Halle Berry

Two and a half hours into the 74th annual Academy Awards, the extravaganza reached an emotional highpoint when veteran actor Sidney Poitier took the stage to accept his honorary Oscar and the entire Academy took to its feet. But it would be just one golden moment in a historic night that welcomed the Oscars into their new home and saw some old ghosts laid emphatically to rest, with Halle Berry and Denzel Washington joining Poitier as the only African-Americans ever to win best acting Oscars.

Denzel Washington won his fifth NAACP Image Award for Training Day at ceremonies Saturday in Los Angeles. The Best Actress nod went to Halle Berry for Swordfish. Best picture honors went to Ali. Other winners include Steve Harvey, best actor in a comedy series for The Steve Harvey Show, and Mo'Nique, best actress in a comedy for The Parkers. Rock star Little Richard, who turns 70 this year, was chosen for the group's Hall of Fame Award. Alicia Keys won best new artist, while Ja Rule was named best rapper for his single "Livin' It Up."

As the emotionally spent and psychologically tattered wife who unwittingly seeks solace in the arms of the racist white prison guard who oversaw her husband's final days, Halle Berry gives what may be the year's rawest, most devastating performance in Monster's Ball. It finally should elevate the 33-year-old actress above the ranks of the simply beautiful. It may even win her an Oscar. Leticia Musgrove couldn't have been an easy part to play. She's a woman without a tether. Her husband has been executed.

Surrounded by reporters pushing and shoving each other, the nationally known politician says to hell with it and in the glare of television lights and flash bulbs, passionately kisses the young woman who is not his wife. His advisers look at each other in dismay, knowing that their careers have just been flushed down the toilet.President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky? No, it's Warren Beatty, playing Sen. Jay Bulworth and Halle Berry, playing his lover, Nina, who is African-American. Fed up with reciting the worn-out nostrums necessary to get re-elected, Bulworth starts saying exactly what he thinks about the state of race and politics in America.

The aliens have landed in Beverly Hills and are wearing pumpkin-colored vinyl, stiletto fingernails and earrings like ICBMs.In Robert Townsend's "B.A.P.S." -- which is a kind of immigrant fable -- cultures and classes collide but give way to an ultimately enriched social landscape. But the conflicts don't arise from religious oppression, politics or shrinking quotas. They're about too much mouth, too much South and too much mousse.What are "B.A.P.S."? Black American Princesses, of course.

When considering Halle Berry, it is almost impossible not to focus on her beauty: The exquisite cheekbones, the flawless cafe au lait skin, the eyes like two huge dark caramels and the wrists so narrow they look as if they could almost fit through the hole of a doughnut.Her hair is shorn to her skull and slicked back in a style that only super models can carry off. Twinkling in her ear lobes are large diamond studs, an anniversary gift from her husband, the Atlanta Braves outfielder David Justice.

Before Sunday night and the start of "Queen," she was known primarily for her work in the film "Boomerang," her haircut and her recent marriage to Atlanta Braves right-fielder David Justice.Suddenly, millions of people, some of whom never heard of her a week ago, are debating her performance in the title role as Alex Haley's grandmother in the CBS miniseries that concludes tomorrow night at 9 on WBAL (Channel 11). Halle Berry's got people talking."I hope people will like me," Berry said in an interview in Los Angeles before the miniseries aired.

What do you mean, you can't go home again?With TV, it's like we never left.And during the February sweeps that begin this week, the wayback machine will be in nostalgia overdrive, recycling the golden memories from Mayberry to Bedrock and beyond.Ever since CBS hit the jackpot with retrospectives and reunion specials for "The Ed Sullivan Show," "All in the Family" and others, the major networks have glommed onto nostalgia as a sure-fire success formula.So a key ratings month like the February sweeps is a natural for these memory fests.

A funny thing happened to Tanya Carol on the way to work the other day. She was waiting for the No. 15 bus, glancing around Mount Holly Street, when she noticed something odd."I looked to the left and looked to the right and saw my haircut," says the 23-year-old magazine editor.Well not exactly her haircut. The short, layered bob that's become the style of the summer really belongs to Halle Berry, the fresh-faced actress in the Eddie Murphy movie, "Boomerang." But thanks to recent trips to the beauty salon, it also has turned up on Venel and Wanda and Melanie and . . .Not since Dorothy Hamill donned her bouncy wedge in the late '70s have so many women sought the same 'do. Simple and sexy, Ms. Berry's cut has caught on particularly among young black women, many of whom wouldn't mind if a few snips of the scissors made them look more like the model-turned-movie-star.

''The Last Boy Scout'' should do it for Bruce Willis.Willis has had a string of losers (''Bonfire of the Vanities,'' ''Hudson Hawk,'' ''Mortal Thoughts,'' ''Billy Bathgate''), so the Willis Watch has been growing, gathering speed and attention as it does. Will he ever do another successful film? Are the ''Die Hard'' films going to be the length and breadth of his movie career?Well, ''The Last Boy Scout'' may not be perfect, but it moves like thunder, has a number of laughs and entertains during all of its 97-minute running time.