Cliches

Red Zone: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of the San Francisco Dog Mauling, by Aphrodite Jones. William Morrow. 336 pages. $24.95. The horrific death of Diane Whipple in January 2001, was instant fodder for the tabloids and cable TV -- a former all-American lacrosse player, she was literally torn to shreds by two huge Presa Canario "fighting dogs" in the hallway of her tony apartment building. Neo-Nazis, tattooed convicts, bestiality, the Mexican mafia, Celtic runes and lesbianism all figured in the case.

An Unquiet History, by Matthew Battles. Norton. 256 pages. $24.95. Battles is on the staff of the Houghton Library, Harvard University's rare books collection, a most appropriate vantage point for examining the conception, utility and romance of libraries through history. It is a splendidly articulate, informative and provoking piece of work. Thousands of volumes have been written about books, their preservation -- and, indeed, tragic destruction -- and many are worthy. But Battles' is the newest and is sweeping in its inclusiveness, extraordinarily brisk in narrative vigor, and consistently lively -- utterly trumping the cliches of the mustiness of libraries and the dreariness of librarians.

Chow Yun-Fat deserves so much better than Bulletproof Monk, there ought to be a law. Rarely has so charismatic a performer been wasted on such mindlessly inept drivel. Here's a sampling of the cliches strung together in this amateur-night production: the wise Buddhist monk, the bad guy covered in tattoos, the vengeance-obsessed Nazi, the wisecracking petty thief, the privileged gal who seeks her identity on the streets, the doughnut-eating cop, the dying mentor, the slugfest pitting one beautiful woman against another, the movie critic aghast that professional filmmakers can't do any better than this.

St. Patrick's Day is upon us, which means it's time to raise a pint and ponder this year's Irish puzzle: How in God's name did the greatest writer of the 20th century become a pizza? This is the question that comes to mind when one visits one of Baltimore's most popular new destinations, the James Joyce Irish Pub & Restaurant at the corner of President and Aliceanna streets. The restaurant, open since November in the ground floor of the parking garage of the new Inner Harbor Marriott, is your typical Irish-theme spot: wooden partitions imported from the home country, reliable shepherd's pie and corned beef, folk music piped over the speakers, the inevitable Guinness.

He pleads. He prays. He scolds. He repents, kind of. We've heard it all before, of course, though now the stakes are a bit higher. On R. Kelly's new album, Chocolate Factory (Jive), released Tuesday, the R&B star isn't oblivious to the world of trouble he's in. On the contrary, he tries to sing his way out of it with his most traditional-sounding album yet, from its Al Green- and Marvin Gaye-inspired ballads to its steppin' dance mixes. Kelly was indicted last year in Chicago on 21 counts of child pornography, and faces 12 more counts on similar charges after a recent arrest in Florida.

WASHINGTON - After all the rallies, the handshaking, the millions of dollars spent and the barrage of negative television and radio advertising by the candidates of both parties, the country today remains about where it was politically 24 hours ago - split down the middle. But in a campaign in which no central issue seemed to sway the voters across the nation, President Bush, by investing a huge amount of his time and prestige, bucked the history of first-term presidents in a midterm election.

Alone among this year's nuclear-disaster pictures, K-19: The Widowmaker has the virtue of believability. Based on the real-life near-meltdown, in July 1961, of the first Russian submarine to carry ballistic missiles, the movie follows the ship's scheduled sea trials - and the unscheduled calamity that compelled its men to weld a leak and jerry-rig a cooling system in one of the reactor chambers. The officers in this brave new world of atomic nightmare make decisions in the dark; the sailors make repairs amid savage radioactivity.

In answer to the question, "Why does one write poetry?", Wallace Stevens, one of America's great 20th-century poets, responded: "Because one is impelled to do so by a personal sensibility and also because one grows tired of the monotony of one's imagination." Since 1956, when his first book was chosen by W.H. Auden to win the coveted 1956 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, John Ashbery, like Stevens, has used poetry to avoid the boredom of a sedentary imagination. It is typical and telling about modern poetry that both Stevens and Ashbery do not claim to write from "inspiration," though their sensibility impels them, but from monotony, tiredness and perhaps impatience with the status quo. In the service of his imagination, John Ashbery has published more than 20 volumes of poems, a collection of plays, a novel, essays and art criticism.

Ice Cube gets to act out every tough-guy fantasy he's ever dreamed in All About the Benjamins; unfortunately, he insists that we come along for the ride. There's no disputing Cube's screen presence, and there are moments where he comes close to actually acting - including scenes in which he doesn't glower. But first-time director Kevin Bray's style is so hyperkinetic, so full of jump-starts and fast zooms and freeze frames and extreme close-ups, that it can't help but be distracting. A little style is fine, but that adjective - little - is important.