Mike Nichols

And so it’s back to the ’50s (again). “All plays are dated,” Harold Clurman wrote in steadfast support of Clifford Odets in 1970. “They are products of their time.” Yes; but everything depends on how much the dated-ness shows.

In the current Broadway revival of Odets’econd to last play, The Country Girl, it shows too much. Odets himself described the play as superficial, and he is correct. Even Clurman, who first produced the revolutionary conscience plays of Odets in the 1930s when they worked together at the Group Theatre, conceded that The Country Girl is more about the actors in it than the play—or potboiler—itself.  read more »

This weekend, across the country, discerning film-going audiences were able to choose between two types of history: the real kind and the fake. Guess which one won?! National Treasure: Book of Secrets (no. 3), which follows the Indiana Jones-like Ben Gates as he tries to clear his family’s name in connection to the Lincoln assassination, raked in over $45 million and easily earned the top spot in the country. But here in the city, it lost out to Mike Nichols’ Charlie Wilson’s War (no. 2), about an obscure congressman and his even more obscure fight to help the Afghans defeat the Soviets during the Cold War, which outearned the Nicholas Cage actioner by $5,000, while playing on one less screen. Cue Cindy Adams: Only in New York, kids!  read more »

Julia Roberts is not a fan of showing her naked bod in front of the camera. But those who enjoyed getting a good, long look at the actress’ legs peeking out of a bubble bath in Pretty Woman (all “nude” scenes came compliments of a sultry body double) will want to see director Mike Nichol’s forthcoming Charlie Wilson’s War. In an interview with E!, Ms. Roberts makes her serious sentiments on skin known, saying, “Listen, there's a reason why you don't see me naked me in movies, you don't see me running around in bathing suits in movie”—that is, until Charlie Wilson’s War opens on December 21—“It’s just not my thing.”

It’s not Ocean’s co-star Brad Pitt’s thing either. After all, the dreamy do-good actor told the BBC last week that he would forego any future nude scenes. The reason? “I don't want to be embarrassed when my kids get old enough to see my films.”

Okay, so baring her own bum has always been off-limits for Ms. Roberts, 40, but apparently kissing Don Johnson on an episode of Miami Vice has not. When an interviewer recently raised the face-blast-from-the-past to the actress and mother of three, she demurred, explaining why the on-screen smooch never happened. “Let me tell you something: I was falling ill while in Miami and ended up with spinal meningitis. Got sick down there, the sickest I've ever been in my life. There's a little-known fact." And we can see why, frankly.