Malcolm Mcdowell

Malcolm McDowell scared the hell out of everyone a little over two decades ago when he played Alex, the violent, sadistic, usually stoned chief Droog in "A Clockwork Orange. " In it, he was the leader of a group of teen-agers, a cult, more or less, who spoke a language of their own, Nadsat - a mix of Anglicized Russian, Gypsy, rhyming slang and associative words. It would be hard to forget the image of him, bowler hat on his head, one eye ringed with painted false lashes, mouth curled in a smile - or was it a sneer?

10 tonight CHANNEL 3 Malcolm McDowell (right) reprises his role as cult leader Bret Stiles, who faces off with Patrick (Simon Baker, left) once again. This time, though, he's got some valuable information about the missing psychic.

The British are better at developing female action stars than we are, recognizing that high cheekbones and a supple trigger finger make an irresistible combination. First Kate Beckinsale in the Underworld movies and now Rhona Mitra in Doomsday, an intriguing if derivative sci-fi thriller. To play a deadly commando in the year 2035, Mitra, best known to American audiences for her stint on Boston Legal , has her hair cut in an ultra-angular shag so that she resembles Victoria Beckham on steroids.

The people in "My Life So Far" are so rich and their problems so trivial, it would be easy to mistake it for a Hollywood movie, were it not for the burr. The movie, set in Scotland, is adapted from the autobiography of a British TV executive, and describes his formative years in the 1940s on an estate managed by his scheming father (Colin Firth), who believes he will make his fortune in moss. In some ways, the movie is about a boy coming to grips with the fact that is father is a buffoon, and the movie initially adopts a comic posture that suits this content.

Some directors make movies that clutch clumsily at emotion. Some splatter gore and noise mindlessly across the screen and call it daring. Stanley Kubrick, who died Sunday at 70, made movies that thought out loud - in ways that only movies, with their potent marriage of image and sound, can. That doesn't mean he was a captive of the art house. He made some films - from Spartacus to the mythic, mystifying 2001: A Space Odyssey - that had legs at the box office. He could work in blood-red - to the point, in the darkly prophetic A Clockwork Orange, of spawning outrage.

So far this year, Jim Caviezel has played a martyr twice onscreen - once as the Messiah in The Passion of the Christ and now as golfer Bobby Jones in Stroke of Genius. The film is a curious blend of tragedy and hagiography. Jones' brilliant if relatively brief career in the 1920s earned him a place in the golf pantheon rivaled only by Jack Nicklaus'. But if this film portrait is to be believed, never has someone so excelled at a discipline yet derived so little pleasure from it. From the time he took up the game as a neurasthenic youth in Georgia, golfing exacted a terrible toll on Jones' psyche and health.

Let's put it this way: You should go see Class of 1999 if you're the type of person who likes a movie in which students go to the dead of the class. The film features three inner-city schoolteachers who want to mold young minds. Understand, however, that they are a far cry from Our Miss Brooks and Welcome Back, Kotter. If you are a member of the class of 1999 at Seattle's Kennedy High and you flunk - you die. That's because your history, chemistry and gym teachers are attack androids programmed to terminate you if you don't learn your lessons.

A Clockwork Orange is a timely offering, and not just because of the recent death of director Stanley Kubrick. The carnage in Littleton, Colo., makes this nightmare evocation of alienation and mindless violence among the young all the more visionary and prescient. If Kubrick's earlier vision of the future in 2001: A Space Odyssey perplexed some viewers, A Clockwork Orange, released in 1971, was tailored to shock them deeply. It took the satirical device of exaggeration of present trends into things to come.

The concept is sound: Recast the refreshingly subversive '60s television show I Spy - which propelled the careers of Bill Cosby and Robert Culp - with their counterparts Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson as a modern-day undercover agent 009 and superspy James Blond. The execution is so dumbed-down, so dumbfounding, that sophisticated moviegoers might confuse it for outtakes from Spy Kids 2 and XXX. Incredible, but true: It took the combined talents of four (count 'em) screenwriters, two comic geniuses and resourceful director Betty Thomas (maker of the hilarious Howard Stern bio Private Parts and that delightful The Brady Bunch Movie)

The Ellen DeGeneres Show (3 p.m., NBC10) - Mario Lopez; Two Cellos; Chris Jericho and Cheryl Burke. Entertainment Tonight (7 p.m., CBS3) - Singer Britney Spears; wedding trends. The Insider (7:30 p.m., CBS3) - Actor Ryan Reynolds; The Voice ; actor Jim Carrey. Access Hollywood (7:30 p.m., NBC10) - Meredith Vieira; Maria Menounos and George Lopez. Franklin & Bash (9 p.m., TNT) - A woman is charged with using sex to murder her husband - an unusual situation that calls for some unorthodox defense tactics.

WE'RE NOT quite to Memorial Day, but you could say the summer TV season starts tonight, with the return of Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance" (8 p.m., Fox 29). NBC's "America's Got Talent" is back Tuesday (8 p.m., NBC10) and "The Voice" (10 p.m. Tuesday, NBC10) continues its duets to the death for the foreseeable future. There's no need for me to go on: If you're looking to see people singing, dancing, juggling, falling into water or merely pretending to fall in love in a hot tub, you have only to turn on your TV. "Reality," I promise, will find you. But if you're looking for the kind of escape that can only come from watching people who admit they're pretending, performing lines scripted for them, here's a quick look at some of what the next few weeks hold: TNT's "Franklin & Bash.

The idea keeps catching on - even if audiences are still catching up. The Los Angeles Philharmonic is preparing for its second live movie-theater simulcast on Sunday - only a week after Carmen in 3-D leapt from London's Royal Opera and a few weeks before the English National Opera's 3-D Lucrezia Borgia arrives on DirecTV. More quietly, the Philadelphia Orchestra continues on an alternate route, eschewing satellite technology for the Internet in the seventh of a series of nine simulcasts March 20. The music world can't help but be dazzled by the Metropolitan Opera's recently released simulcast numbers: The nine transmissions in the 2009-10 season sold 2.4 million tickets, grossed $48 million, and eventually made a net profit of $8 million for the opera company.

10 tonight CHANNEL 3 Malcolm McDowell (right) reprises his role as cult leader Bret Stiles, who faces off with Patrick (Simon Baker, left) once again. This time, though, he's got some valuable information about the missing psychic.

This week's top DVD releases offer comic-book backgrounds. Astonishing X-Men Marvel Motion Comic, Grade A-minus: This DVD release exists somewhere between live-action film and animation. The original words and drawings from the comic book on which it is based have been used to create this hybrid style. Three talented people came together to make the unique and entertaining film, which features Wolverine, Beast, and the rest of the mighty mutant cast. Gifted - originally written as a comic book - comes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer master Joss Whedon.

K ERRI-LEE HALKETT is leaving Fox 29. The anchor-babe, who started at the station in 2002, has been off-air for several weeks with what she told colleagues was a skin rash. A station spokeswoman said last night that Halkett was expected to return to work in the second week of October for a last broadcast and on-air send-off. "Philly will always feel like home, and I will never forget how welcome you have all made me feel. From the bottom of my heart, thank you Philadelphia," Halkett said in a prepared statement released last night.

Standing in front of a painted killer in a cowboy hat and a Bob Marley with wilder hair than Medusa, John Walsh stared into the TV cameras, explaining his mission to identify a girl "thrown away like a pile of garbage. " A new big clue was about to be revealed. Frank Bender, forensic sculptor, stepped forward in the studio of his South Street home. He pulled away a large black cover to display a tiny head - one with large brown eyes and a gently rounded nose amid a soft, brown complexion.

The British are better at developing female action stars than we are, recognizing that high cheekbones and a supple trigger finger make an irresistible combination. First Kate Beckinsale in the Underworld movies and now Rhona Mitra in Doomsday, an intriguing if derivative sci-fi thriller. To play a deadly commando in the year 2035, Mitra, best known to American audiences for her stint on Boston Legal, has her hair cut in an ultra-angular shag so that she resembles Victoria Beckham on steroids.

In what was arguably the most anticipated delivery in the world, Angelina Jolie gave birth to her and Brad Pitt's daughter yesterday in Africa, Pitt's publicist announced in Los Angeles. "The night of May 27, 2006, in Namibia, Africa, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt welcomed their daughter Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt. No further information is being given," publicist Cindy Guagenti said in a statement. No photographs were being released, she added. The baby's arrival had been the subject of intense media speculation in recent months, compelling the superstar couple to decamp to Africa for privacy.