Meryl Streep

I AM mortified!" says Oscar winner Helen Mirren about reports - in The New York Times and elsewhere, stating that she was "too busy" to have dinner at the invitation of Queen Elizabeth II. Helen tells me she tried desperately to rearrange the shooting schedule for the movie National Treasure: Book of Secrets, but the company was in South Dakota filming on location. "I just could not shut all that down to take three days off to go to Buckingham Palace." I am sure the queen understood this and will invite Helen for another time.

Meir Ariel, 57, a songwriter and singer whose works became classics of modern Israeli music, died yesterday of an infection in Jerusalem. He wrote the words to hundreds of songs, many of which entered the canon of pop and rock music in Hebrew, said Israeli Composers' Union chairman Yori ben-David."

Start preparing for those summer road trips now. And don't forget to include some literacy games for the backseat. Check out these books and audiotapes.Books:"Travel Time! My First Backseat Book" (ages 3 to 5); Rand McNally & Company, 1997"Alphabet Travels" (age 2 and up); Rand McNally & Company, 1997Audiotapes:"Madeline" by Ludwig Bemelmans. Picture book and cassette (Puffin)"The Velveteen Rabbit" by Margery Williams, read by Meryl Streep (Rabbit Ears/S&S)Scholastic Parent and Child MagazinePub Date: 5/12/99

"Music of the Heart," the real-life story of an inner-city violin teacher struggling against an unfeeling bureaucracy to keep her program going, is the sort of tear-inducing feel-gooder that only a curmudgeon could find fault with.Permit me just a few curmudgeonly moments.But first, the essentials of the plot. Newly divorced Roberta Guaspari (Meryl Streep), desperate to find a way to support herself and her two boys, persuades an inner-city principal (Angela Bassett, believably strong-willed but compassionate)

Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. That much we know. But what about the special evil that lurks at the heart of happy families?Such is the central premise of "One True Thing," Carl Franklin's sympathetic if by-the-numbers adaptation of the Anna Quindlen novel. An unremarkable story of family dysfunction, catharsis and healing, "One True Thing" is dragged from a fatal pool of treacle by Meryl Streep and Renee Zellweger, both of whom turn in brave, unsentimental performances.As a mainstream domestic melodrama, "One True Thing" takes material usually reserved for the Lifetime channel and network movies of the week and gives it a slightly more sophisticated gloss; when tears are shed -- and they will be shed -- at least filmgoers won't hate themselves in the morning.

Conventional wisdom used to have it that movie theaters weren't safe for adults until well after Labor Day, but the summer of 1998 gave the lie to such thinking.With fare like "The Truman Show," "Out of Sight" and "Saving Private Ryan" - not to mention the gross-out comedy "There's Something About Mary" for the inner 13-year-old boy in everyone - grown-ups had their share of diversions while the kids feasted on "Madeline," "Mulan" and "The Parent Trap."Still, a look ahead confirms the tradition of autumn as the back-to-basics movie season, with new films from such beloved veterans as John Frankenheimer, Woody Allen, Jonathan Demme, Ken Loach and Terrence Malick, not to mention young Turks like Todd Solondz, Gus Van Sant and Bryan Singer.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Getting to know Robert De Niro is like getting to know the stranger sitting next to you on a city bus. You can ask basic questions and get reluctant answers, but the stranger probably wishes he were sitting next to the mute bag lady who wasn't so curious.De Niro is a great actor. He gives his all even in a small part like the bumbling pathologist he plays in "Marvin's Room," which is scheduled to open locally Jan. 31. But as an interview, the word is that he's no award winner.

In case we hadn't noticed, Glamour points out this month that Hollywood's "most desirable women are over 35 and acting their age."The hot celluloid ladies include Ellen Barkin, 40; Meryl Streep, 46; Susan Sarandon, 49; and Michelle Pfeiffer, 38.That's great news for all of us who aren't getting any younger. However, the fact still remains that those actresses will never be paired with a sweet young thang the way older male actors are. Robert Redford, 58, can offer 33-year-old Demi Moore an indecent proposal, but when will we see Meryl Streep get busy with, say, 34-year-old Michael J. Fox?

Given the pedigree behind it, "Before and After" is a surprisingly and, one might even say, bitterly disappointing film.Good lord, what an assemblage of talent! The original novel was by Rosellen Brown, the screenplay by Ted Tally ("Silence of the Lambs"). The director is that Euro-sophisticate specialist in the nasty, Barbet Schroeder of "Single White Female" and "Reversal of Fortune." The stars are Meryl Streep (as in the Meryl Streep) and Liam Neeson (as in the Liam Neeson).But the movie, after a provocative first hour, just fizzles off into something flat and unengaging, and ends up as a loud kitchen-sink melodrama, with people screaming accusations at each other over the breakfast table.

It should have happened in 1984, when she received a Tony nomination for her Broadway stage performance in "Hurlyburly."It should have happened in 1986, when her work in "Aliens" netted her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, or in 1988, when she racked up two Oscar nominations -- for Best Actress ("Gorillas in the Mist") and Best Supporting Actress ("Working Girl").But it was only last year, when she found herself acting the coveted role at the center of "Death and the Maiden," that Sigourney Weaver began to regard herself as one of the front-rank American actresses.

Inglourious Basterds * 1/2 ( 1 1/2 STARS) $38 million $38 million 1 week Rated: R Running time: 2:33 What it's about: A band of Jewish-American commandos (including Brad Pitt, above) bedevil the German army, and a French Jew seeks justice for the Nazi slaughter of her family. Our take: It's so hollow and protracted that it transforms mayhem into monotony. District 9 ** ( 2 STARS) $18.2 million $72.8 million 2 weeks Rated: R Running time: 1:52 What it's about: A government agent comes to the aid of an alien race (above)

District 9 ** ( 2 STARS) $37.5 million $37.5 million 1 week Rated: R Running time: 1:52 minutes What it's about: A government agent comes to the aid of an alien race (above) forced to live in slumlike conditions on Earth. Our take: It's mainly a compost of other sci-fi movies, some as old as "RoboCop" and "Aliens," and some as recent as "Cloverfield." G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra ** ( 2 STARS) $22.3 million $98.5 million 2 weeks Rated: PG-13 Running time: 1:58 minutes What it's about: Team leader Duke (Channing Tatum, above)

G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra ** ( 2 STARS) $54.7 million $54.7 million 1 week Rated: PG-13 Running time: 118 minutes What it's about: Team leader Duke (Channing Tatum, above) and his elite force must save the world from metal hungry robots. Our take: G.I. Joe may not be beefier, but it's cheesier and less aggravating than "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," the summer '09 headbanger it most resembles. Julie & Julia *** ( 3 STARS) $9.8 million $86.1 million 3 weeks Rated: PG-13 Running time: 123 minutes What it's about: Meryl Streep (above)

The problem with Doubt is its dramatic certainty. From the start of this sadly familiar and stagy tale, set in a Bronx church and Catholic school in 1964, the headmistress, a stern disciplinarian named Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep), suspects her priest, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), of sexual misconduct. After Sister Aloysius persuades the naive Sister James (Amy Adams) to alert her to signs of unspeakable acts, the younger nun witnesses behavior she thinks raises questions.

Sydney Pollack, the Academy Award-winning director of Out of Africa who achieved acclaim making popular, mainstream movies with A-list stars, including The Way We Were and Tootsie, died yesterday. He was 73. Mr. Pollack, who was also a producer and actor, died of cancer at his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif., according to Leslee Dart, his publicist and friend. "Sydney Pollack has made some of the most influential and best-remembered films of the last three decades," film scholar Jeanine Basinger said recently.

THERE ONCE was a man from St. Paul/Who went to a fancy dress ball./He said, `Yes, I'll risk it. I'll go as a biscuit!'/And a dog ate him up in the hall."

SO, shall we expect to see Tom Cruise, his business partner Paula Wagner, Robert Redford and Meryl Streep yukking it up in costume and singing silly songs, in the wake of the disappointing opening of Lions for Lambs? Well, Miss Streep has just completed the movie version of Broadway's Mamma Mia! so there are colorful clothes and ABBA tunes galore in her future. I don't know that Tom, Paula or Redford are quite so lucky. They all had a lot of high hopes riding on Lions for Lambs, it being the initial Cruise/Wagner project out of their United Artists deal, and it is Redford's first directorial effort in seven years.

I HONOR `real journalism,' which doesn't get clouded by false stories whether they're about me or anybody else," said Angelina Jolie at the Courage in Journalism Awards in Beverly Hills. So, you see, occasionally something does happen on the West Coast that isn't about Britney, Nicole, Lindsay or Paris. A saucy film Meryl Streep as Julia Childs? Nora Ephron is adapting the Julie Powell book Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. The saucy Ms. Ephron will also direct and - hooray - the movie will be made in New York City in March.

The problem with Lions for Lambs isn't its political engagement but its cinematic disengagement. Robert Redford directs and stars in this ambitious talkathon, which would have been more effective as a radio play. Redford is all flashing teeth and conscience as a professor intent on pushing a gifted but complacent frat boy in his political-science class (Andrew Garfield) into some commitment to our civic life. Tom Cruise is all flashing teeth and cunning as a hotshot Republican senator shopping a scoop about a bold strategic change in Afghanistan to a seasoned journalist (Meryl Streep)

After she'd had a brief incandescent run in the theater and done some TV movies, Meryl Streep got her first film role: two brief scenes in Julia, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Jane Fonda. Her second was The Deer Hunter, in which she played a war bride and fresh-faced beauty - so green, in fact, that some thought they had merely found a woman who resembled the character and cast her. The film generated the first of her 14 Oscar nominations. Now 30 years later, Streep's oldest daughter, Mamie Gummer, after only two professional plays, has her first role of consequence in a film starring Vanessa Redgrave (Evening)