Annette Bening

An author (Annette Bening, above) believes a serial killer has taken over her mind in the psychodrama In Dreams (9 p.m.-11 p.m., Lifetime).

Cattrall: 'Sex and the City' movie sequel in the works "Yes, there will be a sequel" to Sex and the City. Kim Cattrall (Samantha in the HBO series and the film) acknowledged during an interview on The Paul O'Grady Show in Britain that they're shooting another big-screen version. Plans for a sequel have been buzzing for sometime, reports Usmagazine.com. In September, the show's star, Sarah Jessica Parker, said a sequel depended on the story. "If we can't tell a story that's really worthy of an audience, then we won't do it," she said.

In the movie version of Augusten Burroughs' memoir, Running With Scissors, the writer-producer-director, Ryan Murphy, best-known for creating FX's Nip/Tuck, uses a cascade of goofy-creepy episodes from Burroughs' early life for gross-out comedy and psychodrama and even grosser sentimentality. It's a clever variation on you'll laugh, you'll cry entertainment - here, you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll gag. But it's a bit too much like a TV series: That '70s Show becomes "That '70s Freakshow."

In the movie version of Augusten Burroughs' memoir, Running With Scissors, the writer-producer-director, Ryan Murphy, best-known for creating FX's Nip/Tuck, uses a cascade of goofy-creepy episodes from Burroughs' early life for gross-out comedy and psychodrama and even grosser sentimentality. It's a clever variation on you'll laugh, you'll cry entertainment - here, you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll gag. But it's a bit too much like a TV series: That '70s Show becomes "That '70s Freakshow."

In Being Julia, Annette Bening gets to play a hammy British stage actress in 1930s London who, having been made a fool of, decides that no one should be allowed to get away with that. It's a dream role for any actress, carte blanche to chew any scenery that comes within range. She gets to play flighty and flustered and vengeful, sometimes all within a single scene. And Bening approaches the role of Julia Lambert as though she wants to devour it. Maybe she does; Being Julia is her first starring role since 2000's tragically unhilarious What Planet Are You From?

Warren Beatty and Annette Bening expecting child early 0) next yearWarren Beatty and his girlfriend, Annette Bening, are expecting a child next year. Mr. Beatty, 54, and Ms. Bening, 33, met last year while filming "Bugsy," which is due to be released at Christmas.A terse statement by the couple said: "We are happy to confirm we are looking forward to the birth of a child early next year."It will be a first child for Mr. Beatty, who has never married but has romanced some of Hollywood's most glamorous women, and for Ms. Bening, who stars opposite Harrison Ford in "Regarding Henry".

Just when you thought "The Silence of the Lambs" had spawned its last exploitative knock-off, along comes "In Dreams," a sick little vehicle for several actors who should know better.Annette Bening plays a children's book illustrator who is being haunted by premonitory dreams wherein little girls are being abducted by a redheaded stranger who is not Willie Nelson. When her visions begin to come true, hitting fatally close to home, she enters a world of teasing paranoia we haven't seen since "Gaslight" and a mental institution that might just have been vacated by Susan Hayward.

"The Siege," which has Islamic terrorists causing chaos in New York, has already been decried by Arab and Islamic groups who fear it will fan the flames of prejudice and mistrust.But director Edward Zwick's real targets are the politicians and law enforcers fighting them. Zwick and co-screenwriters Lawrence Wright and Menno Meyjes are asking: Can a free society exist when it's under attack by a group pledged to destroy it?The answer is ultimately ambiguous, because the film turns on one of Hollywood's favorite cop-outs: people who do the right thing, even when doing so is totally out of character.

Jack Nicholson as the president of the United States. Jack Nicholson as a Las Vegas hustler. Little green men who say "ack-ack," leer at Playboy centerfolds and turn the entire U.S. Congress to toast. Tom Jones as Tom Jones. Disembodied heads falling in love with each other. Songs by Slim Whitman."Mars Attacks!" has it all, and more. How could this movie not be a riot?Ask Tim Burton, who somehow has managed the impossible. Never has a movie so brimming with potential failed so utterly to deliver.

Politics aside, "The American President" is a delightful romantic comedy in which boy president meets girl, boy president loses girl and boy president gets girl.But it's so hard to put the politics aside because the movie doesn't want to put the politics aside. The politics are hardly incidental; in fact, in a certain way, they're the point.So let me just state the movie's bias up front and get it out of the way (and get it out of my system!). It is so liberal it will make your gums ache with its sanctimonious syrup of moral superiority, narcissism, sensitivity and sentimentality.

An author (Annette Bening, above) believes a serial killer has taken over her mind in the psychodrama In Dreams (9 p.m.-11 p.m., Lifetime).

In Being Julia, Annette Bening gets to play a hammy British stage actress in 1930s London who, having been made a fool of, decides that no one should be allowed to get away with that. It's a dream role for any actress, carte blanche to chew any scenery that comes within range. She gets to play flighty and flustered and vengeful, sometimes all within a single scene. And Bening approaches the role of Julia Lambert as though she wants to devour it. Maybe she does; Being Julia is her first starring role since 2000's tragically unhilarious What Planet Are You From?

It isn't true that life begins at 40, at least not for Kevin Spacey. Professionally speaking, Spacey, who turned 40 in July, has been surfing a jet stream since 1995, when he imprinted himself on our collective consciousness as the most unusual of "The Usual Suspects."He gave Hollywood its archetypal crazed movie exec in "Swimming With Sharks," turned slightly more lethal as the manipulative serial killer in the Stygian "Seven," and seemed to surprise even himself as a smooth cop working both sides of the street, then rediscovering his idealism, in "L.A.

Just when you thought "The Silence of the Lambs" had spawned its last exploitative knock-off, along comes "In Dreams," a sick little vehicle for several actors who should know better.Annette Bening plays a children's book illustrator who is being haunted by premonitory dreams wherein little girls are being abducted by a redheaded stranger who is not Willie Nelson. When her visions begin to come true, hitting fatally close to home, she enters a world of teasing paranoia we haven't seen since "Gaslight" and a mental institution that might just have been vacated by Susan Hayward.

"The Siege," which has Islamic terrorists causing chaos in New York, has already been decried by Arab and Islamic groups who fear it will fan the flames of prejudice and mistrust.But director Edward Zwick's real targets are the politicians and law enforcers fighting them. Zwick and co-screenwriters Lawrence Wright and Menno Meyjes are asking: Can a free society exist when it's under attack by a group pledged to destroy it?The answer is ultimately ambiguous, because the film turns on one of Hollywood's favorite cop-outs: people who do the right thing, even when doing so is totally out of character.

Jack Nicholson as the president of the United States. Jack Nicholson as a Las Vegas hustler. Little green men who say "ack-ack," leer at Playboy centerfolds and turn the entire U.S. Congress to toast. Tom Jones as Tom Jones. Disembodied heads falling in love with each other. Songs by Slim Whitman."Mars Attacks!" has it all, and more. How could this movie not be a riot?Ask Tim Burton, who somehow has managed the impossible. Never has a movie so brimming with potential failed so utterly to deliver.

Los Angeles -- There is a scene in "Bugsy" that proves a meal doesn't have to be hot to be spicy.Warren Beatty -- playing the title role -- and Annette Bening, as Bugsy's girlfriend Virginia Hill, engage in some post-dinner lovemaking that is so erotically charged, so believable, that surely it must have been ad-libbed. Tell this to Bening and she shakes her head of chestnut-colored Mary Pickford curls."Oh, no," she says, appalled at the idea. "No, that scene was entirely scripted. Everything was scripted."

'The Grifters'Starring John Cusack, Annette Bening and Anjelica Huston.Directed by Stephen Frears.Released by Miramax.Rated R.** 1/2 Grifters are the coyotes on the great plains of crime. They hover at the edges, afraid to go after the really big kills, afraid of the implicit violence in big money stings, but nibbling, scuffling and pawing for the unattended few bucks left over.Jim Thompson is the poet-laureate of this low-rent moral twilight and Stephen Frears' version of Thompson's "The Grifters" chronicles the vicious games members of this demimonde play upon each other.

Politics aside, "The American President" is a delightful romantic comedy in which boy president meets girl, boy president loses girl and boy president gets girl.But it's so hard to put the politics aside because the movie doesn't want to put the politics aside. The politics are hardly incidental; in fact, in a certain way, they're the point.So let me just state the movie's bias up front and get it out of the way (and get it out of my system!). It is so liberal it will make your gums ache with its sanctimonious syrup of moral superiority, narcissism, sensitivity and sentimentality.

Hollywood--It was as if the legendary mobster himself had rolled the dice and come up snake eyes."Bugsy" -- the TriStar film directed by Barry Levinson that pulled in a leading 10 Academy Award nominations -- won only two Oscars Monday night. And those were for art direction and costume design.This occurred despite some high-powered promotion and after the film's normally publicity-shy star and co-producer Warren Beatty conducted numerous interviews on behalf of the movie, the story of mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, who the film credits with dreaming up the idea of a gambling capital in Las Vegas, Nev.TriStar chairman Mike Medavoy said yesterday that even though "The Silence of the Lambs" captured Oscars for best picture, best actor, best actress, best director and best adapted screenplay at the 64th annual Academy Awards ceremony, he was still "very proud of 'Bugsy.