James Spader

After getting swamped last year by HBO, network television staged a comeback last night at the 57th Annual Emmy Prime Time Awards. The first award of the evening went to Brad Garrett, of CBS' Everybody Loves Raymond, and the last went to the show itself as Best Comedy. It was a night of major awards for ABC, with Lost winning as Best Drama, James Spader of Boston Legal winning as Best Lead Actor in a Drama and Felicity Huffman of Desperate Housewives winning for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.

There is almost nothing that can cheapen and shrink a major moment of national history like a mediocre made-for-TV movie. And The Pentagon Papers, which purports to tell how and why former Pentagon employee Daniel Ellsberg leaked secret documents on the Vietnam War in 1971, is a mediocre made-for-TV movie. The primary problem is that director Rod Holcomb (The Education of Max Bickford) gives us pastiche instead of a film with a unified artistic vision and compelling emotional arc. Holcomb imitates the visual styles of several great feature films and then cobbles them together into a relatively lifeless television movie.

"Wolf" means to howl, but the best it can manage is a bow-wow or two, maybe a mangy arf.Astutely cast, often quite witty, it begins with a promising idea and really seems headed in an interesting direction. Then it's as if someone on the set said, "Hey, it's a horror movie. Blood, guts, bites and fights!" And the whole thing tips off into hokey ludicrousness.The idea, as cleverly conceived by Jim Harrison, a novelist who presumably would know about such things: In the corridors of power in a New York publishing house, the decent, humane "literary" editor-in-chief, Will Randall (Jack Nicholson)

Partial list of nominations announced yesterday by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Comedy series: Arrested Development, Fox; Desperate Housewives, ABC; Everybody Loves Raymond, CBS; Scrubs, NBC; Will & Grace, NBC. Drama series: Deadwood, HBO; Lost, ABC; Six Feet Under, HBO; 24, Fox; The West Wing, NBC. Miniseries: Elvis, CBS; Empire Falls, HBO; The 4400, USA; The Lost Prince, PBS. Made for television movie: : Lackawanna Blues, HBO; The...

Carrie and company returning for 'Sex' sequel There's still sex to be had in the city, even though Carrie Bradshaw has settled down with one man. New Line Cinema spokeswoman Candice McDonough confirms that Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker, her three co-stars and writer-director Michael Patrick King are signed for a sequel to last year's hit movie. The film will reunite Parker and gal pals Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon. In a statement, King says: "I'm very excited to work with these amazing actresses again and would love to give everyone more information about the sequel ... but I'm busy with my Sex life."

History might be made on two fronts tonight at the Emmys. While much has been written about either AMC's Mad Men or FX's Damages having a chance to become the first basic cable series to win as best drama, even more compelling is the possibility that HBO's John Adams could be the most honored program in TV history before the night ends. The historically sound and dramatically dazzling miniseries about the life of America's second president won eight Emmys last week at the Creative Arts portion of the competition and needs only three more tonight to tie Angels in America, the 2003 HBO miniseries based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play about AIDS, and the 1976 ABC production Eleanor and Franklin, a made-for-TV movie about the life of President Franklin Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor.

CALL IT an occupational hazard, but like most journalists I have a tendency to destroy every nice romantic fantasy with some flat-footed realism. No matter how I may suspend judgment in the darkened movie theater, by the time I reach the parking lot I am writing a postscript to the happy endings.So I left ''White Palace'' as Susan Sarandon and James Spader were beginning their happily-ever-after. And as I was beginning my what-happens-next.It wasn't the age gap between these two that stuck in my de-constructionist imagination, although much ado has been made of the steamy love affair between a 43-year-old woman and a 27-year-old man. When we were younger, the older woman was cast as a predatory Mrs. Robinson.

THE FALL CALENDAR of films reveals one thing. No one genre seems to dominate. There seems to be something for all, romance, violence, comedy, action, adventure and, of course, the Mafia. What would the season, any season, be without a few films about the Mafia?One such film opens Friday. It is Martin Scorsese's ''GoodFellas,'' a movie based on the book ''Wiseguy'' by Nick Pileggi. Ray Liotta is the young man who dreams of being a member of the mob, and Robert De Niro is the mob chieftain he serves.

Michael Damas, 90, an Arab-American who grew up in a neighborhood called "Little Syria" and later became mayor of Toledo, Ohio, died there Sunday of congestive heart failure. Born to parents who fled their village in Lebanon to avoid service in the military, Mr. Damas was involved in politics for about 50 years. He was a state legislator, city councilman, and school board member. A Democrat, he served three terms in the Ohio House of Representatives from 1948-1952. He was mayor from 1959 to 1961.

It kind of serves me right for not tuning in to Turner Classic Movies. When the clock strikes 10 on Tuesday nights, I'm usually in front of the television set watching the ABC show Boston Legal, more for William Shatner's nonpareil performance as the egomaniacal, over-the-top lawyer Denny Crane than for anything else. Perhaps I should have cut my losses and tuned to other channels after the episode in which Crane, forced to defend a murderer/rapist, shoots the guy in the kneecaps. "Denny Crane," Crane says to his soon-to-be-former client, who is doubled over in pain.