Vengeance

It should have been a deliciously satisfying moment for Lori Haigh, a form of vindication a quarter-century in the making. It's not a stretch to say she had hoped for years for something just like it -- when an official of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange would break emotionally and show at least a flicker of the same kind of suffering she'd felt so many times after being molested by a priest when she was a teenager. Then, it seemingly happened.

Election officials said Thursday that President Pervez Musharraf would seek reelection by lawmakers to a five-year term Oct. 6, even though his bid is clouded by legal challenges and widespread popular disdain. The announcement of the election date came as the Supreme Court heard arguments from opponents seeking to have the Pakistani leader disqualified from standing for office while serving as army chief.

When a friend from the old neighborhood rang Abu Ali after sunrise one day this month to tell him that his house had been destroyed, the middle-aged Sunni confessed to himself that he felt happy. He turned to his wife in bed and told her that the Americans had flattened their home in the Washash neighborhood and killed some of the Shiite militia members who had kicked them out last September. They were people he had lived next to for years, people he had said hello to every day.

In "Death Sentence," Kevin Bacon descends to the throne left vacant by the late Charles Bronson, that of a law-abiding worker bee turned one-man killing machine bent on avenging his family. Based on Brian Garfield's novel of the same name (itself a sequel to the book that began it all, "Death Wish"), this latest exercise in do-it-yourself justice-mongering features Bacon as Nick Hume, a risk-assessment company vice president whose No. 1 son is wantonly slaughtered in a gas station holdup.

Michelle Pfeiffer had no intention of spending nearly five years away from the silver screen. "You know," the 49-year-old actress says matter-of-factly, "it just happened." A few years ago, Pfeiffer, her über-TV-producer husband David E. Kelley and their children, Claudia Rose, 14, and Jack Henry, 13, relocated from Los Angeles to Northern California. "I think it was a big venture relocating," she offers. "I had been reading things. It wasn't like I made a conscious decision to not work.

THE abrupt blackout ending of "The Sopranos" finale may have left some fans dissatisfied, but the HBO drama is poised to exit the television landscape with closure of another sort. The epic mobster tale racked up 15 Emmy nominations Thursday, including one for outstanding drama series, a recognition the program won only once before in its seven-year run. Stars James Gandolfini and Edie Falco were also nominated as outstanding leads.

THE small, fictional Kansas town of "Jericho" is freezing. There is no electricity, food supplies are dwindling, and there are no wild animals to be found. People are dying. The new mayor has a plan: Make resources stretch by forcing out refugees from nearby towns. He throws tear gas into a church and out run the refugees, tripping over one another on the steps. One woman lands at the bottom, face-down. "Eat her!" yells Skeet Ulrich, who plays the CBS drama's lead character, Jake Green.

"You take direction rather well," says a vengeance-minded former stage manager with a knack for melodrama, menacing his terrified quarry with a loaded pistol. "Most actors have to ask about their motivation." Such is the witty, mutually reinforcing interplay between reality and theatrical artifice that fuels "Stage Struck," Simon Gray's sardonic 1979 twist on the British mystery-thriller genre.

Racing legend Mickey Thompson was forced to watch his wife's murder before he, too, was shot in the head, a fact that clearly points to a vengeful killer, a prosecutor said in closing arguments Monday. The man on trial for the 1988 killings, Michael Goodwin, a motor sports rival whose business had been destroyed in a bitter dispute, listened intently in the Pasadena courtroom. Goodwin did not testify in the seven-week double-murder trial.

There is a peculiarly American genre in book publishing that is all about redemption. To be more precise, it is about optimism, success, hubris, purgatory, humility, renewed self-awareness and then redemption. To be really effective, the author must undertake a dose of soul searching on TV talk shows. Carly Fiorina, the fallen chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Co., has now trodden this familiar path, although she seems to have rushed past some of the customary waypoints.