Keira Knightley

Nineteen23, a new monthly program dedicated to "films that were screened in schools instead of theaters, in small places instead of big ones, and for specialized audiences instead of general ones," begins tonight at the Maryland Art Place with a group of short works reflecting the theme "Cities and Towns." Highlights of the program include Shirley Clarke's 1960 "Skyscraper," a documentary on the construction of a Fifth Avenue skyscraper built three years earlier; Lincoln Johnson's "Elysium," which juxtaposes a 17th-century poem with Baltimore street scenes from the early 1960s; and Larry Yust's 1969 "The Lottery," an adaptation of Shirley Jackson's short story about small-town blackballing.

From the cover Globes: all questions, no answers So the 82 voting members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association have punted. They're either unable or unwilling to designate any sort of Oscar frontrunner and so have nominated as many as 12 films for either best drama or comedy, for the 65th annual Golden Globe Awards. Sprinkling their gold dust everywhere, the group handed out nominations for dramas, seven in all, for films such as Atonement, the World War II tale of love thwarted by a child's overactive imagination, to Ridley Scott's ode to drug lords, American Gangster, to the Coen brothers' violent modern-day Western No Country for Old Men. And there were the five nominees in the musical or comedy category, including Sweeney Todd, based on the Sondheim musical about a barbarous barber; Hairspray, based on the John Waters film and Broadway play; the unplanned pregnancy comedy, Juno - and on and on. Some of the films, like Across the Universe and Charlie Wilson's War, haven't set the critics afire, but what does that matter, when Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks can be nominated and invited to the party?

Whether you call it attention-deficit-disorder filmmaking or MTV style, every time you think that show-off camera moves and ultra-staccato cutting set to rock and pop have disappeared, they spring up yet again - most egregiously in Domino, today's offbeat action-film premiere. The auteur, Tony Scott, repeats the methods of his previous hit, Man on Fire (2004), where he became the Tilt-a-Whirl of directors. First he dizzied audiences with vertiginous camera angles and varying degrees of grain and color.

Reese Witherspoon may be the closest thing to a lock in this year's Oscar race, having won every acting award short of the Razzie for her portrayal of steel magnolia June Carter in Walk the Line. The National Society of Film Critics, San Francisco Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle, Boston Society of Film Critics ... all have named Witherspoon the best actress of 2005. And she's earned the plaudits; her Carter is a welcome source of strength and stability in the film, as she struggles to steady the roller-coaster life of music legend Johnny Cash.

It's tempting, as some have done, to call Johnny Depp the king of the weirdo actors -- and God knows, with charmless, bizarro turns like his Michael Jackson-esque Willy Wonka, he has on occasion laid claim to the title. But if his performances were merely odd for oddness' sake, like the dressed-up ham served by declining greats such as Marlon Brando or Rod Steiger, they wouldn't connect so zingily with the audience. Throughout Depp's career, his approach to acting has balanced "fun" and aesthetic risk-taking, outlandish imagination and emotional reality.

Any other year, and fans of the Academy Awards would be buzzing today about the twin nominations for Cate Blanchett, about the first-time nominations for two aging veterans in the twilight of their careers, and about the wide-open race for the best picture Oscar, where it's truly anyone's guess which movie will win. But the talk so far this year isn't so much about who will win the Oscars as it is about who will watch them. Thanks to the Hollywood writers' strike, now well into its third month, it appears likely the Feb. 24 awards show will have to go on unscripted.

Capsules by Michael Sragow or Chris Kaltenbach, unless noted. Full reviews are at baltimore sun.com/movies. Atonement -- The crush of an upper-class teen on her housekeeper's son (James McAvoy) catalyzes a devastating accusation that ruins his life and that of the girl's older sister (Keira Knightley). This beautifully acted, remarkably visualized adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel sums up the need for charity and generosity in art and life. (M.S.) R 123 minutes A The Bucket List -- A pair of dying cancer patients (Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman)

TELEVISION THE RICHES / / 10 p.m. Tuesday. FX ....................... This decidedly off-beat drama about a family of grifters that tries to steal the American Dream by assuming the identity of a dead family returns for Season 2. The series was troubled last year by an inability to maintain a tone that was both credible and comically dark. But it was always a joy to watch droll Minnie Driver and super-charged Eddie Izzard as the mom and pop hustlers trying to pass as members of the upper-middle class in McMansion Land.

Director Gore Verbinski asked Hong Kong actor Chow Yun-Fat to shave his head for his role as the powerful Singapore buccaneer Capt. Sao Feng in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. "He wanted to keep his hair for a while," Verbinski recalls. "But I said I think we should see this guy not having a head of hair. We have so many long-haired pirates." The 52-year-old star of Ang Lee's Oscar-winning martial arts epic, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, agreed to go the bald pate route, but only if the filmmaker would shave him. "I think as a director, he has a full vision of every single character in the movie," says Chow, a lanky charmer who is not above bussing a woman's hand.