Anthony Lapaglia

Critic's Pick // Jack (Anthony LaPaglia) searches for a foreman who disappeared after a fired worker threatened him on Without a Trace (10 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13).

Series American Idol:: Twelve semifinalists perform. (8 p.m., WBFF-Channel 45) The Mentalist:: A country club's queen bee is fatally poisoned during a cocktail party at her home, and Patrick (Simon Baker) and the team dig up all kinds of unsavory information about the community. (9 p.m., WJZ-Channel 13) Frontline: : Inside the Meltdown: : This Frontline documents factors that led to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. (9 p.m., WETA-Channel 26) Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:: Benson and Stabler (Mariska Hargitay, Christopher Meloni)

Series American Idol:: Twelve semifinalists perform. (8 p.m., WBFF-Channel 45) The Mentalist:: A country club's queen bee is fatally poisoned during a cocktail party at her home, and Patrick (Simon Baker) and the team dig up all kinds of unsavory information about the community. (9 p.m., WJZ-Channel 13) Frontline: : Inside the Meltdown: : This Frontline documents factors that led to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. (9 p.m., WETA-Channel 26) Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:: Benson and Stabler (Mariska Hargitay, Christopher Meloni)

Critic's Pick // Jack (Anthony LaPaglia) searches for a foreman who disappeared after a fired worker threatened him on Without a Trace (10 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13).

The Toronto International Film Festival commemorated Sept. 11 yesterday in the best way it knew how: through cinema. The Guys, about a fire captain (Anthony LaPaglia) who works with an editor (Sigourney Weaver) to write eulogies for his men who died that day, screened after a popular run as an off-Broadway play. The critical consensus was that Jim Simpson's small-budget film, adapted from his staging at New York's Flea Theater, lacked emotional heft, but that LaPaglia turned in an authentic performance.

LOS ANGELES -- Is the era of the movie supercop coming to an end?It's a little too early to tell. But with a public appalled by the videotaped police beating of Rodney King and generally cooling toward the "Beverly Hills Cop"/"48 HRS." movie formulas that were popular in the '80s, change is definitely in the air.Heywood Gould hopes that his feature, "One Good Cop," might point the way toward a more realistic, emotionally believable kind of depiction. A former police reporter for the New York Post, Gould was a staff writer for the acclaimed '60s TV series "N.Y.

The trials continue on "Murder One," still one of the best dramas on TV."Friends" (8 p.m.-8: 30 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11) -- Monica (Courteney Cox) buys a new bed; Ross (David Schwimmer) has to suffer through dinner with Rachel's overbearing father (Ron Liebman); and Joey (Matt Le- Blanc) is teaching a soap opera class. What a pile of predicaments. NBC."Diagnosis Murder" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13) -- There's a bus accident, and this guy dies. Only Dr. Sloan doesn't think it was an accident; he thinks one of the passengers killed him. Good thing: All the passengers are sitting in the emergency room, which makes it easy to question suspects.

Steve Buscemi's "Trees Lounge" is set in the alternate universe ... you know, the one where Steve Buscemi isn't a star.It's like an autobiographical fantasy, in which the brilliantly weaselly actor imagines what might have happened if he'd never left Long Island for downtown and the performance scene, never gotten that big break as Mr. Pink in "Reservoir Dogs" and gone on to become all but de rigueur in any independent film that demands to be taken seriously,...

Happy 94th, Mr. Hope."The Oprah Winfrey Show" (4 p.m.-5 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11) -- Baltimorean Lynne Lamberg, author of "Bodyrhythms: Chronobiology and Peak Performance," chats with Oprah about the best times of the day to meet, think, exercise, etc."High Incident" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2) -- Gang warfare spills over onto the buses of El Camino in this repeat from September, and it's up to Rhoades and Helgado (Blair Underwood and Lisa Vidal) to cool things down. ABC."Murder One" (9 p.m.-11 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2)

One of the first images showcased on The Inside, a new crime drama premiering tonight at 9 on Fox, is that of a dead woman with half her face cut off. Even without the setting of an abandoned warehouse with rats scurrying around the corpse, gruesome would only start to describe the scene. But just in case there are any viewers for whom the image is not graphic enough, the corpse is revisited a couple of scenes later at the morgue, with the coroner attempting to reattach the severed flap of face.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - In a medium obsessed with the young and the restless, two veteran actors are smashing the age barrier to star in fall series. Dennis Hopper, 69, plays a Pentagon official in NBC's E-Ring. Don Johnson, 55, portrays an over-the-hill lawyer in WB's Just Legal. Both dramas come from producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who has reshaped prime time with CSI, Without a Trace and Cold Case. He also has done quite a lot for middle-age actors who never will be confused with male models and boy toys.

One of the first images showcased on The Inside, a new crime drama premiering tonight at 9 on Fox, is that of a dead woman with half her face cut off. Even without the setting of an abandoned warehouse with rats scurrying around the corpse, gruesome would only start to describe the scene. But just in case there are any viewers for whom the image is not graphic enough, the corpse is revisited a couple of scenes later at the morgue, with the coroner attempting to reattach the severed flap of face.

The Toronto International Film Festival commemorated Sept. 11 yesterday in the best way it knew how: through cinema. The Guys, about a fire captain (Anthony LaPaglia) who works with an editor (Sigourney Weaver) to write eulogies for his men who died that day, screened after a popular run as an off-Broadway play. The critical consensus was that Jim Simpson's small-budget film, adapted from his staging at New York's Flea Theater, lacked emotional heft, but that LaPaglia turned in an authentic performance.

Say what you will about well-written murder mysteries and suspenseful thrillers; for truly excruciating tension, there's nothing like watching a relationship unravel. Icy silences. Seething resentments. Broken promises. Public slights. These are things that keep me on the edge of my seat in theaters, or turning the pages of books. For pure stress, wondering whodunit simply can't compare to worrying about the husband/wife, father/son, mother/daughter relationship that's disintegrating in front of me. Recently, I watched two well-crafted films in which the relationships slowly (oh, so slowly)

Happy 94th, Mr. Hope."The Oprah Winfrey Show" (4 p.m.-5 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11) -- Baltimorean Lynne Lamberg, author of "Bodyrhythms: Chronobiology and Peak Performance," chats with Oprah about the best times of the day to meet, think, exercise, etc."High Incident" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2) -- Gang warfare spills over onto the buses of El Camino in this repeat from September, and it's up to Rhoades and Helgado (Blair Underwood and Lisa Vidal) to cool things down. ABC."Murder One" (9 p.m.-11 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2)

The trials continue on "Murder One," still one of the best dramas on TV."Friends" (8 p.m.-8: 30 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11) -- Monica (Courteney Cox) buys a new bed; Ross (David Schwimmer) has to suffer through dinner with Rachel's overbearing father (Ron Liebman); and Joey (Matt Le- Blanc) is teaching a soap opera class. What a pile of predicaments. NBC."Diagnosis Murder" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13) -- There's a bus accident, and this guy dies. Only Dr. Sloan doesn't think it was an accident; he thinks one of the passengers killed him. Good thing: All the passengers are sitting in the emergency room, which makes it easy to question suspects.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - In a medium obsessed with the young and the restless, two veteran actors are smashing the age barrier to star in fall series. Dennis Hopper, 69, plays a Pentagon official in NBC's E-Ring. Don Johnson, 55, portrays an over-the-hill lawyer in WB's Just Legal. Both dramas come from producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who has reshaped prime time with CSI, Without a Trace and Cold Case. He also has done quite a lot for middle-age actors who never will be confused with male models and boy toys.

"Mixed Nuts" sure is zany. It's also wacky, zonked and way-out. It just isn't very funny.Nora Ephron's first film since "Sleepless in Seattle," the movie is long on people bumping into walls and doors, and short on just about every other civilized virtue. It's particularly demeaning to its star, Steve Martin, who is presented in an unappetizing light as a whining, kvetching incompetent.Based on a French cult item called "Pere Noel Est Une Ordure" (you figure it out), the film looks as if it might be interesting: a farce set at a completely unprofessional suicide "hot line" office on the prime night of lonely guy despair, Christmas Eve. But Ephron's good taste keeps it from prancing into truly dangerous or subversive areas.

Steve Buscemi's "Trees Lounge" is set in the alternate universe ... you know, the one where Steve Buscemi isn't a star.It's like an autobiographical fantasy, in which the brilliantly weaselly actor imagines what might have happened if he'd never left Long Island for downtown and the performance scene, never gotten that big break as Mr. Pink in "Reservoir Dogs" and gone on to become all but de rigueur in any independent film that demands to be taken seriously,...

"Mixed Nuts" sure is zany. It's also wacky, zonked and way-out. It just isn't very funny.Nora Ephron's first film since "Sleepless in Seattle," the movie is long on people bumping into walls and doors, and short on just about every other civilized virtue. It's particularly demeaning to its star, Steve Martin, who is presented in an unappetizing light as a whining, kvetching incompetent.Based on a French cult item called "Pere Noel Est Une Ordure" (you figure it out), the film looks as if it might be interesting: a farce set at a completely unprofessional suicide "hot line" office on the prime night of lonely guy despair, Christmas Eve. But Ephron's good taste keeps it from prancing into truly dangerous or subversive areas.