Trying to fathom Kate Beckinsale’s character at all is tougher than algebra: does the sweet ingenuous and slightly dim girl of the first part

Trying to fathom Kate Beckinsale’s character at all is tougher than algebra: does the sweet, ingenuous and slightly dim girl of the first part become a monster of manipulation or simply a woman taking charge of her life? It’s usually safe to assume that money is a prime motivation in James, but how much does passion also influence Amerigo?These puzzles, set against the clogged opulence of Edwardian London, sustain interest without ever inflaming it. The clash between American innocence and Old World cunning never approaches the tragic intensity of the last screen version of James, Iain Softley’s wonderfully insinuating The Wings of The Dove Nor does it match the fluency of its movement. James Ivory frames his shots with tremendous precision, and Andrew Sanders’ production design keeps the interiors in a state of immaculate burnish. Yet while the eye can feast, the mind tends to wander, particularly in the latter stages. As for the heart, I must confess, it didn’t get a look-in.The prospect of Wonder Boys put a spring in my step.

Based on the novel by Michael Chabon, it’s directed by Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential), written by Steve Kloves (The Fabulous Baker Boys) and stars Michael Douglas as a pot-smoking academic undergoing a midlife crisis. It’s a dramatic change of pace for Douglas, a much more interesting actor than he’s given credit for. Instead of his usual ballistic satyrs and supermen, he gives a wry and self-deprecating performance as a rumpled, lame-duck English professor, Grady Tripp, who’s terrified he’s a has-been. Seven years ago Tripp wrote a great novel, The Arsonist’s Daughter, that won prizes and made him a literary hero to smart undergraduates; since then he’s been struggling to complete the follow-up, which has ballooned beyond 2,000 pages of manuscript. As the story begins, Tripp’s wife has just left him and his married lover, Sara (Frances McDormand), who also happens to be the college chancellor, tells him that she’s pregnant.The movie follows him over the course of a chaotic and often farcical weekend.

Along with his domestic entanglements, Tripp also has to field the attentions of his agent, Crabtree (Robert Downey Jr), who’s just off the plane and eager to check on the new novel; of a pretty student, Hannah (Katie Holmes), who’s rooming in his house and perhaps wants to make the tenure permanent; and of James Leer (Tobey Maguire), the gifted but troubled star of his creative writing class. He ends up driving around night-time Pittsburgh in his battered old Ford trying to keep his protégé out of trouble and a colleague’s dead dog (don’t ask) out of sight.With a cast this strong and a leading actor unexpectedly prepared to mock himself, you can’t imagine how Wonder Boys can fail; and it doesn’t, exactly. Yet while it’s entertaining and amiable, I kept wishing it were more of a blast – sharper, funnier, maybe even a bit nastier. Douglas is great as the beleaguered prof, perfecting the look of a man who’s just got out of bed and wishes he hadn’t; it’s a sartorial watershed for him, too – having sported the most vilified item of clothing in Nineties cinema (the V-neck in Basic Instinct), he may well have surpassed it here with the world’s worst dressing-gown.Problem is, Tripp is the only decently developed character in the movie. Downey Jr and Maguire get some good scenes without building to very much, while Frances McDormand and Katie Holmes are ignored for long stretches. There’s even the incomparable Rip Torn on display as a visiting senior novelist whose success naturally puts Tripp’s teeth on edge, yet you’ll have forgotten him by the end. One imagines that certain lines worked better in Michael Chabon’s novel than they play on screen: self-conscious literary banter that sounds fine in one’s head has a tendency to stink by the time an actor gets at it.

See Wonder Boys for Douglas, though, and remind yourself that creeps and thugs aren’t the limit of his repertoire.. With 65 companies worldwide performing his work at one time or another, Paul Taylor has to be the most successful modern-dance choreographer ever. He used to be a pretty extraordinary dancer, too, although he just says: “My style was a don’t-bother-me-I’m-busy style. That is, I didn’t play to the audience.”

With 65 companies worldwide performing his work at one time or another, Paul Taylor has to be the most successful modern-dance choreographer ever. He used to be a pretty extraordinary dancer, too, although he just says: “My style was a don’t-bother-me-I’m-busy style. That is, I didn’t play to the audience.”
John Percival, who writes in these pages and often saw Taylor dance, is more specific. “He was amazing because he had this physical bigness, he just straddled the stage.

And on top of that, he had a sensational smoothness of movement.”He celebrated his 70th birthday on 29 July, and still has his rangy tallness and swimmer’s shoulders (he was on his college swimming team). The only noticeable change is a moustache, perhaps to fill the gap between his mouth and his nose which he (wrongly) always believed was too short. Apart from his birthday, the year has been marked with a Légion d’honneur from the French, despite his rabid Francophobia; and a world premiere, Fiends Angelical, at the Jacob’s Pillow festival in July, where they also organised an exhibition of his artwork – witty assemblages made out of found objects. Since last year, moreover, his company has been touring extensively as official American Cultural Ambassadors, in which capacity they are arriving in London.The Paul Taylor Dance Company’s last visit was 10 years ago, when the Queen came and tapped the Royal finger in time to Company B, the season’s hit, set to the wartime songs of the Andrews Sisters. Taylor, who was in attendance, has a couple of good stories about that occasion, including the moment, when preparing for the Queen to sit next to him, he gallantly held down her Sadler’s Wells tip-up seat, only to find a catastrophic mistiming caused the Royal bottom actually to sit on his hand.He will be coming again with his company, although these days he normally prefers to stay put, here in his Long Island home.