FILM STUDIES

In a well-ordered world, a weekly column learns how to generate one rounded, ripe subject a week - like a ready apple falling in one's lap. My editor said, "Well, It's a Wonderful Life is being revived. You could talk about that, couldn't you?" I certainly could, with all that this strange film means to me - such a mixture of Capra-corn and film noir. "Because you're sometimes a bit hard on Capra," she added. Her remark took me aback. "No, it's just that I have mixed feelings about him," I tried to explain.

Nothing helped feelings settle as the week developed. For a start, I went to see the new Woody Allen picture, Celebrity. It's not as good as Deconstructing Harry, and it's not really about celebrity. But it's further uncomfortable proof that, somehow, as he has become a famously "bad" man, so Allen has made himself a better artist. Well, there will be time to discuss that as the movie makes its way, by a very slow boat (from China perhaps) to these shores. But Charlize Theron! That was something to talk about now! Because she steals Celebrity and just sprawls across it, as if to say, "A star is born - huh?" I couldn't wait to write about the thoughts Charlize Theron provoked.

But then the American papers had the remarkable report about how, last week-end, kids all over the country had been going to see some new picture, and paying their $7.50 or $8, just because they'd found out that it was playing with a trailer for the new Star Wars picture. That won't open in America until next May, and I will predict right now that by the end of June it will have passed Titanic as the biggest-grossing movie of all time. So far.

What was most stunning was that these kids were then walking out - before the main feature! - as soon as they'd seen the two-minute trailer. The new Star Wars picture goes back to the pre-story of Darth Vader and Obi Wan Kenobi, and it stars Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor. Better yet, Lucas has directed this one himself - he hasn't actually directed a picture since Star Wars. But these kids weren't alive when the original was made. They may be the children of children who were dazzled over 20 years ago. And they testify to what is nearly the religion of the myth.

So, I could go see the trailer myself, talk to some of the kids, work up a little piece about how the very modest George Lucas (actually born in a Californian town named Modesto) changed the picture business for good and ill.

"But Charlize Theron," said my editor. "What is that?"

What indeed? Well, Charlize Theron is a blonde born in South Africa about 23 years ago, and she's like five feet elastic. She was in 2 Days in the Valley, and she was Keanu Reeves's wife in The Devil's Advocate.

"The one Al Pacino had his cruel and devilish way with?" said my editor.

Exactly. And in Celebrity, she plays a model who wears a tight white slip and a long wig and who is - she admits - flawless. Or is it floorless? She also gets aroused erotically whenever and wherever she's touched.

"You mean - ?" said my editor.

I do, I said, and I'd really like to convey what I feel about her.

"I think I've got that already," said my editor.

Well, I felt a little deflated by her dry voice - and then the next night Bobby Simone passed on. For those of you not yet in on the show, I'm talking NYPD Blue, for me the best series on American television; Bobby Simone is one of the leading detectives, played by Jimmy Smits. And Smits had said that, after four years, he wanted to leave the show. So the show had to find a way of writing him out. Kill him? Have him go to law school?

I don't know when Britain will get these episodes, so I'm not going to spoil them for fans. But there will be no more Simone. And for three episodes, the show has been setting this up, with Bobby very sick in hospital with heart trouble. Could they find a transplant? The last episode is 90 minutes, as opposed to the usual 60, and it gives you the answer.

All the while, of course, life at the precinct station goes on, and Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) gets involved with his ex-wife because she's now an alcoholic, and he says he will help her through it. But they're all waiting for the call from the hospital about Bobby.

Such episodes are filmed in seven days. This one may have got 10. It was and is brilliant - one of the best things you'll see on a screen this year or next. Time and again, television in America beats the movies at their own game. For a fraction the cost. That's a topic I'd like to get into.

"And It's a Wonderful Life?" asked my editor.

"Christmas perhaps?" I suggested.

"Star Wars?" She was being relentless.

"Maybe the bare facts of the story are enough - do you think?"

She sighed over the phone. "Well, Charlize Theron is definitely dangling," she said.

"I can live with that."