the bank. This weekend, the formidable pianist Vladimir Feltsman plays works by Haydn, Beethoven and Schumann. 8 p.m., Washington Irving High School, 16th Street and Irving Place, Manhattan, (212) 586-4680; $9 (Eichler). JERUSALEM SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (Sunday) Leon Botstein brings his new out-of-town orchestra to Carnegie Hall. Martinus Memorial to Lidice will be the item of interest, along with music by Prokofiev and Strauss. 8 p.m., (212) 247-7800; $20 to $80. (Bernard Holland) OLGA KERN (Thursday) This dynamic young Russian pianist, who shared a gold at the Van Cliburn Competition in 2001, plays Mendelssohn, Chopin, Rachmaninoff and Liszt. 8 p.m., Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $20 to $50. (Eichler) KIROV ORCHESTRA (Sunday and Monday) To mark the Shostakovich centenary, Lincoln Center has invited Valery Gergiev to lead all 15 symphonies -- no, not in one stretch, though you wouldnt put it past Mr. Gergiev to try. The conductor will split his survey between his two ensembles: the Kirov Orchestra, here this week, and the Rotterdam Philharmonic, arriving next month. Sundays program features the Symphonies Nos. 1, 2 and 10; Monday brings Nos. 7 and 9. Sunday at 3 p.m., Monday at 8 p.m., Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $35 to $69. (Eichler) MARGARET LATTIMORE, STEPHANIE NOVACEK, MARY PHILLIPS, JAKE HEGGIE, RICKY IAN GORDON and EUGENIA ZUCKERMAN (Tuesday) The idea is simpler than the long roster of names would suggest: music by Mr. Gordon and Mr. Heggie, accompanied by the composers on the piano and by a flute, sung by three mezzo-sopranos, with just a soupçon of Ned Rorem and Stephen Sondheim. 7:30 p.m., Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $32. (Midgette) ALEXANDER LONQUICH (Wednesday) Though widely respected in Europe, this 45-year-old German-born pianist, now living in Italy, is not well known in the United States. For this, his American recital debut, he plays the New York premiere of Wolfgang Rihms Tombeau and works by Mozart, Schumann, Chopin and C. P. E. Bach. 8 p.m., 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue, (212) 415-5500; $35. (Tommasini) JEANNE MALLOW (Tomorrow) Though this violist comes from a distinguished family of string players (including her grandmother, the violist Lillian Fuchs, and her great-uncle, the violinist Joseph Fuchs), she has built her career on her own, with notable performances and recordings. For this program she will play works by Vivaldi, Schumann, Rachmaninoff and William Keith Rogers, with the pianist Vladimir Valjarevic. 8 p.m., Merkin Concert Hall, 129 West 67th Street, Manhattan, (212) 501-3330; $20; $15 for students and 65+. (Tommasini) SOHEIL NASSERI (Tomorrow) This young Californian pianist has both a magnificent technique and an inventive interpretive spirit, qualities that served him well in the early installments of his two-season Beethoven cycle. Mr. Nasseri has chosen not to present the sonatas in chronological order, so his concluding program actually leaves him among relatively early works: Nos. 8 (the Pathétique) through 11, and 16. 8 p.m., Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $33 and $45. (Kozinn) NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC (Tonight and tomorrow night) After canceling last week because of bad health, Christoph von Dohnanyi plans to return to conduct a program that includes Bartoks Bluebeards Castle with Anne Sofie von Otter and Matthias Goerne. 8, Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $26 to $94. (Holland) ORPHEUS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA (Monday) Bach has been a good venture for this conductorless group, which has been joined this year by the conductorless Bach Choir and started a series of Bach cantatas with members of the choir in the appropriate setting of the Metropolitan Museums Medieval Sculpture Hall. On the program: Cantatas 18, 157, and 193. 8 p.m., the Metropolitan Museum, (212) 570-3949; $60. (Midgette) CHARLES ROSEN (Sunday) Mr. Rosen is as renowned for his insightful books and essays as for his probing piano performances, but his playing is by no means bookish: as concerned as he is with the details of style and structure, he is also intent on showing composers as animated by passions and desires, and working within a historical context that includes influences and competitors. Mr. Rosen will explore the influence of Bach and Haydn on Mozart in a program that includes selections from Bachs Art of Fugue and Musical Offering, as well as Haydns Sonata No. 43 and Divertimento in F, and Mozarts Gigue in G and Sonata in A minor. 1:30 p.m. (lecture) and 3 p.m. (recital), 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue, (212) 415-5500; $35. (Kozinn) NADJA SALERNO-SONNENBERG (Tuesday) It is the season of Brahms violin sonatas: Less than a month after Christian Tetzlaff played all three in Alice Tully Hall, Ms. Salerno-Sonnenberg tackles the same program on the same stage. Given their radically different performance styles, the overlaps should end there. The pianist Anne-Marie McDermott joins. 8 p.m., Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $20; $10 for students and 65+. (Eichler) JORDI SAVALL AND HESPÈRION XXI (Wednesday and Thursday) A fantastic performer on the viola da gamba and also one of the early-music worlds most inventive ensemble leaders, Mr. Savall presides over what promises to be an illuminating master class on Wednesday. The next night, he leads in his flagship ensemble, Hespèrion XXI, in variations by Diego Ortiz, Lucas Ruiz de Ribayaz, José Marín, Juan Hidalgo, Gaspar Sanz and Antonio Martín. 8 p.m., Metropolitan Museum of Art, (212) 570-3949; $25 on Wednesday, in Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium; $60 on Thursday, in the Medieval Sculpture Hall (sold out); $25 for a preconcert discussion on Thursday at 6 p.m. with Mr. Savall and David DArcy, in the Rogers Auditorium. (Kozinn) JEAN-YVES THIBAUDET (Wednesday) In the hearts of the French, Ravel and Schumann are kindred spirits. Mr. Thibaudet here plays piano music by both. 8 p.m., Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $21 to $72. (Holland) Dance Full reviews of recent performances: nytimes.com/dance. ATLANTA BALLET (Sunday) One of the oldest indigenous American ballet troupes, Atlanta Ballet will present two dances by John McFall, the company director, and one by Christopher Hampson. 2 p.m., Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts, Brooklyn College, Flatbush and Nostrand Avenues, Flatbush, (718) 951-4500, www.brooklyncenteronline.org; $15 to $30. (Jennifer Dunning) DANCEBRAZIL (Tonight through Sunday) Two programs explore the rich cultures of Bahia, Brazil, in choreography that merges Afro-Brazilian dance, live music and the martial arts form of capoeira, including a new dance by the company director Jelon Vieira to music by Tuzé de Abreu. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8, Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 242-0800, www.joyce.org; $42. (Dunning) GENE POOL AT DNA (Tonight through Sunday) A clever new name for that old favorite, the dance showcase. This one will feature four different programs of dance by seven artists, who include Isabel Gotkowsky, Earl Mosely and Laurie DeVito. Tonight at 8, tomorrow at 2 and 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., Dance New Amsterdam, 280 Broadway, between Reade and Chambers Streets, Lower Manhattan, (212) 279-4200; $17. (Dunning) DONNA SCRO GENTILE/FREESPACE DANCE (Tonight and tomorrow night) Ms. Gentile, who has danced with Sean Curran and Murray Louis, will present choreography set to music by Daniel Bernard Roumain, Glen Fittin, Tigger Benford and Peter Jones, performed by the resident company at Montclair State University. 8:30, St. Marks Church, 131 East 10th Street, East Village, (212) 674-8194; $15. (Dunning) REBECCA KELLY BALLET (Tonight and tomorrow night) The company celebrates its 25th anniversary with performances featuring two guest artists: Jared Matthews of American Ballet Theater and Duncan Cooper of Dance Theater of Harlem. 8, John Jay Theater, 899 10th Avenue, at 58th Street, Clinton, (212) 279-4200, www.ticketcentral.com; $40. (Jack Anderson) ASHLEIGH LEITE (Tonight and tomorrow night) Autopsy, an emotionally charged evening of dance, light and sound, follows the interior journeys of five women. 8, Joyce SoHo, 155 Mercer Street, (212) 334-9907; $15. (Anderson) SUSAN MARSHALL & COMPANY (Tonight and tomorrow night) A skilled choreographic storyteller offers Cloudless, a collection of danced short stories, some explosive, others quietly intimate. 7:30, Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 924-0077, www.dtw.org; $15 and $25. (Anderson) * YVONNE MEIER (Thursday) Ms. Meier is returning after eight years to her enjoyably anarchic improvisational choreography. For her new pieces this is not a pink pony and Gogolorez, she has enlisted the aid of downtown-dance stars like Miguel Gutierrez, Jennifer Monson, Nami Yamamoto and Jeremy Wade. (Through March 18.) 8 p.m., the Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 255-5793, ext. 14, www.thekitchen.org; $12. (Dunning) * BENJAMIN MILLEPIED & COMPANY (Tuesday through Thursday) One of the smartest and liveliest of New York City Ballet dancers, Mr. Millepied will lead his company, whose roster includes several bright young City Ballet performers and the American Ballet Theater star Gillian Murphy, in a new work by Aszure Barton and in three new dances of his own. They are set to scores that include piano music by Philip Glass, played by Pedja Muzijevic, and accompaniment cued by the dancers motions. (Through March 19.) The Joyce Theater Gala Celebration on Wednesday will pay tribute to Jerome Robbins and Yourgos Loukos, artistic director of the Ballet lOpéra de Lyon. Tuesday and Thursday at 8 p.m., Wednesday at 7 p.m., Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 242-0800, www.joyce.org or, for gala tickets, (212) 691-9740; $42 (non-gala); $500 to $1,250 (gala). (Dunning) * MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP (Tonight, tomorrow and Wednesday) Mr. Morriss 25th-anniversary season is in full swing. Program A, with Mr. Morris conducting Vivaldis Gloria, plays tonight and tomorrow, and Program B, with his stagings of the operas Four Saints in Three Acts and Dido and Aeneas, starts on Wednesday. There is also the first of three programs of small pieces at the Mark Morris Dance Center tomorrow afternoon. And there are all manner of ancillary events, a schedule for which can be found at www.mmdg.org. Tonight, tomorrow night and Wednesday night at 7:30, Howard Gilman Opera House, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, (718) 636-4100, www.bam.org; $20 to $70. The Solos, Duets and Trios program is tomorrow at 5 p.m., Mark Morris Dance Center, 3 Lafayette Avenue, near Flatbush Avenue, Fort Greene, Brooklyn. (Sold out.) (John Rockwell) 92ND STREET Y HARKNESS DANCE FESTIVAL (Tomorrow and Sunday) An annual event concludes with the Francesca Harper Project in Modo Fusion, a multimedia work that Ms. Harper, a dancer, singer and choreographer, conceived in collaboration with Brian Reeder, a former dancer with American Ballet Theater. Tomorrow night at 8 (followed by a discussion with the writer Margo Jefferson, a former critic for The New York Times), Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m., Ailey Theater, 405 West 55th Street, Clinton, (212) 415-5500, www.92Y.org/harknessfestival; $20; $15 for students and 65+. (Dunning) THE NETA DANCE COMPANYS A.W.A.R.D. Show! (Sunday) Another show in a free monthly series featuring dance and talks between artists and audiences. The show features the choreographers Keely Garfield, Deganit Shemy, Ann Liv Young and the duo Ella Ben Aharon and Sahar Javedani, with Neta Pulvermacher moderating. 7 p.m., Joyce SoHo, 155 Mercer Street, (212) 334-7479. (Dunning) * STAN WONT DANCE (Wednesday and Thursday) The United States debut of this promising-looking troupe, led by two former dancers of the DV8 Physical Theater in London. Their piece Sinner is, according to a news release, designed to shatter the limits of physical and emotional endurance. (Through March 18.) 8 p.m., Performance Space 122, 150 First Avenue, at Ninth Street, East Village, (212) 477-5288, www.ps122.org; $20; members, $10. (Rockwell) SUMMERFEST 06: ANDREA HAENGGI/AMDAT (Tonight and tomorrow night) With the aid of dance and video, Andrea Haenggis escalator transforms lobbies and moving stairways into four magical theaters, each evoking a mood of its own. 7 and 8:30, World Financial Center, 220 Vesey Street, Lower Manhattan, (212) 945-0505 or www.worldfinancialcenter.com; free. (Anderson) * PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY (Tonight through Sunday, and Tuesday through Thursday) The companys annual City Center season continues with repertory programs all week. Of the seasons two New York premieres, the angelic Spring Rounds can be seen tonight and Wednesday night, and the diabolical Banquet of Vultures is scheduled for tomorrow night, Sunday afternoon and Tuesday night. Tonight, tomorrow night and Wednesday and Thursday nights at 8; tomorrow at 2 p.m.; Sunday at 3 p.m.; and Tuesday at 7 p.m.; City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan, (212) 581-1212, www.nycitycenter.org; $15 to $80. (Rockwell) Art Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art. Museums * AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM: SURFACE ATTRACTION: PAINTED FURNITURE FROM THE COLLECTION, through March 26. The remarkable images, abstract patterns and floral motifs that flutter across the 30 or so tables, chairs, cabinets and blanket chests in this beautiful, convention-stretching show confirm that from the late 1600s to the late 1800s, quite a bit of American painting talent and ambition was channeled into the decoration of everyday wood objects. The combination of imagination and utility, of economic means and lush effects, defines the human desire for beauty as hard-wired. 45 West 53rd Street, (212) 265-1040. (Roberta Smith) * BROOKLYN MUSEUM: SYMPHONIC POEM: THE ART OF AMINAH BRENDA LYNN ROBINSON, through Aug. 14. This prodigious show, by an artist born and still living in Columbus, Ohio, celebrates her heritage in paintings, drawings, sculpture, stitchery, leather work and less classifiable forms of expression. Besides its sheer visual wizardry, using materials like leaves, twigs, bark, buttons and cast-off clothes, her art is compelling in that it ruminates on the history of black migration to, and settlement in, the United States, from early times to the present, in a garrulous, very personal way. Her works do not lend themselves to easy deciphering, but her magic with materials and her daring compositional imagination draw you in. 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park, Brooklyn (718) 638-5000. (Grace Glueck) * Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum: FASHION IN COLORS, through March 26. Drawn from the collection of the Kyoto Costume Institute in Japan, this sumptuous show arranges 68 often lavish Western gowns and ensembles according to the colors of the spectrum and reinforces their progress with a posh, color-coordinated installation design. For an experience of color as color, it is hard to beat, but it also says a great deal about clothing, visual perception and beauty. 2 East 91st Street, (212) 849-8400.(Smith) * Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: David Smith: A Centennial, through May 14. David Smith is best known for his worst work, bulky sculptures of the important kind that museums and banks like to buy. Much (though not all) of that material has been excised from this survey in favor of smaller, earlier, nonmonumental pieces that the curator, Carmen Gimenez, presents with plenty of air and light. The result is exemplary as a David Smith experience, an American Modernism experience and a Guggenheim Museum experience. 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, (212) 423-3500. (Holland Cotter) JEWISH MUSEUM: SARAH BERNHARDT: THE ART OF HIGH DRAMA, through April 2. This exhibition is devoted to the flamboyant 19th-century actress whose name was once invoked by mothers as a warning to melodramatic daughters: Who do you think you are, Sarah Bernhardt? Its almost overstuffed roster of items includes original Félix Nadar photos of Bernhardt at 20 and the human skull presented to her by Victor Hugo, the costumes she wore as Cleopatra and Joan of Arc, her own accomplished sculptures and relics of lovers and American tours. 1109 Fifth Avenue, at 92nd Street, (212) 423-3200. (Edward Rothstein) Metropolitan Museum of Art: Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt, through May 7. Egypt was no picnic 5,000 years ago. The average life span was about 40 years. Wild animals were ever-present. Childbirth was perilous. Prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness were shots in the dark. Doctors were priests. Medicine was a blend of science, religion and art. The 65 or so objects in this beautiful show functioned as all three. Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, (212) 535-7710. (Cotter) * MET: Robert Rauschenberg: Combines, through April 2. Big and handsome almost to a fault. Theres something weird about seeing once joyfully rude and over-the-top contraptions from the 1950s and 60s lined up like choirboys in church, with their ties askew and shirttails out. But even enshrined, the combines still manage to seem incredibly fresh and odd, almost otherworldly. I thought of a medieval treasury -- all the rich colors and lights and intricate details. The most beautiful tend to be the early ones: large but delicate, with a subtle, fugitive emotional pitch. (See above.) (Michael Kimmelman) THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: EDVARD MUNCH: THE MODERN LIFE OF THE SOUL, through May 8. This affecting, full-scale retrospective is the first survey of this Norwegian painter in an American museum in almost 30 years. Its more than 130 oils and works on paper cover Munchs entire career, from 1880 to 1944. It also includes a large selection of prints -- many ingeniously adapted from his oils -- that played an important role in his art. 11 West 53rd Street, (212) 708-9400. (Glueck) THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: ON SITE: NEW ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN, through May 1. Since the early 1970s, when Spain began to awaken from the isolation of a four-decade dictatorship, Spanish architects have produced designs of unusual depth, often with a firm connection to the land, a sense of humility and a way of conveying continuity with the past while embracing the present. Packed with pretty images and elegant models, this exhibition lacks the scholarly depth you might have hoped for on such a mesmerizing subject. (See above.)(Nicolai Ouroussoff) The Museum of Modern Art: JOHN SZARKOWSKI: PHOTOGRAPHS, through May 15. A kind of homecoming, this beautiful show surveys the pictures taken by Mr. Szarkowski before and after his influential 29-year term at the helm of the Moderns photography department. The best show him combining the styles of the photographers he has long admired with his native ground -- the architecture and landscape of the upper Midwest. (See above.) (Smith) P.S. 1: Jessica Stockholder: Of Standing Float Roots in Thin Air, through May 1. A soaring, cannily designed installation -- made of airborne plastic bins, electric lights, orange extension cords and an old armchair topping a wooden tower -- by a sculptor known for orchestrating productive collisions of formalism and consumerism. 22-25 Jackson Avenue, at 46th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, (718) 784-2084. (Ken Johnson) P.S. 1: Ricky Swallow, through March 20. Extraordinarily realistic and symbolically portentous sculptures carved from wood by Australias representative to last summers Venice Biennale, in which three of the five works on view here were included. (See above.) (Johnson) Whitney Museum of American Art: LANDSCAPE, through Sept. 18. With only 20 works dispersed throughout the Whitneys second floor, this startlingly fresh installation of recent art from the museums collection uses space in an extravagant, exhilarating way, while weaving a cats cradle of intersecting meanings, emotions, forms and processes through the landscapes of American art and history. It turns out that the less you look at, the more you can see, especially in an arrangement orchestrated by someone who believes that the best tool for coaxing out an artworks polymorphous content is another piece of art. This someone is Donna De Salvo, the museums new associate director for programs and curator of collections; her Whitney debut should be seen by anyone interested in the craft and art of a curator. 945 Madison Avenue, at 75th Street, (212) 570-3600. (Smith) Whitney Museum of American Art: WHITNEY BIENNIAL 2006: DAY FOR NIGHT, through May 28. This biennial will provoke much head-scratching by uninitiated visitors. A hermetic take on what has been making waves, its packaged -- branded might be the better word -- as a show long on collaboration and open-endedness: several shows under one roof, including a revival of the 1960s Peace Tower, which rises like a Tinker Toy construction from the Whitney courtyard, with contributions by dozens of artists. As a counter to the image of the art world as rich, youth-besotted and obsessed with crafty little nothings, the ethos here is provisional, messy, half-baked, cantankerous, insular -- radical qualities art used to have when it could still call itself radical and wasnt like a barnacle clinging to the cruise ship of pop culture. That was back in the 1970s. And much of whats here (including works by bohemians and other senior eccentrics around then) harks back to that moment. Beauty is hard to come by. Check out, among other things, Paul Chans digital animation of shadowy objects like cellphones and bicycles, floating upward, Wizard of Oz-like, while bodies tumble down, the work cast as if it were light from a tall window slanting onto the floor of a dark room. And also Pierre Huyghes film, shot in Antarctica and Central Park. Its really gorgeous: crosscut between day and night, fiction and reality, it encapsulates the shows operative but ultimately airy metaphor about the slippery state of art now. (Day for Night is the biennials first-ever title, after the François Truffaut film.) 945 Madison Avenue, at 75th Street, (800) 944-8639 or www.whitney.org. (Kimmelman) Galleries: Uptown Tony Cragg: Five Bottles In the early 1980s, this eminent English sculptor made flat, mosaiclike works out of found colored plastic objects and fragments. This show presents a set of five wall-works, each representing a different giant colored bottle composed of toys, combs, cigarette lighters and other pieces of ordinary commercial detritus. Vivian Horan, 35 East 67th Street, (212) 517-9410, through April 21. (Johnson) Jim Shaw: My Mirage 1986- 91 This amazingly inventive California-based artist first became widely known for a series of about 170 works, all measuring 17 by 14 inches, that chronicles the life of a white suburban boy named Billy, from innocent youth to druggy degradation to born-again salvation. The 30 pieces from the series in this show variously imitate comic strips, acid-rock posters, thrift store paintings, comic greeting cards and many other pop culture forms. Skarstedt, 1018 Madison Avenue, near 78th Street, (212) 737-2060, through April 1. (Johnson) Galleries: Chelsea MetLife The curator and publisher Geoffrey Young has organized an enthralling show of small works by 12 artists who favor exacting craftsmanship and surrealistic imagination. Some, like Oona Ratcliffe, Cary Smith and Patricia Fabricant, tend toward abstraction; others, like Chris Zitelli and Morgan Bulkeley, create dreamlike narrative and symbolic images. Morgan Lehman, 317 10th Avenue, near 28th Street, (212) 268-6699, through April 1. (Johnson) * William Nicholson Though less well-known than his son, the British abstract painter Ben Nicholson, Sir William Nicholson was a successful artist in his day. The mostly small landscapes, portraits and Chardinesque still lifes in this beautiful show offer transporting fusions of paint and imagery. Paul Kasmin, 293 10th Avenue, at 27th Street, (212) 563-4474, through March 25. (Johnson) Other Galleries * Do You Think Im Disco Theres a big story to be told about disco culture of the 1970s, which had roots in rhythm and blues, African-American church music, 1960s drug culture, gay liberation and all manner of anti-establishment politics. This modest group show touches on all of these elements, however glancingly and unsystematically, by considering the trickle-down effect of discomania on some new art today. Longwood Art Gallery@Hostos, 450 Grand Concourse, at 149th Street, Mott Haven, the Bronx, (718) 518-6728, through March 18. (Cotter) * THE DOWNTOWN SHOW: THE NEW YORK ART SCENE, 1974-1984 The real down-and-dirty downtown art scene, when the East Village bloomed, punk and new wave rock assailed the ears, graffiti spread like kudzu and heroin, along with extreme style, raged, is the subject of this wild and woolly show. Its a humongous time warp of more than 450 paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, videos, posters, ephemera and things in between by artists, writers, performers, musicians and maestros of mixed media, from a photograph of the transvestite Candy Darling as she posed on her deathbed to a small, painted sculpture made of elephant dung by David Hammons. With so many clashing ideologies, points of view and attitudes toward art-making, this no-holds-barred hodgepodge generates the buzz and stridency of, say, Canal Street on payday. New York University, Grey Art Gallery, 100 Washington Square East, (212) 998-6780; and Fales Library, 70 Washington Square South, (212) 988-2596, Greenwich Village; through April 1. (Glueck) * Anya Gallaccio: One Art The viscerally poetic single work occupying Sculpture Centers spacious main gallery is a 50-foot weeping cherry tree that was cut up and reassembled in the gallery, where it is held in place by steel cables and bolts. Sculpture Center, 44-19 Purves Street, at Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, (718) 361-1750, through April 3. (Johnson) THE STUDIO VISIT The studio visit, a time-honored ritual that everyone in the art world has both endured and learned from, is taken to its limit in Exit Arts latest exhibition marathon. Each of the 160 mostly short videos represents one artists idea of, play on, or substitute for, a studio visit. It is a show that often cries out for a fast-forward button, but there are some notable gems -- for example, by Joyce Pensato, Cynthia von Buhler, Ida Applebroog, Bruce Pearson, Lance Wakeling, Taylor McKimens, Paul Wirhun, Elisabeth Kley, Christy Gast and Kim Jones. Exit Art, 475 10th Avenue, at 36th Street, Manhattan, (212) 966-7745, through March 25. (Smith) Zoo Story A clay gorilla by Daisy Youngblood, a bronze she-wolf by Kiki Smith, a flock of concrete sheep by Françoise-Xavier Lalanne and works about animals by more than 20 other artists, including John Baldessari, Katharina Fritsch, Ross Bleckner and Rebecca Horn, turn the first floor of this sleek, three-story private museum into a diverting menagerie. Fisher Landau Center for Art, 38-27 30th Street, Long Island City, Queens, (718) 937-0727, through June 12. (Johnson) Last Chance Stan Brodsky Evidence of Things At 80, this painter, based in Huntington, N.Y., is making abstractions of uncommon liveliness and material richness. With their craggy, calligraphic forms glowing and flickering against fields of lush, generously applied color, Mr. Brodskys paintings evoke the idea of an Abstract Expressionist who traded in his angst for hedonistic jouissance. June Kelly, 591 Broadway, between Houston and Prince Streets, SoHo, (212) 226-1660; closes Tuesday. (Johnson) * DAVID DUPUIS/JESSICA JACKSON HUTCHINS In complementary shows, Mr. Dupuis cultivates his Surrealist-Symbolist penchant for small, visionary landscapes, while branching out into grotesquely detailed self-portraits, and Ms. Hutchins offers macabre spoofs of ceramics, social rituals and craftsmanship, with crudely made tea bowls and serving platters perched on topographically suggestive pedestals. Derek Eller Gallery, 615 West 27th Street, Chelsea, (212) 206-6411; through tomorrow. (Smith) * RICHARD GREAVES: ANARCHITECTURE; MARIO DEL CURTO: PHOTOGRAPHS Mr. del Curtos sympathetic black-and-white photographs introduce Mr. Greavess bristling huts and environments, built during the last decade in the wilds of Canada. Materials include parts of salvaged barns and farm houses joined with baling wire into sagging, swaying, psychologically potent forms that qualify as outsider architecture, site-specific installation art and settings for fairy tales -- especially those about witches. Andrew Edlin Gallery, 529 West 20th Street, Chelsea, (212) 206-9723; closes tomorrow. (Smith) * DAINA HIGGINS In an art world knee-deep in feats of realism, these small paintings of urban scenes stand out. They are made with spray paint and stencils, based on photographs taken by the artist, a technique that gives the gritty subjects a transcendental immateriality, as if the world were made of varying tones of light. Elizabeth Harris Gallery, 529 West 20th Street, Chelsea, (212) 463-9666; closes tomorrow. (Smith) Jerry Kearns: Forever More For many years Mr. Kearns has been making illustrative paintings combining Pop-Surrealist style, leftist politics and anti-consumerist social commentary, with humor and obviousness often battling to a draw. His new paintings feature muscle-bound Jesus figures, hysterical hermaphrodites, creepy children, magical birds, fast-food products and heavenly blue skies. Michael Steinberg, 526 West 26th Street, Chelsea, (212) 924-5770; closes tomorrow. (Johnson) * Studio Museum in Harlem: FREQUENCY, Despite some marked unevenness, this display of new and recently emerged talent confirms the current vitality of black art, contemporary art and midsize New York museums. Names to look out for include Kalup Linzy, Leslie Hewitt, Shinique Smith, Demetrius Oliver, Nick Cave, Mickalene Thomas and Michael Queenland, but dont stop there. 144 West 125th Street, (212) 864-4500; closes Sunday. (Smith)

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In a World of Chaos: Gazas Watar Band Seeking Love.

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The Listings: April 7 - April 13

Selective listings by critics of The New York Times of new and noteworthy cultural events in the New York metropolitan region this week. * denotes a highly recommended film, concert, show or exhibition. Theater Approximate running times are in parentheses. Theaters are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of current shows, additional listings, show times and tickets: nytimes.com/theater. Previews and Openings FESTEN Opens Sunday. Based on the film The Celebration, this London transfer, starring Julianna Margulies, Larry Bryggman and Michael Hayden, is about a Danish man who confronts some old secrets at a family reunion (1:45). Music Box Theater, 239 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. LOS BIG NAMES Opens Sunday. Marga Gomezs solo drama is about her parents, Latino entertainers who never achieved crossover success (1:30). 47th Street Theater, 304 West 47th Street, Clinton, (212) 239-6200. BASED ON A TOTALLY TRUE STORY Opens Tuesday. A Hollywood deal makes a comic-book writer re-evaluate his relationships in this new play by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (2:00). Manhattan Theater Club at City Center Stage II, 131 West 55th Street, (212) 581-1212. GUARDIANS Opens Tuesday. A favorite from the 2005 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, this series of monologues juxtaposes the Abu Ghraib scandal in the United States with the release by a London newspaper of forged photos of English soldiers torturing detainees. Jason Moore directs (1:30). Culture Project, 45 Bleecker Street, at Lafayette Street, East Village, (212) 253-9983. PEER GYNT Opens Tuesday. Following their hit revival of Hedda Gabler, the Brooklyn Academy of Music presents another Henrik Ibsen play to honor the centennial of the playwrights death. Robert Wilson directs this 1867 verse drama (3:50). Howard Gilman Opera House at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, (718) 636-4100. STUFF HAPPENS Opens Thursday. The words of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and company make up the script of David Hares docudrama about the run-up to war (2:50). The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, at Astor Place, East Village, (212) 239-6200. AWAKE AND SING! Opens April 17. Lincoln Center revives Clifford Odetss classic fist-shaking drama about a Jewish family struggling to survive during the Depression. The impressive cast includes Mark Ruffalo, Ben Gazzara and Zoë Wanamaker (2:30). Belasco Theater, 111 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. THE DROWSY CHAPERONE Opens May 1. This little-musical-that-could about an unscrupulous Broadway producer in the 1920s (some things never change) began at the Toronto Fringe Festival and now makes its unlikely premiere on the Great White Way (1:40). Marquis Theater, 1535 Broadway, at 45th Street, (212) 307-4100. A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE Previews start Thursday. Opens April 27. Redemption is a major theme of this musical fantasy adapted from a Peter S. Beagle novel about a recluse who lives in a Bronx cemetery (2:00). York Theater, St. Peters Lutheran Church, Lexington Avenue at 54th Street, (212) 868-4444. LANDSCAPE OF THE BODY Opens April 16. John Guare, never satisfied with an overly tidy play, throws comedy, tragedy, satire and mystery into this cult drama, which first opened almost three decades ago. Lili Taylor and Sherie Rene Scott star (2:15). Signature Theaters Peter Norton Space, 555 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 244-7529. LESTAT Opens April 25. Elton John and Bernie Taupin have a good track record making pop hits, but can they find success in the cursed genre of the vampire musical? Hugh Panaro stars (2:30). Palace Theater, 1564 Broadway, (212) 307-4100. SCREWMACHINE/EYECANDY OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE BIG BOB Previews start Thursday. Opens April 16. C. J. Hopkinss dark drama, a hit at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival, is about a game show host even more bizarre than Bob Barker (1:30). 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street, (212) 279-4200. TARZAN Opens May 10. Phil Collins lends his invisible touch to the score of the latest Disney musical. David Henry Hwang wrote the book (2:30). Richard Rodgers Theater, 226 West 46th Street, (212) 307-4100. THREE DAYS OF RAIN Opens April 19. Julia Roberts stars in this years most closely watched star vehicle, a revival of the Richard Greenberg time-traveling drama about how we divide the legacy of our parents. Paul Rudd also stars (2:30). Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, 242 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. THE THREEPENNY OPERA Opens April 20. If any Broadway theater was made for a revival of Brechts classic, its the cabaret-style Studio 54, which will be host to an intriguing cast that includes Alan Cumming and Cyndi Lauper (2:40). Studio 54, 254 West 54th Street, (212) 719-1300. THE WEDDING SINGER Opens April 27. Stephen Lynch plays the goofy title character in this musical adaptation of the Adam Sandler film about leg warmers, Billy Idol and other artifacts from the 1980s. John Rando (Urinetown) directs (2:20). Al Hirschfeld Theater, 302 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. Broadway BAREFOOT IN THE PARK For a work that celebrates the liberating force of spontaneity, this revival of Neil Simons 1963 comedy doesnt have one scene that feels organic, let alone impromptu. Directed by Scott Elliott, and starring Patrick Wilson and a miscast Amanda Peet as newlyweds in Greenwich Village, this Barefoot has the robotic gait of Frankensteins monster (2:20). Cort Theater, 138 West 48th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Ben Brantley) * BRIDGE & TUNNEL This delightful solo show, written and performed by Sarah Jones, is a sweet-spirited valentine to New York City, its polyglot citizens and the larger notion of an all-inclusive America. In 90 minutes of acutely observed portraiture gently tinted with humor, Ms. Jones plays more than a dozen men and women participating in an open-mike evening of poetry for immigrants (1:30). Helen Hayes Theater, 240 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Charles Isherwood) THE COLOR PURPLE So much plot, so many years, so many characters to cram into less than three hours. This beat-the-clock musical adaptation of Alice Walkers Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about Southern black women finding their inner warriors never slows down long enough for you to embrace it. LaChanze leads the vibrant, hard-working cast (2:40). Broadway Theater, 1681 Broadway, at 53rd Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS The arrival of Jonathan Pryce and his eloquent eyebrows automatically makes this the seasons most improved musical. With Mr. Pryce (who replaces the admirable but uneasy John Lithgow) playing the silken swindler to Norbert Leo Butzs vulgar grifter, its as if a mismatched entry in a three-legged race had become an Olympic figure-skating pair (2:35). Imperial Theater, 249 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) DOUBT, A PARABLE (Pulitzer Prize, Best Play 2005, and Tony Award, Best Play 2005) Set in the Bronx in 1964, this drama by John Patrick Shanley is structured as a clash of wills and generations between Sister Aloysius (Eileen Atkins), the head of a parochial school, and Father Flynn (Ron Eldard), the young priest who may or may not be too fond of the boys in his charge. The plays elements bring to mind those tidy topical melodramas that were once so popular. But Mr. Shanley makes subversive use of musty conventions (1:30). Walter Kerr Theater, 219 West 48th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) JERSEY BOYS From grit to glamour with the Four Seasons, directed by the pop repackager Des McAnuff (The Whos Tommy). The real thrill of this shrink-wrapped bio-musical, for those who want something more than recycled chart toppers and a story line poured from a can, is watching the wonderful John Lloyd Young (as Frankie Valli) cross the line from exact impersonation into something far more compelling (2:30). August Wilson Theater, 245 West 52nd Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA Love is a many-flavored thing, from sugary to sour, in Adam Guettel and Craig Lucass encouragingly ambitious and discouragingly unfulfilled new musical. The show soars only in the sweetly bitter songs performed by the wonderful Victoria Clark, as an American abroad (2:15). Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) THE ODD COUPLE Odd is not the word for this couple. How could an adjective suggesting strangeness or surprise apply to a production so calculatedly devoted to the known, the cozy, the conventional? As the title characters in Neil Simons 1965 comedy, directed as if to a metronome by Joe Mantello, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick reprise their star performances from The Producers, and its not a natural fit. Dont even consider killing yourself because the show is already sold out (2:10). Brooks Atkinson Theater, 256 West 47th Street, (212) 307-4100. (Brantley) * THE PAJAMA GAME Sexual chemistry in a Broadway musical? Isnt that illegal now? If it were, then Harry Connick Jr. and Kelli OHara -- the white-hot stars of Kathleen Marshalls delicious revival of this 1954 musical -- would be looking at long jail terms. This intoxicating production, which features a charming supporting cast led by Michael McKean, allows grown-up audiences the rare chance to witness a bona fide adult love affair translated into hummable songs and sprightly dance (2:30). American Airlines Theater, 227 West 42nd Street, (212) 719-1300. (Brantley) RING OF FIRE The man in black turns sunshine yellow in a show that strings songs associated with Johnny Cash into a big, bright candy necklace of a musical revue, created and directed by Richard Maltby Jr. In the current bio-flick Walk the Line, Cash wrestles demons; Ring of Fire wrestles with a really bad case of the cutes (2:00). Ethel Barrymore Theater, 243 West 47th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) * SWEENEY TODD Sweet dreams, New York. This thrilling new revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheelers musical, with Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone leading a cast of 10 who double as their own musicians, burrows into your thoughts like a campfire storyteller who knows what really scares you. The inventive director John Doyle aims his pared-down interpretation at the squirming child in everyone who wants to have his worst fears both confirmed and dispelled (2:30). Eugene ONeill Theater, 230 West 49th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) * THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE The happy news for this happy-making little musical is that the move to larger quarters has dissipated none of its quirky charm. William Finns score sounds plumper and more rewarding than it did on Off Broadway, providing a sprinkling of sugar to complement the sass in Rachel Sheinkins zinger-filled book. The performances are flawless. Gold stars all around (1:45). Circle in the Square, 1633 Broadway, at 50th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Isherwood) * WELL Lisa Krons sparkling autobiographical play about illness, integration and her mother (portrayed by with majestic warmth and weariness by Jayne Houdyshell) helps restore the honor of that tarnished literary form, the memoir. Though it shows the strain of scaling up for Broadway, this singular work, which stars Ms. Kron as herself, opens windows of insight and emotion found in no other show (1:40). Longacre Theater, 220 West 48th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) Off Broadway DEFIANCE The second play in John Patrick Shanleys cycle of morality dramas that began with Doubt, this ambitious tale of racial relations and the military mindset on a North Carolina marine base feels both overcrowded and oddly diffuse. If Doubt has an elegant and energy-efficient sprinters gait, Defiance progresses with a flustered air of distraction. The excellent Margaret Colin, as an officers wife, provides a welcome shot of credibility (1:30). Manhattan Theater Club, Theater 1, 131 West 55th Street, (212) 581-1212. (Brantley) ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE Miscasting is the mother of invention. Or so it proves to be for Jan Maxwell, who retailors an ill-fitting part and makes it as snug as a glove in this underpowered revival of Joe Ortons scandalous 1964 comedy. Scott Elliss production of Ortons great farce of sexual hypocrisy, which also stars Alec Baldwin, is breezy, often funny and rarely convincing. (2:00). Laura Pels Theater at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theater, 111 West 46th Street, (212) 719-1300. (Brantley) GEORGE M. COHAN TONIGHT! The all-singing, all-dancing Jon Peterson summons the spirit of this legendary Broadway entertainer in this engaging one-man musical, devised and directed by Chip Deffaa (1:30). Irish Repertory Theater, 132 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, (212) 727-2737. (George Hunka) GREY GARDENS As the socialite in limbo called Little Edie Beale, Christine Ebersole gives one of the most gorgeous performances ever to grace a musical. Unfortunately, shes a pearl of incalculable price in a show that is mostly costume jewelry. Adapted from the Maysles brothers 1975 cult documentary movie, a camp favorite, and directed by Michael Greif, with the excellent Mary Louise Wilson as Edies bedridden mother (2:40). Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 279-4200. (Brantley) JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS A powerfully sung revival of the 1968 revue, presented with affectionate nostalgia by director Gordon Greenberg. As in the original, two men (Robert Cuccioli and Rodney Hicks) and two women (Natascia Diaz and Gay Marshall) perform a wide selection of Brels plaintive ballads and stirring anthems. Ms. Marshalls captivating performance of Ne Me Quitte Pas, sung in the original French and with heart-stirring transparency, represents Brel at his best. (2:00). Zipper Theater, 336 West 37th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Isherwood) * THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE Please turn off your political correctness monitor along with your cellphone for Martin McDonaghs gleeful, gory and appallingly entertaining play. This blood farce about terrorism in rural Ireland, acutely directed by Wilson Milam, has a carnage factor to rival Quentin Tarantinos. But it is also wildly, absurdly funny and, even more improbably, severely moral (1:45). Atlantic Theater, 336 West 20th Street, Chelsea, (212) 239-6200. Closing Sunday. Moving to Broadway. Previews begin April 19; opens May 3 at the Lyceum Theater, 149 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) A NIGHT IN NOVEMBER A soccer game in Belfast is a catalyst for personal transformation in Marie Joness tour de force two-act monologue. Marty Maguire throws himself into the revival of this well-written, funny piece with an abandon that verges on hysteria. (1:30). Irish Arts Center, 553 West 51st Street, Clinton, (212) 868-4444. (Anne Midgette) PEN David Marshall Grants sometimes preachy new three-character play is about an unhappy Long Island family in 1969. J. Smith-Cameron is fascinating to watch as she exposes the anguish behind the tough, angry exterior of the wheelchair-bound mother; Dan McCabe is uneven but believable as the troubled teenage son who wants to get away from her; and Reed Birney is less persuasive as the ex-husband who has already left. The title object is a gift from the author to himself: it allows something impossible to happen. (2:15). Playwrights Horizons, Peter Jay Sharp Theater, 416 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 279-4200. (Andrea Stevens) THE PROPERTY KNOWN AS GARLAND Adrienne Barbeau as Judy, backstage on the night of her last concert in Copenhagen. Billy Van Zandts play is tawdry and dull, and Ms. Barbeaus performance offers neither the minor rewards of a decent impersonation nor the guilty pleasures of an indecent one. (1:30). The Actors Playhouse, 100 Seventh Avenue South, at Fourth Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 239-6200. (Isherwood) RED LIGHT WINTER A frank, occasionally graphic story of erotic fixation and the havoc it can wreak on sensitive types. Written and directed by Adam Rapp, this play is both a doomy romantic drama and a morbid comedy about the anxieties of male friendship. Although somewhat contrived, it features a lovely performance by Christopher Denham as a lonely soul starved for intimacy (2:25). Barrow Street Theater, 27 Barrow Street, West Village, (212) 239-6200. (Isherwood) A SAFE HARBOR FOR ELIZABETH BISHOP The life of a great poet becomes the stuff of stale prose in this one-woman bio-play by Marta Goes, starring Amy Irving (1:30). 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street, (212) 279-4200. (Isherwood) SANDRA BERNHARD: EVERYTHING BAD AND BEAUTIFUL Sandra Bernhard was a proverbial rock star long before headline-making folks in even the most prosaic walks of life were being referred to as such. Her new show, a collection of songs interspersed with musings on her life and on public figures ranging from Britney Spears to Condi Rice, is casual to the point of offhand. That said, its invigorating to be in the presence of a true original (2:00). Daryl Roth Theater, 101 East 15th Street, at Union Square, East Village, (212) 239-6200. (Isherwood) * [TITLE OF SHOW] Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell are the authors, stars and subject matter of this delectable new musical about its own making. The self-consciousness is tempered by a wonderful cast performing with the innocence of kids cavorting in a sandbox. Its a worthy postmodern homage to the classic backstage musicals, and an absolute must for show queens (1:30). Vineyard Theater, 108 East 15th Street, Flatiron district, (212) 353-0303. (Isherwood) * TRANSATLANTIC LIAISON A play fashioned from Simone de Beauvoirs love letters to the American novelist Nelson Algren and scenes from her novel The Mandarins (which tells the story of their affair). Wonderful performances by Elizabeth Rothan as de Beauvoir in love, and Matthew S. Tompkins as the emotional Algren (1:30). Harold Clurman Theater on Theater Row, 412 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 279-4200. (Honor Moore) Off Off Broadway BURIED CHILD Tom Hermans revival makes something known new by revealing how close Sam Shepards play about a dysfunctional Midwest family is to tragic opera, speechlike arias included. The Michael Chekhov Theater Company is presenting 45 Shepard plays, and this first effort sounds a positive note. (2:30) Big Little Theater, 141 Ridge Street, near Houston Street, Lower East Side, (212) 868-4444. (Stevens) WE USED TO GO OUT Jason Mantzoukas and Jessica St. Clair revive the tradition of male-female comedy team in this appealing sketch about a disintegrating romance (1:00). UCB Theater, 306 West 26th Street, Chelsea, (212) 366-9176. (Jason Zinoman) Long-Running Shows * ALTAR BOYZ This sweetly satirical show about a Christian pop group made up of five potential Teen People cover boys is an enjoyable, silly diversion (1:30). New World Stages, 340 West 50th Street, Clinton, (212) 239-6200.(Isherwood) AVENUE Q R-rated puppets give lively life lessons (2:10). Golden, 252 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) BEAUTY AND THE BEAST Cartoon made flesh, sort of (2:30). Lunt-Fontanne Theater, 205 West 46th Street, (212) 307-4747. (Brantley) CHICAGO Irrefutable proof that crime pays (2:25). Ambassador Theater, 219 West 49th Street, (212) 239-6200.(Brantley) HAIRSPRAY Fizzy pop, cute kids, large man in a housedress (2:30). Neil Simon Theater, 250 West 52nd Street, (212) 307-4100. (Brantley) THE LION KING Disney on safari, where the big bucks roam (2:45). New Amsterdam Theater, 214 West 42nd Street, (212) 307-4100. (Brantley) MAMMA MIA! The jukebox that devoured Broadway (2:20). Cadillac Winter Garden Theater, 1634 Broadway, at 50th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA Who was that masked man, anyway? (2:30). Majestic Theater, 247 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) THE PRODUCERS The ne plus ultra of showbiz scams (2:45). St. James Theater, 246 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) RENT East Village angst and love songs to die for (2:45). Nederlander Theater, 208 West 41st Street, (212) 307-4100. (Brantley) SPAMALOT (Tony Award, Best Musical 2005) This staged re-creation of the mock-medieval movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail is basically a singing scrapbook for Python fans. Such a good time is being had by so many people that this fitful, eager celebration of inanity and irreverence has found a large and lucrative audience (2:20). Shubert Theater, 225 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) WICKED Oz revisited, with political corrections (2:45). Gershwin Theater, 222 West 51st Street, (212) 307-4100. (Brantley) Last Chance * ABIGAILS PARTY Scott Elliotts thoroughly delectable production of Mike Leighs 1977 comedy about domestic discord among the British middle classes. Jennifer Jason Leigh leads a superb ensemble cast as a party hostess who wields the gin bottle like a deadly weapon, resulting in an evening of savagely funny chaos (2:15). Acorn Theater at Theater Row, 410 West 42nd Street, Clinton,(212) 279-4200; closing tomorrow. (Isherwood) BERNARDA ALBA Michael John LaChiusas musical adaptation of Federico García Lorcas tragedy of sexual repression often feels wan and weary, though not for want of erotic imagery. The ominous, oppressive atmosphere that makes Lorcas play so much more than a potboiler is mostly missing in inaction. Graciela Daniele directs a game ensemble led by a miscast Phylicia Rashad (1:30). Mitzi Newhouse Theater, 150 West 65th Street, Lincoln Center, (212) 239-6200; closing Sunday. (Brantley) THE MUSIC TEACHER, A PLAY/OPERA A pair of interlocking monologues surrounding a little parody of an opera, with text by Wallace Shawn and music by his brother Allen. Written two decades ago and shelved when the authors failed to find a producer, this is a minor-key, underrealized work that hits a few elegiac notes but steps too gingerly around the psychosexual trauma at its core (1:45). Minetta Lane Theater, 18 Minetta Lane, Greenwich Village, (212) 307-4100, closing Sunday. (Isherwood) * RABBIT HOLE Thanks to a certain former American president, it has become almost impossible to say that you feel someone elses pain without its sounding like a punch line. Yet the sad, sweet release of David Lindsay-Abaires wrenching play, about the impact of the death of a small child, lies precisely in the access it allows to the pain of others, in its meticulously mapped empathy. With an emotionally transparent five-member cast led by Cynthia Nixon and Tyne Daly, directed by Daniel Sullivan, this anatomy of grief doesnt so much jerk tears as tap them (2:10). Biltmore Theater, 261 West 47th Street, (212) 239-6200; closing Sunday. (Brantley) TRIAL BY WATER Qui Nguyen, raising worthwhile questions about how to live a humane and moral life in the real world, has based his play on the experiences of a cousin who survived a voyage of Vietnamese refugees in the South China Sea that ended in murder and cannibalism. Though the actors are not able to surmount the plays unfortunate didacticism and melodrama, Clint Ramoss stunning wooden set does. (1:30). Culture Project, 45 Bleecker Street, at Lafayette Street, East Village, (212) 352-3101; closing Sunday. ( Stevens) * ZOMBOID! (FILM/PERFORMANCe PROJECT #1) O, the heresy of it! Richard Foreman has introduced film into the realm of exquisitely artificial, abstract theater in which he has specialized for four decades. As it turns out, juxtaposing two art forms allows Mr. Foreman to underscore in resonant new ways what he has been saying for years: reality is, well, relative. And he continues to work in a style guaranteed to infect your perceptions for hours after (1:15). Ontological-Hysteric Theater, 131 East 10th Street, East Village; closing Sunday. (212) 352-3101. (Brantley) Movies Ratings and running times are in parentheses; foreign films have English subtitles. Full reviews of all current releases, movie trailers, show times and tickets: nytimes.com/movies. ATL (PG-13, 103 minutes) A couple of rap stars make respectable starts on acting careers in this tale of black teenagers in Atlanta, despite a script marred by clichés and predictability. Tip Harris -- the rapper T. I. -- is intriguing as a young man who takes on the responsibility of raising his younger brother when their parents are killed, and Antwan Andre Patton -- Big Boi from OutKast -- makes a terrific drug lord. (Neil Genzlinger) BASIC INSTINCT 2 (R, 120 minutes) A joyless calculation, starring Sharon Stone and directed by Michael Caton-Jones, that is also a prime object lesson in the degradation that can face Hollywood actresses, especially those over 40. (Manohla Dargis) * THE BEAUTY ACADEMY OF KABUL (No rating, 74 minutes, in English and Dari) In the summer of 2004, a group of volunteer American hairstylists arrived in Kabul to open a school. In The Beauty Academy of Kabul, the director Liz Mermin documents the hilarious, moving and sometimes fractious meeting of diametrically different cultures, one having suffered unimaginable horrors and the other believing a good perm is the answer to everything. (Jeannette Catsoulis) * BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (R, 134 minutes) Annie Proulxs heartbreaking story of two ranch hands who fall in love while herding sheep in 1963 has been faithfully translated onto the screen in Ang Lees landmark film. (Mr. Lee won the Academy Award for best director.) Heath Ledger (in a great performance worthy of Brando at his peak) and Jake Gyllenhaal bring them fully alive. (Stephen Holden) * CAPOTE (R, 114 minutes) Philip Seymour Hoffmans portrayal of Truman Capote is a tour de force of psychological insight. (Mr. Hoffman won the Academy Award for best actor.) Following the novelist as he works on the magazine assignment that will become In Cold Blood, the film raises intriguing questions about the ethics of writing. (A. O. Scott) CRASH (Academy Award, Best Picture) (R, 107 minutes) A gaggle of Los Angeles residents from various economic and ethnic backgrounds collide, sometimes literally, within an extremely hectic 36 hours. Well intentioned, impressively acted but ultimately a speechy, ponderous melodrama of liberal superstition masquerading as realism. (Scott) DAVE CHAPPELLES BLOCK PARTY (R, 103 minutes) The setup is blissfully simple: a free block party on a dead-end street in Bed-Stuy, with a lineup of musicians, some of whom, like Kanye West and Mos Def, have put in appearances on Chappelles Show. The nominal idea, Mr. Chappelle explains on camera, was the concert Ive always wanted to see. The result, which ping-pongs between Brooklyn and Mr. Chappelles hometown in Ohio, is a tantalizing sketch-portrait of the artist amid an outpouring of hard beats and soul. (Dargis) DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON (PG-13, 110 minutes) The romantic cliché that all artists are a little bit mad is put through its paces (if never seriously questioned) in this documentary about Daniel Johnston, a mentally ill songwriter whom Kurt Cobain, the lead singer for Nirvana, once called the greatest living. Jeff Feuerzeig, who won the best director award at the 2005 Sundance Festival, cobbles together a moving portrait of the artist as his own ghost, using a wealth of material provided by Mr. Johnston, from home movies to audiocassette diaries to dozens of original, and often heartbreakingly beautiful, songs. (Dana Stevens) * DRAWING RESTRAINT 9 (No rating, 135 minutes) Most of this stately film of few words, conceived and directed by the artist Matthew Barney, who co-stars with his wife, Bjork, takes place on a Japanese whaling ship afloat in Nagasaki Bay. Steeped not only in Japanese seafaring lore but also in centuries-old traditions of Japanese ritual, the film could be described as Mr. Barneys Moby-Dick. (Holden) * FIND ME GUILTY (R, 124 minutes) This gripping courtroom drama, directed by Sidney Lumet, now 81 and near the top of his game, is based on the 1987-88 trial of 20 members of the New Jersey-based Lucchese crime family on multiple counts. Vin Diesel turns in a sensational performance as Giacomo DiNorscio, better known as Jackie Dee, who broke from the ranks of his fellow defendants to be his own defense lawyer. (Holden) ICE AGE: THE MELTDOWN (PG, 93 minutes) Creative exhaustion haunts Ice Age: The Meltdown, as the characters from 2002s Ice Age face global warming and the submersion of their valley. While the animals head for safety in a giant, arklike boat, the director, Carlos Saldanha, indulges in biblical imagery and bad science. Over all, a flat and uninspired follow-up to a vastly superior movie. (Catsoulis) * INSIDE MAN (R, 128 minutes) The latest from Spike Lee takes a familiar setup -- in this case, a Wall Street bank heist that mutates into a hostage crisis -- and twists it ever so slightly and nicely. Among the films most sustained pleasures are its holy trinity -- Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster -- and the best lineup of pusses and mugs outside The Sopranos. (Dargis) LONESOME JIM (R, 91 minutes) Steve Buscemi directed this deadpan comedy about a depressed 27-year-old writer (Casey Affleck) who returns from New York in defeat to his childhood home in rural Indiana and takes a job in his parents ladder factory. (Holden) MARILYN HOTCHKISS BALLROOM DANCING AND CHARM SCHOOL (PG-13, 103 minutes) John Goodman plays a dying crash victim on his way to a 40-year-old appointment, and Robert Carlyle is the widowed baker entrusted with keeping it. Instead he meets Marisa Tomei, who teaches him to dance and, more important, throw away his wifes ashes. Toggling back and forth between past and present, Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing and Charm School is a soggy, endless wallow in nostalgia and the healing power of very bad dancing. (Catsoulis) * SLITHER (R, 96 minutes) A horror film about an extraterrestrial monster with a hunger for flesh that slaloms from yucks to yuks, slip-sliding from horror to comedy and back again on its gore-slicked foundation. The writer and director James Gunn knows his icky, scary stuff. (Dargis) * SYRIANA (R, 122 minutes) Ambitious, angry and complicated, Stephen Gaghans second film tackles terrorism, American foreign policy, global trade and the oil business through four interwoven stories. There are at least a half-dozen first-rate performances, and Mr. Gaghan, who wrote and directed, reinvents the political thriller as a vehicle for serious engagement with the state of the world. (Scott) Thank You for Smoking (R, 92 minutes) The director Jason Reitman has made a glib and funny movie from Christopher Buckleys glib and funny novel about a Big Tobacco lobbyist, but the real attraction here is the hard-working star, Aaron Eckhart. (Dargis) TORO NEGRO (No rating, 87 minutes, in Spanish) A disturbed young matador stabs animals, beats his wife and drinks himself to the edge of oblivion in this harrowing, deeply suspect documentary set in rural Mexico. (Nathan Lee) * TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY (R, 91 minutes) Michael Winterbottom both confirms and refutes the assumption that Laurence Sternes 18th-century masterpiece of digression could never be made into a movie by making a movie about the making of such a movie. Steve Coogan is wonderful as Tristram, Tristrams father and himself, though Rob Brydon steals more than a few of Mr. Coogans scenes. (Scott) Tsotsi (R, 94 minutes) (Academy Award winner for best foreign film.) Written and directed by Gavin Hood, from a novel by Athol Fugard, this South African film centers on a 19-year-old thug who steals a baby and finds redemption. You dont have to read crystal balls to see into Tsotsis future; you just need to have watched a couple of Hollywood chestnuts. (Dargis) V for Vendetta (R, 131 minutes) James McTeigue directs this D-for-dumb future-shock story about a masked avenger (Hugo Weaving) and his pipsqueak sidekick (Natalie Portman) at war against a totalitarian British regime. (Dargis) * YANG BAN XI: THE 8 MODEL WORKS (No rating, 90 minutes, in Mandarin) In her documentary about Chinese propaganda of the campiest kind (think rosy-cheeked, chubby-kneed dancers leaping across the stage, guns clutched in one hand, Little Red Books in the other), the director Yan-Ting Yuen revisits the Cultural Revolution to explore the history and legacy of one of the strangest byproducts of totalitarian madness: the revolutionary spectacular. (Dargis) * NEIL YOUNG: HEART OF GOLD (PG, 103 minutes) Filled with country memories, bluesy regret and familiar and piercing sentiment, Jonathan Demmes concert film sounds like quintessential Neil Young, which, depending on your home catalog, will be either an enormous turn-on or a turnoff. (Dargis) Film Series AGAINST THE TIDE: REBELS & MAVERICKS IN CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE FILM (Through April 16) Japan Societys spring film series, which began yesterday, continues this weekend with films including Wild Berries (2003), Miwa Nishikawas satire of Japanese family values; and Kaza-hana (2001), the director Shinji Somais last work, a drama about a bureaucrat and a young widow trying to redefine their damaged lives. 333 East 47th Street, Manhattan, (212) 715-1258; $10. (Anita Gates) PRIX JEAN VIGO (Through Dec. 30) The Museum of Modern Art is honoring Vigo (1905-34), the French filmmaker, with a series of 41 films from directors who have won the prize that bears his name. Paris Awakens (1991), Olivier Assayass drama about alienated urban teenage lovers, will be shown tomorrow. Judith Godrèche and Thomas Langmann star. (212) 708-9400; $10. (Gates) RECENT FILMS FROM DENMARK (Through April 19) Scandinavia House continues its overall Scandinavian film series with Rumle Hammerichs Young Andersen (2005), the story of Hans Christian Andersens encounter, at the age of 18, with a difficult school principal. 58 Park Avenue, between 37th and 38th Streets, (212) 879-9779; $8. (Gates) A ROAD MAP OF THE SOUL: THE COMPLETE KIESLOWSKI (Through April 23) To honor the 10th anniversary of Krzysztof Kieslowskis death, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Polish National Film Archive and the Polish Cultural Institute in New York are presenting a retrospective of his work. This weekends films include The Calm (1976), about an ex-convict and a workers strike; The Double Life of Veronique (1991); and all three parts of the Colors trilogy: Blue (1993), White (1994) and Red (1994). Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, Lincoln Center, (212) 875-5600; $10. (Gates) DON SIEGEL (Through Thursday) Siegel, who died in 1991, was a master of several genres, including science fiction, westerns and police thrillers. Film Forums four-week, 25-movie retrospective of his work concludes with a weeklong run of Dirty Harry (1971), his biggest hit. This is Clint Eastwoods first and best interpretation of Harry Callahan, a tough San Francisco cop who has been known to ask deserving punks whether theyre feeling lucky. 209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, South Village, (212) 727-8110; $10. (Gates) VILLAGE VOICE BEST OF 2005 (Through April 26) This annual series, which opened yesterday, continues this weekend with three films. Funny Ha Ha (2003), Andrew Bujalskis debut feature, is a study of post-college life. Claire Deniss Intruder (2004) is a drama about a dying man. The Sun (2005), a portrait of Emperor Hirohito (Issei Ogata), completes Aleksandr Sokurovs dictator trilogy. BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, (718) 636-4100; $10. (Gates) SHELLEY WINTERS VS. THE WATER (Through April 25) Beginning on Wednesday, BAMcinématek honors Winters, who died in January at 83, with screenings of four of her best-known films. Tuesday nights feature is The Night of the Hunter (1955), Charles Laughtons noir thriller with Robert Mitchum as a criminal pretending to be a preacher and Winters as his unsuspecting, doomed new wife. BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, (718) 636-4100; $10. (Gates) ANNA MAY WONG (Through April 16) Wong, the first Chinese-American movie star, would have turned 100 last year. (She died in 1961.) The Museum of the Moving Images extensive seven-week retrospective of her work continues this weekend with Robert Floreys Daughter of Shanghai (1937), a thriller about a woman avenging her fathers murder; Floreys Dangerous to Know (1938), based on Wongs Broadway play about a mobsters girlfriend; and Nick Grindes King of Chinatown (1939), about a Chinese-American surgeon (Wong) who saves a criminals life. 35th Avenue at 36th Street, Astoria, Queens, (718) 784-0077; $10. (Gates) Pop Full reviews of recent concerts: nytimes.com/music. YOLANDA ADAMS (Tomorrow) Blending gospel and rhythm-and-blues, Yolanda Adams has a powerful voice, though it is used more for purposes of warm inspiration and uplifting solace than quasi-sexual shudders of praise. 8 and 10:30 p.m., B. B. Kings Blues Club and Grill, 243 West 42nd Street, Midtown, (212) 997-4144; $65. (Laura Sinagra) EVA AYLLON (Tomorrow) Eva Ayllon is a stadium-filling star in Peru who, for more than 30 years, has placed her own stamp on the Afro-Peruvian folk heritage: songs with crisp syncopations played on instruments as basic as the box drum called the cajón. She adds a husky voice that never shies away from drama. 8 p.m., Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, Midtown, (212) 840-2824; $25 to $45. (Jon Pareles) ANTI-FLAG (Thursday) You cant accuse this politically minded punk band of flip-flopping on the issues. Sure, it moved to the center on the subject of corporate record labels, but it still has lots of leftist bile to spew about topics like the lazy news media (The Press Corpse), big trade (The W.T.O. Kills Farmers) and plain old greed (1 Trillion Dollar$). 7 p.m., Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, at 15th Street, Manhattan, (212) 777-6800; $15.75 in advance, $17 at the door. (Sinagra) ASHA BHOSLE (Tomorrow) Ms. Bhosle is famous as a vocalist for Indian film. Here she performs reinterpreted Bollywood classics accompanied by the Kronos Quartet, with Zakir Hussaino on the tabla, and Wu Man on pipa. 8 p.m., Carnegie Hall, (212) 501-1390; $21 to $72. (Sinagra) NEKO CASE (Tonight) The clarion voice thats best known as the transcendent secret weapon of the Canadian pop group New Pornographers belongs to this alt-country chanteuse, who performs her own songs here. 7 p.m., Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, East Village, (212) 353-1600; $20 in advance, $23 at the door. (Sinagra) KEYSHIA COLE (Tomorrow)The R&B singer Keyshia Cole presents a tough-cookie brand of diva soul that focuses less on fashionista posing than on righteous recrimination. On her single I Changed My Mind, she rides Kanye Wests hard-clapping track with sultry grit. 9 p.m., Nokia Theater, 1515 Broadway, at 44th Street, ticketmaster.com or (212) 307-7171. Sold out. (Sinagra) DONNA THE BUFFALO (Tomorrow) Donna the Buffalo is not named after its fiddler and singer, Tara Nevins. Its good-natured rock leans toward the Appalachian side of country music, though it also dips into reggae and Cajun music, with songs that ponder love and humanitys place in the universe. 6:30 p.m., Avalon, 662 Avenue of the Americas, at 20th Street, Chelsea, (212) 807-7780 or ticketmaster.com or (212) 307-7171; $16.50. (Pareles) FRANZ FERDINAND, DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE (Thursday) At the vanguard of the post-post-punk trend, the poker-faced group Franz Ferdinand plays herky-jerky party music. Death Cab is a decorous diarist-rock band whose sound took on some added alternative-rock heft on its most recent album, Plans (Atlantic). 8 p.m., Hammerstein Ballroom, 311 West 34th Street, garment district, (212) 485-1534; $40 in advance, $45 at the door. (Sinagra) GOGOL BORDELLO (Wednesday) Led by a gruff and extravagantly mustached Ukrainian singer, Eugene Hutz, Gogol Bordello calls itself a Gypsy punk band. Translating Eastern European cabaret to the Lower East Side, its songs work up to a frenetic oompah thats the makings of a rowdy party. 7 p.m., Warsaw, 261 Driggs Avenue, at Eckford Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, (718) 387-0505; $22. (Pareles) HEARTLESS BASTARDS, THE SOLEDAD BROTHERS (Tonight and tomorrow night) Because of her primal yowl, the singer and guitarist Erika Wennerstrom is often compared to Robert Plant and Polly Harvey. The hungry stomp of her power trio, Heartless Bastards, is heavy enough for classic rockers and post-ironic enough for hipsters looking for bar band sincerity. The members switch off headlining slots with the Soledad Brothers. 10:30, Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston Street, at Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, (212) 260-4700; $12. (Sinagra) THE HOLD STEADY, P.O.S. (Tonight) With hipster savvy and bar rock swagger, the Hold Steady savant Craig Finn spews an almost unseemly amount of pop culture references in a voice that recalls Bruce Springsteens. The indie-rapper P.O.S. also performs. 8, Warsaw, 261 Driggs Avenue, at Eckford Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, (718) 387-0505; $16.50. (Sinagra) THE iOS (Tuesday) Just like the Canadian band Stars, the iOs remind you of that exuberant 90s moment when bands like Mavis Piggott and Madder Rose made it seem that smart girl voices over big guitars were the way of the future. The iOs have a guy singer, too. But as in Stars, the female voice is the more affecting. 9:30 p.m., Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston Street, at Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, (212) 260-4700; $10. (Sinagra) TALIB KWELI (Tonight) This brainy rappers agile attack still lacks Jiggas precision, 50 Cents swagger and Nass anguish. But his rapping can be beautiful when he laments things like Lauryn Hills exit from the music scene. 8 p.m., Pratt Institute Student Union, 200 Willoughby Avenue, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, (718) 636-3422; free for Pratt students, $4 for nonstudents. (Sinagra) KYP MALONE (Tomorrow) With his ethereal falsetto and coronal afro, Kyp Malone is known to many as a vocalist and guitarist in the spacy local band TV on the Radio. For years, though, he was a fixture on San Franciscos indie scene. Lately hes been doing his own thing. 8 p.m., Northsix, 66 North Sixth Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, (718) 599-5103; $8. (Sinagra) McCULLOUGH SONGS OF THUNDER, THE BIRMINGHAM SUNLIGHTS (Tomorrow) The 16-piece shout gospel brass band, McCullough Songs of Thunder, from the United House of Prayer for All People in Harlem, aims to blare its devotion so loudly and joyously that the angels have to sing along. They are joined here by the Birmingham Sunlights, a traditional a cappella gospel group. 8 p.m., Harlem Center for the Performing Arts, Aaron Davis Hall, City College, West 135th Street and Convent Avenue, Hamilton Heights, (212) 650-7100; Free. (Sinagra) SUSAN McKEOWN (Tonight) Susan McKeown interprets Irish traditionals with a distinctive intensity. Accompanying her here are some musicians who play on her most recent recording: the fiddler Dana Lyn and the guitarist Eamon OLeary. 9, Glucksman Ireland House at New York University, 1 Washington Mews, Greenwich Village, (212) 998-3950; $15. (Sinagra) BETH ORTON (Tuesday) Though her voice, which recalls the best of the English folk tradition, should be enough to put her songs across, the quality of Ms. Ortons work has often depended on her adept collaborations. Her most recent is with the post-rock gadfly Jim ORourke. 8 p.m., Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, East Village, (212) 353-1600. Sold out. (Sinagra) QUASI (Monday and Tuesday) Sam Coomes and his ex-wife, the Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss, make tempestuous indie-rock that veers toward apocalypse blues. Monday at 8 p.m., Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard Street, TriBeCa, (212) 219-3006; $12 in advance, $14 at the door. Tuesday at 8 p.m., Northsix, 66 North Sixth Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, (718) 599-5103; $12 in advance , $14 at the door. (Sinagra) THE RACONTEURS (Tonight) Jack White of the White Stripes and the power-pop talent Brendan Benson team up with members of the Greenhorns in this assertive side project. They play garage-rock cut with incisive pop hooks. 8 p.m., Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, at 15th Street, Manhattan, (212) 777-6800. Sold out. (Sinagra) RJD2, BEANS (Tonight) Representing an offshoot of the record-store scavenging D.J. tradition exemplified in the 1990s by the likes of DJ Shadow, RJD2 takes a cinematic approach. The rapper Beans, formerly of Antipop Consortium, has made a solo career out of meshing his surreal lyrics with the work of electronic-rock artists and culture-hopping D.J.s. 9, Guggenheim Auditorium, 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, (212) 423-3500; $20 (cash at door only, free for members).(Sinagra) JOSH ROUSE (Tonight) This confessional singer-songwriter gives contemplative navel-gazing a Nashville twist. 8, Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, Midtown, (212) 840-2824; $22.50 to $26.50. (Sinagra) SOWETO GOSPEL CHOIR (Sunday) Gospel music and traditional South African harmonies and rhythms have found common ground and hybrid possibilities since Christian missionaries arrived in South Africa in the 19th century. This 32-member choir carries the fusion toward jubilation, performing traditional songs (and Mbube, the Zulu song better known as The Lion Sleeps Tonight), alongside gospel messages. 3 p.m., New Jersey Performing Arts Center, 1 Center Street, Newark, (888) 466-5722;$17 to $50. (Pareles) THE SOUNDS, MORNINGWOOD (Wednesday) The Sounds are a Swedish band that plays sugar-sharp arena pop with a pinch of bad-girl sass. Morningwood is more punky, though somehow less authentic. 7:30 p.m., Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, at 15th Street, Manhattan, (212) 777-6800; $18 in advance, $20 at the door. (Sinagra) REGINA SPEKTOR (Tuesday) The Russian-born singer and pianist Regina Spektor brings punk immediacy into a cabaret setting, reveling in knotty rhymes and unhinged melodrama. 8 p.m., Warsaw, 261 Driggs Avenue, at Eckford Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, (718) 387-0505; $20. (Sinagra) KREMENA STANCHEVA (Tomorrow) Ms. Stancheva is a member of Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, the Bulgarian vocal group that created one of world musics first minibooms in the late 1980s. She has been with the group for 45 years. This concert and folklore presentation allows her to apply her many years of Bulgarian song scholarship. 8 p.m., Bulgarian Consulate General, 121 East 62nd Street, Manhattan, (212) 935-4646; $15. (Sinagra) THE SWORD (Tonight and Sunday) The Texans in the Sword do a great approximation of Black Sabbaths slow menace, at points also revealing hard-core punk underpinnings with thrash bravura. Tonight at 8:30, Maxwells, 1039 Washington Street, Hoboken, N.J.,(201) 653-1703; $8 in advance, $10 at the door. Sunday at 7 p.m., CBGB, 315 Bowery, at Bleecker Street, East Village; (212) 982-4052; $10 in advance, $12 at the door. (Sinagra) TINARIWEN (Tonight) This guitar band from the deserts of Mali turns Tuareg cultures acoustic music into a chant-based kind of distended electric blues, addressing the issues of exile, displacement and poverty. 8, Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, at 95th Street, (212) 864-5400; $26. (Sinagra) WOLFMOTHER (Tuesday) Part of a wave of whats been dubbed heritage metal, the Australian trio Wolfmother strives to sound like Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer. 8 p.m., Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, near the Bowery, Lower East Side, (212) 533-2111. Sold out. (Sinagra) WOLF PARADE (Sunday and Monday) Part of Montreals wave of It art-pop bands that includes Arcade Fire and Unicorns, Wolf Parade has a Northern noir take on keyboard-heavy epics. 7:30 p.m., Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, East Village, (212) 353-1600. Sold out.(Sinagra) Cabaret Full reviews of recent cabaret shows: nytimes.com/music. BARBARA CARROLL (Sunday) Even when swinging out, this Lady of a Thousand Songs remains an impressionist with special affinities for Thelonious Monk and bossa nova. 2 p.m., Algonquin Hotel, Oak Room, 59 West 44th Street, Manhattan, (212) 419-9331; $55, including brunch at noon. (Stephen Holden) BLOSSOM DEARIE (Sunday) To watch this singer and pianist is to appreciate the power of a carefully deployed pop-jazz minimalism combined with a highly discriminating taste in songs. The songs date from all periods of a career remarkable for its longevity and for Ms. Dearies stubborn independence and sly wit. 6:15 p.m., Dannys Skylight Room, 346 West 46th Street, Clinton, (212) 265-8133; $25, with a $15 minimum, or $54.50 for a dinner-and-show package. (Holden) BABY JANE DEXTER (Tomorrow) This booming pop-blues contralto may not be demure, but she is tasteful in a smart, regal, big-mama way, and she is astute in her choices of often obscure soul, blues and jazz songs that play to her contradictory mixture of the lusty and the philosophical. 7 p.m., Helens, 169 Eighth Avenue, near 18th Street, Chelsea, (212) 206-0609; $20, with a $15 minimum. (Holden) ANNIE ROSS (Wednesday) Cool, funny, swinging and indestructible, this 75-year-old singer and sometime actress exemplifies old-time hip in its most generous incarnation. 9:15 p.m., Dannys Skylight Room, 346 West 46th Street, Clinton, (212) 265-8133; $25, with a $12 minimum. (Holden) Jazz Full reviews of recent jazz concerts: nytimes.com/music. ALPHABET LOUNGE BIG BAND (Sunday) Led by the pianist Deidre Rodman, this large ensemble expands on the mischievous eclecticism of the Jazz Passengers, with a lineup that includes Kate McGarry on vocals; Roy Nathanson, Ohad Talmor and Jay Rodriguez on saxophones; Sam Bardfeld on violin; and Curtis Fowlkes on trombone. 6 p.m., Barbès, 376 Ninth Street, at Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 965-9177; cover, $8. (Nate Chinen) MICHAEL BLAKE TRIO (Tonight) Pulse and texture shift perpetually in this trio, thanks to the earthy rhythm team of Ben Allison and Jeff Ballard, on bass and drums; but the groups capricious tone is set by Mr. Blake, on tenor and soprano saxophones. 9 p.m., Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street, West Village, (212) 989-9319; cover, $10, with a one-drink minimum. (Chinen) GARY BURTONS GENERATIONS (Wednesday through April 15) Mr. Burton, the extravagantly proficient vibraphonist, educator and composer, features younger talent exclusively in this ensemble, reserving a central role for the teenage guitar prodigy Julian Lage. 9 and 11 p.m., Birdland, 315 West 44th Street, Clinton, (212) 581-3080; cover, $30, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) BILLY CHILDS CHAMBER ENSEMBLE (Wednesday through April 16) The pianist and composer Billy Childs favors a billowy sound that often drifts perilously close to New Age. But behind a genteel front line of piano, saxophone, harp and guitar lurks the action-oriented rhythm team of Scott Colley on bass and Antonio Sanchez on drums. 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. with 11:30 sets Fridays and Saturdays, Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-2232; cover, $25, $30 Fridays and Saturdays. (Chinen) LOU DONALDSON QUARTET (Tonight and tomorrow) Bebop, blues and boogaloo are all fair game for the veteran alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson, who receives strong support here from Dr. Lonnie Smith on Hammond B-3 organ, Randy Johnston on guitar and Fukushi Tainaka on drums. 9 and 11 p.m., Birdland, 315 West 44th Street, Clinton, (212) 581-3080; cover, $35, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) SHANE ENDSLEY GROUP (Monday) An ethereal sense of groove guides this chamber ensemble, which enfolds Mr. Endsleys trumpet in a dark cocoon of Fender Rhodes piano, vibraphone, guitar, bass and drums. Sharing the bill is Common Thread, a flintier band featuring Mr. Endsley but led by another trumpeter, Jonathan Finlayson. 8 p.m., Tonic, 107 Norfolk Street, near Delancey Street, Lower East Side, (212) 358-7501; cover, $10. (Chinen) GOOD FOR COWS (Tonight and tomorrow) The bassist Devin Hoff and the drummer Ches Smith constitute this Bay Area duo, which interrogates jazz and punk with equal rigor. Tonight they share the bill with another duo, Sonar, from Brooklyn; tomorrow their second set will feature a special guest, the pianist Vijay Iyer. Tonight at 8, Issue Project Room, 400 Carroll Street, between Bond and Nevins Streets, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, (718) 330-0313, issueprojectroom.org; cover, $10. Tomorrow at 8 and 10 p.m., the Stone, Avenue C and Second Street, East Village, www.thestonenyc.com; cover, $10. (Chinen) JON GORDON QUINTET (Tonight and tomorrow night) Mr. Gordon, an accomplished alto and soprano saxophonist, projects standards through a slightly warped lens, with the help of Mike Moreno on guitar, Aaron Goldberg on piano, Joe Martin on bass and Bill Stewart on drums. 10, Fat Cat, 75 Christopher Street, at Seventh Avenue, West Village, (212) 675-7369; cover, $20. (Chinen) * BARRY HARRIS AND REGINA CARTER (Tonight and tomorrow night) Mr. Harris, one of bebops stalwart pianists, and Ms. Carter, a violinist of sleek composure, both hail from Detroit, a fact that has some bearing on this concert of newly commissioned music, featuring each artist with a separate ensemble. 8, Rose Theater, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60th Street and Broadway, (212) 721-6500; $105.50 and $135.50. (Chinen) BILLY HART QUARTET (Tuesday through April 16) Mr. Hart, a loose but focused drummer with a sterling résumé, fronts a dream team of younger players: the tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, the pianist Ethan Iverson and the bassist Ben Street. 9 and 11 p.m., Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, at 11th Street, West Village, (212) 255-4037; cover, $20 to $25, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) WILL HOLSHOUSER TRIO (Thursday) Mr. Holshouser is an accordionist in tune with his instruments folk legacy, but hardly constricted by it; his longstanding trio, with the trumpeter Ron Horton and the bassist David Phillips, manages a playful sort of melancholy. 8 p.m., Barbès, 376 Ninth Street, at Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 965-9177; cover, $8. (Chinen) STANLEY JORDAN TRIO (Through Sunday) Mr. Jordan applies a distinctive tapping technique to the fretboard of his guitar, producing a harmonic range more suggestive of pianism. His rhythm section consists of Zirque Bonner on bass and Ed Barattini on drums. 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. with an 11:30 set tonight and tomorrow night, Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-2232; cover, $30 tonight and tomorrow, $25 on Sunday. (Chinen) STEVE LEHMAN GROUP (Wednesday and Thursday) Mr. Lehman, an intense young saxophonist, features his own sharp-cornered compositions in this ensemble, which derives much of its heft from the drumming of Tyshawn Sorey. Wednesday at 10 p.m., Barbès, 376 Ninth Street, at Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 965-9177; cover, $8. Thursday at 8 and 10 p.m., Jimmys Restaurant, 43 East Seventh Street, East Village, (212) 982-3006; cover, $10, with a one-drink minimum. (Chinen) JIMMY McGRIFF GROUP (Tonight and tomorrow night) A powerfully bluesy presence on the Hammond B-3 organ since the early 1960s, Mr. McGriff marked his 70th birthday earlier this week and continues the celebration here. 9 and 11 p.m., and 12:30 a.m., Smoke, 2751 Broadway, at 106th Street, (212) 864-6662; cover, $25. (Chinen) CHARNETT MOFFETT (Monday) Mr. Moffett may be a few years late with his new album, Internet (Piadrum), but his bass playing is characteristically solid, and he surrounds himself with good musicians -- in this case, the alto saxophonist Vincent Herring, the pianist Mulgrew Miller and the drummer Eric McPherson. 8 and 10:30 p.m., Blue Note, 131 West Third Street, West Village, (212) 475-8592; cover, $10 at tables with a $5 minimum or $5 at the bar, with a one-drink minimum. (Chinen) GRACHAN MONCUR III BAND (Tomorrow and Sunday) Mr. Moncur was one of the first trombonists to make sense of free improvisation, compellingly, in the 1960s; this modern ensemble includes such kindred adventurers as the saxophonists Billy Harper and Michael Blake and the pianist John Hicks. 8 and 10 p.m., Iridium, 1650 Broadway, at 51st Street, (212) 582-2121; cover, $27.50, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) PAUL MOTIAN QUARTET (Through Sunday) The teasingly suggestive drumming of Mr. Motian is just one of several enigmas posed by this ensemble, which is also distinguished by the tightly coiled alto saxophone scribbles of Greg Osby and the abstruse pianism of Masabumi Kikuchi. Larry Grenadier, on bass, serves a welcome clarifying purpose. 9 and 11 p.m., Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, at 11th Street, West Village, (212) 255-4037; cover, $20 to $25, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) * DAVID MURRAY QUARTET/ODEAN POPE SAXOPHONE CHOIR (Through Sunday) In terms of sheer saxophone bluster, it would be tough to conjure a weightier double bill than this one, which pairs the avant-garde tenor titan David Murray (with Lafayette Gilchrist on piano, Jaribu Shahid on bass and Hamid Drake on drums) and Odean Popes signature ensemble (nine saxophones, including Mr. Pope, and a rhythm section). 8 and 10:30 p.m., Blue Note, 131 West Third Street, West Village, (212) 475-8592; cover, $30 at tables with a $5 minimum or $20 at the bar, with a one-drink minimum. (Chinen) SAXOPHONE SUMMIT (Tuesday through April 16) The alto saxophonist Charles McPherson has always nursed a fondness for Charlie Parkers blistering bebop, so his role in this Parker tribute makes perfect sense. So does the supporting cast: Tom Harrell on trumpet, Ronnie Mathews on piano, Ray Drummond on bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums. 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., with an 11 set Fridays and Saturdays, Dizzys Club Coca-Cola, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60th Street and Broadway, (212) 258-9595; cover, $30, with a minimum of $10 at tables, $5 at the bar. (For NYC & Company discount, (212) 484-1222.) (Chinen) SKIRL RECORDS LAUNCH PARTY (Tuesday) Skirl is an independent label with the stated objective of documenting new music by a Brooklyn-centered cadre of musicians. The first three bands on its roster will perform here: the Clarinets, featuring Anthony Burr, Oscar Noriega and Chris Speed (the labels founder); Ted Reichmans My Ears Are Bent; and Curtis Hasselbrings New Mellow Edwards. Also on hand is a pair of bands with Skirl releases in the foreseeable future: Tyft (Hilmar Jensson on guitar, Andrew DAngelo on reeds and Jim Black on drums) and Mr. Noriegas trio (with Trevor Dunn on bass and Tom Rainey on drums). 8 p.m., Tonic, 107 Norfolk Street, near Delancey Street, Lower East Side, (212) 358-7501; cover, $10. (Chinen) GRANT STEWART QUINTET (Tuesday) A big-toned tenor saxophonist in the hard bop mainstream, with a fine ensemble, including the pianist Bill Charlap and the guitarist Peter Bernstein. 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-2232; cover, $20. (Chinen) * HENRY THREADGILLS ZOOID (Through Sunday) The august composer and multi-reedist Henry Threadgill has always nursed a fascination with timbre; in this superb ensemble, his flute and alto saxophone are flanked by cello, oud, acoustic guitar, tuba, trombone and drums. 9 and 10:30 p.m., Jazz Gallery, 290 Hudson Street, at Spring Street, South Village, (212) 242-1063; cover, $20 (Chinen) ERNIE WATTS-LEW SOLOFF QUINTET (Tonight and tomorrow night) Mr. Watts, a Los Angeles-based saxophonist, and Mr. Soloff, a New York trumpeter, present a formidable partnership, especially in the presence of Mulgrew Miller on piano, François Moutin on bass, and Jeff (Tain) Watts on drums. 8, 10and midnight, Sweet Rhythm, 88 Seventh Avenue South, at Bleecker Street, West Village, (212) 255-3626; cover, $20, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) Classical Full reviews of recent music performances: nytimes.com/music. Opera LA BOHÈME (Tomorrow) James Robinsons production punts the Puccini favorite forward by some 80 years, placing the action in the opening months of World War I and lending an extra tug of pathos. A mostly new cast has taken over, with Yunah Lee as Mimi, Gerard Powers as Rodolfo, Jennifer Black as Musetta, and Philip Torre as Marcello. David Wroe conducts. 8 p.m., New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; remaining tickets, $45 and $79. (Jeremy Eichler) CARMEN (Tonight, Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday) City Opera seems to be finishing its season with a new emphasis on voice. This Carmen looks as if it is worth hearing, with the strong mezzo Kate Aldrich in the title role, and the soprano Laquita Mitchell making her company debut as Micaëla. Robert Breault has already shown he has a strong if unvaried voice as Alfredo in La Traviata; lets see what he offers in a heavier part, Don José. George Manahan conducts. Tonight at 8, Sunday at 1:30 p.m., Tuesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $25 tickets remaining tonight; $45 on Sunday; and $65 to $120 on Tuesday and Thursday. (Anne Midgette) DON GIOVANNI (Tomorrow) A largely decent cast helps bring across Mozarts nearly perfect opera at City Opera. Elizabeth Caballero, new to the company, is a feisty Donna Elvira who utters little squeaks of indignation when shes not pouring out her heart in melisma; Yeghishe Manucharyan shows his white-toned tenor to advantage as Don Ottavio. Alas, Christopher Schaldenbrand, a talented singer, has not quite grown into the demanding title role. 1:30 p.m., New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; remaining tickets, $25. (Midgette) DON GIOVANNI (Tomorrow and Sunday) Amatos venerable recipe -- no rehearsals, changing casts at every performance -- should make for an unusual version of Mozarts classic, but at least the theaters small scale represents a kind of period fidelity. Tomorrow night at 7:30, Sunday afternoon at 2:30, Amato Opera, 319 Bowery, at Second Street, East Village, (212) 228-8200; $30; $25 for students and 65+. (Midgette) * DON PASQUALE (Tonight and Tuesday) The veteran Austrian director Otto Schenk, who is also an acclaimed comic actor in his homeland, understands that the way to make a rich comic opera like Donizettis Don Pasquale work is to treat it seriously. In his wonderful new production for the Met he has accomplished this vividly. He taps into the emotions -- jealousy, yearning, fear of death -- that swirl below the surface of this farcical tale about a crusty and miserly bachelor who foolishly decides to take a young wife and disinherit his shiftless nephew. The cast is splendid, especially the charismatic soprano Anna Netrebko; the robust, dynamic young baritone Mariusz Kwiecien; and, in the title role, the stylish Italian bass Simone Alaimo. Maurizio Benini conducts. 8 p.m., Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000; $70 to $205 tickets remaining tonight; $175 on Tuesday. (Anthony Tommasini) * FIDELIO (Tomorrow and Thursday) Jürgen Flimms strikingly contemporary and deeply humane production, which opened at the Met in 2000, is back. So is the soprano Karita Mattila, who gives a courageous and vocally radiant portrayal of Leonore, operas most valiant and devoted wife. The conductor Paul Nadler has taken over for James Levine, who has withdrawn for the rest of the season, and though Mr. Nadler is no Levine, he does honorable work. All in all, this production still delivers. And Ms. Mattila is astonishing. Erika Sunnegardh, who recently made her Met debut as Leonore when Ms. Mattila was ill, sings in the last performance on Thursday. 8 p.m., Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000; $26 to $220. (Tommasini) MANON (Tomorrow) The news is Renée Fleming, who closes out the run of a signature role in this venerable but appealing Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production, along with the tenor Massimo Giordano, under the baton of Jesús López-Cobos. Not news is the length of this grand opera; after hearing an opera by Massenet, a notable dramatic soprano is supposed to have said, And they say Wagner is long? 1:30 p.m., Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000; sold out, but returns may be available. (Midgette) LE NOZZE DI FIGARO (Wednesday) Jonathan Millers 1998 production, now directed by Robin Guarino, has the virtue of letting Mozarts music and Da Pontes libretto work their magic unhindered. The Met has assembled a strong cast that includes Andrea Rost as Susanna, John Relyea as Figaro, Alice Coote as Cherubino, Soile Isokoski as the Countess, and Peter Mattei as the Count. Mark Wigglesworth conducts. 8 p.m., Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000; $26 to $175. (Allan Kozinn) LA TRAVIATA (Monday) The Mets first-rate revival is back again with Hei-Kyung Hong, Frank Lopardo and Dwayne Croft in the major roles. 8 p.m., Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000; remaining tickets, $175. (Bernard Holland) Classical Music AMERICAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (Tonight) Gather all ye Anglophiles. Leon Botstein conducts Bridge, Bliss and Vaughan Williams. 8, Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $25 to $53. (Holland) BARGEMUSIC (Tonight, tomorrow, Sunday and Thursday) A weekly presenter of chamber music performances, this floating concert hall also offers great views of Lower Manhattan. Tonight the pianists Gerald Robbins and Katya Mihailova play Mozart, Schubert, Brahms, Dvorak and Shostakovich. Tomorrow and Sunday, Mark Peskanov and colleagues team up for Brahmss G minor Piano Quartet along with Beethoven and Mozart. Thursday brings the pianist Dmitri Alexeev in Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Scriabin and Rachmaninoff. Tonight, tomorrow and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 4 p.m., Fulton Ferry Landing next to the Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn, (718) 624-2083; $35. (Eichler) ELIOT FISK AND PACO PEÑA (Monday) Eliot Fisk, the great, high-energy classical guitarist, and Paco Peña, the fine flamenco player, join forces for a recital that includes music by Albéniz, Falla, Rodrigo, Granados, Paganini, Scarlatti, Mendelssohn and Bach, as well as Mr. Peñas own works. 8 p.m., Metropolitan Museum of Art, (212) 570-3949; $45. (Kozinn) VADIM GLUZMAN (Tonight) This violinists program goes all the way from Mozart to Castelnuovo-Tedesco. 7, Metropolitan Museum of Art, (212) 570-3949; $25. (Holland) GUARNERI STRING QUARTET (Tomorrow) The Guarneri is soldiering through another season as the de facto quartet in residence at the Met Museum. Each of the groups concerts features a Mozart chamber composition, along with other works. This time around, its Mozarts Clarinet Quintet (with David Shifrin), as well as Arriagas Quartet No. 2 and Dohnanyis Quartet in A minor. 8 p.m., (212) 570-3949; $50. (Eichler) JUILLIARD ORCHESTRA (Monday) Gerard Schwarz, a hometown conductor heard less in New York these days, conducts the Juilliards young professional-quality players in Mahler, David Diamond and Behzad Ranjbaran, with the violinist William Harvey. 8 p.m., Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 769-7406; free, but tickets are required. (Holland) * KRONOS QUARTET (Tonight and tomorrow) This ensembles wide-ranging Live Mix series continues with two concerts in which the boundaries between classical, pop and world music are exceedingly porous. Tonight the quartet plays works by Glenn Branca, best known for his huge electric guitar symphonies, as well as ones by Terry Riley, a founder of Minimalism; the eclectic rock composer J. G. Thirlwell; and the pipa virtuoso Wu Man. Tomorrow the quartet, with the Indian singer Asha Bhosle and the tabla player Zakir Hussain, plays music by the Icelandic band Sigur Ros and the composers Derek Charke, Ram Narayan and Rahul Dev Burman. Tonight at 7:30 at Zankel Hall, tomorrow at 8 p.m. at Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $28 to $35 tonight, $21 to $72 tomorrow. (Kozinn) MIAMI STRING QUARTET (Sunday) This excellent group, in residence at the Hartt School in Connecticut, has been admirably committed to contemporary music. But this time, in the essential (and affordable) Peoples Symphony Concerts series, the quartet is playing works by Haydn, Schumann and Sibelius. Intimate Voices, the Sibelius quartet, is a deeply personal and hauntingly eclectic work, and may strike some as a bolder score than many works of more recent decades. 2 p.m., Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, Manhattan, (212) 586-4680; $9 and $11. (Tommasini) NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (Tonight) Leonard Slatkin made a superb recording of John Coriglianos powerful Symphony No. 1 during his years with the St. Louis Symphony, and he is taking it up again with the National Symphony. The program also includes Elgars Introduction and Allegro (Op. 47) and Beethovens Piano Concerto No. 3, with Emanuel Ax. 8 p.m., Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $24 to $85. (Kozinn) NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC (Today) The orchestra spotlights talent from among its own ranks, with the concertmaster Glenn Dicterow performing Mozarts Violin Concerto No. 3, and the principal trumpet player Philip Smith as the soloist in Ellen Taaffe Zwilichs American Concerto. Bramwell Tovey conducts, adding a Mozart overture and Francks Symphony. 11 a.m., Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $23 to $76. (Eichler) PEABODY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (Tonight) The prestigious Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore regularly sends its impressive student ensemble on tour to make music and spread the word about the institution. With its music director, Hajime Teri Murai, the orchestra plays an adventurous program with New York premieres of works by Christopher Theofanidis and Michael Hersch; Paquito DRiveras Gran Danzon (a flute concerto); and Mahlers mighty Das Lied von der Erde. 8 p.m., Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $18. (Tommasini) * ROTTERDAM PHILHARMONIC (Sunday and Monday) The first installments of Valery Gergievs cycle of Shostakovichs symphonies, with the Kirov Orchestra last month, were both invigorating and revelatory. Mr. Gergiev takes up the project with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, with contributions on Sunday from the Riverside Choral Society and the Rutgers University Kirkpatrick Choir. The programs include the Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4 on Sunday, and Nos. 5 and 15 on Monday. Sunday at 3 p.m., Monday at 8 p.m., Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $35 to $69. (Kozinn) * ST. MATTHEW PASSION (Tomorrow, Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday) Jonathan Millers humble, eloquent staging strips Bachs masterpiece to its humane core. No sets, no costumes -- just casually dressed musicians sitting in a circle, and soloists singing in English. Paul Goodwin conducts Rufus Müller, Curtis Streetman, Krisztina Szabo, Suzie LeBlanc, Daniel Taylor, Nils Brown and Stephen Varcoe. Tomorrow, Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday at 3 p.m.; Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, (718) 636-4100; $30 to $90. (Eichler) ANDREAS SCHOLL (Tuesday) Countertenors are on the rise, and Mr. Scholl is one of the fastest-rising of the bunch, with a rounded, fluty instrument and a definite flair in how he sings with it. His program is a potpourri, ranging from the late Middle Ages to Haydn and Mozart. 7:30 p.m., Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; sold out. (Midgette) TRIBECA NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL (Sunday) Music of the Avant-Pop is the title for this disparate festival of four concerts extending through May, presented by the avowedly eclectic New York Art Ensemble. This first concert focuses on Generation Y, with five so-called emerging composers exploring various permutations of acoustic and electronic instruments. 7 p.m., Flea Theater, 41 White Street, TriBeCa, (212) 352-3101; $15; $10 for students and 65+. (Midgette) Dance Full reviews of recent performances: nytimes.com/dance. THE ALLEN BODY GROUP AND JENNIE MARYTAI LIU (Thursday) Science is the inspiration for Malinda Allens Einsteins Dreams and Ms. Lius Learning in Lower Animals. (Through April 15.) 7:30 p.m., Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 924-0077, www.dtw.org; $20. (Jennifer Dunning) BALLET BUILDERS (Tomorrow and Sunday) This group encourages choreographers to work in the classical ballet medium. This years dancemakers are Salim Gauwloos, a Belgian-born Broadway dancer; Helen Heineman, a reborn choreographer after leaving dance for the legal profession; Debra Jo Hughes, a ballet dancer who performed with Siegfried and Roy; Joseph Jeffries of Ballet Memphis and the Trocks; the New York teacher Lonne Moretton; Ted Thomas and Frances Ortiz, directors of their own company; and -- are you ready for this? -- Robert Sher-Machherndl of the Lemon Sponge Cake Contemporary Ballet of Colorado. Tomorrow at 8 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m., Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street, Manhattan, (212) 307-4100; $25. (Dunning) * LES BALLETS GRANDIVA (Monday) This all-male drag ballet company may seem to be performing for laughs, but there is a great deal of loving knowledge and technical expertise in the classical and contemporary pieces (including Peter Anastoss new Serenadiana) presented by these dancers, former members of troupes that include the Kirov Ballet, American Ballet Theater and the National Ballet of Canada. 8 p.m., Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, at 95th Street, (212) 864-5400, or www.balletsgrandiva.com. Tickets: $10. (Dunning) ALEXANDRA BELLER/DANCES (Tonight and tomorrow night) A frustrated Broadway diva, a baby-killing debutante, a cowardly soldier and a lesbian tap dancer find themselves trapped together forever in You Are Here. 7:30, Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 924-0077; $20 and $12. Also at Dance Theater Workshop this week is a free screening of work by four participants in the workshops Digital Fellows program, Monday at 7:30 p.m. (Jack Anderson) CHAN-CAN-DANCE THEATER (Tonight and tomorrow night) Abby Man-Yee Chans company makes its New York debut in Ms. Chans Lost and Found, inspired by the experiences of adopted Chinese girls in American families. 8, Joyce SoHo, 155 Mercer Street, between Houston and Prince Streets, (212) 334-7479; $15. (Dunning) CHILDREN OF UGANDA (Tuesday through Thursday) Twenty children, ages 8 to 18, will celebrate the culture of their country and of East Africa in song and dance to raise money for Ugandas 1.7 million AIDS and war-related orphans. (Through April 16.) 7 p.m., Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 242-0800, www.joyce.org; $25; $15 for children. (Dunning) CHRIS & JUSTIN (Tonight through Sunday) Chris Yon and Justin Jones get this weeks best-title award for Pear Cowboy Planet, which they describe, unfortunately, as a tragicomic triptych about the mysterious properties of addition and subtraction. Oh, well, so much for poetic ambiguity. Tonight and tomorrow night at 10, Sunday at 5:30 p.m., the Club at La MaMa, 74A East Fourth Street, East Village, (212) 475-7710, www.lamama.org; $15. (Dunning) COLLECTIVE DANCE NY (Tonight and tomorrow night) New dances by five new choreographers from Goucher College, New York University and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, with two collaborators. 8, Triskelion Arts, 118 North 11th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, (718) 302-3454; $12. (Dunning) DANCE COLLECTIVE (Tonight and tomorrow) The troupe will perform The Ravens Wife, an evening of dance, theater and myth conceived and created by the company director, Carol Nolte. Tonight at 9, tomorrow at 8 p.m., Merce Cunningham Studio, 55 Bethune Street, at Washington Street, West Village, (212) 627-4275; $15 or T.D.F. voucher. (Dunning) DANCENOWNYC: PEPATIAN BRONX BURLESQUE SHOW (Tonight and tomorrow night) Eight individual choreographers and groups will participate in this show, among them Arthur Aviles, Richard Rivera, Merian Soto and Rokafella and Full Circle Soul Sistahs. 9:30, Joes Pub, at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, at Astor Place, East Village, (212) 239-6200, www.joespub.com; $20. (Dunning) * EMERGENCY FUND FOR STUDENT DANCERS (Tuesday) Proceeds from annual performances for this good cause usually go to help in sudden emergencies. This year, preprofessional dancers from five major modern-dance and ballet academies in New York City will perform for the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, in a program that includes excerpts from pieces by Martha Graham, Arthur Mitchell and Robert Garland and dances by Merce Cunningham, Alan Danielson and Darrell Moultrie. 7:30 p.m., Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 West 55th Street, Clinton, (212) 864-2277; $20; $15 for students and 65+. (Dunning) * FEST FORWARD: HIP HOP UNBOUND (Tonight and Thursday) The festival continues, through April 15, with performances, panel discussions and workshops. It includes a program tonight by two all-female companies, DecaDanceTheater and Full Circle Productions, and on Thursday, Deep*NYC: An Evening of Dance, Fashion, Music and Video by artists including Akim Funk Buddha and the Japanese dance group Bi-Trip. 7 p.m., Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, 566 LaGuardia Place, at Washington Square South, Greenwich Village, (212) 279-4200, www.skirballcenter.nyu.edu; $25 tonight, $15 Thursday.(Dunning) LEADING LADIES: A BROAD CELEBRATION (Thursday) This festival of dances by women continues with Jalopy, a new multimedia, site-specific piece presented by Alethea Adsitt and company. (Through April 15.) 8 and 10 p.m., Dance New Amsterdam, 280 Broadway, at Chambers Street, SoHo, (212) 279-4200, www.ticketcentral.com or www.dnadance.org; $17. (Dunning) MIRAL AND FRIENDS (Monday) Miral Koth will present Mood Swings, a suite of dances that explore the paintings of Egon Schiele, life under water, battling cancer and hitchhiking across America. The music, much of it performed live, includes taped singing by Brigitte Bardot. 8 p.m., Theater 80, 80 Saint Marks Place, between First and Second Avenues, East Village, (212) 352-3101, www.theatermania.com; $20; $15 for students. (Dunning) 92ND STREET Y HARKNESS DANCE CENTER: FRIDAYS @NOON (Today) Featured artists in this free program are the Butoh dancer Tanya Calamoneri, Ellen Cornfield and Hilary Easton and company. Noon, 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, 1395 Lexington Avenue, (212) 415-5553. (Dunning) OUT OF SPACE (Tonight and tomorrow night) Presented by Danspace Project, this program features dances by Andrea E. Woods, the Parijat Dance Company, Janessa Clark and Tru Essencia Cru. 8:30, BRICstudio, 57 Rockwell Place, at Fulton Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, (718) 855-7882, ext. 53; www.briconline.org; $12; $10 for students. (Dunning) DAVID PARKER AND THE BANG GROUP (Thursday) The irrepressible Mr. Parker will present dances that include his new Backward and in Heels, a piece for six dancers that is set to music. That music incorporates excerpts from the score from The Sound of Music; Hava Nagila, played by a hand-bell choir; and Schuberts Ave Maria. (Through April 15.) 8:30 p.m., Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, at 95th Street, (212) 864-5400, www.symphonyspace.org; $21. (Dunning) JOHN PASSAFIUME DANCERS (Tomorrow and Sunday) A protégé of Paul Sanasardo and a former dancer with Anna Sokolow, Mr. Passafiumes new Fissures, inspired by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, examines the way everyday events can cause fault lines in our perceptions of ourselves. Tomorrow at 8 p.m., Sunday at 5 p.m., Clark Studio Theater, 165 West 65th Street, Lincoln Center, (212) 243-4370; $25. (Dunning) JAMES SEWELL BALLET (Tonight through Sunday) Mr. Sewell, a New York expatriate who now works in Minneapolis, returns with his company in a program of dances that include Guy Noir: The Ballet, a collaboration with Garrison Keillor; Anagram, a choreographic response to music by Schubert; and Involution, which mixes ballet and improvisation. Tonight at 8, tomorrow at 2 and 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 242-0800, www.joyce.org; $40. (Dunning) SHARING THE LEGACY: DANCE MASTERWORKS OF THE 20TH CENTURY (Tonight and tomorrow night) The masterworks in question are by choreographers who include George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham, Laura Dean, José Limón, Mark Morris and Antony Tudor. The performers are young dancers from 10 colleges across the nation, among them New Yorks own Hunter College, New York Universitys Tisch School of the Arts and Purchase Colleges Conservatory of Dance. 8 p.m., Kaye Playhouse, 68th Street between Lexington and Park Avenues, (212) 772-4448; $20; $10 for students and 65+. (Dunning) SUGAR SALON LAUNCH (Monday) Five panelists, including the choreographer Susan Marshall and Wendy Perron, editor in chief of Dance Magazine, will participate in What Does the Future Hold for Women in Modern Dance? The free discussion initiates a new series of performances and residencies, sponsored by Barnard College and the Williamsburg Art neXus, whose focus is to return women to their former place in the American modern dance they founded. 7:30 p.m., 202 Altschul Hall, Barnard College campus, Broadway and 117th Street, Morningside Heights, (212) 854-2995. (Dunning) TRINAYAN COLLECTIVE (Thursday) This New York-based company of Indian classical dancers will explore the notion of the witness in Sakshi/Witness, a dance in the Odissi style. (Through April 16.) 8 p.m., Joyce SoHo, 155 Mercer Street, between Houston and Prince Streets, SoHo, (212) 334-7479; $25; $20 for students and 65+. (Dunning) URBAN BUSH WOMEN (Tonight through Sunday) Jawole Willa Jo Zollars popular African-American troupe performs in Dance New Amsterdams new theater. There are two programs, the first tonight at 8 and Sunday at 2 p.m.; the second tomorrow at 8 p.m.; Dance New Amsterdam, 280 Broadway, at Chambers Street, Lower Manhattan, (212) 279-4200, www.ticketcentral.com; $25.(John Rockwell) WORK AND SHOW FESTIVAL (Tonight, tomorrow and Monday) The dance component of this festival ends with performances of work by Baraka de Soleil and D Underbelly (tonight) and a marathon of works by all participants (tomorrow). Tonight at 7, tomorrow from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., TriBeCa Performing Arts Center, Borough of Manhattan Community College, 199 Chambers Street, Lower Manhattan, (212) 220-1460, www.tribecapac.org; $10. (Dunning) KEVIN WYNN COLLECTION (Tonight through Sunday) Known for his high-energy, fast-sweeping group pieces, Mr. Wynn will present Tracing Sirocco, which he describes as a hallucinogenic ensemble work for 16 dancers that is set in an African desert and danced to a soundscape by Luna Reyes. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8, Sunday at 7 p.m., Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 West 55th Street, Clinton, (212) 868-4444, www.smartix.com; $18. (Dunning) Art Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art. Museums * BROOKLYN MUSEUM: SYMPHONIC POEM: THE ART OF AMINAH BRENDA LYNN ROBINSON, through Aug. 14. This prodigious show, by an artist born and still living in Columbus, Ohio, celebrates her heritage in paintings, drawings, sculpture, stitchery, leather work and less classifiable forms of expression. Besides its sheer visual wizardry, using materials like leaves, twigs, bark, buttons and cast-off clothes, her art is compelling in that it ruminates on the history of black migration to, and settlement in, the United States, from early times to the present, in a garrulous, very personal way. 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park, Brooklyn, (718) 638-5000. (Grace Glueck) * Brooklyn Museum: WILLIAM WEGMAN: FUNNEY/STRANGE, through May 28. Descended from Marcel Duchamp and Buster Keaton, Mr. Wegman has straddled high and low for more than three decades, using his signature Weimaraners to make the art worlds funniest videos, as well as television commercials, calendars and childrens books. His popular success has tended to obscure his originality and influence, along with a multifarious production that includes wittily captioned drawings, wonderfully irreverent paintings and a host of nondog photographic work. This thorough and thoroughly entertaining retrospective highlights not only the accessibility of his richly human art, but also its dedication to the 1970s notion that art should not look like art. (See above.) (Roberta Smith) * Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: David Smith: A Centennial, through May 14. David Smith is best known for his worst work, bulky sculptures of the important kind that museums and banks like to buy. Much (though not all) of that material has been excised from this survey in favor of smaller, earlier, nonmonumental pieces that the curator, Carmen Gimenez, presents with plenty of air and light. The result is exemplary as a David Smith experience, an American Modernism experience and a Guggenheim Museum experience. 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, (212) 423-3500. (Holland Cotter) * International Center of Photography: Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography, through May 28. If Martians tuned into our television news broadcasts, theyd have a miserable impression of life on Earth. War, disease, poverty, heartbreak and nothing else. Thats exactly how most of the world sees Africa: filtered through images of calamity. The Nigerian-born curator Okwui Enwezor offers a bracing alternative view in this show of recent photography from Africa. He isnt interested in simply exchanging an upbeat Africa for a downbeat one, smiles for frowns, but in engineering a slow, complex, panoptical turn in perspective, one that takes in many moods and directions. The results are stimulating, astringent, brimming with life. 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at 43rd Street, (212) 857-0000. (Cotter) METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: HATSHEPSUT, through July 9. Can a queen be a king, too? Consider the case of Hatshepsut, an Egyptian ruler of the 15th century B.C. She assumed the supreme title of pharaoh and ruled Egypt in that powerfully masculine role until her death. Hatshepsut is the subject of a celebratory show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one that commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Mets department of Egyptian art. Organized by the Met and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, it includes many objects from the Mets own extensive holdings, excavated at its digs in the 1920s and 30s. But it isnt so easy to follow Hatshepsuts trail in this ambitious show, what with the number of relatives, subordinates, minor officials and such who also have a place in it, along with scarabs, jewelry, pottery, furniture and other artifacts. (212) 535-7710. (Glueck) Met: KARA WALKER AT THE MET: AFTER THE DELUGE, through July 30. The Metropolitan Museum of Arts first foray into artist-organized shows is a small tour de force of curatorial creativity. Inspired partly by Hurricane Katrina, Ms. Walker has combined works from the Met with examples of her own art, connecting shared themes of race, poverty and water to illuminate contemporary arts inevitable dialogue with past art. The show has as many crosscurrents and undertows as a river. (See above.) (Smith) THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: EDVARD MUNCH: THE MODERN LIFE OF THE SOUL, through May 8. This affecting, full-scale retrospective is the first survey of this Norwegian painter in an American museum in almost 30 years. Its more than 130 oils and works on paper cover Munchs entire career, from 1880 to 1944. (212) 708-9400. (Glueck) THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: ON SITE: NEW ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN, through May 1. Since the early 1970s, when Spain began to awaken from the isolation of a four-decade dictatorship, Spanish architects have produced designs of unusual depth, often with a firm connection to the land, a sense of humility and a way of conveying continuity with the past while embracing the present. Packed with pretty images and elegant models, this exhibition lacks the scholarly depth you might have hoped for on such a mesmerizing subject. (See above.) (Nicolai Ouroussoff) National Academy Museum: Treasures from Olana: Landscapes by Frederic Edwin Church, through April 30. Exquisite small landscape studies by the best of the Hudson River School painters. They are from the collection at Olana, the Persian-style Victorian mansion -- now a museum -- that Church built on an upstate hill overlooking the Hudson River. 1083 Fifth Avenue, (212) 369-4880. (Ken Johnson) NEUE GALERIE: KLEE AND AMERICA, through May 22. For a long time, the Swiss-born artist Paul Klee (1879-1940), regarded as a leading Modernist figure in Europe, didnt believe his delicate, chimerical work had much of a future in the United States. Yet, thanks to artists, collectors and dealers with close contacts in Germany who had begun to discover his work, by the early 1920s, Klees impact began to be felt here. This show of more than 60 paintings and drawings assembled exclusively from American holdings covers the wide spectrum of Klees work. 1048 Fifth Avenue, at 86th Street, (212) 628-6200. (Glueck) P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center: The Thirteen: Chinese Video Now, through April 24. A snappy roundup of recent video, a favored medium among young artists in a digitally-savvy 21st-century China, this show has two fine pieces by Cao Fei, who has garnered much attention recently. It is also the occasion for several worthy New York debuts. Some of the art is light, slight, and MTV-ish, but artists like Cui Xiuwen, Xu Zhen, Li Songhua, Xu Tan, Meng Jin and Dong Wensheng give us a lot. 22-25 Jackson Avenue, at 46th Street, Long Island City, Queens, (718) 784-2084. (Cotter) Whitney Museum of American Art: WHITNEY BIENNIAL 2006: DAY FOR NIGHT, through May 28. This biennial will provoke much head-scratching by uninitiated visitors. A hermetic take on what has been making waves, its packaged -- branded might be the better word -- as a show long on collaboration and open-endedness: several shows under one roof, including a revival of the 1960s Peace Tower, which rises like a Tinker Toy construction from the Whitney courtyard, with contributions by dozens of artists. As a counter to the image of the art world as rich, youth-besotted and obsessed with crafty little nothings, the ethos here is provisional, messy, half-baked, cantankerous, insular -- radical qualities art used to have when it could still call itself radical and wasnt like a barnacle clinging to the cruise ship of pop culture. That was back in the 1970s. And much of whats here (including works by bohemians and other senior eccentrics around then) harks back to that moment. (800) 944-8639 or www.whitney.org. (Michael Kimmelman) Galleries: Uptown * FRANCIS PICABIA: WORKS ON PAPER, 1901-1951 Consistent with the predominantly linear, sometimes kitschy imagery of the artists proto-postmodern transparency paintings, the 100 works on paper here reveal a lifelong involvement with drawing, marked by an indifference to notions of style, taste, consistency, skill or progress. It is both a challenge and a treat. Michael Werner, 4 East 77th Street, (212) 988-1623, through April 15. (Smith) 1968: All in a Dream In 1968 the photographer Lenny Gottlieb saved 30,000 snapshots that were supposed to have been thrown out at the photographic processing lab he was working in. Approximately 500 of them are on view here; collectively, they offer an enthralling cross-section of American life during a year of tremendous change. Andrew Roth, 160A East 70th Street, (212) 717-9067, through April 29. (Johnson) RECENT PAINTINGS BY QIN FENG Working in ink and tea on silk-cotton paper, this 45-year-old Chinese artist continues the long tradition of Chinese calligraphy and ink painting, with assists from Japanese sumi-ink painting and Abstract Expressionists like Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell. Goedhius Contemporary, 42 East 76th Street, (212) 535-6934, through April 17. (Smith). Galleries: 57th Street Darren Almond /Janice Kerbel: The Impossible Landscape Nothing is obvious in this handsome show of works by two London-based Conceptualists. The connection is that both make visible things that are in different ways impossible. Ms. Kerbels elegantly abstracted designs for gardens in an office, a Laundromat and other unlikely places are meant to be imagined but never actually built. Mr. Almonds sumptuous, subtly eerie landscape photographs were shot at night using long exposures, making visible what would be invisible to the naked eye. The Horticultural Society of New York, 128 West 58th Street, (212) 757-0915, through May 5. (Johnson) REFLECTIONS OF GODS Ensconced in a small, chapel-like gallery, this exhibition of nine sacred objects and one hanging screen includes a beautiful 16th-century mask and a 12th-century carved wood sculpture of a Shinto deity holding a Buddhist wish-granting jewel. Mika Gallery, 41 East 57th Street, (212) 888-3900, through April 15. (Smith) * SPRING MIST FROM SNOW This veritable wonder cabinet of furniture, objects and artworks conjures up the rarefied realm of the Chinese scholars study but also represents other Asian cultures. One stand-out is a Qing wish-granting scepter in carved boxwood that must be among the fountainheads of Art Nouveau; its provenance is listed as an old French collection. William Lipton Ltd., 41 East 57th Street, (212) 751-8131, through April 15. (Smith) Galleries: Chelsea Tara Donovan Known for creating improbable accumulations of ordinary things, Ms. Donovan here has arranged three million plastic cups in stacks from ankle-high to five feet. They make a 50-by-60-foot rectangle on the floor, resembling a lumpy field of snow. PaceWildenstein, 545 West 22nd Street, (212) 929-7000, through April 22. (Johnson) * Dan Fischer Velvety graphite drawings copied from Xerox copies of book and magazine images of well-known artists like Robert Smithson and Sol LeWitt and artworks like Jeff Koonss iconic Rabbit evoke and possibly satirize the reverence that some people feel for modern and contemporary art. Derek Eller, 615 West 27th Street, (212) 206-6411, through April 15. (Johnson) Great Performance: Contemporary Chinese Photography This group show updates the careers of artists who gained notice in the 1990s and gives some exposure to others who are still unfamiliar here. The real find is work by two women, Yin Xiuzhen and the formidable young performance artist Chen Qiulin. Max Protetch, 511 West 22nd Street, (212) 633-6999, through April 15. (Cotter) Anthony James Call it Industrial Surrealist Chic. Mr. Jamess works include old heavy-duty power tools displayed in gleaming, mirrored cases; a glass case of white birch tree trunks that seems to extend infinitely by virtue of two-way mirrors; and a life-size, digitally copied female nude of laser-cut aluminum. Holasek Weir, 502 West 27th Street, (212) 367-9093, through April 15. (Johnson) Daniel Johnston: The Story of an Artist The nearly 70 ballpoint and felt-tip drawings by this semi-outsider artist and rock musician and 2006 Whitney Biennial pick dont live up to the hype, but they are fun to look at. In a distracted but versatile, faux-adolescent style, the Texas-based Mr. Johnston creates sweet and sometimes hair-raising cartoon improvisations on themes of love, sex, hope, despair and death. Clementine, 632 West 27th Street, (212) 243-5937, through April 15. (Johnson) Eve K. Tremblay: Tales Without Grounds A rising young Canadian photographer presents glossy staged photographs of people doing enigmatic things in and around a large facility for hydroponic lettuce cultivation. With their cinematically intense colors, Ms. Tremblays pictures are like stills from a Tarkovskian science fiction movie. Buia, 541 West 23rd Street, (212) 366-9915, through April 22. (Johnson) Galleries: SoHo TIM BARBER A fresh, even touching reprise of the overused convention of walls papered with unframed photographs and small cartoonish drawings, this show has been culled from Mr. Barbers Web site, tinyvices.com. With 250 people represented, it blurs the line between professional and amateur and introduces a savvy curatorial eye. Spencer Brownstone Gallery, 39 Wooster Street, (212) 334-3455, through April 15. (Smith) Marcel Broodthaers This reverential exhibition of just three works by a Belgian Conceptualist regarded as a Duchampian saint in some sectors of the art world includes a hat painted white and attached to a canvas painted black and white; a work called LErreur, consisting of 45 eggshells attached to a canvas labeled moules, the French word for mussels; and a set of canvases neatly inscribed with words relating to the composition and sale of paintings. Peter Freeman, 560 Broadway, near Prince Street, (212) 966-5154, through April 15. (Johnson) Rico Gatson: African Fractals Mr. Gatsons suave geometric paintings and sculptures of symbolically charged vernacular objects -- a whipping post in the form of a Christian cross with wrist-holes, for example -- feature African-style stripe patterns, creating a dialogue between utopian Modernism and tragic social history. A video installation produces hypnotic patterns out of films of the pageantry surrounding the great boxing match between Muhammed Ali and George Foreman that took place in Zaire in 1974. Ronald Feldman, 31 Mercer Street, (212) 226-3232, through April 22. (Johnson) Joëlle Tuerlinckx: Drawing Inventory A prominent Belgian conceptualist presents a dry and oblique installation consisting of a large quantity of ordinary materials more or less related to the art of drawing. The Drawing Center, 35 Wooster Street, (212) 219-2166, through April 22. (Johnson) Last Chance * ARTS OF ANCIENT CHINA A museum-quality selection that begins with an elegant Neolithic red pottery bowl includes rare examples of early lacquer and is especially notable for its profusion of bronze vessels and objects. J. J. Lally, 41 East 57th Street, (212) 371-3380; closes Wednesday. (Smith) THIERRY DE CORDIER AND PIERRE HUYGHE Mr. de Cordiers Female Drawings evoke blurred, semi-abstract Madonnas and also the recherché style of postwar European figuration. Mr. Huyghes puppet video, This is Not a Time for Dreaming, which ruminates on, and was commissioned for, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard -- suffers from obscurity, but is still one of the most beautiful videos made in recent years. Marian Goodman, 24 West 57th Street, (212) 581-5187; closes tomorrow. (Smith) * REALM OF THE GODS: ART FROM INDIA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA A lavish display of sculptures of Hindu deities and Buddhist monks offers excellent examples of several of Indias dynastic and regional styles in bronze, sandstone and terra cotta, along with works from Thailand, Cambodia, Mongolia and, especially, Tibet. Carlton Rochell, 41 East 57th Street, (212) 759-7600; closes today. (Smith) Charlotta Westergren: Ahus Sommaren 1974 Preoccupied by her family and ancestry, Ms. Westergren presents a James Turrell-like room with artificial aroma added, designed to simulate the light and smell of a summer home in Sweden. She also presents Swedish wildflowers made of sugar by a professional confectioner and her own reprisals of old paintings by a beloved sister who once aspired to become an artist. Bellwether, 134 10th Avenue, near 18th Street, Chelsea, (212) 929-5959; closes tomorrow. (Johnson)

Tom Parker Bowles reviews The Hard Rock Cafe on Park Lane

Pulled pork is disgracefully sweet, and horribly mushy; baby food for the terminally tasteless. And Ive detected more smoke in a Californian gym. Ribs are marginally better, but only in the way that the guillotine is marginally preferable to the noose.

American Christian Response to the Recent Terrorist Attacks

The recent attacks on a Pakistani school which left over 100 children dead, as well as the recent hostage situation in Australias capital, Sydney, have left an appropriate level of sadness and despair in many people. While running at the gym yesterday I even heard CNN reporters asking. We believe that there will be no more death, and the sea of chaos has been stilled (Rev 4:6, 15:2) to glass. Yet, I am unsure how that happens. Posted by Adam Tomlinson at 9:47��.

Malcolm Frasers steady hand is in stark contrast to Tony Abbotts chaotic.

Successors, on both sides of politics, often criticised Malcolm Fraser for not doing enough to modernise the Australian economy. Judging him solely by this yardstick, they argued the ���wasted��� Fraser years were something every leader had to strive to avoid.

Npower accidentally sends letters to staff it made redundant encouraging them.

Despair-ado, Down South, United Kingdom, 1 month ago... David Hasselhoff releases bizarre 80s-themed music video featuring kung-fu fighting, flying dinosaurs and Hitler Former Baywatch star; Selena Gomez displays her sensational curves in a sexy.

Parking despair grinding locals - NT News

Darwin locals in despair over lack of parking. by: DANI. The lack of parking in Darwin is creating chaos Picture: Katrina Bridgeford Source: News Corp Australia. DARWIN in the 1970s,. Last week the Darwin council voted to increase its parking fees by five per cent a year over the next five years to be in line with other regional towns in Australia. Townsville, with.. 10 Grey seals were released on the southern coast near Czolpino on the Baltic Sea 28. THEY are one��.

The Guardian view on climate change and social disruption: how one form of.

In 2010 alone, according to UN International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction figures, 150 million were affected by floods. Flood refugees get the chance to go home when the waters recede. But in the decades to come, as rainfall patterns shift and.

Resonant Leaders Calm the Turbulent Sea - IndustryWeek

In short, resonant leaders have the ability to restore order from chaos, create calm in the midst of storm and inspire purpose and direction where confusion and despair once reigned. Like Jesus in the boat, they restore our faith��.

Q. and A.: Roderick MacFarquhar on Xi Jinpings High-Risk Campaign to Save.

Two years into Xi Jinpings tenure as Chinas president, many analysts consider him to be the most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping, the man who oversaw Chinas opening to the world and its market-oriented policies after the chaos of the 1966-76.

Police chief SMILES posing with Bali Nine onboard their final flight

Pictures have emerged of a smiling police commissioner posing with the two condemned Australian drug smugglers, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, on their plane before take off on the two hour flight to the executions on Indonesias death island.

The Guardian view on climate change and social disruption.

UK �� europe �� americas �� asia �� middle east �� africa �� australia �� opinion selected �� sports. being swallowed by the sea. Dont dismiss this as wild speculation: anthropology and archeology are demonstrating how climate chaos has produced exactly such effects in the past.. But in the decades to come, as rainfall patterns shift and the seas rise, some people ��� in Bangladesh, in Florida, in the Nile delta ��� will see their homes submerged forever. Islanders will find their��.

Avoiding despair when disaster hits: aid, advocacy, action.

by Marianne Elliott, Regional Leader, Off the Mat, Into the World Australia and NZ. When we are faced with. are most effective. Jessica Alexander, author of Chasing Chaos: My Decade In and Out of Humanitarian Aid, wrote more in Slate this week on why it is more helpful (and less harmful) to send money, not second-hand goods or even new products.. Sea surface temperatures around the Philippines were as much as two degrees above normal. This is not the old��.

Pacific Solution: Manus Island in a state of chaos - Solidarity.

On Saturday 12 January, the Australian government transferred another 40 single male asylum seekers (Iranians, Iraqis and Afghans) to Manus Island, taking the numbers to around 220 including 30 children between the ages of 7 and 18 years-old.. In the two days following their arrival, there were also at least four attempts at suicide���two attempted hangings and three attempted drownings when Iraqi asylum seekers jumped the fence and ran into the sea.

Changing Antarctic waters could trigger steep rise in sea.

While we have record high sea ice in Antarctica, the Australian research council is figuring that a collapse of Antarctic ice is imminent, followed by 3-4 meters of sea-level rise. Its all based on a model that they took back in time��.

Egypt Launches Airstrike in Libya Against ISIS Branch

CAIRO ��� Egypt conducted an airstrike against an Islamist stronghold in Libya on Monday in retaliation for the beheading of at least a dozen Egyptian Christians by a local franchise of the Islamic State, in Cairos deepest reach yet into the chaos that.

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. Article on attitudes of 76 hs grads on current soc, econ and pol issues; sees grads as desiring to be useful, even if selfishly so, and more purposeful and optimistic than in recent yrs despite poor job mkt (M)

NOTABLE BOOKS

This list has been selected from books reviewed since the Holiday Books issue of December 2002. It is meant to suggest some of the high points in this years fiction and poetry, nonfiction, childrens books, mysteries and science fiction. The books are arranged alphabetically under genre headings.The complete reviews of these books may be found at nytimes.com/books. FICTION & POETRY ABANDON: A Romance. By Pico Iyer. (Knopf, $24.) A graceful novel whose hero, an English graduate student of Sufi mystical poetry who hopes to uncover that within himself which passeth show, heads first for California and later for Iran, where he and the woman he is traveling with improve their understanding of mystical poetry and of themselves.. List of notable books of 2003; drawings (L)

Todays Lisa Wilkinson hammers Christopher Pyne over Bali Nine duo

Elite military vehicles, decoy vehicles, fighter jets, riot squad police - you would have to say right now that president Widodo, rather than listening to the Australian governments pleas for clemency, hes treating these men like prize catches, hes.

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. comment on com rept (M)

Sea of chaos and despair

People-smugglers are using the same ruthless deception that was their stock in trade when waves of asylum-seekers made their way to Australia after the dismantling of the Howard governments Pacific Solution by Labor, with up to 1200 deaths at sea.

Transfer Denied: The Hidden Costs of Washingtons War Against al-Shabab

Somalia has been plagued by chaos and lawlessness since the 1991 overthrow of President Mohammed Siad Barre. The country was ranked by the Fund for Peace as the worlds most insecure state for six straight years until last summer, when it was edged .

NOTABLE BOOKS

This list has been selected from books reviewed since the Holiday Books issue of December 2000. It is meant to suggest some of the high points in this years fiction and poetry, nonfiction, childrens books, mysteries and science fiction. The books are arranged alphabetically under genre headings. The complete reviews of these books may be found at The New York Times on the Web: nytimes.com/books. FICTION & POETRY THE ABOMINATION. By Paul Golding. (Knopf, $26.) A smart, angry first novel full of beautiful surfaces, including that of the hero, if thats the word, who wanders through gay London seething with contempt for his milieu and hatred for the grown-ups who deformed his childhood.. List of notable books of 2001 in fiction and nonfiction categories, with brief excerpts from earlier reviews; drawings (L)

Notable Books

This list has been selected from books reviewed since the Holiday Books issue of December 2001. It is meant to suggest some of the high points in this years fiction and poetry, nonfiction, childrens books, mysteries and science fiction. The books are arranged alphabetically under genre headings. The complete reviews of these books may be found at nytimes.com/books. FICTION & POETRY ACCIDENTS IN THE HOME. By Tessa Hadley. (Holt, $23.) The link between reading and adultery, refined and elaborated since Flaubert, governs affairs in this rewarding, concentrated first novel about a voraciously literate 29-year-old Englishwoman and her family and her glamorous childhood friend (and the friends boyfriend, who may be no reader at all). THE ADVENTURES OF MILES AND ISABEL. By Tom Gilling. (Atlantic Monthly, $23.) A beguiling novel that celebrates a young 19th-century Australian who thinks he can build a flying machine; his opposite number, Isabel, is fairly skeptical about flight but not about love, and both of them are suckers for a good supply of dreams. AFTER NATURE. By W. G. Sebald. (Random House, $21.95.) A book-length poem in which the painter Matthias Grünewald, the naturalist Georg Steller and the author himself inhabit a meditation on the sources of the catastrophic imagination, the continuities between nature and human nature, and issues of coming into being and passing away. AFTER THE QUAKE: Stories. By Haruki Murakami. (Knopf, $21.) The six stories in this slim collection about the emotional aftershocks of the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, which killed more than 4,000 people and left nearly 300,000 homeless, are apt to resonate eerily in an American readers inner ear, though they were all written before Sept. 11. AGAPE AGAPE. By William Gaddis. (Viking, $23.95.) The first word in the title of this brilliant posthumous not-really-a-novel has three syllables and refers to love in and of the creation; the book is a kind of farewell summa or parting meditation on life, death and the player piano, seen as a mechanical forerunner of digital computing. AT SWIM, TWO BOYS. By Jamie ONeill. (Scribner, $28.) Two great causes -- free Ireland and a free gay nation -- coincide in this polished but energetic novel built on the hazards of love, heroism, history and tenderness, and placed in political and moral history by the Easter Rising of 1916. THE AUTOGRAPH MAN. By Zadie Smith. (Random House, $24.95.) Smiths entertaining second novel studiously avoids the glorious excesses of her first, White Teeth, offering instead a lone protagonist (a half-Jewish, half-Chinese autograph trader from North London) and a single quest narrative (a journey to New York in search of a reclusive 1950s starlet). BAUDOLINO. By Umberto Eco. (Harcourt, $27.) Ecos Bildungsroman, set in the Middle Ages, includes some of the authors familiar obsessions -- forged manuscripts, fake relics -- and features several bizarre episodes and characters of impeccably historical origin. BEDLAM BURNING. By Geoff Nicholson. (Overlook, $26.95.) A lively novel involving madness, false identities and the nature of authorship (Nicholsons 13th novel; he should know). Its narrator, a handsome chap, agrees to impersonate his friend, a weedy novelist, and winds up in a lunatic asylum. BE MY KNIFE. By David Grossman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) A brilliant concoction by an outstanding Israeli novelist whose hero, a 33-year-old married man, persuades a woman to undertake a brutally honest love affair to be carried on, in a political and physical vacuum, entirely by correspondence. BET YOUR LIFE. By Richard Dooling. (HarperCollins, $25.95.) A forceful novel by a writer and lawyer based in Omaha, who leaves room for ideas as well as characters and action as two men and a woman, all insurance investigators, crusade against so-called viatical policies, in which fatally ill people, strapped for cash, sell their policies at deep discounts. BIG IF. By Mark Costello. (Norton, $24.95.) A novel offers an anthropological look at the occupational rituals and argot of a group of Secret Service agents, who are in fact simply stressed-out working stiffs just like us, with the small difference that they are also charged with the continued well-being of the vice president. BLESSINGS. By Anna Quindlen. (Random House, $24.95.) In this persuasive and gently humorous novel, the discovery of a newborn baby girl left in a cardboard box creates opportunities for redemption and renewal for the handyman who finds her and for the dowager on whose estate she was abandoned. THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS. By Paul Auster. (Holt, $24.) Metaphysics and mystery run free in this novel so full of levels that A narrates B narrating C narrating his own story, which is in a movie; the plot concerns a missing silent film comedian who has gone unmissing and a movie scholar who pursues him. BY THE LAKE. By John McGahern. (Knopf, $24.) The sixth novel in 40 years of careful, lapidary production by this elegant Irish writer concerns the passage of a year in an unnamed Irish village, a couple who have returned to it and a community for which the biggest event of the entire year is the arrival of a telephone pole. THE CADENCE OF GRASS. By Thomas McGuane. (Knopf, $24.) McGuanes first novel in 10 years shows, as his work in the 1970s did, people responding with comically awful behavior to a hostile but also zany universe; there is a plot, concerning some kind of infernal legacy, but the digressions the author can never resist are, fortunately, deft and funny no matter how irrelevant or inconsequential. CAMOUFLAGE: Stories. By Murray Bail. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $20.) Fourteen stories by an Australian who invests his space in satire, not character; in one story people hold races on the partitions of their office cubicles, while in another a conceptual artist offers to document the existence of everyone alive. CARAMELO. By Sandra Cisneros. (Knopf, $24.) A cheerful, fizzy novel whose heroine and narrator joins her large Mexican-American family in driving from Chicago to Mexico City and back every summer; colorful generalizations abound concerning the borders of language and culture that they cross when they must. THE CAVE. By José Saramago. (Harcourt, $25.) The cave in mind is Platos, where shadows pass for realities; the characters in Saramagos latest novel live in a complex where they work, shop and enjoy simulated experiences, victims not just of global capitalism but of their own eagerness to go along. CENTURYS SON. By Robert Boswell. (Knopf, $24.) The world rolls on in recrimination and mourning in this novel of four generations, the first represented by a Russian dissident full of falsehoods, the second an unhappy couple, the third an adolescent suicide and a 15-year-old mother. CHILD OF MY HEART. By Alice McDermott. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $23.) In East Hampton, sometime in the early 1960s, the teenage narrator of McDermotts novel concentrates on a few summer days and a lot of baby-sitting; a growing awareness of the adult world and its risks is foreshadowed rather than understood or displayed. A CHILDS BOOK OF TRUE CRIME. By Chloe Hooper. (Scribner, $24.) An ambitious first novel by an Australian, in which an adulterous affair between a schoolteacher and a students father runs parallel to an affair that ended in murder 20 years earlier. There is cause to be ill at ease, since the wronged wife in affair No. 1 has just published a book about affair No. 2. THE COLLECTED STORIES. By Clare Boylan. (Counterpoint, paper, $16.50.) A fascination with things strange but true drives Boylans shrewd plots; her settings range from the early Victorian period to Margaret Thatchers Britain, but she is most at home among the working-class Irish of the 1960s and 70s. THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ISAAC BABEL. Edited by Nathalie Babel. (Norton, $39.95.) The total product of the marvelous writer who tried to create a synthesis of the Russian, the Jewish, the literary and the revolutionary, a mix that bestowed life on his fiction but could not save him from death on Stalins orders in 1940. THE CRAZED. By Ha Jin. (Pantheon, $24.) A devoted student tries to untangle the stroke-induced ravings of his teacher in the months before the demonstrations at Tiananmen Square in a novel that gently underlines the hardships endured in contemporary China. The Crimson Petal and the White. By Michel Faber. (Harcourt, $26.) A 19-year-old prostitute is the central character of this novel in which an empty and befouled late Victorian world is successfully confronted by nothing more than wit, determination and a good heart. The narrator, our educator and guide, examines the inner thoughts of the books inhabitants until we learn to understand them for ourselves. CROW LAKE. By Mary Lawson. (Dial, $23.95.) This ambitious first novel combines two standard motifs -- sudden orphanhood and rescue by an inspiring schoolteacher -- in an exploration of class and sibling rivalry, ennui and persistence, especially in the character of Kate Morrison, who rises against tall odds to an academic career she actually has little heart for. DARLINGTONS FALL: A Novel in Verse. By Brad Leithauser. (Knopf, $25.) A 5,700-line verse novel (10-line stanzas, irregularly rhymed) that invokes the butterfly effect of chaos mathematics: a butterflys random passage starts Russel Darlington on the road to a career in lepidopterology; many years later, a second butterfly lures him to fall from a cliff, crippling him permanently. THE DARTS OF CUPID: And Other Stories. By Edith Templeton. (Pantheon, $23.) The minutely observed social transactions and discriminating aperçus in these stories by a writer who is now 85 are set in train by a kind of erotic attraction that the clinically minded would not hesitate to call sadomasochism. THE DEAD CIRCUS. By John Kaye. (Atlantic Monthly, $24.) Kayes propensity for desolation governs this novel of a polluted Hollywood, where Gene Burk, a private investigator, pursues the death of a rockabilly star in a case that eventually leads through Burks dead sweetheart to a lover of Charles Manson. DECEMBER 6. By Martin Cruz Smith. (Simon & Schuster, $26.) The picaresque hero of Cruzs thriller, an American wheeler-dealer living in Tokyo on the eve of Pearl Harbor, uses his Zelig-like abilities in an effort to thwart Japans war plans. DESIRABLE DAUGHTERS. By Bharati Mukherjee. (Theia/Hyperion, $24.95.) In this shrewd, intellectual novel, an Americanized Bengali woman in San Francisco is forced to reckon at length with the culture she has cast aside when a man says he is the illegitimate son of her sister in New York. THE DIVE FROM CLAUSENS PIER. By Ann Packer. (Knopf, $24.) Many a young person has come to New York for a restart; the narrator of this beguiling first novel, which is much concerned with the particularities of place and conduct, does it after a nitwit move by her fiancé in Wisconsin renders him quadriplegic. THE DOCTORS HOUSE. By Ann Beattie. (Scribner, $24.) Does less of minimalism mean more of something else? Beatties novel explores at considerable length, in a prose that owes much to the language of therapy, a fraught relationship between a 40-ish woman whose husband is dead and her brother, a flagrant womanizer. THE EMPEROR OF OCEAN PARK. By Stephen L. Carter. (Knopf, $26.95.) This debut novel by a Yale legal scholar centers on a dynastic black family, whose patriarch, forced to withdraw from consideration for the Supreme Court, has died (and, it appears, also lived) amid mysterious circumstances and rattling skeletons. ENEMY WOMEN. By Paulette Jiles. (Morrow, $24.95.) Love crosses the lines in this Civil War novel set in dubious Missouri, where an 18-year-old spitfire of rebel attachments is the prisoner of a Union officer whose interrogation of her turns into a prison romance. EVAS COUSIN. By Sibylle Knauss. (Ballantine, $24.95.) A German novel based on facts about a cousin of Hitlers mistress, Eva Braun; Marlene, the protagonist and narrator, is called to keep Eva company in the fateful summer of 1944, and is soon observing the wars end from a lonely, weirdly endangered position. EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED. By Jonathan Safran Foer. (Houghton Mifflin, $24.) Alex, a Ukrainian lad whose love for everything American has infected his speech with an amazing thesaurus of near-miss English, narrates this novel about himself and Jonathan Safran Foer, who is visiting ancestral territory and working on a novel about a Ukrainian town where dozens of worthy themes usefully congregate. FAIR WARNING. By Robert Olen Butler. (Atlantic Monthly, $24.) This witty, airy novel fuses comedy of manners and of philosophy, realized in the life of a fine-arts auctioneer whose presentations, orgasmic necessities for her, are sheer performance, aimed at the cupidity and insecurity of her audiences. FAMILY MATTERS. By Rohinton Mistry. (Knopf, $26.) Somebody has to care for a dying Parsi patriarch in Mistrys third novel, but the mans descendants are not up to it; maybe, the book suggests, family isnt what it used to be. The same seems true of Bombay, where this goes on against a background of social decay. FEMALE TROUBLE: A Collection of Short Stories. By Antonya Nelson. (Scribner, $24.) Nelsons fourth collection, written in clear, muscular prose that endures depression, deals chiefly with distraught women in the act of returning somewhere, often to a childhood home, looking for a second chance. FINGERSMITH. By Sarah Waters. (Riverhead, $25.95.) A fine Gothic ear is part of Waterss kit in this neo-Dickensian tale of a baby farmer and a foundling who is drawn into a fearful sexual intimacy as part of a scheme to defraud an heiress. FRAGRANT HARBOR. By John Lanchester. (Marian Wood/Putnam, $25.95.) A novel of large scope, placed chiefly in Hong Kong in 1935 and after, undertaking big propositions: race, class, love, war and, perhaps most successfully, the transformation of a refugee community into one of the worlds richest societies. THE GOOD REMAINS. By Nani Power. (Grove, $24.) A fictional elegy for Ashland, Va., where a large cast of characters, brimming with life and goofiness, approaches the Christmas holiday; the central character, a baby doctor who dreams of ham and of the good old days, fails at actually cooking a ham. GOULDS BOOK OF FISH: A Novel in Twelve Fish. By Richard Flanagan. (Grove, $27.50.) Phantasmagoric energy propels this novel of Tasmanian wonders and horrors whose hero is based on an English convict, the author of a book on the local fish, who died trying to escape from a penal colony in 1831; the original Goulds illustrations appear. GREAT DREAM OF HEAVEN: Stories. By Sam Shepard. (Knopf, $20.) Shepards heaven is comfortably earthbound and can amount to no more than a painless life, as it does in this collections title story about two old men whose daily pleasure it is to put on their Stetsons and walk to lunch at a Dennys somewhere near the Mojave. HALF IN LOVE: Stories. By Maile Meloy. (Scribner, $23.) Fourteen stories, set mostly in the authors native Montana, among small-time racetracks and failed oil wells, where brides choose wedding dresses to hide branding-iron scars; no one expects an easy life here, and even the young feel their choices constrained by economics and losing habits. HAZMAT: Poems. By J. D. McClatchy. (Knopf, $23.) Another collection by a poet who carries forward the strict, literate, exact tradition of Auden and James Merrill, but with a physical focus on bodily organs and products that preserves his fluency, exotic settings and intricate forms from aestheticism. THE HEART OF REDNESS. By Zakes Mda. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24.) A novel encompassing a black South Africans critique of the cult of the new, presented as the combat between the forces of progress and those of tradition, all reflected from a defining religious schism in the Xhosa nation back in 1856-57. THE HORNED MAN. By James Lasdun. (Norton, $24.95.) A psychological thriller that explores the interior motions of self-policing; the narrator, a dedicated member of his colleges sexual harassment committee, finds that sexual desire has become bureaucratic maneuvering and dreads the escape of his thought-crimes into real-life action. THE HOUSE OF BLUE MANGOES. By David Davidar. (HarperCollins, $26.95.) A polished first novel by the C.E.O. of Penguin India, the book tracks three generations of the Dorais, a Christian family from the south of India, across the first half of the 20th century, ending just before independence. HOUSE OF WOMEN. By Lynn Freed. (Little, Brown, $23.95.) Fairy-tale elements prevail in this novel in which a mother and a daughter fight to the death; Nalia, an opera singer and Holocaust survivor, reigns over Thea, who is quasi-abducted by a Bluebeardish Syrian in a narrative full of dream logic, psychoanalysis and the writing of journals for others to read. THE IDEA OF PERFECTION. By Kate Grenville. (Viking, $24.95.) Two forlorn, wearied souls -- a shy engineer who fears heights and a rough, gruff textile artist and curator with three husbands behind her -- are exposed to each other in a small town in Australia, a burg so countrified they have only themselves to relate to. I DONT KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother. By Allison Pearson. (Knopf, $23.) The beleaguered heroine of this novel, a 35-year-old hedge fund manager in London, struggles madly with the world she has made, containing children, husband, work and worry, under high pressure. IGNORANCE. By Milan Kundera. (HarperCollins, $23.95.) Variations on some of the authors usual themes -- betrayal and lost love, memory and forgetting, exile and return -- in a novel whose heroine returns to Prague after 20 years to find that her old friends have no use for her émigré life and no longer talk of victimization but of bourgeois success. ILL TAKE YOU THERE. By Joyce Carol Oates. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $25.95.) The nameless narrator of this daring novel (Oatess 38th) is a philosophy student out to disown her dysfunctional past by affixing herself to others and adopting their identities: first a group of sorority sisters and later a gifted black graduate student. INTERESTING WOMEN: Stories. By Andrea Lee. (Random House, $22.95.) A lush collection of beautifully textured fiction, set mostly in Italy, where the author lives, and featuring American expatriate beauties, many of them black, in situations that are concerned with multiple ways of being foreign -- even in your own home, country or marriage. IN THE FOREST. By Edna OBrien. (Houghton Mifflin, $24.) Though not wholly lacking in the adulterous impulse so fundamental to the characters in OBriens powerful evocations of Irish reality in the past, the principals in this novel are concerned with murder, madness and innocence in the backwoods of their island. IN THE HAND OF DANTE. By Nick Tosches. (Little, Brown, $24.95.) A novel in which Tosches first characterizes Dante as a good guy and great poet, then turns to the 21st century and a band of New York mobsters who have stolen the original manuscript of The Divine Comedy; they call upon a character named Tosches to authenticate the document. JULY, JULY. By Tim OBrien. (Houghton Mifflin, $26.) A 30th-anniversary reunion (belated) of the college class of 1969 draws together enough baby boomers in OBriens novel to account for the tumultuous sweep of history since their graduation. JUST LIKE BEAUTY. By Lisa Lerner. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24.) A captivating first novel that takes a surreal look at the buildup to a beauty pageant and a 14-year-old narrators struggle to break free of its spell. THE KEEPERS OF TRUTH. By Michael Collins. (Scribner, paper, $13.) A sharp, wry novel on the pitfalls and pleasures of American society, featuring a down-to-earth narrator from a seen-better-days city, and a mysterious disappearance; a finalist for Britains Booker Prize in 2000. THE LAST DREAM-O-RAMA: The Cars Detroit Forgot to Build, 1950-1960. By Bruce McCall. (Crown, $25.) A clever assortment of dream-car caricatures (a family car with a retractable patio, a Vegastar with a slot-machine gearshift, for example) forms this satirical glimpse at 1950s style, marked, in McCalls opinion, by fatuousness, bad taste and shameless excess. THE LAYING ON OF HANDS: Stories. By Alan Bennett. (Picador USA, $15.) Formerly known as one-quarter of the British comedy group Beyond the Fringe, Bennett serves up a volume of just three stories, all tender, caustic gems about lonely people, most in professions at once earnest and comic (podiatrists, masseurs, vicars). LIFE OF PI. By Yann Martel. (Harcourt, $25.) A high-seas adventure tale with a large dose of allegory, in which Pi Patel, a teenage Indian boy, and a 450-pound tiger named Richard Parker become the only survivors of a shipwreck that swallowed a private zoo belonging to Pis family. LIMBO, AND OTHER PLACES I HAVE LIVED: Stories. By Lily Tuck. (HarperCollins, $22.95.) There is a distance at the heart of Tucks collection of short stories about women searching for themselves: a woman fears becoming unrecognizable to her own family, husbands and wives drift apart in their intimacy. Exotic locations underscore the unity of Tucks tone. THE LITTLE FRIEND. By Donna Tartt. (Knopf, $26.) This lush novel about a Mississippi family at the end of a long decline into middle-class normalcy opens with a grisly murder -- a 9-year-old boy found hanging from a tupelo tree on Mothers Day -- and follows a strong-willed young heroines crusade to seek out the people who killed her brother. THE LOST GARDEN. By Helen Humphreys. (Norton, $23.95.) In this authors third novel, an awkward horticultural researcher of 35 leaves a blitzed London for the country to organize young women to grow food; there she expands horizontally in new acquaintances and vertically in some symbolically attractive gardens planted before 1914. THE LOVELY BONES. By Alice Sebold. (Little, Brown, $21.95.) An accomplished first novel chronicling the aftermath of a girls abduction and murder -- narrated by the victim, 14-year-old Susie Salmon; the bones that give the book its title belong not to Susie but to the inspiring connections that are forged after her death. MALAISE. By Nancy Lemann. (Scribner, $24.) The authors fourth novel concerns the transplantation of Fleming Ford, a Southern woman, and her two small children into a California city where, for a while, old complaints about vapidity and sloth seem bright and new; but whats really at stake for Fleming is honoring her commitments and keeping her promises. Refreshing. MARY GEORGE OF ALLNORTHOVER. By Lavinia Greenlaw. (Houghton Mifflin, $24.) A finely constructed first novel that unveils another eccentric from rural England: Mary George, a socially clumsy yet plucky teenage dreamer who overcomes obstacles (many of which she is oblivious of) by ignoring them. THE METAL SHREDDERS. By Nancy Zafris. (BlueHen/Penguin Putnam, $24.95.) An entertaining, illuminating novel whose lead characters, a third-generation scrap dealer and his Wellesley graduate sister, struggle to run a business they do not love while observed by a father who shows no sign of loving them. ME TIMES THREE. By Alex Witchel. (Knopf, $22.) A funny, if episodic, first novel, about the coming of age in the late 1980s of a 26-year-old fashion editor, her lovable but dense fiancé, who is engaged to two other girls besides, and her best friend, a gay man with AIDS; by a style writer for The Times. MIND CATCHER. By John Darnton. (Dutton, $25.95.) A cybernetic-anthropological thriller by the cultural news editor of The Times, in which two hubristic scientists attempt to connect a 13-year-old boy to a computer, thus combining human intelligence and computer speed. THE MIRACLE. By John LHeureux. (Atlantic Monthly, $24.) A thoughtful novel in which a popular young Roman Catholic priest, transferred to the sticks for being too mod, sees a mothers prayer raise her daughter from the dead; in this he eventually sees the ancient truth that love can restore, renew and revive. THE MONK DOWNSTAIRS. By Tim Farrington. (HarperSanFrancisco, $22.95.) A tender, witty novel in which a former monk, after 20 years in his order, rents an apartment from a 38-year-old single mother; the ensuing relationship proceeds cautiously, taking account of the prudence required of struggling people who arent going to get that many more chances. MORAL HAZARD. By Kate Jennings. (Fourth Estate, $21.95.) A business novel whose modest pace and poetic structure distinguish it from the traditional macho product, packed with hard fact and action; Jenningss purpose is ethical investigation and meditation on the perilous, jerry-built global financial markets. A MULTITUDE OF SINS: Stories. By Richard Ford. (Knopf, $25.) Quite a few wrongs are done in these elegantly worded stories, although what prevails is generally adultery, often at the end of an affair or later, when its too late to throw those dice again. The Navigator of New York. By Wayne Johnston. (Doubleday, $27.95.) A bold novel centered on the competition between Robert E. Peary and Dr. Frederick A. Cook to be recognized as first man at the North Pole; to real life Johnston adds the fictional Devlin Stead, through whom we sense the engrossing white waste of the polar North and the flaws of its would-be heroes. THE NERVE. By Glyn Maxwell. (Houghton Mifflin, $22.) A collection of largely low-key poems by an intelligent, sensitive writer, moving confidently toward expressions of common feeling in a voice conversational or false-naïve, always sounding within earshot of the English lyric tradition. NEW AND COLLECTED POEMS: 1931-2001. By Czeslaw Milosz. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $45.) In the winter of his 70-year career, Milosz appears to be locked in insoluble argument with himself: where he once credited poetry with the power to rescue mankind from the void, he now demurs, maintaining that language is inadequate to the task of capturing verity. NINE HORSES: Poems. By Billy Collins. (Random House, $21.95.) The current national poet laureate, who produced these verses, is often able to proceed unburdened by many of the tools -- assonance, alliteration, wordplay, complex metrics -- that hang from the poets belt; he makes his way in the world by being funny. NOBLE NORFLEET. By Reynolds Price. (Scribner, $26.) What distinguishes the hero and title character of Prices novel is a sordid familiarity with death (his younger siblings were killed in their sleep by their mother) and sex (one proclivity in particular drives away the women willing to love him). NO SAINTS OR ANGELS. By Ivan Klima. (Grove, $24.) The personal and the political are inseparable in Klimas newest novel, in which a Prague dentist, daughter of a zealous bureaucrat of the former regime, determines that the hate mail she has been receiving originates with a half brother previously unknown to her. NOTHING THAT MEETS THE EYE: The Uncollected Stories of Patricia Highsmith. By Patricia Highsmith. (Norton, $27.95.) A collection of 28 of Highsmiths previously unanthologized suspense stories, written mostly in the late 1940s and early 50s. NO WAY TO TREAT A FIRST LADY. By Christopher Buckley. (Random House, $24.95.) Buckleys sendup of political sex scandals in the age of constant media takes the form of a legal thriller; accused of assassinating her wayward husband, the first lady denies having done it, but whatever she did is secondary to the heroic proportions of the trial that ensues. OXYGEN. By Andrew Miller. (Harcourt, $24.) In this unusually artful novel, the author, who never really hides his presence, combines two stories that are long and curious in their discovery of each other: one about an Englishwoman with a terminal cancer and her two sons, and another concerning a gay Hungarian playwright who is burdened by regret for his actions during the revolution of 1956. PALLADIO. By Jonathan Dee. (Doubleday, $24.95.) Dee, a courageous novelist of ideas, takes on morals, lost love and the art of selling in this story about a beautiful (and passive) woman and two advertising executives who differ about the power of the viewer over the thing viewed. PARADISE ALLEY. By Kevin Baker. (HarperCollins, $26.95.) A scary, convincing novel steeped in historical fact and set in the New York City of July 1863, when 119 died in three days of rioting against the draft, chiefly by Irish immigrants who feared losing their jobs to the slaves they were being called on to free. THE PIANO TUNER. By Daniel Mason. (Knopf, $24.) A first novel whose alert, responsive, confused, generous hero is a London piano tuner, selected by the War Office in 1886 to trek into the backest beyond of Burma to service the piano of a (possibly mad) British surgeon and proconsul. THE PICKUP. By Nadine Gordimer. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24.) A chance meeting between a rich, white, South African woman and an immigrant from a Muslim country turns into a love affair that suggests two cultures in quest of each other and the uses of mutual incomprehension for mutual attraction. POEMS SEVEN: New and Complete Poetry. By Alan Dugan. (Seven Stories, $35.) A big volume by a major poet (it won a National Book Award last year) whose life work is adult matter, full of conviction, void of poses; its great theme is human pettiness exposed yet dignified by mortality. POLAR. By T. R. Pearson. (Viking, $24.95.) A quietly unsettling, darkly satirical Southern novel, whose hero, an old rural Virginia reprobate, inexplicably acquires oracular familiarity with the Antarctic and knowledge about a little girls unsolved disappearance. PRAGUE. By Arthur Phillips. (Random House, $24.95.) A first novel set in 1990, far beyond the recently fallen Berlin Wall, where young Americans reveal themselves not as travelers but mere tourists, detached from their surroundings, weightless and immaterial among time-battered buildings and people who have survived wars and uprisings. RAPTURE. By Susan Minot. (Knopf, $18.) The action of this brief novel is a single act of oral sex, but its life is found in memories of a doomed affair and the thoughts of Kay and Benjamin, its partners; they know each other well, but not what is happening between them. THE REAL McCOY. By Darin Strauss. (Dutton, $24.95.) An ambitious, thought-infested novel placed at the turn of the last century, in which a boxer who is also a confidence man helps America round the corner to a new world of mass communications, celebrity, product endorsement and the makeover. THE RETURN OF THE CARAVELS. By António Lobo Antunes. (Grove, $24.) Portugals history as an imperial power literally comes home in this novel of collective memory set in 1974; Vasco da Gama, Cabral and Francis Xavier are back in Lisbon, raising hell and anchoring their puny vessels alongside tankers. REVERSIBLE ERRORS. By Scott Turow. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28.) Kindle County surges to life again in Turows richly characterized thriller, which revolves around a reluctant pro bono lawyers efforts to overturn a black mans murder conviction, despite his confession, and free him from death row. THE ROTTERS CLUB. By Jonathan Coe. (Knopf, $24.95.) A fictional British panorama of the early stages of the transformation wrought on Britain by Margaret Thatcher (another volume is to come); its central figures, not quite finished, are chiefly university-bound students at a school in Birmingham. THE RUSSIAN DEBUTANTES HANDBOOK. By Gary Shteyngart. (Riverhead, $24.95.) An energetic, ambitious first novel whose protagonist, a Russian-born graduate of an American college, tries to figure out what it means to be an American, a Russian, an immigrant, a Jew; a great deal of splendid comedy hangs on his inability to find out. THE SEAL WIFE. By Kathryn Harrison. (Random House, $23.95.) In this thickly atmospheric novel, set in 1915 Alaska, Harrison characteristically combines love and suffering, vulnerability and dominance, in a sexual affair between a young weather scientist and an Aleutian woman who almost never speaks. SEARCHING FOR INTRUDERS: A Novel in Stories. By Stephen Raleigh Byler. (Morrow, $23.95.) Some confident, ruefully funny pieces in a mode (one far from exhausted, as Byler shows) established by Raymond Carver and Richard Ford, exploring what might be called post-postmacho manhood. the season of lillian dawes. By Katherine Mosby. (HarperCollins, $24.95.) Nothing can prepare even upper-crust New York for the arrival of the title character, who is, alphabetically, Francophone, horsewoman, markswoman, naturalist, painter, psychologist, scholar, tango dancer and -- zounds! -- attractive to boot. THE SECRET. By Eva Hoffman. (PublicAffairs, $25.) A notable memoirist and critic of consistent sensitivity and broad erudition turns to fiction in this novel whose protagonist is the single daughter of a single parent, living in the Midwest some 25 years in the future; cracking the secrets of her birth sends her questing for the meaning of her life. SEEK MY FACE. By John Updike. (Knopf, $23.) Updike mixes art history with fiction in a story, recollected later by its heros widow, of how in the decade after World War II American artists, led by Jackson Pollock (here called Zack McCoy), seized power from Europe and made New York the center of the art world. SELECTED POEMS, 1957-1994. By Ted Hughes. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, cloth, $35; paper, $15.) With poems that are characteristically alert to the processes of creation as well as self-destruction, this selection displays Hughess mighty, even terrifying, talent. SERVANTS OF THE MAP: Stories. By Andrea Barrett. (Norton, $24.95.) A collection of stories complete in themselves but linked by threads of association or neighborhood or interest or family into a kind of imaginative collaboration that covers most of the last two centuries, always inhabited by characters who share a passionate interest in figuring out how things work. THE SEVEN SISTERS. By Margaret Drabble. (Harcourt, $25.) A novelist whose work has considered primarily the issues of her own generation now employs a protagonist in her 60s who begins a new life, estranged from husband and daughters, undertaking a voyage in the wake of Virgils Aeneas from Carthage to Naples. THE SHELL COLLECTOR: Stories. By Anthony Doerr. (Scribner, $23.) Hunting and being hunted, holding on and letting go are the themes that govern this skillful first collection, inhabited by people apt to fall in love with a magicians assistant or run away with a metal eater from a traveling carnival. THE SIEGE. By Helen Dunmore. (Grove, $24.) A powerful, well-researched novel (Dunmores seventh) that follows a young woman and her family during the siege of Leningrad in 1941. A SIMPLE HABANA MELODY: (From When the World Was Good). By Oscar Hijuelos. (HarperCollins, $24.95.) The protagonist of Hijueloss sixth novel is a Cuban composer so decorous his cross is an inability to act on, or even articulate, his deepest passions, accumulating a lifetime of repression and regret. SIN KILLER: The Berrybender Narratives, Book 1. By Larry McMurtry. (Simon & Schuster, $25.) This irresistible tale, the first of a planned tetralogy, full of blood, blunder and myth, follows the fate of an upper-crust British family that attempts to explore the Western frontier (circa 1830) with a huge traveling ménage. SLOAN-KETTERING: Poems. By Abba Kovner. (Schocken, $17.) A final collection, now translated into English, by the Israeli poet and partisan (1918-87) who organized and led the Vilna ghetto uprising in World War II; at the end of his life, he chronicles his losing battle with cancer in a cycle dedicated to the struggle for existence, naming the collection after the New York cancer center where he was treated. SPIES. By Michael Frayn. (Metropolitan/Holt, $23.) The 10th novel by this master of the intellectual mystery masquerading as popular entertainment concerns a London suburb where, if memory serves the narrator, the phases of the moon govern events during World War II and an alleged spys conduct visibly contradicts the everyday space-time continuum. SPRING FLOWERS, SPRING FROST. By Ismail Kadare. (Arcade, $23.95.) A murky, capricious novel by an Albanian who lives in France; it deals with an Albania now open to the world in principle but still separated from everywhere else by its legends, hallucinations and fantasies, and by the return of the blood-feud code that Communism had suppressed. SPRINGING: New and Selected Poems. By Marie Ponsot. (Knopf, $25.) A love poet, a metaphysician and a formalist, Ponsot cultivates an eccentricity that allows her to make her moral points epigrammatically or on the sly; this is her fifth book of poems, the product of a long life and intelligent pruning. THE STORIES OF ALICE ADAMS. (Knopf, $30.) Fifty-three stories from four decades by a writer who died in 1999; apparently traditional in their omniscient third-person narration, they fill the space behind the scenes with imagination and implications about what people want and why it turns to ashes when they get it. THE STORY OF LUCY GAULT. By William Trevor. (Viking, $24.95.) National and private heartache suffuses this novel that begins with a dreadful mistake committed during the partition of Ireland, when an Anglo-Irish couple, falsely believing their child is dead, disappear untraceably, leaving the girl to a solitary life. THE STRENGTH OF THE SUN. By Catherine Chidgey. (Holt, $23.) A fascinating novel in which widely separated simultaneous events -- a girls disappearance, a scholars leaving his wife -- develop or discover connections in a sort of quantum-mechanics way that seems to explore the idea of connectedness itself. SUMMER IN BADEN-BADEN. By Leonid Tsypkin. (New Directions, $23.95.) An extraordinary novel by a Soviet Jewish doctor who died unpublished in 1982; its hero is Dostoyevsky, and its central enigma is the anti-Semitism of a great writer whose fiction is profoundly sensitive to human suffering and the pain of others, proclaiming the right to life and sunshine of every creature not Jewish. THE SWEETEST DREAM. By Doris Lessing. (HarperCollins, $26.95.) A novel, clearly autobiographical but far from self-invasive, omitting the authors involvements with psychology and mysticism in favor of a kind of fable that can contain Communism, personal freedom and the doing of good in southern Africa. TELL ME: 30 Stories. By Mary Robison. (Counterpoint, paper, $14.) Selected stories covering the past 25 years of Robisons career, with characters -- suburban and Midwestern for the most part -- who are often caught in brief unguarded moments that reveal a great deal about their lives. 10TH GRADE. By Joseph Weisberg. (Random House, $23.95.) A first novel, told in the voice and mentality of Jeremy Reskin, a high school sophomore whose perception is sometimes wasted on his ordinariness, but who renders well the supreme importance of social distinctions and the misery of teenage self-analysis. TEPPER ISNT GOING OUT. By Calvin Trillin. (Random House, $22.95.) A Manhattan driver, the hero of this novel, seeks the islands best parking spaces and occupies them, sitting and reading while the meter runs; his offhand concentration makes him a kind of Zen saint and leads to a struggle with a mayor whose rage for order suggests Rudolph W. Giuliani. THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW: A Collection of Stories. By A. M. Homes. (HarperCollins, $23.95.) Short stories by an author sometimes accused of the gratuitous grotesque; but the strangeness she deploys is often in perfect balance with the heart of the character who displays it in little tragedies, wild aspirations and surprisingly warm satires of family life. THIS COLD COUNTRY. By Annabel Davis-Goff. (Harcourt, $25.) As a young war bride packed off to the country, this novels heroine faces her own battle on the home front against her new in-laws, members of the Anglo-Irish bourgeoisie whose insularity and creaking conventionalism portend genteel self-destruction. THREE JUNES. By Julia Glass. (Pantheon, $25.) Braiding together three summers (1989, 95 and 99), this debut novel explores the idea of emotional isolation as it moves, fittingly, across a series of islands -- off Scotland, Greece and the coast of New Jersey -- to chronicle a scattered, multigenerational Scottish family. TISHOMINGO BLUES. By Elmore Leonard. (Morrow, $25.95.) Leonards latest cinema-ready tale is riotously funny, featuring a high-diving protagonist in Tunica, Miss.; the rural Mafiosi who want him whacked; quixotic supporting characters aplenty; and a Civil War re-enactment of the less-than-epic Battle of Brices Cross Roads. TOURMALINE. By Joanna Scott. (Little, Brown, $23.95.) Reconstructing his fathers search for gems in the soil of Elba, the principal narrator of this novel of ideas discovers as well how the past is extracted from materials like gossip, superstition and marital distrust. THE TRANSLATOR. By John Crowley. (Morrow, $24.95.) A college students crush on a Soviet poet in the 1960s serves to support this novels fictional world full of conspiracy theories and paranoia but sustained with far nobler stuff: poetry, the souls of nations, the transforming power of language. TWELVE. By Nick McDonell. (Grove, $23.) This accomplished first novel by an 18-year-old tracks the dissolute behavior of some rich kids returning home for the Christmas holidays; its protagonist is a boy called White Mike, who gives up his subway seat to elderly women and neither smokes nor drinks; what he does is deal drugs, in company with characters whose lives converge at a single calamitous party. 2182 KHZ. By David Masiel. (Random House, $22.95.) A confidently anarchic first novel whose title refers to the international distress channel for mariners in trouble; most of it happens at sea off Alaska, and the chief victim of the happenings is a likable unfortunate who has spent a decade working the Arctic and becomes the only survivor of a disaster wrought by a captain who screams at his crew, Do Things! UNLESS. By Carol Shields. (Fourth Estate, $24.95.) The useful monotony of happiness is whats missing for Reta, a writer whose eldest daughter, Norah, has taken to sitting and begging on a downtown street corner; Retas response and the authors tone, measured and calm, are of greater interest than Norahs withdrawal itself. UNSUNG HEROES OF AMERICAN INDUSTRY: Stories. By Mark Jude Poirier. (Talk Miramax, $22.) A light pathos pervades this nimble collection of stories about men and women in dying industries (worm breeding, for example). THE VARIETIES OF ROMANTIC EXPERIENCE: Stories. By Robert Cohen. (Scribner, $23.) Cohens first collection of stories is as lyrical as it is economical, closely associating love and desire with existential confusion. VERSAILLES. By Kathryn Davis. (Houghton Mifflin, $21.) A reflective, mysterious novel about human development; it takes a souls-eye view of the life of Marie Antoinette from her marriage at 14 to the guillotine at 38; narrated by herself sometime after her death, when she has had a chance to think some about her earthly life and its contents. walk through darkness. By David Anthony Durham. (Doubleday, $23.95.) Odysseys run on two parallel tracks in this novel: that of a fugitive slave making his perilous way from Maryland to Philadelphia, and that of the dissolute Scotsman hired to track him down. WAVEMAKER II. By Mary-Beth Hughes. (Atlantic Monthly, $23.) The title of this politically imaginative first novel is the name of a boat belonging to Roy Cohn, who appears, impetuous and sentimental, human and controversial, at the top of a pyramid of enterprise supported, to his cost, by Will Clemens, a loyal young executive, and his loyal wife. THE WEATHER IN BERLIN. By Ward Just. (Houghton Mifflin, $24.) In this novel by a skilled observer of Americas top people, a burned-out movie director of 64, visiting an arty institution in the reborn Berlin, finds himself brooding on the past to the disadvantage of the future, becoming a sort of spiritual and psychological German. WHEN THE EMPEROR WAS DIVINE. By Julie Otsuka. (Knopf, $18.) This muted first novel seeks to find and articulate what life really felt like to a family of Japanese-Americans relocated during World War II, and to convey the mood of our country under stress from the viewpoint of some genuinely oppressed people. THE WHORES CHILD: And Other Stories. By Richard Russo. (Knopf, $24.) In these short stories the author of Empire Falls, this years Pulitzer Prize novel, abandons working-class settings and protagonists in favor of intellectuals caught in late middle age, worried about illness and ambivalent about marriage. WIDE BLUE YONDER. By Jean Thompson. (Simon & Schuster, $24.) Happiness is permitted in this novel about a mother and her daughter who survive a hot summer in Springfield, Ill., despite the intrusions of troublesome characters; by the end, the mother has seen in the daughter her own power to be kind, insightful and brave. THE WINTER ZOO. By John Beckman. (Holt, $25.) The hero of this first novel, a young man newly arrived in Poland from Iowa, trades his naïveté for lessons in youthfulness; Beckman captures the rush of freshly liberated desires in post-Communist Europe, making his climactic scene a pansexual orgy in a Krakow hotel. WISH YOU WERE HERE. By Stewart ONan. (Grove, $25.) An equal-opportunity novel told from the perspectives of the members of three generations of the Maxwell family as they contemplate and develop the injuries and grudges of many years during a weeks vacation -- their last -- at their summer cottage in western New York. WITHOUT END: New and Selected Poems. By Adam Zagajewski. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30.) A new anthology by a poet who was a 1970s dissident in Poland, where words are weighted with history that takes them beyond their lexical meanings and things are frequently renamed; this volume contains three previous English collections, recent work and some new translations of earlier poems. YOU ARE NOT A STRANGER HERE. By Adam Haslett. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $21.95.) These nine short stories (Hasletts first collection) exhale a desiccated bleakness, a despair mitigated by the characters desire to be good, to do the right thing despite hopelessness, loss, disease and frequent mental illness. YOU SHALL KNOW OUR VELOCITY. By Dave Eggers. (McSweeneys, $22.) Eggerss first novel (son of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) takes place in frantic motion as a pair of 27-year-old semi-slackers are projected by the violent death of their best friend into exploring all the world they can get to. NONFICTION THE AGE OF SACRED TERROR. By Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon. (Random House, $25.95.) The authors, both staff members of the National Security Council in the Clinton administration, give an account of bureaucratic inertia in antiterrorist efforts before Sept. 11, with the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the military reluctant to share information or work with one another. AMBLING INTO HISTORY: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush. By Frank Bruni. (HarperCollins, $23.95.) Bruni, who covered the Bush candidacy at length for The Times, concentrates on Bushs personality and mannerisms, which he renders as oddly prankish and frivolous for a politician, at least until grounded by the events of Sept. 11. AMERICAN GROUND: Unbuilding the World Trade Center. By William Langewiesche. (North Point/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $22.) A reporters account of dismantling the trade centers ruins, an engineering project that came in ahead of schedule; the many fine performances adduced permit the author to skewer greed and selfishness when he sees them. AMERICAN SCOUNDREL: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles. By Thomas Keneally. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $27.50.) A frequently spellbinding recitation of the career of a totally awful politician, crook, adulterer and murderer who was no good as a general either. AMERICAS FIRST DYNASTY: The Adamses, 1735-1918. By Richard Brookhiser. (Free Press, $25.) A succinct, skillful account of the lives of John, John Quincy, Charles Francis and Henry, four generations of men often brilliant but often shortsighted as well: two presidents, one diplomat and, finally, a historian who felt he had failed the ancestors. AMONG THE HEROES: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back. By Jere Longman. (HarperCollins, $24.95.) Longman, a Times reporter, powerfully reconstructs the final moments of United Flight 93, the hijacked airliner that crashed outside Shanksville, Pa., on Sept. 11, 2001, and argues that the planes occupants were not passive victims but defiant combatants. BAD ELEMENTS: Chinese Rebels From Los Angeles to Beijing. By Ian Buruma. (Random House, $27.95.) Conversations with Chinese dissidents around the world, beginning in the West and concluding in parts of China; they show a widespread desire for democracy that is not necessarily adapted to prevail. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. By Edmund S. Morgan. (Yale University, $24.95.) A distinguished historian gives us a Franklin highly clubbable yet vigorous in the exercise of civic virtue; not at first eager to throw off the Hanoverian yoke, he maneuvered France into joining our war with its wealth and its navy. BIG GAME, SMALL WORLD: A Basketball Adventure. By Alexander Wolff. (Warner, $24.95.) A senior writer for Sports Illustrated explores the world of international basketball, a sport far more popular than many Americans realize, from Bhutan to Lithuania and back. THE BIRDS OF HEAVEN: Travels With Cranes. By Peter Matthiessen. (North Point, $27.50.) A veteran celebrant of natures provision and a travel writer who defies every element searches out the worlds 15 (11 endangered) species of cranes, observing with great passion and scrupulous attention to detail; splendidly illustrated by Robert Bateman. BLACK LIVINGSTONE: A True Tale of Adventure in the Nineteenth-Century Congo. By Pagan Kennedy. (Viking, $24.95.) A charming, intelligent venture in biography; the writers interest in William Henry Sheppard, a black missionary in 19th-century Africa, began when she learned that he was a fellow Virginia Presbyterian. THE BLACK VEIL: A Memoir With Digressions. By Rick Moody. (Little, Brown, $24.95.) Recollections of 29 days the author spent in a psychiatric hospital in Queens 15 years ago, crazily apprehensive of sexual assault, woven into a tour of Maine looking (in vain) for plausible connections between his family and Hawthornes black-veiled minister. THE BLANK SLATE: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. By Steven Pinker. (Viking, $27.95.) Pinker, a psychologist at M.I.T., proposes that human nature is largely genetically fixed and attempts to destroy the blank slate theory with an arsenal of scientific research, acute analysis and attitude. BLOOD-DARK TRACK: A Family History. By Joseph ONeill. (Granta, $27.95.) A smart, diligent inquiry into the World War II era and the (possibly culpable) activities of the authors grandfathers, one a Turk interned by the British in Palestine, the other an I.R.A. officer, perhaps a murderer. BLUE LATITUDES: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before. By Tony Horwitz. (Holt, $26.) Horwitz cheerfully pursues James Cooks hugely successful 18th-century voyages of discovery in the Pacific and in doing so considers how becoming part of the known world changed the discoverees. BREAKING CLEAN. By Judy Blunt. (Knopf, $24.) An account, delicately eloquent when its not scary, of 12 years as a ranch wife, mother and overstressed laborer in Montana; the author, who was virtually unconsulted about her career choice up to this point, arose one day and scrammed. BROWN: The Last Discovery of America. By Richard Rodriguez. (Viking, $24.95.) The final volume in Rodriguezs trilogy of memoirs exploring the American predicament turns on the concept of brown not in the sense of pigment but in the sense of mixed, unclear, fluid, dissolving boundaries like race, class and country. THE CELL: Inside the 9/11 Plot, and Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It. By John Miller and Michael Stone with Chris Mitchell. (Hyperion, $24.95.) The real good guys in this story about the chain of events leading up to 9/11 -- and the opportunities missed along the way -- are the blue-collar detectives who were convinced something big was in the works but were stymied by a sluggish intelligence bureaucracy. CHARLES DARWIN. The Power of Place: Volume II of a Biography. By Janet Browne. (Knopf, $37.50.) The second half of a portrait of Darwin and the Victorian habitat that enabled his work but paradoxically rejected its content, though honoring him as Britains greatest scientist. CHERRY: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard. By Sara Wheeler. (Random House, $26.95.) An authoritative evocation of the English amateur explorer who was permanently bemused by his two years with Scott in the Antarctic and wrote a classic book about them, The Worst Journey in the World. CHRIST: A Crisis in the Life of God. By Jack Miles. (Knopf, $26.95.) The author of God: A Biography (1995) continues his examination of God strictly as a literary character -- a complex, contradictory one who learns about himself from his interactions with humans; in becoming one himself, God accepts and expiates his guilt for his errors since the Creation. COMPLICATIONS: A Surgeons Notes on an Imperfect Science. By Atul Gawande. (Metropolitan/Holt, $24.) Gawande, who is both a surgeon and a staff writer for The New Yorker, looks clearly and coolly at the limits and defects of medicine, which, he says, may be the most complex of human endeavors. THE CONQUERORS: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitlers Germany, 1941-1945. By Michael Beschloss. (Simon & Schuster, $26.95.) Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- brilliant, charming, unpredictable and dying -- dominates this vigorously written history of the Allies plan for rebuilding Germany after the war. A COOKS TOUR: In Search of the Perfect Meal. By Anthony Bourdain. (Bloomsbury, $22.95.) An amusing account of the authors global search for the perfect mix of food and context that takes the reader to the culinary corners of the earth: from Vietnam (a live cobra heart) and Japan (poisonous blowfish) to England (roasted bone marrow) and Scotland (deep-fried Mars bar). THE COUNT AND THE CONFESSION: A True Mystery. By John Taylor. (Random House, $24.95.) An anxiety-enhancing, doubt-engendering report about the murder (or suicide) of a prosperous social climber in Virginia and the conviction (or railroading) of a woman who had been his lover; by the author of Storming the Magic Kingdom. THE DEMON IN THE FREEZER: A True Story. By Richard Preston. (Random House, $24.95.) Preston, whose 1994 book The Hot Zone made his name synonymous with troublesome microbes, turns his focus from the Ebola virus to another, potentially even more lethal microbial disaster -- a bioterrorist attack with the smallpox virus. DONT LETS GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT: An African Childhood. By Alexandra Fuller. (Random House, $24.95.) A memoir from the bad side of African history, presented with plenty of wit and no apologies, by a woman whose family, seeking to escape black rule, batted around several former colonies, surrounded by watchdogs, booze and tragedy. DOT.CON: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. By John Cassidy. (HarperCollins, $25.95.) A history of the dot-com bubble by a financial writer for The New Yorker, with insightful observations about the Federal Reserve and severe views on its chairman, Alan Greenspan. THE DOUBLE BOND. Primo Levi: A Biography. By Carole Angier. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $40.) This life of the author, chemist and Auschwitz survivor sprang from two equally necessary processes of creation: inductive, which illuminates the radiant work, and deductive (Levis family declined to talk), which conjures up the intensely private man in all his resilient melancholy. A DOUBLE THREAD: Growing Up English and Jewish in London. By John Gross. (Ivan R. Dee, $23.50.) A delightful memoir of life to the age of 18 in London before, during and after World War II, and a paean to the authors family, itself major delightful; Gross, who grew up to be an eminent British man of letters, recalls never suffering on account of being Jewish. THE DRESSING STATION: A Surgeons Chronicle of War and Medicine. By Jonathan Kaplan. (Grove, $25.) An unusual memoir by a white South African surgeon whose sense of adventure has led to work on the battlefields of Kurdistan, Eritrea, Myanmar and Mozambique -- and aboard a cruise ship. DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER. By Tom Wicker. (Times Books/Holt, $20.) This volume in Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.s American Presidents series holds Eisenhowers accomplishments up against the two major issues of his time: the cold war and civil rights. Wicker, a former reporter and columnist at The Times, likes the man more than his policies. EDISONS EVE: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life. By Gaby Wood. (Knopf, $24.) Ever since Enlightenment philosophers conceived of men and animals as machines, clever people have found reasons and means to enforce the idea; this book presents notable automatons, both genuine and fake, down to Thomas Edisons time. EISENHOWER: A Soldiers Life. By Carlo DEste. (John Macrae/Holt, $35.) A very thick book about an ambitious, self-confident man; it explores adeptly the events in 1944-45 that tested the limits of Eisenhowers abilities, which were enormous as to organization and political sensitivity but not as to strategic skills. ELEANOR AND HARRY: The Correspondence of Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. Edited by Steve Neal. (Lisa Drew/Scribner, $26.) Truman and Franklin D. Roosevelts widow needed each other badly for their own agendas; these 254 letters show a mutual wariness that never ceased, but growing respect and admiration as well. EMMAS WAR. By Deborah Scroggins. (Pantheon, $25.) Scroggins builds her suspenseful account of the continuing Sudanese civil war around the short life of Emma McCune -- a beautiful, adventurous and recklessly passionate aid worker -- and sheds light on the greater European dreams, delusions and failures in the African country. THE ENGLISHMANS DAUGHTER: A True Story of Love and Betrayal in World War I. By Ben Macintyre. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24.) A remarkable excavation of an improbable incident, the concealment for a year and a half in a French village of some stranded British soldiers, one of them the father of a local woman the author met there in 1997. FIREHOUSE. By David Halberstam. (Hyperion, $22.95.) A journalists homage to firefighters, their values, their culture and their courage during the martyrdom imposed on the New York Fire Department by the catastrophe of the attack on the World Trade Center. FIRST GREAT TRIUMPH: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power. By Warren Zimmermann. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30.) A career diplomats brilliantly readable book on the Spanish-American War and its aftermath, and on the men who used the occasion to gain control of 10 million people of nearly all races and an island empire: Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, John Hay, Elihu Root and Alfred T. Mahan. THE FLY SWATTER: How My Grandfather Made His Way in the World. By Nicholas Dawidoff. (Pantheon, $26.) Dawidoffs captivating family memoir is a tribute to his twice-exiled grandfather, the Harvard economist Alexander Gerschenkron, retracing his tortuous path to Cambridge and recounting the intellectual passion that earned Gerschenkron the title the last man with all known knowledge. THE FUTURE OF LIFE. By Edward O. Wilson. (Knopf, $22.) This distinguished biologist proposes that there is yet time to avoid a grand planetary environmental crash provided we get serious, acknowledge a duty of stewardship and recognize an emotional affiliation (biophilia, as he calls it) with other kinds of life. THE FUTURE OF THE PAST. By Alexander Stille. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) A smart, engaging consideration of how hard and how important it is to maintain a collective memory through the preservation of monuments and artifacts, the care of libraries, the recording of cultural systems, the preservation of breathing spaces. THE GATEKEEPERS: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College. By Jacques Steinberg. (Viking, $25.95.) Steinberg, a national education correspondent for The Times, was able to follow the procedures at Wesleyan University for a year and see how the admissions process really looks, to the admitters as well as the applicants. He found it strenuous for all concerned, and not getting easier. GENES, GIRLS, AND GAMOW: After the Double Helix. By James D. Watson. (Knopf, $26.) A priceless glimpse into the intellectual circle, and the campus coed distractions, that nurtured the revolutionary paradigm discovered by Watson and his collaborator Francis Crick. GENIUS: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds. By Harold Bloom. (Warner, $35.95.) Not your usual literary critic, Bloom; he arrives at his judgments through broad comparisons rather than close textual scrutiny (too bad for you if you havent read everything yet), but his enthusiasm, his gigantic assertions and his religious fervor have the power to trample unbelief to dust. GRACEFULLY INSANE: The Rise and Fall of Americas Premier Mental Hospital. By Alex Beam. (PublicAffairs, $26.) In its putatively mind-healthy bucolic setting, McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., sheltered the well-born and the articulate bewildered for a couple of centuries; this entertaining narrative is short on the real desolation of mental illness but copious as to anecdote and changing clinical fashions. HART CRANE: A Life. By Clive Fisher. (Yale University, $39.95.) A penetrating, absorbing biography of the American poet, a sensation in his teens, who ended his own life at 32; the author, a British critic, captures the loneliness and pathos of Cranes existence and places his poems where the life illuminates them. HEART OF A SOLDIER: A Story of Love, Heroism, and September 11th. By James B. Stewart. (Simon & Schuster, $24.) A rendering, in precise and careful prose, of the life and death of Rick Rescorla, director of security for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in Lower Manhattan on Sept. 11. Rescorla, an old soldier, helped direct 2,700 people down the stairs of 2 World Trade Center to safety and was last seen on the 10th floor, climbing. HIGH AND MIGHTY: SUVs -- The Worlds Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way. By Keith Bradsher. (PublicAffairs, $28.) The author, a former Detroit correspondent of The Times, devotes statistics, indignation and a how-things-work comprehension of the internal combustion monster to an argument that the S.U.V. is bad for your health. HIS INVENTION SO FERTILE: A Life of Christopher Wren. By Adrian Tinniswood. (Oxford University, $35.) A capable, workmanlike biography of the rebuilder of St. Pauls Cathedral and renewer of 56 churches destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. A HOUSE UNLOCKED. By Penelope Lively. (Grove, $23.) An English country house, where Lively herself spent much of her adolescence, becomes a historical landscape, dramatizing the generations that owned it and illuminating, from its gong stands to its napkin rings, centuries of change and upheaval. HOW TO BE ALONE: Essays. By Jonathan Franzen. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24.) Thirteen smart pieces, dated from 1994 to 2001, all recording a sensibility in endless conflict with the world around it and with itself, concerned with the contradictions and ambivalences a novelist usually embodies in imaginary people. IN RUINS. By Christopher Woodward. (Pantheon, $24.) A historians learned, eclectic approach to the spooky gratification (known to Henry James and Rose Macaulay) that comes with contemplating the collapse of presumptuousness past, the wreck of vanished wealth, importance and influence. The examples, all European, begin and end in Italy. IN THE DEVILS SNARE: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. By Mary Beth Norton. (Knopf, $30.) A historian seeks to restore the witchcraft panic to its context, much of which consisted of the terrifying Indian wars of late-17th-century New England; the society that tried witches in 1692 was living on the edge of hysteria already, from natural political events we find it hard to recall. IRIS ORIGO: Marchesa of Val dOrcia. By Caroline Moorehead. (Godine, $35.) A fascinating biography of a remarkable woman, an Anglo-American heiress who became the lady of a big estate in Tuscany, where she knew everybody, worked hard, taught peasants to read, helped people escape Fascism and wrote beautifully on many subjects. ISADORA: A Sensational Life. By Peter Kurth. (Little, Brown, $29.95.) The meteoric trajectory of Isadora Duncan, the American free spirit who more or less invented modern dance; astonished audiences throughout the first quarter of the 20th century; and lost two children in a strange automobile accident, then her own life in an even stranger one. JAMES MADISON. By Garry Wills. (Times Books/Holt, $20.) The fourth president of the United States -- who can remember him? A solid, subtle, ingenious contributor to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Madison seemed ineffectual after his election to the top magistracy in 1808; Wills attributes his failings to provincialism, naïveté and a preference for the arts of legislation over the drive of leadership. JAYS JOURNAL OF ANOMALIES. By Ricky Jay. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $40.) The contents of the 16 issues of Jays handsome and handsomely researched historical quarterly of the same title about magicians and unusual performers, like the armless and legless bowler Matthew Buchinger and the multiple crucifixion victim Chami Khan. JAZZ MODERNISM: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce. By Alfred Appel Jr. (Knopf, $35.) Appel pursues the formal and thematic affinities between jazz and high modernism, linking the rhythms of Armstrong to Hemingway, the phrasings of Ellington to the work of Brancusi and Man Ray. JESSE JAMES: Last Rebel of the Civil War. By T. J. Stiles. (Knopf, $27.50.) A provocative, heavily revisionist biography of Americas prototype bandit; Jamess Civil War experiences as a death-squad guerrilla lead directly to his postwar depredations, which are seen less as proletarian anger against the rich and the banks than as efforts to defeat Reconstruction. JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES. Volume Three: Fighting for Freedom, 1937-1946. By Robert Skidelsky. (Viking, $34.95.) The final installment of Skidelskys life of the most influential economist since Adam Smith, who gave his all in the World War II struggle for survival, negotiating finances with the United States and trying to save Britains market economy. LAKE EFFECT. By Rich Cohen. (Knopf, $23.) Cohens third book, a fast-moving memoir about his typically 1980s youth in suburban Chicago, is at its heart a candid and nostalgic tribute to the authors friendship with Jamie Drew -- the charismatic, troubled true hero of Cohens youth. THE LAST AMERICAN MAN. By Elizabeth Gilbert. (Viking, $24.95.) A profile of Eustace Conway, woodsman, hunter and visionary utopian, competent in every situation except social ones, where his inability to see anything in any way except his way becomes a handicap; he seems to lack the flexibility of his analogue, Crocodile Dundee. LAZY B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest. By Sandra Day OConnor and H. Alan Day. (Random House, $24.95.) An engaging portrait, by the Supreme Court justice and her brother, of a distinctive, vanished way of life on 250 square miles without electricity or running water but with plenty of grit. THE LETTERS OF KINGSLEY AMIS. Edited by Zachary Leader. (Talk Miramax/Hyperion, $40.) More than a thousand delicious pages of uncharitable observations by the author of Lucky Jim and many other fine surly novels, a womanizer who did not like women and a writer who could barely tolerate books; his letters to Philip Larkin are particularly funny, despite the absence of Larkins letters to him. L. FRANK BAUM: Creator of Oz. By Katharine M. Rogers. (St. Martins, $27.95.) A life of the Royal Historian, whose 14 Oz books are unsentimental, emphasizing the homely American virtues of self-reliance and practicality, and fearlessly approaching old problems like the soul-body question; by a professional scholar and lifetime Oz devotee. A LIFE IN PIECES: The Making and Unmaking of Binjamin Wilkomirski. By Blake Eskin. (Norton, $25.95.) In 1997, Wilkomirskis Fragments was much admired as a masterpiece of Holocaust writing; since then, both author and book have faded into fraudulence. Eskins research now illuminates not the Holocaust but the fantasy life of a disturbed young man with an unhappy childhood whose real name Eskin himself is not altogether sure of. A LIFES WORK: On Becoming a Mother. By Rachel Cusk. (Picador USA, $22.) The author of three well-esteemed English novels has dropped fiction for this funny, smart memoir of personal transition, in which her sense of captivity appears undeniable, breast-feeding despicable and mommy groups unbearable. LINCOLNS GREATEST SPEECH: The Second Inaugural. By Ronald C. White Jr. (Simon & Schuster, $24.) A professor of American religious history interprets the speech as a sermon on the origins and paradoxes of the Civil War; its great theme is that God has his own purposes and knows them better than humans do. THE LIVES OF THE MUSES: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired. By Francine Prose. (HarperCollins, $25.95.) In her first nonfiction outing, Prose assesses women without whom the product of some male artists would have been different, from Alice Liddell (Lewis Carrolls Alice) to Suzanne Farrell (who cast a fertile spell on George Balanchine). LONDON: The Biography. By Peter Ackroyd. (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $45.) A prodigiously researched history that is neither top-down nor bottom-up but cross-sectional: shunning traditional chronology and players (aristocrats are scarce), Ackroyd instead offers a London defined by a set of recurring motifs -- smell, sound, speech, fog, fire, ghosts and plague are some of the more significant. LONE PATRIOT: The Short Career of an American Militiaman. By Jane Kramer. (Pantheon, $25.) Real-life anthropology: the author hangs with a band of self-styled patriots in Washington State, finding them armed to the teeth yet reassuringly inept. LONGITUDES AND ATTITUDES: Exploring the World After September 11. By Thomas L. Friedman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) A collection of essays, supplemented by diary entries and previously unpublished notes, by the Timess foreign affairs columnist, many of them on the implications of 9/11 and the sheer complexity of America today. LOST DISCOVERIES: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science -- From the Babylonians to the Maya. By Dick Teresi. (Simon & Schuster, $27.) A knowledgeable, witty science writer surveys the numerous scientific achievements of non-European civilizations, many of them well known to historians of science but usually excluded from classrooms in favor of Westerners. THE LUNAR MEN: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World. By Jenny Uglow. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30.) A study of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, which met monthly in the latter 18th century over the defining activities of the modern world: science and industries based on science. LYRICS OF SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. The Tragic Courtship and Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore: A History of Love and Violence Among the African American Elite. By Eleanor Alexander. (New York University, $26.95.) Alcoholism, bipolar disorder and the stresses of extreme visibility all played a part in the unfortunate relationship of Americas first famous black poet and his wife, herself a writer of considerable distinction. THE MAKING OF A PHILOSOPHER: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy. By Colin McGinn. (HarperCollins, $25.95.) An autobiography whose author rose from Blackpool to Oxford to Rutgers, showing what it is like to be a philosopher in action: tough, determined, amusing, combative and clever, as well as engaged in an important and difficult task. MASTER OF THE SENATE: The Years of Lyndon Johnson. By Robert A. Caro. (Knopf, $35.) In this new volume of his humongous life of Johnson (whom he is beginning to admire, a little), the author follows his man in taking over the United States Senate and pushing through it the first civil rights bill since 1875. MASTERS OF DEATH: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust. By Richard Rhodes. (Knopf, $27.50.) A writer who has long been interested in the problems of violence examines the SS units assigned to kill Jews in Eastern Europe by shooting them; Nazi anxiety about the psychological health of men so employed led to the invention first of the gas vans, then of the gas chambers. THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World. By Ken Alder. (Free Press, $27.) An absorbing, often comic account of the beginning of the metric system by two astronomers, charged to create a new unit of distance; this they did, despite wars, mobs, absurd rumors and even a touch of madness. MOVIE LOVE IN THE FIFTIES. By James Harvey. (Knopf, $35.) Towering westerns and pert musicals are largely absent from this quirky celebration: Harvey asks how they can compare with James Mason as a megalomaniac cortisone addict or Deanna Durbin, incredibly, as a noir femme fatale -- beacons of subversion in an age that fairly crackled with conformity. MRS. PAINES GARAGE: And the Murder of John F. Kennedy. By Thomas Mallon. (Pantheon, $22.) A journalistic inquiry into Ruth Paine, the woman who welcomed Marina Oswald -- and sometimes her husband, Lee -- into her suburban Dallas home in 1963; it offers a new theory about the antecedents of the assassination. MUSSOLINI. By R. J. B. Bosworth. (Oxford University, $35.) A historians judicious examination of the dictator who helped create Fascism from a mix of socialism and nationalism; he ruled Italy for 21 years, losing touch with reality when he became dependent on Hitler and too well acquainted with war. MY FINE FEATHERED FRIEND. By William Grimes. (North Point, $15.) Grimes, the restaurant critic for The Times, knew nothing about the variety of the chicken that arrived in his backyard -- cackling, pacing and pecking -- and stayed. NAPOLEON: A Biography. By Frank McLynn. (Arcade, $32.95.) A biography that offers the general reader a synthesis of the enormous body of specialized research about Napoleon now available and examines current myths and controversies; its approach is occasionally psychoanalytical rather than historical. NATASHAS DANCE: A Cultural History of Russia. By Orlando Figes. (Metropolitan/Holt, $35.) This sequel to the authors history of the Russian Revolution examines the great and endless debates that have absorbed the nations intellectual, artistic and moral authorities from Peter the Greats opening to the West until the present. THE NATURAL: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton. By Joe Klein. (Doubleday, $22.95.) A solid, if provisional, overview of That Man, whose every sin made him more popular but who was never able (or didnt really try) to accomplish big-deal reforms, though his incremental achievements were substantial. NEAR A THOUSAND TABLES: A History of Food. By Felipe Fernández-Armesto. (Free Press, $25.) A bold historian (he has written a book about truth) undertakes to follow the shifts in history that have socialized people by making them cook and multiplied people by multiplying their diets and their choices. NINETY DEGREES NORTH: The Quest for the North Pole. By Fergus Fleming. (Grove, $26.) Flemings remarkable account of the quest for the North Pole between the 1850s and 1926 picks up where his previous book, Barrows Boys, about the British Admiraltys obsession with the Northwest Passage, left off; the two make up a sort of history of 19th-century Arctic exploration. NOBODYS PERFECT: Writings From The New Yorker. By Anthony Lane. (Knopf, $35.) Film, literature and other passions explored in virtuosic prose by a critic whose cheerful temper never stands in the way of a brilliant line delivered with insouciance, and whose powers as a literary critic are first-rate, even when he reviews Judith Krantz. nothing remains the same: Rereading and Remembering. By Wendy Lesser. (Houghton Mifflin, $24.) A critic turns her scrutiny to the minute but vertiginous re- of rereading: each time she cracks a dusty cover, her young self, long dormant, emerges from within. OAXACA JOURNAL. By Oliver Sacks. (National Geographic, $20.) An organized excursion for fern lovers became a discovery of Mexico for the endlessly curious Dr. Sacks, first shocked by the third-world poverty of rural Mexico, then entirely absorbed in the visit to another time provided by its pre-Hispanic remains. OFF TO THE SIDE: A Memoir. By Jim Harrison. (Atlantic Monthly, $25.) A sprawling, roundabout report on the life lived large by a writer who is fairly sprawling and roundabout himself; hunting, fishing, eating a five-hour meal with Orson Welles, making vast money in Hollywood and misplacing it, offering no apologies for his participation in the incalculable messiness of life. OUR POSTHUMAN FUTURE: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. By Francis Fukuyama. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) Fukuyama (The End of History and the Last Man) advances another controversial but thoughtful thesis: biotechnological advances -- behavior-modifying drugs, genetic tinkering -- may alter human nature and move us into a posthuman stage of history. OUT OF THE BLUE: The Story of September 11, 2001, From Jihad to Ground Zero. By Richard Bernstein. (Times Books/Holt, $25.) An ambitious and straightforward attempt by Bernstein and other reporters of The Times to turn the myriad narrative strands of 9/11 -- the attacks, the perpetrators, the victims -- into a coherent whole, complete with recurring characters and plotlines that balance action and exposition. THE PERFECT STORE: Inside eBay. By Adam Cohen. (Little, Brown, $25.95.) The author, who writes editorials for The Times, traces the growth of the online auction site from fuzzy utopian community to corporate behemoth where one can buy everything from Sèvres and Studebakers to pickle pots and, yes, The Perfect Store. PRINCE OF PRINCES: The Life of Potemkin. By Sebag Montefiore. (Thomas Dunne/St. Martins, $45.) A densely detailed biography of Prince Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin (1739-91), who served as Catherine the Greats military strategist, diplomat, literary adviser, art collector and lover, outlasting other favorites in her glamorous yet crude court. A PROBLEM FROM HELL: America and the Age of Genocide. By Samantha Power. (New Republic/Basic Books, $30.) Power, the executive director of Harvards Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, expertly documents American passivity toward various genocides in the 20th century. RACISM: A Short History. By George M. Fredrickson. (Princeton University, $22.95.) A historian proposes that the distinctive ideology of Western racism was made necessary by the growing Enlightenment belief in equality; earlier and elsewhere, men had needed no theories to treat one another ill. REACHING FOR GLORY: Lyndon Johnsons Secret White House Tapes, 1964-1965. Edited by Michael Beschloss. (Simon & Schuster, $30.) Political skill, ruthlessness and paranoia distinguish Johnsons talks covering the period in 1964 and 1965 when he got his Great Society programs through Congress and plunged this country into war in Vietnam. READING CHEKHOV: A Critical Journey. By Janet Malcolm. (Random House, $23.95.) A gifted journalists elegant excursion through and around Chekhov, finding wild and strange objects in his stories where others have often sighted only delicacy, modesty and candid, well-behaved shades of gray. THE RECKLESS MIND: Intellectuals in Politics. By Mark Lilla. (New York Review, $24.95.) A sense of disappointment drives this nimble, illuminating study: disappointment that such profound and influential minds as Heidegger, Benjamin and Foucault could have been so politically detached when confronted by the tumult of the 20th century. REINVENTING THE BAZAAR: A Natural History of Markets. By John McMillan. (Norton, $25.95.) An economists world tour: the Dutch flower market in Aalsmeer and the centuries-old camel fair of Rajasthan, India, are two examples of McMillans enthusiasm for free markets, which achieve their full potential, he insists, only if the government provides the necessary infrastructure. REVENGE: A Story of Hope. By Laura Blumenfeld. (Simon & Schuster, $25.) When her father, an American rabbi, was shot in the Old City of Jerusalem, Blumenfeld ingratiated herself with the Palestinian gunmans family, planning the disclosure of her identity as a form of revenge; Blumenfeld, a Washington Post reporter, explores the mechanics and psychology of vengeance and creates a subtle portrait of the gunman himself. THE RIVERS TALE: A Year on the Mekong. By Edward A. Gargan. (Knopf, $26.95.) A journey from the Tibetan plateau to the delta in Vietnam, taken by a former correspondent for The Times in an effort to understand better the region that obsessed him since his college days; the American presence, and its effects on the lands along the river, are always in view. THE RURAL LIFE. By Verlyn Klinkenborg. (Little, Brown, $20.) Brief, luminous, descriptive and meditative essays, mostly from this newspaper, pursuing a month-to-month journey through the seasonal demands of country life, especially on the authors farm in upstate New York but with excursions to the West. THE RUSSIA HAND: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy. By Strobe Talbott. (Random House, $29.95.) An account that manages to be, well, diplomatic even as it depicts the post-cold-war epic in terms of personal encounters between two men who seem the joint product of Chaucer, Rabelais and Balzac: Bill Clinton and the man Clinton called Ol Boris. SAKHAROV: A Biography. By Richard Lourie. (Brandeis University/University Press of New England, $30.) The author, a novelist and translator, offers a subtle, revealing life of Andrei Sakharov, the nuclear physicist who developed into an authentic apostle of humanity and democracy in the former Soviet Union. SALT: A World History. By Mark Kurlansky. (Walker, $28.) Theres more to salt than everybody knows; without it, people cant live. Its cheap now, and many people get too much, but that wasnt always so; Kurlansky gives the economic, political, chemical and industrial story of a substance once so valuable that salary is named for it. SAVAGE REPRISALS: Bleak House, Madame Bovary, Buddenbrooks. By Peter Gay. (Norton, $24.95.) A distinguished cultural historian reads three landmark novels as propelled, respectively, by Dickenss resentment of his mean old mother, Flauberts of the culture of the bourgeoisie and Manns of his capitalist father. SCOTTY: James B. Reston and the Rise and Fall of American Journalism. By John F. Stacks. (Little, Brown, $29.95.) The life of a journalist who joined The New York Times in 1939 and came to personify it; his access to the powerful, who came to trust his balance and propriety, served him well in the 1950s, less well in the age of Vietnam and Watergate. THE SHORT SWEET DREAM OF EDUARDO GUTIÉRREZ. By Jimmy Breslin. (Crown, $22.) A true-life account of an illegal Mexican immigrant who died on a New York construction site, and of the dreary lives and modest ambitions common to Mexicans in this country. SINCLAIR LEWIS: Rebel From Main Street. By Richard Lingeman. (Random House, $35.) A biography of Lewis (1885-1951), Americas first Nobel laureate in literature (1930), whose once immense reputation has suffered an undeserved posthumous decline. THE SISTERS: The Saga of the Mitford Family. By Mary S. Lovell. (Norton, $29.95.) The story of the six high-spirited, aristocratic, amusing and amusable sisters who did as they pleased, mostly, and captured the imagination of Britain for about half the 20th century; the author takes no sides and, what is truly remarkable, keeps track of all six lives at once. SISTERS OF SALOME. By Toni Bentley. (Yale University, $27.95.) A former Balanchine dancer, profoundly alerted by a visit to the Crazy Horse in Paris, explores the history and philosophy of stripping, from its inspiration in Wildes Salome to her own personal experimental demonstration in a TriBeCa club. THE SKEPTIC: A Life of H. L. Mencken. By Terry Teachout. (HarperCollins, $29.95.) This biography copes with Menckens shortcomings -- crankiness, provinciality and an inability to believe Germany was doing wrong in the 20th century -- by placing them in contemporary contexts. SNOBBERY: The American Version. By Joseph Epstein. (Houghton Mifflin, $25.) In a society more ostensibly egalitarian than ever, Epstein observes, snobbery has proliferated and intensified in new forms, with new peaks from which to look down on others; he fleshes out his perceptions with an examination of his own experience. SOLDIERS: Fighting Mens Lives, 1901-2001. By Philip Ziegler. (Knopf, $26.) Ziegler, well known as a biographer of royalty and celebrities, concentrates here on the ashes of empire by talking to residents of Londons Royal Hospital Chelsea, veterans of Britains wars from Flanders to Cyprus and Aden, men who had little to lose in life and little to gain but whose fidelity never came into question. SOMEBODYS GOTTA TELL IT: The Upbeat Memoir of a Working-Class Journalist. By Jack Newfield. (St. Martins Press, $25.95.) The scrappy, Brooklyn-born muckraker recalls the tumultuous 60s and its characters, big and small, from the worlds of politics, sports, crime, journalism and music. SONIC BOOM: Napster, MP3, and the New Pioneers of Music. By John Alderman. (Perseus, $26.) A smart and meticulous book on the still unfolding digital music revolution; Alderman, who covered the scene for Wired News, is sympathetic to the upstarts but not uncritically so. SOROS: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire. By Michael T. Kaufman. (Knopf, $27.50.) A survivor of Nazism and Communism who has made billions is bound to contain paradoxes; personally shy and financially bold, Soros admits he wants to be the conscience of the world and has given huge sums to undermine totalitarianism but, as this biography by a former correspondent and editor for The Times makes clear, he cares little for publicity. SPY: The Inside Story of How the FBIs Robert Hanssen Betrayed America. By David Wise. (Random House, $24.95.) Wise, a longstanding authority on the spy business, explains how a turncoat of no great intellect or skill escaped detection for two decades of bumbling by several intelligence services, including the K.G.B., which never learned his identity though he had betrayed to it many American agents or targets of C.I.A. recruitment. STARDUST MELODIES: The Biography of Twelve of Americas Most Popular Songs. By Will Friedwald. (Pantheon, $27.50.) The songs, all of which everybody knows, are discussed in individual chapters, giving each songs genesis, a microscopic analysis of its structure, a detailed assessment of its performing and recording history; by a deeply attentive, emotionally attuned listener. STEP ACROSS THIS LINE: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002. By Salman Rushdie. (Random House, $25.95.) Sketches, essays, columns, speeches from a decade, some of them a bit mean-spirited, others gorgeous. They include a grave, eloquent recent lecture series at Yale that calls on artists to use their own weapons against the assault of Sept. 11 and its subversion of the world we thought we knew. TEACHER: The One Who Made the Difference. By Mark Edmundson. (Random House, $23.95.) A fascinating tribute to a teacher who opened the doors of careful thought to Edmundson in 1969, his last year in high school in Medford, Mass., a working-class city that supplied factory workers and civil servants; instead, it eventually delivered Edmundson into the English professoriate of the University of Virginia. TED HUGHES: The Life of a Poet. By Elaine Feinstein. (Norton, $29.95.) A sensitive full-scale portrait of Hughes (1930-98), a private man who became known as much for his tragic marriage to Sylvia Plath as for his own work. TESTS OF TIME. By William H. Gass. (Knopf, $25.) An impressive collection of essays by the distinguished novelist, essayist and philosopher; Gass addresses matters literary, social and political, including the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the O. J. Simpson trial. THEM: Adventures With Extremists. By Jon Ronson. (Simon & Schuster, $24.) A British journalist and documentary filmmaker, straining to sound naïve, hobnobs with conspiracy theorists who think a few conspirators run the world; at their most extreme, they can become conspirators themselves, as Timothy McVeigh did, disappointed with the Ku Klux Klan. THEODORE REX. By Edmund Morris. (Random House, $35.) The sequel to The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979) covers a relatively brief period, beginning with the assassins bullet that elevated Vice President Roosevelt to the White House, ending seven and a half years later. A THREAD ACROSS THE OCEAN: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable. By John Steele Gordon. (Walker, $26.) Laying a telegraphic cable 2,000 miles long and two miles deep required amazing supplies of money, time and nerve; it finally succeeded in 1866. THE THREATENING STORM: The Case for Invading Iraq. By Kenneth M. Pollack. (Random House, $25.95.) Pollack brings his experience as a Persian Gulf analyst for the C.I.A. to bear in this argument for invasion; he sets the stage with a chilling portrayal of conditions there, then examines each of the buzz-word choices facing the United States -- containment, deterrence and regime change. TIME TRAVELER: In Search of Dinosaurs and Ancient Mammals From Montana to Mongolia. By Michael Novacek. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) An insightful natural history of our planet and a lively memoir about how Novacek, curator of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, fell into the profession. TONIGHT AT NOON: A Love Story. By Sue Graham Mingus. (Pantheon, $24.) A memoir (by a onetime Milwaukee debutante) of 11 years and numerous tumults with a very difficult man, the jazz composer, bandleader and double-bass virtuoso Charles Mingus, the last three as his wife until his death in 1979. TRAINS OF THOUGHT: Memories of a Stateless Youth. By Victor Brombert. (Norton, $25.95.) A lyrical, luminous account of the displacements of a bourgeois Jewish childhood, mostly in Europe, and of United States Army service during World War II; by a distinguished literary academic who came to America with his family in the summer of 1941. TRAVELS WITH A TANGERINE: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah. By Tim Mackintosh-Smith. (Welcome Rain, $30.) A genial, civilized rendition, by a curious scholar, of some of the 75,000 miles pursued by the great 14th-century Moroccan traveler Ibn Battutah. WAR IS A FORCE THAT GIVES US MEANING. By Chris Hedges. (PublicAffairs, $23.) Hedges, a reporter for The Times and for 15 years a foreign correspondent, admits to war addiction and swears it off, stepping back to reflect on the carnage he witnessed and the devices of those whose purpose war serves. WARRIOR POLITICS: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos. By Robert D. Kaplan. (Random House, $22.95.) Kaplans plan for preserving the American ideal suggests using the wisdom of the past -- Churchills statesmanship, Sun-Tzus hesitant determinism -- as a guide for future foreign policy. WHAT EVOLUTION IS. By Ernst Mayr. (Basic Books, $26.) A wise and illuminating examination, by an illustrious evolutionary biologist, that sorts out the complexities of evolution -- as the author calls it, perhaps the greatest intellectual revolution experienced by mankind -- with insight and authority. WHAT KIND OF NATION: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States. By James F. Simon. (Simon & Schuster, $27.50.) A professor of law examines the angry dialogue of several decades between Jefferson, who thought the 13 colonies made 13 sovereignties, and Marshall, who thought the Constitution made them one. WHAT WENT WRONG? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. By Bernard Lewis. (Oxford University, $23.) A remarkable, succinct account of a cultural and political conflict centuries in the making; by a distinguished and prolific historian of the Muslim world. WHY I AM A CATHOLIC. By Garry Wills. (Houghton Mifflin, $26.) Wills, who says he has never even considered leaving the Roman Catholic Church, tells why, giving en route a condensed history of the papacy and of its growth in recent centuries to aberrant proportions, in need of supervision from the loyal People of God. WILL YOU MISS ME WHEN IM GONE? The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music. By Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshberg. (Simon & Schuster, $25.) Born and raised in southwestern Virginia, the original Carters -- two women on guitar and autoharp and, often, a peculiar male voice -- seemed both strange and beautiful in 1927, and still do. WITTGENSTEINS POKER: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers. By David Edmonds and John Eidinow. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $24.) So what happened between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper in a legendary encounter in 1946, and who should care? The authors reconstruct the episode and try to find out. THE WRITER AND THE WORLD. By V. S. Naipaul. (Knopf, $30.) A collection covering about three decades and divided into sections on India, Africa and America, by the Nobel Prize winner whose perpetual personal frame of reference and utter fearlessness about giving offense season his habitual gloom. YOUTH. By J. M. Coetzee. (Viking, $22.95.) During that period of a mans life when he is most repulsive to himself and everybody else, Coetzee, at the end of his teens a snob, prude and mamas boy, devoted immense efforts to becoming a lover and an artist, with results so disappointing at the time he has seen fit to write this memoir in the third person. CHILDRENS BOOKS ACTION JACKSON. By Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan. Illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker. (Roaring Brook, $16.95.) (Ages 8 and up) The text of this account of Jackson Pollocks life is straightforward, and the illustrations are brilliantly done by an accomplished artist whose lighthearted expressionist approach works gracefully and effectively with Pollocks painting. AMERICA. By E. R. Frank. (Richard Jackson/Atheneum, $18.) (Ages 12 and up) An absorbing and challenging novel about a teenage boy who has been abandoned, adopted, abandoned, fostered, abducted, abandoned and more, but is surviving. EMILY DICKINSONS LETTERS TO THE WORLD. Written and illustrated by Jeanette Winter. (Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16.) (Ages 5 and up) A small book offers an intriguing and rich introduction to the life and work of the poet. The illustrations are complex and insightful. FEED. By M. T. Anderson. (Candlewick, $16.99.) (Ages 12 and up) In this novel about teenagers in a consumerist future, the author imagines an America where people have computer chips implanted in their heads. For spring break youngsters party on the moon. The book is fast, shrewd, slang-filled and surprisingly engaging. HONDO & FABIAN. Written and illustrated by Peter McCarty. (Holt, $16.95.) (Ages 2 to 5) Two friends, a dog and cat, spend a perfect day -- the dog at the beach with another dog, the cat at home with the baby of the house. Serene and enchanting. I STINK. By Kate McMullan. Illustrated by Jim McMullan. (Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins, $15.95.) (Ages 4 to 8) A big urban garbage truck tells all -- and that includes describing steering wheels, gas pedals, brakes, all in pairs -- and recites a deliciously revolting alphabet of what it devours. A subject of consuming interest to many children, and the book is illustrated with great energy and wit. MADLENKAS DOG. Written and illustrated by Peter Sis. (Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $17.) (Ages 5 to 9) Madlenka and her imaginary dog (so real it frightens cats) on a red leash tour her urban neighborhood in this splendid, witty fantasy. THE THIEF LORD. By Cornelia Funke. The Chicken House/Scholastic, $16.95.) (Ages 8 and up) A fast-paced German novel about orphan brothers who run away from Hamburg to Venice and join a band of pickpockets led by an aristocratic thief. What distinguishes it from other fantasy capers is its respect for both the struggle to grow up and the mixed blessings of growing old. THE THREE QUESTIONS: Based on a Story by Leo Tolstoy. Written and illustrated by Jon J. Muth. (Scholastic, $16.95.) (Ages 6 and up) A beautifully illustrated and engaging meditation on how to live, involving a boy named Nikolai and his friends the heron, the monkey and the dog, a wise turtle, and a mother panda and her baby. YELLOW UMBRELLA. Written and illustrated by Jae Soo Liu. (Kane/ Miller, $19.95.) (Ages 4 and up) An enchanting wordless account of a rainy day journey, seen mostly from above as children move through rain-drenched streets. Theres also a CD that is meant to accompany the story and, surprisingly, it does. MYSTERIES CITY OF BONES. By Michael Connelly. (Little, Brown, $25.95.) Sheer narrative propulsion drives the action of this haunting story, which plunges Harry Bosch, a Los Angeles police detective, into deep contemplation of the ancient history of human violence as he hunts for meaning in the death of a 12-year-old boy whose skeletal remains turn up in the hills of Laurel Canyon. HELL TO PAY. By George P. Pelecanos. (Little, Brown, $24.95.) This down-and-dirty writer from the urban badlands of Washington breaks out two of his best characters, ex-cops Derek Strange and Terry Quinn, to give us a jolting view of lawless neighborhoods where menacing pimps, feral street kids and no-hope stiffs live and prey on one another. JOLIE BLONS BOUNCE. By James Lee Burke. (Simon & Schuster, $25.) A former plantation overseer, whose biblical name of Legion suggests this diabolical villains capacity for evil, gets a little too close to Burkes Cajun detective, Dave Robicheaux, in a Southern Gothic tale that uncovers the traditions of sexual sadism in a Louisiana bayou town. THE LAST KASHMIRI ROSE. By Barbara Cleverly. (Carroll & Graf, $24.) The seductive beauty and secret dangers of India under the British Raj are evoked in this exotic debut whodunit, which sends a dashing Metropolitan Police officer to Bengal in 1922 to investigate the deaths of five cavalry officers wives, each a victim of her own worst nightmare. THE PRONE GUNMAN. By Jean-Patrick Manchette. (City Lights Noir, paper, $11.95.) Cool, compact and shockingly original, this noir crime novel dispassionately observes the professional ruin and mental decline of a hired killer who makes the mistake of thinking that he can retire from his deadly trade and settle down with a nice girl. Q IS FOR QUARRY. By Sue Grafton. (Marian Wood/Putnam, $26.95.) Building on the skimpy facts in a true (and still unsolved) 1969 homicide of an unknown woman whose body was dumped in a quarry in Santa Barbara County, Grafton creates a sensitive assignment for her private eye, Kinsey Millhone, and two old geezer-cops who are obsessed with this sad case. RESOLUTION. By Denise Mina. (Carroll & Graf, $25.) Although it can stand alone as the stark account of the murder of an eccentric old woman who sells bootleg CDs at an open-air flea market, this crime novel is the final chapter in a class-conscious trilogy about the disintegration of a socially dysfunctional neighborhood in gritty Glasgow. THE SNIPERS WIFE. By Archer Mayor. (Mysterious/Warner, $23.95.) Willy Kunkle, a one-armed, wild-eyed cop who normally works the clean mean streets of Brattleboro, Vt., comes to New York to identify the body of his ex-wife and sticks around to hunt for her killer, using the sniper skills he picked up in Vietnam to feel his way around this jungle of a city. THE STONE MONKEY. By Jeffery Deaver. (Simon & Schuster, $25.) In a labyrinthine plot that is a marvel of intricate game construction, Deaver pits his genius sleuth, Lincoln Rhyme, against a shape-shifting villain known as the Ghost, who sank a ship of illegal Chinese immigrants off the coast of Long Island and is now hellbent on eliminating all witnesses to the atrocity. SCIENCE FICTION ACROSS THE NIGHTINGALE FLOOR. By Lian Hearn. (Riverhead, $24.95.) An engaging fantasy of love and revenge that secures the readers suspension of disbelief by bringing to life an appealing setting -- an alternate medieval Japan -- and a likable young hero who has inherited the ability to cloud mens minds and to seem to be in two places at the same time. APPLESEED. By John Clute. (Tor/ Tom Doherty, $25.95.) The co-author of both The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and The Encyclopedia of Fantasy brings his vast knowledge of imaginative literature to this playful but daunting far-future novel. Readers must be on their toes to follow Clutes quicksilver re-envisioning of familiar genre premises and jargon. THE LONGEST WAY HOME. By Robert Silverberg. (Eos/HarperCollins, $25.95.) In his usual lucid prose Silverberg chronicles the long journey home of a young aristocrat who, fleeing a rebellion of his worlds supposedly docile underclass, discovers some disturbing truths about his society and some heartening truths about himself, while interacting with a fascinating mix of truly surprisingly alien aliens. PRETERNATURAL3. By Margaret Wander Bonanno. (Tor/Tom Doherty, $24.95.) Bonanno is at it again, proving (as she did in the first two books in this series) that science fiction and postmodern metafiction were made for each other. What she sees while looking over her own shoulder -- love outdueling death -- will enthrall any reader prepared to follow her through this tricky maze of a novel. SKIN FOLK. By Nalo Hopkinson. (Warner Aspect, paper, $12.95.) The acclaimed author of Brown Girl in the Ring and Midnight Robber puts her lyrical gifts to good use in a collection of new and previously published short stories whose mood ranges from erotic to enraged. SOLITAIRE. By Kelley Eskridge. (Eos/HarperCollins, $24.95.) The plotting of this first novel may strain credulity, but when a young woman who has been promised the world is sentenced to eight years of solitary confinement inside her own head, her high-tech ordeal is evoked in a stylistic and psychological tour de force that arouses both pity and terror. THE WATCH. By Dennis Danvers. (Eos/HarperCollins, $24.95.) A thoughtful time-travel romp by the author of Circuit of Heaven and End of Days. Its unlikely hero is the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin, who is plucked from his deathbed in 1921 and given a second chance to bring Western society to its senses. THE YEARS OF RICE AND SALT. By Kim Stanley Robinson. (Bantam, $25.95.) What if the Black Plague had wiped out not a third but virtually all of Europes population in the 14th century? This is the eye-opening premise of Robinsons latest novel, a magisterial alternate history from one of science fictions most important writers.. List of notable books of 2002 with brief descriptions; drawings (L)

The Listings: Feb. 17 - Feb. 23

Selective listings by critics of The New York Times of new and noteworthy cultural events in the New York metropolitan region this week. * denotes a highly recommended film, concert, show or exhibition. Theater Approximate running times are in parentheses. Theaters are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of current shows, additional listings, showtimes and tickets: nytimes.com/theater. Previews and Openings THE WOODEN BREEKS Opens Tuesday. MCC Theater presents Glen Bergers gothic fairy tale set in the fictitious Scottish town of Brood (2:00). Lucille Lortel Theater, 121 Christopher Street, West Village, (212) 279-4200. INDOOR/OUTDOOR Opens Wednesday. The playwright Kenny Finkle aims for the cat-lover demographic in this relationship comedy about a computer programmer and his chatty feline companion (1:50). DR2 Theater, 103 East 15th Street, Flatiron district, (212) 239-6200. THE PAJAMA GAME Opens Thursday. Labor unrest leads to romance in this classic musical about a manager and a union representative at a pajama factory. Harry Connick Jr. stars, and Kathleen Marshall directs (2:30). American Airlines Theater, 227 West 42nd Street, (212) 719-1300. SOLDIERS WIFE Opens Thursday. The Mint Theater revives another forgotten drama, Rose Frankens romantic comedy from the 1940s, set against the backdrop of World War II (2:00). Mint Theater, 311 West 43rd Street, Clinton, (212) 315-0231. BERNARDA ALBA Opens March 6. The Tony winner Phylicia Rashad (A Raisin in the Sun) plays another formidable matriarchal figure with an iron will in Lincoln Centers musical version of Lorcas House of Bernarda Alba. Michael John LaChiusa, who already has one musical to his name this season, See What I Wanna See, contributes music and lyrics (1:30). Mitzi Newhouse Theater, 150 West 65th Street, (212) 239-6200. DEFIANCE Opens Feb. 28. Set on a Marine Corps base during the 1970s, John Patrick Shanleys new play, his first since Doubt, revolves around an explosive incident between an African-American marine and a white one. Doug Hughes directs (1:30). Manhattan Theater Club, Theater 1, 131 West 55th Street, (212) 581-1212. ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE Previews start today. Opens March 16. Alec Baldwin stars in Joe Ortons jet-black comedy about a handsome stranger who seduces everyone else onstage (2:00). Laura Pels Theater at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theater, 111 West 46th Street, (212) 719-1300. FAMILY SECRETS Previews start Wednesday. Opens March 8. Sherry Glaser plays her entire family in this revival of her 1993 autobiographical solo show about moving from the Bronx to Southern California (1:30). 37 Arts, 450 West 37th Street, (212) 307-4100. GREY GARDENS Opens March 7. Maybe the biggest question mark of the musical season, this intriguing show is an adaptation of the cult documentary about the eccentric socialite relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (2:30). Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 279-4200. THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE Opens Feb. 27. Dead pets, severed limbs, black Irish humor -- Martin McDonagh (Pillowman) is up to his old tricks in this devilish comedy about terrorism and torture (1:45). Atlantic Theater, 336 West 20th Street, Chelsea, (212) 239-6200. MEASURE FOR MEASURE Previews start Thursday. Opens March 5. The resourceful Pearl Theater tries to provide an answer to this problem play (2:30). Theater 80, 80 St. Marks Place, East Village, (212) 598-9802. MEASURE FOR PLEASURE Previews start Tuesday. Opens March 8. A new play by David Grimm (Kit Marlowe) that is part restoration comedy, part modern sex comedy (2:30). Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, at Astor Place, East Village, (212) 239-6200. THE MUSIC TEACHER, A PLAY/OPERA Previews start Tuesday. Opens March 6. This artistic hybrid by Wallace Shawn and his brother Allen is a drama about the making of an opera that features -- are you still following? -- operatic flashbacks (1:50). Minetta Lane Theater, 18 Minetta Lane, Greenwich Village, (212) 307-4100. RING OF FIRE Opens March 12. Johnny Cash hits form the backbone of this musical about three couples. So far, its received surprisingly good buzz. Richard Maltby Jr. directs (2:00). Ethel Barrymore Theater, 243 West 47th Street, (212) 239-6200. SIDD Previews start Thursday. Opens March 15. Herman Hesses novel Siddhartha, the musical version (2:15). Dodgers Stages, 340 West 50th Street, Clinton, (212) 239-6200. [TITLE OF SHOW] Opens Feb. 26. This New York Musical Theater Festival hit is a satirical musical about several artists racing to finish a musical in three weeks. Apparently, they got it done (1:30). Vineyard Theater, 108 East 15th Street, Flatiron district, (212) 353-0303. TRANSATLANTIC LIAISON Previews start Monday. Opens March 1. A new play about Simone de Beauvoir concentrating on her affair with the novelist Nelson Algren. Uses details from her published letters and the novel The Mandarins (1:30). Harold Clurman Theater on Theater Row, 412 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 279-4200. Broadway * BRIDGE & TUNNEL This delightful solo show written and performed by Sarah Jones is a sweet-spirited valentine to New York City, its polyglot citizens and the larger notion of an all-inclusive America. In 90 minutes of acutely observed portraiture gently tinted with humor, Ms. Jones plays more than a dozen men and women participating in an open-mike evening of poetry for immigrants (1:30). Helen Hayes Theater, 240 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200.(Charles Isherwood) THE COLOR PURPLE So much plot, so many years, so many characters to cram into less than three hours. This beat-the-clock musical adaptation of Alice Walkers Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about Southern black women finding their inner warriors never slows down long enough for you to embrace it. LaChanze leads the vibrant, hard-working cast (2:40). Broadway Theater, 1681 Broadway, at 53rd Street, (212) 239-6200.(Ben Brantley) DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS On paper this musical tale of two mismatched scam artists has an awful lot in common with The Producers. But if you are going to court comparison with giants, you had better be prepared to stand tall. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, starring Jonathan Pryce and Norbert Leo Butz, never straightens out of a slouch (2:35). Imperial Theater, 249 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) * DOUBT, A PARABLE (Pulitzer Prize, Best Play 2005, and Tony Award, Best Play 2005) Set in the Bronx in 1964, this play by John Patrick Shanley is structured as a clash of wills and generations between Sister Aloysius (Eileen Atkins), the head of a parochial school, and Father Flynn (Ron Eldard), the young priest who may or may not be too fond of the boys in his charge. The plays elements bring to mind those tidy topical melodramas that were once so popular. But Mr. Shanley makes subversive use of musty conventions (1:30). Walter Kerr Theater, 219 West 48th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) JERSEY BOYS From grit to glamour with the Four Seasons, directed by the pop repackager Des McAnuff (The Whos Tommy). The real thrill of this shrink-wrapped bio-musical, for those who want something more than recycled chart toppers and a story line poured from a can, is watching the wonderful John Lloyd Young (as Frankie Valli) cross the line from exact impersonation into something far more compelling (2:30). August Wilson Theater, 245 West 52nd Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA Love is a many-flavored thing, from sugary to sour, in Adam Guettel and Craig Lucass encouragingly ambitious and discouragingly unfulfilled new musical. The show soars only in the sweetly bitter songs performed by the wonderful Victoria Clark, as an American abroad (2:15). Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) THE ODD COUPLE Odd is not the word for this couple. How could an adjective suggesting strangeness or surprise apply to a production so calculatedly devoted to the known, the cozy, the conventional? As the title characters in Neil Simons 1965 comedy, directed as if to a metronome by Joe Mantello, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick reprise their star performances from The Producers, and its not a natural fit. Dont even consider killing yourself because the show is already sold out (2:10). Brooks Atkinson Theater, 256 West 47th Street, (212) 307-4100. (Brantley) * RABBIT HOLE Thanks to a certain former American president, it has become almost impossible to say that you feel someone elses pain without its sounding like a punchline. Yet the sad, sweet release of David Lindsay-Abaires wrenching play, about the impact of the death of a small child, lies precisely in the access it allows to the pain of others, in its meticulously mapped empathy. With an emotionally transparent five-member cast led by Cynthia Nixon and Tyne Daly, directed by Daniel Sullivan, this anatomy of grief doesnt so much jerk tears as tap them (2:10). Biltmore Theater, 261 West 47th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) SPAMALOT (Tony Award, Best Musical 2005) This staged re-creation of the mock-medieval movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail is basically a singing scrapbook for Python fans. Such a good time is being had by so many people that this fitful, eager celebration of inanity and irreverence has found a large and lucrative audience (2:20). Shubert Theater, 225 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) * SWEENEY TODD Sweet dreams, New York. This thrilling new revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheelers musical, with Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone leading a cast of 10 who double as their own musicians, burrows into your thoughts like a campfire storyteller who knows what really scares you. The inventive director John Doyle aims his pared-down interpretation at the squirming child in everyone who wants to have his worst fears both confirmed and dispelled (2:30). Eugene ONeill Theater, 230 West 49th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) * THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE The happy news for this happy-making little musical is that the move to larger quarters has dissipated none of its quirky charm. William Finns score sounds plumper and more rewarding than it did on Off Broadway, providing a sprinkling of sugar to complement the sass in Rachel Sheinkins zinger-filled book. The performances are flawless. Gold stars all around (1:45). Circle in the Square, 1633 Broadway, at 50th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Isherwood) Off Broadway * ABIGAILS PARTY Scott Elliotts thoroughly delectable production of Mike Leighs 1977 comedy about domestic discord among the British middle classes. Jennifer Jason Leigh leads a superb ensemble cast as a party hostess who wields the gin bottle like a deadly weapon, resulting in an evening of savagely funny chaos (2:15). Acorn Theater at Theater Row, 410 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 279-4200. (Isherwood) * ALTAR BOYZ This sweetly satirical show about a Christian pop group made up of five potential Teen People cover boys is an enjoyable, silly diversion (1:30). Dodger Stages, Stage 4, 340 West 50th Street, Clinton, (212) 239-6200.(Isherwood) CONFESSIONS OF A MORMON BOY Steven Fales, a sixth-generation Mormon, describes leaving his family and becoming a gay escort in this fairly conventional, although admittedly compelling, piece of confessional theater (1:30). SoHo Playhouse, 15 Vandam Street, between Avenue of the Americas and Varick Street, (212) 691-1555. (Jason Zinoman) DECEMBER FOOLS Sherman Yellen takes a stab at the letters-in-a-drawer play (old letters are discovered, and lives are changed), and things get off to a promising start: a New York matrons disgruntled daughter finds some of Moms old screeds and turns them into weapons. But the play is too long, and some dandy comedy is undercut by some tired melodrama (2:15). Abington Theater Arts Complex, 312 West 36th Street, (212) 868-4444. (Neil Genzlinger) DOG SEES GOD: CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE BLOCKHEAD The Peanuts characters grow up, do drugs and have sex in this dark, disposable parody. Good grief (1:30). Century Center for the Performing Arts, 111 East 15th Street, Flatiron district, (212) 239-6200. (Zinoman) * FORBIDDEN BROADWAY: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT This production features the expected caricatures of ego-driven singing stars. But even more than usual, the show offers an acute list of grievances about the sickly state of the Broadway musical, where, as the lyrics have it, everything old is old again (1:45). 47th Street Theater, 304 West 47th Street, Clinton, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) JUMP/CUT Neena Bebers play about an aspiring filmmakers effort to document his best friends illness limns despair while leaving the audience exhilarated -- by the fierce beauty of Bebers writing, and by a captivating performance by Luke Kirby as the brilliant, charismatic, darkly funny manic-depressive whose inescapable fate is the central mystery of the work (2:10). Julia Miles Theater, 424 West 55th Street, Clinton, (212) 239-6200. (Miriam Horn) * LENNY BRUCE IN HIS OWN WORDS Jason Fisher does an impressive facsimile of this legendary comic in a nostalgic greatest-hits collection of his stand-up routines (1:10). Zipper Theater, 336 West 37th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Zinoman) * THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED Lean, mean and about as deep as a shot glass, Diane the Hollywood agent is just the tonic New York theatergoers need in the depths of an urban winter. Played by Julie White in an irresistible adrenaline rush of a performance, Diane is the archmanipulator in Douglas Carter Beanes tangy fable of fame and its discontents, directed by Scott Ellis. With Neal Huff as a closeted Hollywood star, and Johnny Galecki as the rent boy who loves him (2:10). Second Stage Theater, 307 West 43rd Street, Clinton, (212) 246-4422. (Brantley) RFK This solo show written and starring Jack Holmes is a reasonably accurate historical portrait, but the performance, unfortunately, lacks the charisma and charm that made the real Bobby Kennedy a star (1:35). Culture Project @ 45 Bleecker, 45 Bleecker Street, at Lafayette Street, East Village, (212) 253-9983. (Jonathan Kalb) THE RIGHT KIND OF PEOPLE Satire sans teeth by Charles Grodin about internecine warfare within a Fifth Avenue co-op board. Directed by Chris Smith, the show has the embarrassed air of someone who has just been served a choice steak and misplaced his dentures (1:30). Primary Stages, at 59E59, 59 East 59th Street, (212) 279-4200. (Brantley) * THE SEVEN The wild ride of luckless ol Oedipus -- accidentally offing Dad, marrying Mom, being dissed by the kids -- gets pimped to the nines in this frisky and funny new riff on the classic story. Written by Will Power and directed by Jo Bonney, the show is a freewheeling adaptation of one of the more static, less revered Greek tragedies, Aeschylus Seven Against Thebes: a hip-hop musical comedy-tragedy (2:00). New York Theater Workshop, 79 East Fourth Street, East Village, (212) 239-6200. (Isherwood) * THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL Led by Lois Smith in a heart-wrenching performance, the cast never strikes a false note in Harris Yulins beautifully mounted revival of Horton Footes drama, finding an emotional authenticity in a work largely remembered as a tear-jerking chestnut. This is not to say you should neglect to bring handkerchiefs (1:50). Signature Theater, 555 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 244-7529. (Brantley) Off Off Broadway AVALON Glory Sims Bowens retelling of the Camelot legend from the womens point of view is entertaining but too long and uncertain in tone. The comic moments work better than the earnest ones (2:20). Looking Glass Theater, 422 West 57th Street, Clinton, (212) 352-3101. (Anita Gates) BACK OF THE THROAT An Arab-American playwright (Yussef El Guindi) addressing the harassment of Arab-Americans after 9/11? Interesting. But the play would have been even more interesting if the harassers were something other than cardboard characters out of the J. Edgar Hoover closet (1:15). Flea Theater, 41 White Street, TriBeCa, (212) 352-3101. (Genzlinger) THE BOOK OF THE DUN COW An animal allegory about good and evil, this family musical by Randy Courts and Mark St. Germain is on the didactic side and could use more oomph. Providing some are an electric villain, Micah Bucey, and a warm-voiced mezzo, Carol Hickey. Still, a number of children at a recent performance seemed absorbed: they didnt squirm, they watched (2:15). West End Theater in the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, 263 West 86th Street, (212) 352-3101. (Andrea Stevens) * LEMKINS HOUSE The man who invented the word genocide, Raphael Lemkin, turns out to have an unsettled afterlife in this compelling drama by Catherine Filloux. He learns, through visitations by Tutsis and others, that the international law he campaigned for against genocide may not have accomplished anything. John Daggett is impressive as Lemkin (1:20). 78th Street Theater Lab, 236 West 78th Street, (212) 868-4444. (Genzlinger) PARADISE A mostly articulate drama about an inarticulate young man who may have found Mr. Right or the tipping point that leads him into madness (1:30). Access Theater, 380 Broadway, north of White Street, TriBeCa, (212) 868-4444.( Zinoman) REAL BLACK MEN DONT SIT CROSS-LEGGED ON THE FLOOR The poet and playwright Maliks series of quick, interwoven scenes tracing the lives of African-American men in America, mainly in the last half century, can pack an emotional punch, but it works better as a showcase for some outstanding performances by its eight-member cast than it does as a theater piece (2:00). New Federal Theater, Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street, at Pitt Street, Lower East Side, (212) 279-4200. (Stevens) 25 QUESTIONS FOR A JEWISH MOTHER This is the comediancomedienne is a Style book prohibition/lg Judy Golds fiercely funny monologue, based on her own life as a single Jewish lesbian mother and interviews with more than 50 other Jewish mothers (1:10). Ars Nova, 511 West 54th Street, Clinton, (212).868-4444. closing March 10 !(Phoebe Hoban) * ZOMBOID! (FILM/PERFORMANCe PROJECT #1) O, the heresy of it! Richard Foreman has introduced film into the realm of exquisitely artificial, abstract theater in which he has specialized for four decades. As it turns out, juxtaposing two art forms allows Mr. Foreman to underscore in resonant new ways what he has been saying for years: reality is, well, relative. And he continues to work in a style guaranteed to infect your perceptions for hours after (1:15). Ontological-Hysteric Theater, 131 East 10th Street, East Village, (212) 352-3101. (Brantley) Long-Running Shows AVENUE Q R-rated puppets give lively life lessons (2:10). Golden, 252 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) BEAUTY AND THE BEAST Cartoon made flesh, sort of (2:30). Lunt-Fontanne Theater, 205 West 46th Street, (212) 307-4747. (Brantley) CHICAGO Irrefutable proof that crime pays (2:25). Ambassador Theater, 219 West 49th Street, (212) 239-6200.(Brantley) HAIRSPRAY Fizzy pop, cute kids, large man in a housedress (2:30). Neil Simon Theater, 250 West 52nd Street, (212) 307-4100. (Brantley) THE LION KING Disney on safari, where the big bucks roam (2:45). New Amsterdam Theater, 214 West 42nd Street, (212) 307-4100.(Brantley) MAMMA MIA! The jukebox that devoured Broadway (2:20). Cadillac Winter Garden Theater, 1634 Broadway, at 50th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA Who was that masked man, anyway? (2:30). Majestic Theater, 247 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) THE PRODUCERS The ne plus ultra of showbiz scams (2:45). St. James Theater, 246 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. (Brantley) RENT East Village angst and love songs to die for (2:45). Nederlander Theater, 208 West 41st Street, (212) 307-4100. (Brantley) WICKED Oz revisited, with political corrections (2:45). Gershwin Theater, 222 West 51st Street, (212) 307-4100.(Brantley) Last Chance CHITA RIVERA: THE DANCERS LIFE At 72, Ms. Rivera still has the voice, the attitude and -- oh, yes -- the legs to magnetize all eyes in an audience. If the singing scrapbook of a show that surrounds her is less than electric, there is no denying the electricity of the woman at its center (2:00). Schoenfeld Theater, 236 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200; closing Sunday. (Brantley) * IN THE CONTINUUM Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter are both the authors and the performers of this smart, spirited and disarmingly funny show about two women: one a middle-class mother in Zimbabwe, the other a 19-year-old at loose ends in Los Angeles whose lives are upended by H.I.V. diagnoses. Emphatically not a downer (1:30). Perry Street Theater, 31 Perry Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 868-4444; closing tomorrow. (Isherwood) * MAJOR BANG OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE DIRTY BOMB This disarming exercise in political cabaret demonstrates that laughter in the dark need not be desperate. Written by Kirk Lynn, this multilevel, multiform tale of nuclear anxiety resurrects the sane, inquisitive satiric spirit of the early 1960s, a time when irony was a strategic tool instead of a conditioned reflex. Paul Lazar directs Steve Cuiffo and Maggie Hoffman in a multitude of roles (1:10). St. Anns Warehouse, 38 Water Street, at Dock Street, Brooklyn, (718) 254-8779; closing Sunday. (Brantley) THE WOMAN IN WHITE Bravely flouting centuries of accepted scientific theory, the creators of this adaptation of Wilkie Collinss spine-tingler have set out to prove that the world is flat, after all. This latest offering from Andrew Lloyd Webber, directed by Trevor Nunn, seems to exist entirely in two dimensions, from its computer-generated backdrops to its decorative chess-piece-like characters (2:50). Judy Kuhn replaces Maria Friedman. Marquis Theater, 211 West 45th Street, (212) 307-4100; closing Sunday. (Brantley) Movies Ratings and running times are in parentheses; foreign films have English subtitles. Full reviews of all current releases, movie trailers, showtimes and tickets: nytimes.com/movies. ANNAPOLIS (PG-13, 108 minutes) Annapolis is so gung-ho about the United States Naval Academys ability to turn boys into fighting men and rebels into scrappy team players that it could easily be confused with a military recruiting film. (Stephen Holden) BIG MOMMAS HOUSE 2 (PG-13, 98 minutes) Martin Lawrence is back in fat-lady drag in this inconsequential sequel for undemanding moviegoers. Mr. Lawrence makes the most of the incongruity of a manly F.B.I. agent posing as a nanny in floral-print dresses, but the humor doesnt go much beyond oversize underwear and a tequila-drinking dog. (Anita Gates) * BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (R, 134 minutes) Annie Proulxs heartbreaking story of two ranch hands who fall in love while herding sheep in 1963 has been faithfully translated onto the screen in Ang Lees landmark film. Heath Ledger (in a great performance worthy of Brando at his peak) and Jake Gyllenhaal bring them fully alive. (Holden) * BUBBLE (R, 72 minutes) A rigorously minimalist story about three factory workers, all played by nonprofessionals, whose placid existence is shattered after two in the little group become romantically linked. Violence liberates the three from the bubble of their existence, much as creative experimentation has periodically liberated the movies director, Steven Soderbergh, from the prison of commercial mainstream filmmaking. (Manohla Dargis) * CACHÉ (HIDDEN) (R, 121 minutes, in French) Michael Haneke, one of the most elegantly sadistic European directors working today, deposits his audience at the intersection of voyeurism and paranoia in this tense, politically tinged psychological thriller about vengeance and injustice. Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil are in top form as an affluent Parisian couple menaced by mysterious drawings and videotapes. (A. O. Scott) * CURIOUS GEORGE (G, 90 minutes) In a refreshing departure from the animal heroes of most recent childrens movies, this Curious George doesnt rap, punch out bad guys or emit rapid-fire commentary on pop culture. George is all monkey -- a quality that will not only appeal to children, but also come as a great relief to parents who grew up with the classic stories by Margret and H. A. Rey. With top-drawer voice talent, including Will Ferrell, Drew Barrymore and Dick Van Dyke; original songs by Jack Johnson; and old-fashioned two-dimensional animation, Curious George is an unexpected delight. (Dana Stevens) DESERT WIND (No rating, 80 minutes, in French) In March 2004, the Swiss documentarist François Kohler took 13 men -- Canadian, French, Swiss and Belgian -- on a two-week trek in the Tunisian Sahara. The group was accompanied by a Swiss psychotherapist, as well as by a team of Tunisian guides with pack camels. The purpose of the trip: to stage a kind of mens encounter group in the desert, encouraging the participants to break away from received notions of masculinity and to talk about their desires, anxieties and deepest fears. Though it generates its share of unintentional giggles, Desert Wind does manage to take us to a seldom-visited place: the hidden corners of the straight male mind. (Stevens) FILM GEEK (No rating, 78 minutes) Scotty Pelk (Malik Malkasian) is a diminutive, socially addled young man whose sole interest in life is the cinema. When hes fired from his job for, in essence, being too annoying, Scotty goes on a downward spiral, begging for work at every video store in town and obsessively courting a pretty film fan (Tyler Gannon) despite her increasingly humiliating rejection of him. Despite this semiautobiographical films likable premise, Scotty Pelk, as written by James Westby and played by Mr. Malkasian, is actually so irritating, so genuinely hard to take, that like the rest of the characters in the movie, we soon find ourselves itching to get away from him. (Stevens) FINAL DESTINATION 3 (R, 92 minutes) Its more dead teenagers and lunatic determinism in this grim third installment of the enjoyably preposterous Final Destination franchise. (Nathan Lee) FIREWALL (PG-13, 100 minutes) A thrill-challenged thriller starring Harrison Ford and directed by Richard Loncraine that manages to entertain mildly only because it traffics in all the familiar action-movie clichés, giving filmgoers ample opportunity to test their action-movie I.Q.s. (Dargis) GLORY ROAD (PG, 109 minutes) The true story, more or less, of the 1966 Texas Western College basketball team -- the first all-black starting five to play in an N.C.A.A. final. By the numbers, but inspiring all the same. (Scott) * GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK. (PG, 90 minutes) George Clooney, with impressive rigor and intelligence, examines the confrontation between the CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow (a superb David Strathairn) and Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (himself). Plunging you into a smoky, black-and-white world of political paranoia and commercial pressure, the film is a history lesson and a passionate essay on power, responsibility and the ethics of journalism. (Scott) * HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE (PG-13, 150 minutes) Childhood ends for the young wizard with the zigzag scar in the latest addition to the Potter saga, even as the director Mike Newell keeps its British eccentricity, fatalism and steady-on pluck irresistibly intact. (Dargis) HOODWINKED (PG, 81 minutes) Little Red Riding Hood is deconstructed in this sub-Shrek bummer, the latest collaboration between computers and cynicism. (Lee) IMAGINE ME & YOU (R, 93 minutes) A bland romance from the British writer and director Ol Parker about a woman (Piper Perabo) whos fast-tracking down the straight and narrow when the florist-next-door (Lena Headey) throws up a roadblock. (Dargis) * KING KONG (PG-13, 180 minutes) Peter Jacksons remake is, almost by definition, too much -- too long, too big, too stuffed with characters and effects-driven set pieces -- but it is also remarkably nimble and sweet. Going back to the Depression-era setting of the 1933 original, Mr. Jacksons film is as much a tribute to the old seat-of-the-pants spirit of early motion pictures as it is an exercise in technological bravura. Naomi Watts as the would-be movie star Ann Darrow and Andy Serkis as the big monkey who loves her have a rapport that gives the spectacle the pathos and sweetness it needs, and help to turn a brute spectacle into a pop tragedy. (Scott) THE LAST HOLIDAY (PG-13, 112 minutes) Based on a 1950 British film, Wayne Wangs comedy about a gentle soul who learns to live only after learning of her imminent death is one of those generic wish-fulfillment flicks in which the soul in question actualizes her goals through perseverance and pluck. The star Queen Latifah charms, but even she cant gold-plate junk. (Dargis) * MANDERLAY (R, 138 minutes) To warm to Manderlay, the chilly second installment of the Danish filmmaker Lars von Triers yet-to-be-completed three-part Brechtian allegory examining American history, you must be willing to tolerate the derision and moral arrogance of a snide European intellectual thumbing his nose at American barbarism. Those willing to endure his scorn are in for a bracing satire of the legacy of slavery in the United States. (Holden) * MATCH POINT (R, 124 minutes) Woody Allens best in years, and one of his best ever. Beneath the dazzling, sexy surface, this tale of social climbing in London (brilliantly acted by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Scarlett Johansson and Emily Mortimer) is ice cold and pitch black, which curiously enough makes it a superior diversion. (Scott) THE MATADOR (R, 96 minutes) Pithy remarks put into the mouth of a star (Pierce Brosnan) playing against type impart a greasy sheen of sophistication to this weightless, amoral romp about a professional hit man facing a midlife crisis. (Holden) MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA (PG-13, 144 minutes) Think As the Geisha Turns, with devious rivals, swoonworthy swains, a jaw-dropping dance number recycled from Madonnas Drowned World tour and much clinching, panting and scheming. Directed by Rob Marshall from the Arthur Golden book, and starring Ziyi Zhang, Gong Li and Michelle Yeoh. (Dargis) * MUNICH (R, 164 minutes) With his latest, Steven Spielberg forgoes the emotional bullying and pop thrills that come so easily to him to tell the story of a campaign of vengeance that Israel purportedly brought against Palestinian terrorists in the wake of the 1972 Olympics. An unsparingly brutal look at two peoples all but drowning in a sea of their own blood, Munich is by far the toughest film of the directors career, and the most anguished. (Dargis) NANNY McPHEE (PG, 99 minutes) In the endearing but somewhat scatterbrained British film Nanny McPhee, Emma Thompson creates an indelible character reminiscent of the pre-Disney Mary Poppins working benign magic to shape up an unruly brood of children. (Holden) PINK PANTHER (PG, 92 minutes) Steve Martin steps into the shoes of Peter Sellers in this intermittently witty revival of a vintage comedy franchise. Though finely honed, Mr. Martins portrayal of the idiotic French police inspector Jacques Clouseau cant match Sellerss viscerally funny one. (Holden) * PRIDE & PREJUDICE (PG, 128 minutes) In this sumptuous, extravagantly romantic adaptation of Jane Austens 1813 novel, Keira Knightleys Elizabeth Bennet exudes a radiance that suffuses the movie. This is a banquet of high-end comfort food perfectly cooked and seasoned to Anglophilic tastes. (Holden) ROVING MARS (G, 40 minutes) Mars. IMAX. If you want to grow up to be an astronaut, prepare to bliss out. (Lee) * SYRIANA (R, 122 minutes) Ambitious, angry and complicated, Stephen Gaghans second film tackles terrorism, American foreign policy, global trade and the oil business through four interwoven stories. There are at least a half-dozen first-rate performances, and Mr. Gaghan, who wrote and directed, reinvents the political thriller as a vehicle for serious engagement with the state of the world. (Scott) TAMARA (R, 98 minutes) Low in budget as well as ambition, this Carrie knockoff is a movie of few innovations but one genuine surprise: the inability of the title character, an evil sorceress, to manage in high heels. (Lee) THROUGH THE FIRE (No rating, 103 minutes) Jonathan Hocks unwaveringly upbeat documentary follows the basketball sensation Sebastian Telfair, a senior at Lincoln High School on Coney Island, as he chooses between the University of Louisville and the N.B.A. Yet behind the cheering and popping flashbulbs lurks another, much darker movie, one that questions the relationship between sneaker manufacturers and financially deprived kids with exceptional talent. (Jeannette Catsoulis) TRANSAMERICA (R, 103 minutes) Felicity Huffmans performance as a preoperative transsexual on a cross-country journey with her long-lost son is sensitive and convincing, and helps the picture rise above its indie road-picture clichés. (Scott) * TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY (R, 91 minutes) Michael Winterbottom both confirms and refutes the assumption that Laurence Sternes 18th-century masterpiece of digression could never be made into a movie by making a movie about the making of such a movie. Steve Coogan is wonderful as Tristram, Tristrams father and himself, though Rob Brydon steals more than a few of Mr. Coogans scenes. (Scott) UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION (R, 106 minutes) In this sequel to Underworld (2003), the writer and director Len Wiseman and the writer Danny McBride pick up the story of the vampire Selene (Kate Beckinsale) and the vampire/werewolf hybrid Michael (Scott Speedman) as they race to prevent the release of an imprisoned über-werewolf. With leads who strain to manage one facial expression between them, and a cinematographer who shoots everything through the same steel-blue filter, Underworld: Evolution is little more than a monotonous barrage of computer-generated fur and fangs. (Catsoulis) WALK THE LINE (PG-13, 138 minutes) Johnny Cash gets the musical biopic treatment in this moderately entertaining, never quite convincing chronicle of his early years. Joaquin Phoenix, sweaty, inarticulate and intense as Cash, is upstaged by Reese Witherspoon, who tears into the role of June Carter (Cashs creative partner long before she became his second wife) with her usual charm, pluck and intelligence. (Scott) A YEAR WITHOUT LOVE (No rating, 95 minutes, in Spanish) Anahí Berneris debut film recounts in uncomfortable close-up the day-to-day activities of a youngish gay writer from Buenos Aires afflicted with AIDS, who becomes involved in S-and-M. Based on the diaries of the real Pablo Peréz (he is also co-writer of the script), the film reveals rare insight into the endurance and treatment of illness, but is never fully arresting. (Laura Kern) * NEIL YOUNG: HEART OF GOLD (PG, 103 minutes) Filled with country memories, bluesy regret and familiar and piercing sentiment, Jonathan Demmes concert film sounds like quintessential Neil Young, which, depending on your home catalog, will be either an enormous turn-on or turnoff. (Dargis) Film Series BEST OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA FILM FESTIVAL (Through Wednesday) BAMcinemateks festival of independent black films from around the world begins today. This weekends features include Tim Greenes Boy Called Twist (2004), a South African version of Oliver Twist, which won the audience award at the Toronto Film Festival; Gavin Hoods Tsotsi (2005), based on Athol Fugards book about a young gang leader who steals a car but doesnt notice the baby in the back seat; and Faces of Change (2005), Michèle Stephensons documentary about activists in five countries. Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, (718) 636-4100; $10. (Anita Gates) DOCUMENTARY FORTNIGHT EXPANDED (Through March 13) The Museum of Modern Arts exhibition of contemporary nonfiction films runs five weeks this year. It continues this weekend with Michael Culpepper and Nikki Drapers Bachelor Farmer (2005), about gay men living in a small Idaho town; Vit Klusak and Filip Remundas Czech Dream (2004), about a promotional campaign for a nonexistent supermarket; and numerous shorts. 11 West 53rd Street, Manhattan, (212) 708-9400; $10. (Gates) FASSBINDER (Through Feb. 26) IFC Centers Weekend Classics Program honoring Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1946-82) continues this weekend with The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972), a drama about an arrogant fashion designer in love with a young model. 323 Avenue of the Americas, at West Third Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 924-7771; $10.75. (Gates) GET ANIMATED WITH WALLACE & GROMIT (Through Feb. 24) The Museum of the Moving Image is presenting a week of matinee screenings of Wallace and Gromit movies, starring Nick Parks animated inventor and his newspaper-reading dog. The program begins on Sunday with the short films A Close Shave, The Wrong Trousers and A Grand Day Out. The first two won Oscars for best animated short. 35th Avenue at 36th Street, Astoria, Queens, (718) 784-0077; $10. (Gates) JOSEPHINE BAKER ON FILM (Through Feb. 26) The Museum of the Moving Image celebrates Bakers centennial with a 10-day retrospective of her films. It begins tonight with the North American premiere of La Revue des Revues (1927), including previously unseen film of Bakers nightclub act. The film will be introduced by Geoffrey Holder. Marc Allégrets Zouzou (1934), the story of a poor girl who wants to be a star, will be shown tomorrow afternoon, introduced by Jean-Claude Baker. 35th Avenue at 36th Street, Astoria, Queens, (718) 784-0077; $10. (Gates) RECENT FILMS FROM SWEDEN (Through Wednesday) Scandinavia Houses program of Swedish features continues with Illusive Tracks (2003), Peter Dalles comic thriller, set at the end of World War II, about a writer determined to help the Germans start over. 58 Park Avenue, at 38th Street, (212) 879-9779; $8. (Gates) Pop Full reviews of recent concerts: nytimes.com/music. ANTI-SOCIAL MUSIC (Thursday) The Anti-Social Music is a forum created to nurture a hybrid chamber music that is filtered though a punk sensibility, drawing on the talents of musicians in local bands like the Hold Steady, Ida, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Gang Gang Dance, World/Inferno Friendship Society and Balkan Beat Box. 8 p.m., Merkin Concert Hall, 129 West 67th Street, Manhattan, (212) 501-3330; $10. (Laura Sinagra) BOBBY BARE JR., TEDDY THOMPSON (Tuesday) Bobby Bare Jr. of Nashville is a blunt songwriter who doesnt mince words. His music tweaks Americana with sounds from the new weird America. Another musical scion, Teddy Thompson, looks to distinguish himself from his folk-rocker parents, Richard and Linda, while still honoring their legacy. His baritone voice sounds like his fathers without the bite, not always a bad thing. 8:30 p.m., Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston Street, at Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, (212) 260-4700; $10. (Sinagra) BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB, ELEFANT (Tomorrow) Moving lately from the surly, noisy sound its name implies to a rootsier realm, the Los Angeles rockers Black Rebel Motorcycle Club now play harmonica and strum away on acoustic guitars. Elefant mines the same dark post-rock vein as Interpol, but without the tension and heft. 6 p.m., Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, East Village, (212) 353-1600; $22 in advance, $25 at the door (sold out). (Sinagra) BUCKWHEAT ZYDECO (Tomorrow) Stanley (Buckwheat) Dural Jr. is a zydeco accordionist whom rockers can love. He bolsters the hefty sound of his accordion with a horn section, and his sets include plenty of gutsy blues tunes, along with Cajun two-steps and waltzes. The band is an indefatigable party generator. 8 and 10:30 p.m., B. B. Kings Blues Club and Grill, 243 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, (212) 997-4144; $20.50 in advance, $25 at the door. (Jon Pareles) GENO DELAFOSE AND FRENCH ROCKIN BOOGIE (Sunday). Geno Delafose, the son of the zydeco accordionist John Delafose, holds on to the traditions of an older generation, pumping waltzes and two-steps and blues on his button accordion, keeping the old bayou flavor. 7:30 to 11 p.m., with free zydeco dance lessons at 6. Connollys on 45th, 121 West 45th Street, Manhattan, (212) 597-5126; $22 (Pareles). THE DIRTBOMBS (Tonight and tomorrow night) The Detroit garage rocker Mick Collinss outfit tears through its live sets, unafraid of dissonance and rough edges. Mr. Collins has a more resonant voice than some of his shouty contemporaries. Tonight at 9:30, Maxwells, 1039 Washington Street, Hoboken, N.J., (201) 653-1703; $13. Tomorrow at 8 p.m., Southpaw, 125 Fifth Avenue, near Sterling Place, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 230-0236; $13. (Sinagra) LUDOVICO EINAUDI AND BALLAKE SISSOKO (Wednesday) The Italian composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi and the Malian kora player Ballake Sissoko collaborate on a repertory including Malian music, blues and Caribbean styles. Each will play individually; then they will perform together. 9.30 pm. Joes Pub, at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, at Astor Place, East Village, (212) 239-6200; $20. (Sinagra) GZA, DJ MUGGS (Sunday) The GZA (Genius) from the Wu Tang Clan and DJ Muggs from Cyress Hill collaborate for some Brooklyn and Staten Island hip-hop bonding. 8 p.m., B.B. Kings Blues Club and Grill, 243 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, (212) 997-4144; $19 in advance, $22 at the door. (Sinagra) IDA, JENNIFER OCONNOR (Tuesday) With its dreamy folk-pop, the trio Ida combines aching harmonies and a supple sense of play. The local songwriter Jennifer OConnor is also on the bill. 7:30 p.m., Rothko, 116 Suffolk Street, at Rivington Street, Lower East Side, (212) 475-7088; $10. (Sinagra) MASON JENNINGS (Thursday) Folk-rock from a songwriter in the John Mayer and Dave Mason mold, sometimes quiet and plaintive, sometimes working up to jam-band peaks. 8 p.m., Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, near the Bowery, Lower East Side, (212) 533-2111; $18 in advance, $20 at the door (sold out). (Pareles) LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO, VUSI MAHLASELA (Tomorrow) The choir Ladysmith Black Mambazo is one of South Africas long-running musical treasures, melding a tradition of Zulu harmony with imported gospel and soul. In the groups dynamic stalking style, Joseph Shabalalas companionable tenor hovers above the groups resonant, bass-heavy harmonies, which build from a cavernous hush to fervent, driving peaks. Vusi Mahlasela was one of the most important songwriters of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, not just for his political courage but also for his sterling voice and for three-chord rockers that make earnest sentiments bounce. 8 p.m., New Jersey Performing Arts Center, 1 Center Street, Newark, (888) 466-5722; $17 to $50. (Pareles) PHIL LESH & FRIENDS (Tonight through Sunday) The Grateful Deads repertory and approach to jamming are Hydra-headed, and Phil Lesh, the Deads bassist, always recruits skillful friends for his own band to conjure the sparkling unpredictability of the Deads finest moments. 6:30 p.m., Hammerstein Ballroom, 311 West 34th Street, (212) 564-4882, $37.50 and $49.50. (Pareles) MARTINA MCBRIDE (Tomorrow) With one of finest vocal tones in pop country, Martina McBride can conjure longing while still projecting comfortable confidence. 8 p.m., Radio City Music Hall, 1260 Avenue of the Americas, at 50th Street, (212) 632-4000; $32.50 to $80. (Sinagra) NEW YORK DOLLS, OPTIMO, TIM SWEENEY (Sunday) This Columbus Day Eve party features a live set by the local glam-legends the New York Dolls and sets by the eclectic dance music DJ Optimo and Tim Sweeney from the Brooklyn dance-rock favorites DFA. 10 p.m., Avalon, 47 West 20th Street, Chelsea, (212) 807-7780; $25. (Sinagra) ORIENTAL MUSIC ENSEMBLE OF THE EDWARD SAID CONSERVATORY of music (Wednesday) The Oriental Music Ensemble is a Palestinian instrumental group playing original compositions in the Arab classical tradition and new arrangements of folk standards. 7 p.m., CUNY Graduate Center, Harold M. Proshansky Auditorium, 365 Fifth Avenue, near 34th Street, (212) 817-7570; $20. (Sinagra) DAVID PAJO, TARA JANE ONEIL (Sunday) David Pajos meandering guitar forays have graced bands like Slint and Zwan. Tara Jane ONeil, a veteran of the 1990s Louisville indie rock scene, makes uncompromising lo-fi music. 8 p.m., Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard Street, TriBeCa, (212) 219-3132; $8. (Sinagra) LAS RUBIAS DEL NORTE (Tomorrow) Led by the singers Allyssa Lamb and Emily Hurst, this band mixes musicians from the United States, France and Colombia who mine their Latin heritage in the performance of boleros, cha cha chas, cumbias, huaynos and cowboy songs. 10 p.m., Barbès, 376 Ninth Street, at Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 965-9177; $10. (Sinagra) DUNCAN SHEIK (Wednesday) The mild, jangly songwriter who had a 1996 hit with the pleasantly numbing Barely Breathing plays new songs with a band. 8 p.m., Frederick P. Rose Hall, , Broadway at 60th Street, (212) 258-9800; $20 to $100. (Sinagra) STEEL PULSE (Tuesday) This British group has been doing its politically outspoken Rasta roots reggae thing for more than three decades. 8 p.m., Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, at 15th Street, Manhattan, (212) 777-6800; $27.50 in advance, $30 at the door. (Sinagra) TRIO JOUBRAN (Sunday) The oud virtuoso brothers of Trio Jourban come from Nazareth and play Palestinian traditionals and flamenco. 7:30 p.m., Zankel Hall, at Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $27 to $32. (Sinagra) CHRIS WHITLEY CELEBRATION (Tonight) This tribute show celebrating the life and work of the singer-songwriter and guitarist Chris Whitley, who died in November at 45, will feature the Dan Whitley Band, as well as guest musicians. 8, the Baggot Inn, 82 West Third Street, West Village, (212) 477-0622; $10. (Sinagra) WOLFMOTHER (Monday) Part of a wave of whats been dubbed heritage metal, the Australian trio Wolfmother strives to sound like Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer. 10 p.m., Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston Street, at Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, (212) 260-4700; $10 (sold out). (Sinagra) YEAH YEAH YEAHS, BLOOD ON THE WALL (Thursday) The fashion-forward singer Karen O and her post-punk Yeah Yeah Yeahs new material moves further away from the precision noise-rock of their past and spotlights more singing than forceful declaration. The shaggy Brooklyn trio Blood on the Wall, fronted by the guitarist and vocalist Brad Shanks and his sister, the bassist and vocalist Courtney Shanks, make hip-shaking rock with a touch of Midwestern-gothic twang. 8 p.m., Maxwells, 1039 Washington Street, Hoboken, N.J., (201) 653-1703; (sold out). (Sinagra) ZAGNUT CIRKUS ORKESTAR (Tonight) The accordionist Matthew Fass leads this six-piece Balkan brass band in music combining Greek, Turkish, Middle Eastern, Roma and jazz. This night includes basic dance instruction. 7:30 p.m., Hungarian House, 213 East 82nd Street, Manhattan, www.nycfolkdance.org; $10. (Sinagra) Cabaret Full reviews of recent cabaret shows: nytimes.com/music. BARBARA CARROLL (Sunday) Even when swinging out, this Lady of a Thousand Songs remains an impressionist with special affinities for Thelonious Monk and bossa nova. 2 p.m., Algonquin Hotel, Oak Room, 59 West 44th Street, Manhattan, (212) 419-9331; $55, including brunch at noon. (Stephen Holden) UTE LEMPER (Tonight and tomorrow night, and Tuesday through Thursday) This cabaret diva, who sings a mostly pan-European, heavily Germanic program reminds us that cabaret can be dangerous (but not hazardous to her health) when infused with politics. 8:45 p.m., with additional shows tonight and tomorrow night at 10:45, Cafe Carlyle, at the Carlyle Hotel, 35 East 76th Street, Manhattan, (212) 744-1600; $85 tonight and tomorrow night, $75 Tuesday through Thursday. (Holden) MAUDE MAGGART (Tonight and tomorrow night, and Tuesday through Thursday) In her show of love songs, most from the 1940s, this bewitching, eerie-voiced nostalgist evokes a film noir bad girl with a romantic heart. 9 p.m., with additional shows tonight and tomorrow night at 11:30, Algonquin Hotel, Oak Room, 59 West 44th Street, Manhattan, (212) 419-9331; $50, with a $20 minimum, or $50 prix fixe dinner at the early shows tonight and tomorrow. (Holden) ANNIE ROSS (Tomorrow) Cool, funny, swinging and indestructible, this 75-year-old singer and sometime actress exemplifies old-time hip in its most generous incarnation. 7 p.m., Dannys Skylight Room, 346 West 46th Street, Clinton, (212) 265-8133; $25, with a $12 minimum. (Holden) Jazz Full reviews of recent jazz concerts: nytimes.com/music. YURI BASHMET AND IGOR BUTMAN (Wednesday) Mr. Butman is a saxophonist and one of Russias top jazz musicians, and Mr. Bashmet is a highly regarded classical violist; they meet here in the name of a jazz-meets-classical crossover, performing Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and a Jazz Suite for Viola, Saxophone, Piano and Orchestra by Igor Raykhelson. 8 p.m., Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60th Street and Broadway, (212) 721-6500; $70.50 and $80.50. (Nate Chinen) TIM BERNES PARAPHRASE (Thursday) This trio, led by the alto saxophonist Tim Berne, engages in an interplay thats unscripted but hardly formless; as on the recent live album Pre-emptive Denial (Screwgun), Mr. Berne has restlessly creative companions in Drew Gress on bass and Tom Rainey on drums. 8 and 10 p.m., Jimmys Restaurant, 43 East Seventh Street, East Village, (212) 982-3006; cover, $10, with a one-drink minimum. (Chinen) TAYLOR HO BYNUM SEXTET (Wednesday) Mr. Bynum is a strong cornetist and serious-minded composer; polyphony is the chief emphasis in his sextet, which includes Matt Bauder on tenor saxophone and clarinets, Mary Halvorson and Evan OReilly on guitars, Tomas Fujiwara on drums, and Jessica Pavone on viola and bass. (An earlier set, at 8 p.m., will feature another sextet, led by Ms. Pavone.) 10 p.m., Barbès, 376 Ninth Street, at Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 965-9177; cover, $8. (Chinen) JOEY CALDERAZZO TRIO (Tuesday through Thursday) Mr. Calderazzo is an energetic and probing pianist best known for his work with Branford Marsalis; but he has led his share of strong trios, in a McCoy Tyner vein. 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-2232; cover, $20.(Chinen) CYRUS CHESTNUT AND ERIC REED (Through Sunday) Two stellar, straight-ahead pianists share a stage, a repertory and a rhythm section (Gerald Cannon on bass, and Willie Jones III on drums). 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., with an 11:30 set tonight and tomorrow night, Dizzys Club Coca-Cola, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60th Street and Broadway, (212) 258-9595; cover, $30, with a minimum of $10 at tables, $5 at the bar.(Chinen) JIMMY COBBS MOBB (Tonight and tomorrow) Mr. Cobb, a masterly hard-bop drummer, has served as a mentor to many young musicians via this band; one, the guitarist Peter Bernstein, takes the melodic lead on this engagement. 9 p.m., 11 p.m. and 12:30 a.m., Smoke, 2751 Broadway, at 106th Street, (212) 864-6662; cover, $25. (Chinen) GEORGE COLEMAN QUARTET (Tonight and tomorrow night) Fluent hard-bop from a tenor saxophonist with a soulfully modernistic style and a solid group featuring the pianist Anthony Wonsey. 9 and 11, Birdland, 315 West 44th Street, Clinton, (212) 581-3080; cover, $30, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) DAVE DOUGLAS AND KEYSTONE (Tomorrow) Keystone (Greenleaf), the most recent cross-disciplinary opus from the trumpeter Dave Douglas, imagines a vividly contemporary soundtrack for the silent films of Fatty Arbuckle; in this New York premiere, Mr. Douglas leads a sextet replete with saxophone, keyboards, turntables, bass and drums. 8:30 p.m., Zankel Hall, at Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $27 and $32. (Chinen) SONNY FORTUNE QUARTET (Tonight and tomorrow) Since the 1960s, countless saxophonists have adopted the methodology of John Coltrane, but few have captured his restless spirit; Mr. Fortune is chief among the ones who have. 8 and 10 p.m. and midnight, Sweet Rhythm, 88 Seventh Avenue South, at Bleecker Street, West Village, (212) 255-3626; cover, $20, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) BERNARD HERRMANNS MUSIC FOR THE 21ST CENTURY (Monday) The iconic film scores of Bernard Herrman -- not only his work with Hitchcock, but also with Truffaut, Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma -- should serve as fine fodder for the clarinetist and saxophonist Marty Ehrlich, the pianist Ted Rosenthal, the guitarist Brad Shepik, the bassist Greg Cohen and the drummer Erik Charlston; this performance is a prelude to the groups premiere in London with full orchestral backing. 9:30 p.m., Joes Pub, at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, at Astor Place, East Village, (212) 539-8778; cover, $15 in advance, $18 at the door, with a two-drink minimum.(Chinen) JOHN HOLLENBECKS LARGE ENSEMBLE (Tonight and tomorrow night) The percussionist and composer John Hollenbeck imbues this excellent orchestra -- its not exactly a big band -- with thoughtful progressivism, harmonic depth and a twinge of irreverent humor. 8, the Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 255-5793, www.thekitchen.org; $10. (Chinen) CHARLIE HUNTER TRIO (Through Sunday) Mr. Hunters eight-string-guitar wizardry and loping groove have both been enshrined in jam band culture, a fact that can overshadow his harmonic sophistication. He brings everything to the table in his band with the tenor saxophonist John Ellis and the drummer Derrek Phillips. (In a late set, at 11:30 p.m., Mr. Ellis is to lead a trio of his own.) 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-2232; cover, $20 and $25. (Chinen) JAVON JACKSON QUARTET (Wednesday through Feb. 25) Mr. Jackson tips his hat to one of his tenor saxophone forebears, Dexter Gordon, with the pianist George Cables and the bassist Rufus Reid -- partners in Gordons final working band -- and the venerable drummer Jimmy Cobb. 9 and 11 p.m., Birdland, 315 West 44th Street, Clinton, (212) 581-3080; cover, $30, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) LOS ANGELES: CENTRAL AVENUE BREAKDOWN (Thursday through Feb. 25) Continuing its salute to American jazz cities, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra toasts the midcentury heyday of the Los Angeles scene; few living musicians can recall that milieu better than the arranger Gerald Wilson and the saxophonist Plas Johnson, who are both featured here. 8 p.m., Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60th Street and Broadway, (212) 721-6500, www.jalc.org; $30 to $130. (Chinen) MALABY/SANCHEZ/RAINEY (Tomorrow) A collective trio that treads a middle ground between lyricism and abstraction, with Tony Malaby on saxophones, Angelica Sanchez on piano and Tom Rainey on drums. 9 p.m., Cornelia Street Cafe, 29 Cornelia Street, West Village, 212 989-9319; cover, $10, with a one-drink minimum. (Chinen) BILL McHENRY QUARTET (Through Sunday) Both as a tenor saxophonist and a composer, Mr. McHenry heeds a patiently exploratory style; he often lets the focus shift to the harmonically advanced guitar playing of Ben Monder, the broadly dynamic bass playing of Reid Anderson and the sparse, intense drumming of Paul Motian. 9 and 11 p.m., Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, at 11th Street, West Village, (212) 255-4037; cover, $25, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) ANDY MIDDLETON (Wednesday) Mr. Middleton, an accomplished composer as well as a smart post-bop tenor saxophonist, unveils his new Muir Woods Suite, played by an eight-piece group including the trombonist Alan Ferber, the alto saxophonist Sheila Cooper and the pianist Henry Hey. 9 and 10:30 p.m., Jazz Gallery, 290 Hudson Street, at Spring Street, South Village, (212) 242-1063; cover, $12; $10 for members. (Chinen) QUINSIN NACHOFFS MAGIC NUMBERS (Thursday) Magic Numbers (Songlines) is an impressive Third Stream effort by Quinsin Nachoff, a Toronto-based saxophonist and composer. Making his New York debut, Mr. Nachoff will enlist the personnel from the album: Mark Helias on bass, Jim Black on drums, and a string quartet led by the violinist Nathalie Bonin. 8 p.m., Tonic, 107 Norfolk Street, near Delancey Street, Lower East Side, (212) 358-7501; cover, $10. (Chinen) CECIL PAYNE SEXTET (Tonight and tomorrow night) Now in his 80s, Mr. Payne ranks as one of the best baritone saxophonists jazz has ever produced; his powerhouse hard-bop band features the pianist Harold Mabern and the trumpeter Jim Rotondi. 8 and 9:45 p.m., Kitano Hotel, 66 Park Avenue, at 38th Street, (212) 885-7119; cover, $20, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) JEREMY PELT QUartet (Tuesday through Feb. 26) The clarion tone and preternatural poise of Mr. Pelts trumpet playing have earmarked him as a rising star in the jazz mainstream; as on his most recent album Identity (MaxJazz), he plays here with the pianist Frank LoCrasto, the bassist Vicente Archer and the drummer Eric McPherson. 9 and 11 p.m., Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, at 11th Street, West Village, (212) 255-4037; cover, $20 to $25, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen) BEN PEROWSKY QUARTET (Sunday) As a drummer, Mr. Perowsky favors headlong propulsion, but he also has a contemplative side; this four-piece band, with Chris Speed on clarinet, Ted Reichman on accordion and Drew Gress on bass, conjures elevated atmospherics with a globe-trotting feel. 8 p.m., Barbès, 376 Ninth Street, at Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 965-9177; cover, $8. (Chinen) PITTSBURGH: FROM THE HEART OF STEELTOWN (Tonight and tomorrow night) This tribute to Pittsburghs jazz legacy takes place in two spaces simultaneously: the Rose Theater, where Wynton Marsalis leads the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in a programmatic salute, joined by the vibraphonist Steve Nelson and the drummer Jeff (Tain) Watts; and the Allen Room, at 7:30, where a small group fronted by the tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander recreates the soul-jazz of Stanley Turrentine. 8, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60th Street and Broadway, (212) 721-6500, www.jalc.org; $30 to $130 for Rose Hall, $40 to $130 for the Allen Room. (Chinen) SPANISH HARLEM ORCHESTRA (Tuesday through Feb. 26) Spit-and-polish salsa from spirited players, led by the highly regarded pianist Oscar Hernández. 8 and 10:30 p.m., Blue Note, 131 West Third Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 475-8592; cover, $30 at tables, with a $5 minimum, and $20 at the bar, with a one-drink minimum. (Chinen) VISION COLLABORATION NIGHTS (Thursday through Feb. 26) This scrappy mini-festival pairs avant-garde choreographers and dancers with like-minded musicians; among the reasons to attend this year is the omnipresence of Kidd Jordan, a gutsy tenor saxophonist and musical patriarch from New Orleans. Thursday through Feb. 25, from 7:30 to 10, Feb. 26,from 5 to 7 p.m., 14th Street Y, 344 East 14th Street, East Village, (212) 696-6681, www.visionfestival.org; $20; $10 for students with ID. (Chinen) Classical Full reviews of recent music performances: nytimes.com/music. Opera AIDA (Tomorrow) Andrea Gruber, Olga Borodina and Johan Botha continue in the Mets ripsnorter production. 1:30 p.m., Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000; sold out. (Bernard Holland) AIDA (Tomorrow and Sunday) Amatos David squares off against a Verdian Goliath: the grandest of grand operas will be offered in one of the smallest of New York theaters. All 102 seats will probably sell out. Tomorrow at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 2:30 p.m., Amato Opera, 319 Bowery, at Second Street, East Village, (212) 228-8200; $30; $25 for students and 65+. (Anne Midgette) ALBERT HERRING (Tomorrow) The Gotham Chamber Opera has been earning its stripes with striking stagings of everything from Handels Arianna in Creta to Respighis version of Sleeping Beauty (with puppets). Its latest production seeks to do justice to the underexplored comic side of Benjamin Britten, who wrote only one comic opera in his lifetime. The final performance is this weekend. 7:30 p.m., Harry de Jur Playhouse, 466 Grand Street, at Pitt Street, Lower East Side, (212) 279-4200; $30 to $65. (Midgette) HERCULES (Tomorrow and Sunday) This Handel opera is rarely heard, but it has plenty to offer, not least a plot that describes a love triangle that proved lethal for Hercules. More to the point, it is a chance to see William Christie lead his extraordinary Parisian ensemble, Les Arts Florissants. The cast includes William Shimell, Joyce DiDonato and Ingela Bohlin. Tomorrow at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m., Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, (718) 636-4100; $35 to $150. (Allan Kozinn) LA FORZA DEL DESTINO (Monday) Deborah Voigt and Salvatore Licitra are featured in the first Forza of the season. 8 p.m., Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6200; $26 to $175. (Holland) RIGOLETTO (Tomorrow) The soprano Anna Netrebko and the tenor Rolando Villazón, operas hottest vocal couple of late, bring star appeal and impressive artistry to the Mets 1989 Otto Schenk production of Verdis Rigoletto. Plácido Domingo, who knows a thing or two about the lead tenor role, conducts. 8 p.m., Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000; sold out.(Anthony Tommasini) SAMSON ET DALILA (Tonight and Wednesday) Marina Domashenko and Clifton Forbis take the title roles tomorrow; Olga Borodina replaces Ms. Domashenko on Wednesday. 8 p.m., Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000; $36 to $205 tonight, $26 to $175 on Wednesday. (Holland) Classical Music AURYN QUARTET (Sunday) This well-reputed string quartet from Cologne stops by the Frick Collection with Dvoraks American Quartet, as well as music by Haydn and Bartok. 5 p.m., Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, (212) 288-0700; $20. (Jeremy Eichler) * BANG ON A CAN PEOPLES COMMISSIONING FUND CONCERT (Wednesday) The idea is music by the people, for the people: pooling donations as small as $5, Bang on a Can raises money to commission three new works a year, and people flock to hear the Bang on a Can All-Stars play them at the annual concert. This years composers are Yoav Gal, Annie Gosfield and John Hollenbeck. 8 p.m., Merkin Concert Hall, 129 West 67th Street, Manhattan, (212) 501-3330; $20. (Midgette) DANIEL BARENBOIM AND RADU LUPU (Monday) Two virtuoso pianists pool talents in an all-Mozart program. 8 p.m., Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $35 to $120. (Holland) BARGEMUSIC (Tonight, tomorrow, Sunday and Thursday) The barge typically relies on ad-hoc ensembles of freelancers, but this weekend, two established groups are on deck. Tonight, its the wind ensemble of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra playing Beethoven, Mozart and Poulenc. Tomorrow and Sunday, the Shanghai Quartet plays selections from Yi-wen Jiangs ChinaSong, a late Beethoven quartet and Brahmss Clarinet Quintet (with Ethan Sloane). Thursday, its back to standard barge fare with the violinist Mark Peskanov and colleagues playing Mozart, Schubert and Beethoven. Today, tomorrow and Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday at 4 p.m., Fulton Ferry Landing next to the Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn, (718) 624-2083; $60 tonight, $40 tomorrow and Sunday, and $35 on Thursday. (Eichler) JOSHUA BELL (Sunday and Wednesday) The popular American violinist plays a recital of works by Mozart, Beethoven, Bartok, Prokofiev and Ysae. Sunday at 3 p.m., New Jersey Performing Arts Center, 1 Center Street, Newark, (888) 466-5722; $20 to $56. Wednesday at 8 p.m., Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $26 to $90. (Eichler) CAPPELLA ANDREA BARCA (Tuesday and Thursday) Andras Schiff, the noted Hungarian pianist, founded this ensemble in 1999 to perform the Mozart piano concertos, which it will do in its American debut this week with him, naturally, as soloist. Tuesday brings Nos. 14 and 15; Thursday will be Nos. 12 and 17; and Feb. 25, the group signs off with Nos. 18 and 19. 8 p.m., Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $28 to $97. (Eichler) CHAMBER MUSIC AT THE Y (Tuesday and Wednesday) The Mozart celebration is all very well, but how about some Martinu for a change? Or at least a compromise: as part of his chamber music series, Jaime Laredo presides over a program split between Martinu (the String Sextet and the Duo No. 1 for Violin and Cello) and Mozart (the Oboe Quartet in F and a Divertimento in D). Among the guest performers are the violist Kim Kashkashian, the oboist Maurice Bourgue and the violinist Jennifer Koh. 8 p.m., 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue, (212) 415-5500; $35. (Kozinn) COUNTER)INDUCTION (Tonight) This vibrant young new-music ensemble offers a program of modern Italian works, including scores by Salvatore Sciarrino, Luca Francesconi, Giacinto Scelsi, Emanuela Ballio, Fabio Vacchi, Luca Belcastro and Anne-Marie Turcotte. 8, Tenri Cultural Institute, 43A West 13th Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 645-2800; $12 suggested donation. (Kozinn) ERIC CUTLER (Tonight) Eric Cutler is a young tenor with a loud voice thats making some opera people listen. The Metropolitan Opera offers him this season as a solid if unrefined Tamino; the Richard Tucker Foundation gave him its 2005 award. Tonight, he offers songs of France (Hahn, Fauré), Italy (Respighi) and America (Musto, Previn and Barber). 7:30, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $32. (Midgette) * LUIGI DALLAPICCOLA (Thursday) As Continuums overview will show, this composer balanced innovation and links to earlier traditions. His music has disappeared to an alarming degree since his death in 1975, but when his music turns up, it invariably invites further exploration. This installment of the Composer Portrait series is your best chance. Included is a selection of works that run from the 1940s (Rencesvals, the Sonata Canonica and Due Studi) through 1970 (Sicut Umbra). 8 p.m., Miller Theater, Broadway at 116th Street, Morningside Heights, (212) 854-7799; $20; $12 for students. (Kozinn) * IN YOUR EAR TOO (Tonight, tomorrow and Sunday) The composer John Adams has developed a regular curatorial gig at Zankel Hall, which will hold a mini-festival this weekend encompassing everything from jazz (with Dave Douglas and Keystone tomorrow) to the distinctive performance artist Rinde Eckert (in An Idiot Divine, tonight). On Sunday, an eclectic program of music new and old for piano, violin and clarinet is contrasted with a Palestinian trio of oud virtuosos. Tonight at 7:30, tomorrow night at 8:30, Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m., Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800; $27 to $32. (Midgette) METROPOLITAN MUSEUM ARTISTS IN CONCERT (Tonight) Now in its third season, the Mets resident chamber ensemble offers another enticing program: Schnittkes Third Quartet, Giya Kanchelis Rag-Gidon-Time, Schumanns Piano Quartet and Dvoraks Bagatelles for two violins, cello and harmonium. 8, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, (212) 570-3949; $30. (Eichler) NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC (Today, tomorrow and Thursday) The Philharmonic has made a big deal of paying tribute to Elliott Carter this season, but its performances of his works are so few and so widely spaced that youve probably forgotten about it. Not to worry: this week, Lorin Maazel and the orchestra get to one of Mr. Carters true classics, the Variations for Orchestra, along with works by Brahms and Kodaly and, with Gil Shaham, Bruchs Violin Concerto No. 1. On Thursday, Robert Spano takes over for the premiere of John Harbisons Milosz Songs, with Dawn Upshaw as the soloist, as well as works by Bartok and Bernstein. Today at 11 a.m., tomorrow at 8 p.m., Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $23 to $76 today; $26 to $94 tomorrow and Thursday. (Kozinn) JOHN OCONOR (Thursday) This Irish pianist returns to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a program of Beethoven, Schubert and Haydn. 8 p.m., Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, (212) 570-3949; $40. (Holland) * LA PASIÓN SEGÚN SAN MARCOS (Monday and Tuesday) Fasten your seat belts was one insiders advice at the Brooklyn Academy of Music a few years ago when this lionized piece by the composer Osvaldo Golijov had its New York premiere. A recasting of a Bach Passion for the South American vernacular, this Pasión is certainly approachable and stirring, and Mr. Golijovs biggest popular success -- if not perhaps as ground-breaking as many seem to think. 8 p.m., Rose Theater, Broadway at 60th Street, (212) 721-6500; $30 to $65. (Midgette) * MARGARET LENG TAN (Tomorrow and Sunday) John Cages 1944 score-painting, Chess Pieces, disappeared into a private collection soon after he wrote it, so when the pianist Margaret Leng Tan first saw it, last year, she knew she had a virtually unknown Cage work to perform. It wasnt that easy: the painting is a chessboard made of score shards, and Ms. Tans job was to determine how those fragments were meant to fall together. She is playing the work, along with Vittorio Rietis Chess Serenade and Michael Nymans Pawn to King Four, as part of the Anthology Film Archives Chess and Surrealism program. 8 p.m., Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue, at Second Street, East Village, (212) 979-1027 ; $12. (Kozinn) * CHRISTIAN TETZLAFF (Wednesday) This exceptional 39-year-old German violinist does not have the name recognition of some other soloists or the marketing muscle behind his career, but the depth and sensitivity of his playing have rightly made him a favorite among critics and connoisseurs. This week, he is joined by the pianist Lars Vogt in a promising program of all three Brahms violin sonatas. 8 p.m., Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $45. (Eichler) VoiceS OF LIGHT (Tonight) Richard Einhorn composed this vivid, unusual oratorio as a soundtrack for Carl Theodor Dreyers silent classic The Passion of Joan of Arc, a compressed telling of Joan of Arcs trial by an ecclesiastical court and of her execution by being burned at the stake. It is to be performed by the Ensemble Sospeso, the New Amsterdam Singers, and Anonymous 4, which assembles only for special projects these days. 8, World Financial Center, West Street, south of Vesey Street, Lower Manhattan, (212) 945-0505; free. (Kozinn) VOX VOCAL ENSEMBLE (Tomorrow) George Steel and his superb chamber choir turn their attention to Jacobus Vaet, an obscure Flemish Renaissance master. This program of Vaets sublime sacred music is filled out with works by Clemens Non Papa and Nicolas Gombert. 8 p.m., Church of St. Paul the Apostle, Columbus Avenue at 60th Street, (212) 854-7799; $35; $21 for students. (Kozinn) Dance Full reviews of recent performances: nytimes.com/dance. * CARRIE AHERN (Thursday) Ms. Ahern describes her new Red, inspired by Margaret Atwoods Handmaids Tale and by the clean lines of the performance space, as a work of beautiful suffocation. Her all-female ensemble includes some of the citys most interesting dance artists. (Through Feb. 26.) 8:30 p.m., Danspace Project at St. Marks Church, 131 East 10th Street, East Village, (212) 674-8194 or www.danspaceproject.org; $15. (Jennifer Dunning) RICHARD ALSTON DANCE COMPANY (Tonight through Sunday) The choreographer Richard Alston has been a mainstay of English contemporary dance since the early 1970s, and his musical, often understated work is always worth watching. This program presents three dances new to New York audiences: Fever, to Monteverdi; Such Longing, to Chopins Nocturnes and Études; and Gypsy Mixture, from the delightfully titled CD Electric Gypsyland. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8, Sunday at 2 p.m., Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 242-0800 or www.joyce.org; $38. (Roslyn Sulcas) JULIO BOCCAS BOCCATANGO (Tonight and tomorrow night) Mr. Bocca and his Ballet Argentino celebrate the tango in two performances in the New York City area this weekend. Tonight at 8, they will perform at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, 1 Center Street, Newark, (888) 466-5722; $20 to $56. The company also performs tomorrow at 8 p.m. at the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts, at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University, Brookville, N.Y., (516) 299-3100; $40 and $52; $37 and $49 for 65+. (Dunning) * CONSTRUCTION COMPANY 2006 DANCE GALA (Tomorrow and Sunday) This enclave for uncategorizable performing artists will celebrate itself by presenting dance by Ariane Anthony, Sally Bowden, Carolyn Lord, Cedric Neugebauer, Rebecca Windmiller and Linda Seifert with Alan Good. 8 p.m., Merce Cunningham Studio, 55 Bethune Street, at Washington Street, West Village, (212) 924-7882; $15; $10 for students and 65+. (Dunning) DANCING IN BLACK (Today, and Monday through Thursday) This free exhibition of African-American dance photography and drawings by Mansa K. Mussa, Richard Barclit and Bruce Harman celebrates Black History Month. (Through Feb. 28.) Mondays through Fridays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery, Hepburn Hall, New Jersey City University, 2039 Kennedy Boulevard, Jersey City, (201) 200-3246. (Dunning) DANZAHOY (Tuesday through Feb. 26) Employing both tango and the joropo, a traditional Venezuelan dance, Danzahoy brings Exodo to the Joyce for its first New York appearance in more than 20 years. Tuesday through next Friday at 8 p.m.; Feb. 25 at 2 and 8 p.m.; Feb. 26 at 2 and 7:30 p.m., the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 242-0800; $36. (Claudia La Rocco) GINA GIBNEY DANCE (Tonight through Sunday) Ms. Gibney explores the worlds of finite reality and the unknowable, and she has made a third new world of them in her mysterious, subtle unbounded. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8:30, Sunday night at 7:30. , Danspace Project at St. Marks Church, 131 East 10th Street, East Village, (212) 674-8194 or www.danspaceproject.org; $15. (Dunning) HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO (Tomorrow) This modern company tackles William Forsythes knotty ballet vocabulary in Enemy in the Figure. 8 p.m., with free lecture at 7:30 p.m., the Performing Arts Center, Purchase College, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, N.Y., (914) 251-6200; $32 and $52. (La Rocco) SARA EAST JOHNSONS LAVA (Tonight through Sunday) Ms. Johnsons award-winning, all-female company, LAVA, presents (w)HOLE (short for The Whole History of Life on Earth), its first new work since 2003. Using trapeze, Chinese acrobatics and swing dancing, among other things, the company tackles rock formation, punctuated equilibrium theory and magnetic polarity reversal with its usual strength and verve. Tonight and tomorrow night at 7, Sunday at 5 p.m., Flea Theater, 41 White Street, TriBeCa, (212) 352-3101, www.TheaterMania.com; $20 to $25. (Erika Kinetz) BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE DANCE COMPANY (Tuesday, Thursday and Feb. 25) Dance gets a remix in Another Evening: I Bow Down, featuring old and new work by Mr. Jones, as well as live music and digital manipulations by Daniel Bernard Roumain. 8 p.m., Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, 566 LaGuardia Place, at Washington Square South, Greenwich Village, (212) 279-4200; $35 and $45. (La Rocco) JUILLIARD SCHOOL: NEW DANCES/NEW MUSIC (Wednesday and Thursday) New dances by Adam Hougland, Jessica Lang and Alan Hineline to new music by Christopher Rouse, Pete M. Wyer and Jerome Begin, conducted by Andrea Quinn. (Through Feb. 26.) 8 p.m., Juilliard Peter Jay Sharp Theater, 155 West 65th Street, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500; $20; $10 (at box office) for students and 65+. (Dunning) * KINGS OF THE DANCE (Thursday through next Sunday) Conceptually yet another ripoff of the Three Tenors, this program upon closer inspection looks a little more interesting than that. It offers Angel Corella and Ethan Stiefel of American Ballet Theater, Johan Kobborg of the Royal Ballet and Nikolay Tsiskaridize of the Bolshoi Ballet, joined by Alina Cojocaru and others from the Royal Ballet. There will be new choreography by Christopher Wheeldon, Roland Petit, Nils Christie, Stanton Welch and Tim Rushton, along with solos by Balanchine, Grigorovich, Petipa and Bournonville, and Fleming Flindts complete Lesson, in which each king will dance the role of the teacher on successive nights. Thursday through Feb. 25 at 8 p.m., Feb. 26 at 3 p.m., City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan, (212) 581-1212 or www.citycenter.org; $35 to $150. (John Rockwell) ROMULO LARREA TANGO ENSEMBLE (Tonight) Three tango-dancing couples, and music by Carlos Gardel and Astor Piazzolla. 8, Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, Manhattan, (212) 840-2824; $32.50 and $37.50. (Dunning) SUSAN MARSHALL AND COMPANY (Wednesday) Ms. Marshall celebrates her companys 20th anniversary with her new Cloudless, a variety show, she says, of short, punchy, poem-sized pieces. (Through Feb. 25.) 7:30 p.m., Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University, corner of Valley Road and Normal Avenue, Montclair, N.J., (973) 655-5112; $35. (Dunning) * MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP: THE EARLY YEARS (Through March 5) This free exhibition of photographs by Tom Brazil is the opening event of a five-week celebration of the 25th anniversary of Mr. Morriss company. Daily, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 924-0077. (Dunning) * REJINA NEJMAN & COMPANY (Thursday) Ms. Nejmans Velocity of Things, in which six characters trapped in a futuristic carnival search desperately for balance in a fast-paced world, won the FringeNYCs 2005 Outstanding Choreography Award. (Through Feb. 26.) 8 p.m., Joyce SoHo, 155 Mercer Street, between Houston and Prince Streets, (212) 334-7479; $18; $15 for students and 65+; T.D.F. accepted. (Dunning) * NEW YORK FLAMENCO FESTIVAL (Tonight through Sunday) Performing this weekend will be Cristina Hoyos Ballet Flamenco de Andalucia (tonight and tomorrow night at 8 and Compania Antonio el Pipa with the guest performers Mariana Cornejo, Concha Vargas and Juana del Pipa (Sunday at 7 p.m.) City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan, (212) 581-1212, nycitycenter.org or www.flamencofestival.org; $30 to $65. (Dunning) 92ND STREET Y HARKNESS DANCE FESTIVAL: SALLY-ANNE FRIEDLAND DANCE DRAMA COMPANY (Tomorrow and Sunday) The Tel Aviv-based Sally-Anne Friedland Dance Drama Company makes its United States debut. The South African-born Ms. Friedland danced with the Batsheva and Bat-Dor companies, but her own work is (according to the press materials) inspired by Carolyn Carlson and Pina Bausch. In her world premiere of Borders and the American premiere of Red, we are promised that the abstraction of dance meets the drama of life. Tomorrow at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m., Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 West 55th Street, Clinton, (212) 415-5500 or www.92Y.org/HarknessFestival; $20; students and 62+, $15. (Sulcas) BETH SOLL & COMPANY (Tonight through Sunday) Ms. Soll will present Mortal Angels, a dance (Ms. Soll) and video (Bryan Hayes) piece inspired in part by the image of a hidden child angel. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8, Sunday at 5 p.m., Construction Company, 10 East 18th Street, Flatiron district, (212) 924-7882; $12. (Dunning) MAXINE STEINMAN & DANCERS (Wednesday, Thursday, Feb. 25 and Feb. 26) The 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival continues with a program that includes two premieres, one a collaboration between Ms. Steinman and her husband, the sculptor Alfredo Cardenas, and the video artist Tom Ruth. Wednesday, Thursday and Feb. 25 at 8 p.m., Feb. 26 at 2 and 7 p.m., Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 West 55th Street, Clinton, (212) 415-5500; $20; students and 62+, $15. (La Rocco) SUMMERFEST 06: BATOTO YETU (Wednesday) This free series -- what more do you need than palm trees for an early summer -- continues with music, dance and storytelling by bust-a-gut child performers. 12:30 p.m., Winter Garden, World Financial Center, West Street, south of Vesey Street, Lower Manhattan, (212) 945-0505 or www.worldfinancialcenter.com. (Dunning) THUNDERBIRD AMERICAN INDIAN DANCERS (Tonight through Sunday) This years Pow-Wow, the companys 31st, includes dances, stories and traditional music from the Iroquois and American Indians of the Northwest Coast, the Southwest, the Plains and the Arctic regions. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8, Sunday at 2 p.m., Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue, at 10th Street, East Village, (212) 254-1109 or www.theaterforthenewcity.net. Evening performances: $10. Matinees: $10; $1 for children under 12 accompanied by a ticket-holding adult. (Dunning) VISION COLLABORATION NIGHTS (Thursday) This series of music and dance collaborations opens with work by the choreographers Marlies Yearby, Felicia Norton, Nancy Zendora and Gus Solomons Jr. (Through Feb. 26.) 7:30 p.m., 14th Street Y, 344 East 14th Street, East Village, (212) 696-6681 or www.visionfestival.org; $20; $50 for a four-day pass. (Dunning) REGGIE WILSON/FIST & HEEL PERFORMANCE GROUP (Tonight, tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday) Mr. Wilson and his superb musicians and dancers create a world that fuses the cultural traditions of the black American South, urban America, Africa and the Caribbean, this time in The Tale: Npinpee Nckutchie and the Tail of the Golden Dek, a new work that explores sexual attraction. 7:30 p.m., Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 924-0077; $25; $15 for students and 65+. (Dunning) Art Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art. Museums * AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM: SURFACE ATTRACTION: PAINTED FURNITURE FROM THE COLLECTION, through March 26. The remarkable images, abstract patterns and floral motifs that flutter across the 30 or so tables, chairs, cabinets and blanket chests in this beautiful, convention-stretching show confirm that from the late 1600s to the late 1800s, quite a bit of American painting talent and ambition was channeled into the decoration of everyday wood objects. The combination of imagination and utility, of economic means and lush effects, defines the human desire for beauty as hard-wired. 45 West 53rd Street, (212) 265-1040. (Roberta Smith) * Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum: FASHION IN COLORS, through March 26. Drawn from the collection of the Kyoto Costume Institute in Japan, this sumptuous show arranges 68 often lavish Western gowns and ensembles according to the colors of the spectrum and reinforces their progress with a posh, color-coordinated installation design. For an experience of color as color, it is hard to beat, but it also says a great deal about clothing, visual perception and beauty. 2 East 91st Street, (212) 849-8400.(Smith) * Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: David Smith: A Centennial, through May 14. David Smith is best known for his worst work, bulky sculptures of the important kind that museums and banks like to buy. Much (though not all) of that material has been excised from this survey in favor of smaller, earlier, nonmonumental pieces which the curator, Carmen Gimenez, presents with plenty of air and light. The result is exemplary as a David Smith experience, an American Modernism experience and a Guggenheim Museum experience. 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, (212) 423-3500. (Holland Cotter) International Center of Photography: Che!: Revolution and commerce, through Feb. 26. This is, in a sense, a one-image show, the image being Alberto Kordas famous 1960 head shot of Che (Ernesto Guevara), taken in Cuba. But the theme is the transformation that the portrait has undergone in the passage of 46 years, as Ches soulful likeness has migrated from political posters to album covers, T-shirts, paper currency, vodka ads and gallery art. 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at 43rd Street, (212) 857-0000. (Cotter) Metropolitan Museum of Art: Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt, through May 7. Egypt was no picnic 5,000 years ago. The average life span was about 40 years. Wild animals were ever-present. Childbirth was perilous. Prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness were shots in the dark. Doctors were priests. Medicine was a blend of science, religion and art. The 65 or so objects in this beautiful show functioned as all three. Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, (212) 535-7710. (Cotter) * MET: ANTONELLO DA MESSINA, through March 5. This small, focused show presents the work of a Sicilian master (about 1430-1479) regarded as the greatest painter to emerge from southern Italy in the 15th century. His signature work, shown here, is The Virgin Annunciate (about 1475-76), depicting Mary as a young Sicilian girl at the moment of the Annunciation, when she is told by the angel Gabriel that she will bear Jesus. The genius of the work lies in the way a traditional icon has been imbued with the life force of a flesh-and-blood human being. (See above.) (Grace Glueck) * MET: Robert Rauschenberg: Combines, through April 2. Big and handsome almost to a fault. Theres something weird about seeing once joyfully rude and over-the-top contraptions from the 1950s and 60s lined up like choirboys in church, with their ties askew and shirttails out. But even enshrined, the combines still manage to seem incredibly fresh and odd, almost otherworldly. I thought of a medieval treasury -- all the rich colors and lights and intricate details. The most beautiful tend to be the early ones: large but delicate, with a subtle, fugitive emotional pitch. (See above.) (Michael Kimmelman) THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: ON SITE: NEW ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN, through May 1. Since the early 1970s, when Spain began to awaken from the isolation of a four-decade dictatorship, Spanish architects have produced designs of unusual depth, often with a firm connection to the land, a sense of humility and a way of conveying continuity with the past while embracing the present. Packed with pretty images and elegant models, this exhibition lacks the scholarly depth you might have hoped for on such a mesmerizing subject. 11 West 53rd Street, (212) 708-9400. (Nicolai Ouroussoff) The Museum of Modern Art: JOHN SZARKOWSKI: PHOTOGRAPHS, through May 15. A kind of homecoming, this beautiful show surveys the pictures taken by Mr. Szarkowski before and after his influential 29-year term at the helm of the Moderns photography department. The best show him combining the styles of the photographers he has long admired with his native ground -- the architecture and landscape of the upper Midwest. (See above.) (Smith) * P.S. 1: Peter Hujar, through March 6. When Peter Hujar died in 1987, he was a figure of acute interest to a small group of fans, and unknown to practically everyone else. His photographs of desiccated corpses in Sicilian catacombs and studio portraits of New Yorks downtown demimonde were a gorgeous shock, and their cocktail of Nadar, Weegee and Vogue shaped the work of many younger artists. This surveyish sampling includes several of his recurrent themes: portraits of people and animals, landscapes, still lifes and erotica. Sensuality and mortality are the binders throughout, inseparable. 22-25 Jackson Avenue, at 46th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, (718) 784-2084. (Cotter) Galleries: Uptown Boyd & Evans: Color in Black and White This husband-and-wife team from England makes large landscape and cityscape photographs in which all but selected central images have been drained of color. The best pictures, like that of the rusty brown tank standing all by itself in the midst of a black and white desert, are more strange and dreamy than gimmicky. Flowers, 1000 Madison Avenue, near 78th Street, (212) 439-1700, through Feb. 25. (Ken Johnson) Robert S. Neuman: Fifty Years With good humored generosity and a skillful, sensuous touch, Mr. Neuman has painted his way through several different genres over the course of his five-decade career, including Abstract Expressionism, geometric formalism, funky allegorical narrative and painterly landscapes that mourn the losses of the American Indians. Allan Stone, 113 East 90th Street, (212) 987-4997, through March 4. (Johnson) Galleries: 57th Street * RON NAGLE AND THE HOLY GRAIl Nominally, the 12 absurdly beautiful little ceramic objects that make up Mr. Nagels eighth New York solo show are teacups. But an exquisite combination of sculptural form, color, surface and craftsmanship elevates each to a transcendental realm of pure aesthetic contemplation. They are smart and slyly humorous, too. Garth Clark, 24 West 57th Street, (212) 246-2205, through Feb. 25. (Johnson) Galleries: Chelsea Norman Ballard: Standing Waves A theatrical lighting designer and veteran laser light artist presents recent compact sculptures in which fine, colored laser lines rhythmically swing or rotate through colored liquids in glass containers. Framed by rugged metal elements, the sculptures combine industrial-strength materialism and the hypnotic appeal of the lava lamp. Bryce Wolkowitz, 601 West 26th Street, (212) 243-8830, through Feb. 25. (Johnson) EIRIK JOHNSON: BORDERLANDS Small, serendipitous encounters in the landscape are the subjects of Eirik Johnsons large color photographs: junk hung picturesquely on a wire fence along a shore; a red sweater splayed between trees in a woods; a fragile, impromptu bridge of skinny longs laid across a creek. In one photograph, a huge crumple of grayish fabric plopped on grass and maybe used as a shelter has the imposing look of a sculptural boulder. There are no control-freak setups here. Rather, it seems that Mr. Johnson helps the camera make its own discoveries, often with poetic results. Yossi Milo Gallery, 525 West 25th Street, (212) 414-0370, through Feb. 25. (Glueck) Sarah Pickering: Explosions Winner of the 2005 Jerwood Photography Award, Ms. Pickering presents large and lush photographs of exploding bombs incongruously set off in pastoral settings as part of law enforcement training programs. Daniel Cooney, 511 West 25th Street, (212) 255-8158, through Feb. 25. (Johnson) ALEX SOTH: NIAGARA Love and romance play tackily in these photographs of small town young people, while the nearby falls of Niagara provide a grand symphonic background. Mr. Soths lens lingers on cheap motels that serve as wedding and honeymoon settings, people awkwardly dressed in celebration clothes, a purple-prose letter conveying declarations of the heart. On a grungy street an unglamorous mother stares unbeguilingly at the camera while cradling an infant. Mr. Soth, whose antecedents would seem to include the faux-vernacular photographs of William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, intersperses these shots with glorious scenics of the eternal Falls, doing their thing above and beyond local happenings. Ho, hum. Gagosian Gallery, 555 West 24th Street (212) 741-1111, through Feb. 25. (Glueck) * TRIFECTA This energetic curatorial face-off consists of three exhibitions devoted to young artists (nearly 20 in all) organized by the gallerys owner, Becky Smith, and her assistants, Esme Watanabe and Erica Samuels. The three groupings progress from minimal to hyper-real, with Ms. Watanabes selection, which lands somewhere in the middle, edging out those of her colleagues. Sara VanderBeeks set-up photographs, which suggest a Surrealists garret, are a find. Bellwether, 194 10th Avenue, near 18th Street, (212) 929-5959, through Feb. 25. (Smith) Johannes Wohnseifer: New Alphabet Paintings and sculptures in several different styles by this brainy young German conceptualist obscurely explore semiotics relating to industrial, military, political and popular-entertainment spheres. He has a keen sense of design, and the sculptures made of pieces of shiny bent metal and thick felt are extremely elegant. But over all, his project looks like that of an academic theory wonk. Casey Kaplan, 525 West 21st Street, (212) 645-7335, through Feb. 25. (Johnson) Galleries: SoHo * BEC STUPAK/HONEYGUN LABS: RADICAL EARTH MAGIC FLOWER This ambitious gallery debut centers on a blind remake of Jack Smiths 1963 orgiastic ode to transvestism and Hollywood camp, Flaming Creatures, projected on a wall opposite the original, with Ms. Stupaks subtitlelike storyboards appearing in between. The contrast is mutually enhancing up to a point; the Stupak provides color and detail missing from the blurry, black-and-white Smith film, but the earlier effort still carries the day. Deitch Projects, 76 Grand Street, (212) 343-7300, through Feb. 25. (Smith) * ZILVINAS KEMPINAS In contrasting works, the artist uses videotape to create one environment and record another. The resulting Op Art installation and the bike ride through Times Square conspire; sensory overload, both retinal and aural, ensues, as does a surprising application of the less-is-more principle. Spencer Brownstone Gallery, 39 Wooster Street, (212) 334-3455, through Feb. 25. (Smith) Other Galleries Carla Accardi and Lucio Fontana: Infinite Space Bridging the gap between higher metaphysics and raw materialism in Italy in the 1960s and 70s, Fontana famously made single-color canvases that he decisively slashed or punctured, while Accardi wrapped strips of painted transparent plastic around wooden stretchers or painted fields of optically vibrating calligraphy. A selection of works by both artists makes for a surprisingly handsome and elegant show that is nicely complemented by a small installation of recent works by Richard Tuttle in the project room. Sperone Westwater, 415 West 13th Street, West Village, (212) 999-7337, through Feb. 25. (Johnson) * Do You Think Im Disco Theres a big story to be told about disco culture of the 1970s, which had roots in rhythm and blues, African-American church music, 1960s drug culture, gay liberation and all manner of anti-establishment politics. This modest group show touches on all of these elements, however glancingly and unsystematically, by considering the trickle-down effect of discomania on some new art today. Longwood Art Gallery@Hostos, 450 Grand Concourse, at 149th Street, Mott Haven, the Bronx, (718) 518-6728, through March 18. (Cotter) * THE DOWNTOWN SHOW: THE NEW YORK ART SCENE, 1974-1984 The real down-and-dirty downtown art scene, when the East Village bloomed, punk and new wave rock assailed the ears, graffiti spread like kudzu and heroin, along with extreme style, raged, is the subject of this wild and woolly show. Its a humongous time warp of more than 450 paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, videos, posters, ephemera and things in between by artists, writers, performers, musicians and maestros of mixed media, from a photograph of the transvestite Candy Darling as she posed on her deathbed to a small, painted sculpture made of elephant dung by David Hammons. With so many clashing ideologies, points of view and attitudes toward art-making, this no-holds-barred hodgepodge generates the buzz and stridency of, say, Canal Street on payday. Granted that much of Downtown was throwaway stuff, too ephemeral and experimental to last; for better or for worse, it helped to change the definition of what art and artists might be. New York University, Grey Art Gallery, 100 Washington Square East, (212) 998-6780; and Fales Library, 70 Washington Square South, (212) 988-2596, Greenwich Village; through April 1. (Glueck) * Anya Gallaccio: One Art The viscerally poetic single work occupying Sculpture Centers spacious main gallery is a 50-foot weeping cherry tree that was cut up and reassembled in the gallery, where it is held in place by steel cables and bolts. Sculpture Center, 44-19 Purves Street, at Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, (718) 361-1750, through April 3. (Johnson) * HOME STORIES: AN INSIDE LOOK AT SINGLE-FAMILY HOUSES IN AUSTRIA Departing from standard-issue architectural exhibitions with a slightly too clever design, this show of 21 recent houses includes portraits of their inhabitants and poster-size sheets free for the taking that function as both labels and catalog. The totality feels like a collaboration among Bernd and Hilla Becher, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and the contemporary photographer of your choice, but it makes an excellent case for the vitality of Austrian architecture. Austrian Cultural Forum, 11 East 52nd Street, (212) 319-5300, through Feb. 25. (Smith) * Speak: Nine Cartoonists Original drawings and studies by nine of the best comic book artists in the business, including R. Crumb, Daniel Clowes, Gary Panter, Chris Ware and Art Spiegelman. Pratt Manhattan Gallery, 144 West 14th Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 647-7778. Through Feb. 25. (Johnson) Last Chance * Ellen Brooks: Vintage Photographs from the 70s Cultural wars have come and gone -- actually, theyve never really gone -- since 1976, when Ellen Brooks first showed a dozen larger-than-life-size studio photographs of nude male and female adolescents. Eight more pictures, never before exhibited, from the same series are on view at Roth, and it is easy to see how, in the right (meaning wrong) setting, they could still cause a fuss today. The inclusion of documentation, including early reviews of the work, give these remarkable pictures a historical context. Andrew Roth, 160A East 70th Street, (212) 717-9067; closes tomorrow. (Cotter) WILLIE COLE: SOLE TO SOUL An adept recycler of found objects used as tools or in assemblages to evoke different varieties of African sculpture, Mr. Cole has expanded both palette and references in his latest efforts. Here womens high heels, arranged by hue, handsomely evoke rose windows, mandalas and lotus flowers, as well as religious multiplicity (Smith). Alexander and Bonin, 132 10th Avenue, near 18th Street, Chelsea, (212) 367-7474; closes tomorrow. (Smith) The Hudson River School at the New-York Historical Society: Nature and the American Vision By the mid-19th century, the United States was a trans-Atlantic political power in search of a cultural profile. Hudson River School landscape painting was the answer: it presented America as the un-Europe. Europe had its Romantic ruins; America had its ultra-Romantic wilderness. Europe had antique; America had primeval. Europe told time in centuries; America told time in eons. Its all here to see in this display of a venerable local institutions permanent collection. New-York Historical Society, 2 West 77th Street, (212) 873-3400; closes Sunday. (Cotter) Whitney Museum of American Art: Raymond Pettibon, If you are unfamiliar with the influential Mr. Pettibons emotionally resonant mix of noirish cartooning and enigmatic literary verbiage, this show of works on paper and, for the first time, a low-tech animated video, serves as a good introduction. (See above.) 945 Madison Avenue, at 75th Street, (800) 944-8639; closes Sunday.(Johnson)

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