Independent Women

Buffeted by advertising, besieged by phone calls, buried in campaign mailers, California voters on Tuesday will close out an election for the history books, its massive outlay part of a Republican effort to ride a national wave of enthusiasm and a Democratic attempt to turn out voters less motivated this year than in the landmark presidential election of 2008. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent by candidates and those on both sides of ballot measures to draw in or repulse voters, and the efforts continued at a frantic pace Saturday.

Independent voters, who broke heavily for President Obama in the 2008 election, have swung dramatically in the other direction and are now deeply dissatisfied with his job performance, the country's direction and the overall state of American politics, a new poll finds. A survey conducted for Independent Women's Voice, a nonprofit, center-right group, also shows Republicans well-positioned to pick up independent voters in the midterm elections on Nov. 2. A total of 40% of independents planned to vote Republican, compared with 18% who said they would vote for a Democrat, according to the survey, part of which was conducted Sept.

"A Talking Picture" is an honest title for a film that is almost entirely conversation. Yet its rich contemplative tone proves deceptive, for its director, Portugal's preeminent filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira, at 96, still knows how to pack a wallop. Oliveira establishes a sense of timelessness only to catch his audience up short with a film that ultimately could scarcely be a more timely comment on the world in which we live.

A solid majority of likely voters favors removing Gov. Gray Davis from office in the recall election Tuesday, and Arnold Schwarzenegger has surged ahead of his rivals in the race to succeed him, according to a new Los Angeles Times poll. By 56% to 42%, likely voters support ousting the Democratic incumbent, a sign that Davis has lost ground in the closing phase of his battle for political survival.

Acting in such films as "Out of the Fog" (1941), "The Sea Wolf" (1941), "High Sierra" (1941) and "Road House" (1948), Ida Lupino became a role model for future generations of actresses playing tough, independent women. But it was as a director that Lupino blazed new trails, becoming the only notable female filmmaker of her era in Hollywood.

Persistence can pay. Just ask producer Ken Wales. For the past 17 years he's struggled to bring Catherine Marshall's 1967 bestseller "Christy" to the screen. His exhaustive efforts have something to show for this week: "Christy" premieres as a new CBS series, shot on location in Townsend, Tenn., and starring Kellie Martin ("Life Goes On") as the plucky heroine of the title and Tyne Daly as the stalwart Quaker missionary, Miss Alice Henderson.

Joyce Mujuru fought so fiercely in the war for independence that she earned the name "Spill Blood." Now, 10 years later, she fights for women's rights in a male-dominated culture. Mujuru, 35, is minister of community and cooperative development in President Robert Mugabe's government and finds the new battle, in its own way, as daunting as the old one.