Fiona Shaw

Sir Richard Burton, the Victorian explorer, geologist, botanist, anthropologist, rake, poet, master of 40 languages and dialects, the first European to enter the sacred, forbidden Muslim citadel of Harer in East Africa, translator of the Kamasutra and the 16-volume "Arabian Nights"--is any life more cinematically enticing than his? It's mystifying that, until now, no one has sought to make a feature film about him, unless you want to count the 1971 TV docudrama "The Search for the Nile."

Who goes to the movies for moral uplift? You want moral uplift, go to the Ice Capades. So don't think that seeing "My Left Foot" (at Horton Plaza) wins you some kind of spiritual merit badge. This one you see for the pure love of great movie making. Its tough-minded, unsentimental writing and ferociously brilliant acting--across the board and especially at the top--manage to give a pretty good idea of what Christy Brown, the Dublin-born writer, poet and painter, was all about.

Who goes to the movies for moral uplift? You want moral uplift, go to the Ice Capades. So don't think that seeing "My Left Foot" (at the AMC Century 14) wins you some kind of spiritual merit badge. This one you see for the pure love of great movie making. Its tough-minded, unsentimental writing and ferociously brilliant acting--across the board and especially at the top--manage to give a pretty good idea of what Christy Brown, the Dublin-born writer, poet and painter, was all about.

Sir Richard Burton, the Victorian explorer, geologist, botanist, anthropologist, rake, poet, master of 40 languages and dialects, the first European to enter the sacred, forbidden Muslim citadel of Harer in East Africa, translator of the Kamasutra and the 16-volume "Arabian Nights"--is any life more cinematically enticing than his? It's mystifying that, until now, no one has sought to make a feature film about him, unless you want to count the 1971 TV docudrama "The Search for the Nile."

"I saw this production in London," Clare Peploe says of a stage version of "The Triumph of Love" mounted two years ago. "It was the last day, and I thought, 'I'm not able to tell any of my friends to go and see it.' It's so extraordinary! So I had to make a film of it." Soon afterward, Peploe, known for directing two romantic comedies of expatriates washed up on exotic shores ("High Season" and "Rough Magic"), brought it up as a possible project with her husband, Bernardo Bertolucci.

Michael Sheen, who played talk show host David Frost both on stage and now in the upcoming screen version of "Frost/Nixon," knows that the transition can be scary. "The great joy and fear about working in front of a camera is that it picks up everything," said Sheen. He rejoined his stage costar Frank Langella for director Ron Howard's adaptation of Peter Morgan's acclaimed play about the 1977 interviews that revived Frost's career and humanized a disgraced Nixon. The film opens Friday.

The Liberty is one of those historic 42nd Street theaters earmarked for redevelopment that no one has cared about in a very long time. Built in 1904 as a legitimate playhouse, it wound up as a hideaway for men with a taste for watching porn in Times Square. The theater has been empty for six years. It looks as though no one has cleaned it in at least that long.

Memo to studios: Mira Sorvino is ready to do a big fat Hollywood comedy. Anyone who has forgotten how funny Sorvino can be need only see "The Triumph of Love," an 18th century screwball sex farce that opened Wednesday in which she plays a princess bent on seducing a pompous philosopher (Ben Kingsley) and his spinster sister (Fiona Shaw) in order to restore her true love (Jay Rodan) to his rightful place on the throne. Sorvino's comedic gifts have not been demonstrated much in recent years.

Audiences showing up at Unknown Theater quickly discover that they're in for anything but a conventional evening of storytelling. Instead, they may find an upside-down room that seems to swallow sound. Or chairs circling a 3,000-pound pile of dark rubber dirt. Or an usher who'll ask you to sit on one side of the house, your companion on the other. "I always consider the role of the audience," says Unknown's artistic director, Chris Covics. "I think there's a dialogue.