Powerful Women

Three films, all about powerful women, top this week's list of new movies on video. One is a semi-surrealistic tale set in Germany, another a controversial adventure about a pair of rebellious women, and the third a tense tale of life during wartime. THE NASTY GIRL 1/2 (1990) (HBO) $89.99. 94 minutes. Lena Stolze, Hans-Reinhard Muller. A captivating mix of historical fact and surrealistic fiction, The Nasty Girl is an inspired political satire based on the real-life tragicomedy of Anja Rosmus, modern folk-heroine of Passau and exposer of that Bavarian village's Nazi past.

In a scene reminiscent of The Graduate, a publisher leaned over to me during a party and said, "You know what sells these days? Women and cats. " Although Bill Clinton is not trying to write a bestseller, he is following this success formula for the '90s. For the first time ever in presidential politics, females and felines are becoming potent forces in the White House. As people in marketing and publishing well know, timing is everything. Socks is not the first White House cat, and Bill Clinton is certainly not the first president to be surrounded by women and winsome kittens.

Donna M. Coughey, president and chief executive officer of Willow Financial Bancorp Inc., has a strong reputation. "She's one of the best I've ever worked with," said James J. Clarke, a Villanova banking consultant, who was on Coughey's board at Chester Valley Bancorp Inc. So Clarke was mystified after hearing that Coughey's bank, based in Wayne, announced this week that it had given up trying to figure out why its books were off $6.2 million...

Rihanna and J. Cole did not make a home sex vid, the Barbadian beauty tweeted on Thursday, denying various rumors, including a RadarOnline report that Hustler honchos have seen the tape, which is up for sale. "We don't believe U, U need more people...AND ofcourse an actual sextape!" Rihanna tweets. J. Cole, for his part, goes direct 'n' succinct: "Gossip Gossip, [dude] just stop it. " Jim Carrey: I Emma Stone! Rubber-faced comic Jim Carrey sounds almost serious in a video love letter to Emma Stone posted on his website (Jimcarreytrulife.com)

The big idea: Crossing borders as a career move and corporate-growth strategy. Gulyas came to DuPont Co. straight out of college, as a chemical-engineering graduate from the University of Notre Dame. After two years in engineering, five years in sales, and some time as senior technical supervisor, she threw her hat into the ring for an opening as a European business manager in Geneva, Switzerland. It was what you'd call a reach. "I really didn't have any business experience, and I did not have an M.B.A.

LONDON - Britain's phone-hacking scandal intensified yesterday as the scope of tabloid intrusion into private voice mails became clearer: Murder victims. Terror victims. Film stars. Sports figures. Politicians. The royal family's entourage. Almost no one, it seems, was safe from a tabloid determined to beat its rivals, whatever it took. The focal point is the News of the World - now facing a spreading advertising boycott - and the top executives of its parent companies: Rebekah Brooks, former News of the World editor who is now chief executive of News International, and her boss, media potentate Rupert Murdoch.

Agnès Jaoui lives to puncture the bubbles of her characters. The writer/actress/director of the keenly observed films The Taste of Others and Look at Me is the Parisian Elaine May, an A-plus student of human behavior that straddles the border between comedy and tragedy. The slightest of her films, Let It Rain is a farce revolving around characters whose dreams unravel and are re-woven. Jaoui is Agathe Villanova, a forthright feminist and aspiring politician who returns to Provence to sort out the estate of her late mother and float a campaign trial balloon.

The Secret Service folks were all over Jason Martin, a Florida busboy, this weekend to retrieve a sacred talisman: Jimmy Buffett's cell phone. The Smoking Gun Web site reports Martin, 22, a self-described stoner, found the phone in late May outside a Delray Beach jazz club, and took it home where he says he and a bunch of his buds, um, smoked some buds and marveled at the stature of the folks Martin claims are listed on the machine's address book,...

Claude Lewis is a longtime Philadelphia journalist Like it or not, America is changing. And most of that change is for the good of the country and the people who inhabit it. Are we there yet? No. Are we finally on the way? Absolutely. Nowhere is America's coming of age more obvious than in the political arena, where women and a growing number of minorities are at last making significant inroads. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), the first female speaker of the House, is now in place with ambitious plans for the country.

She was the candidate's sister, the former president's sister, the wife of the former vice presidential candidate. Legend had it that she was smarter than any of them. I was nobody, 25, working on my first presidential campaign, the senior and junior woman in almost every meeting. I was, for want of any competition, in charge of what they used to call "women's issues" in the campaign. She did not agree with me on what was, then and now, the most explosive of those issues. Did not agree is putting it mildly.

Rihanna and J. Cole did not make a home sex vid, the Barbadian beauty tweeted on Thursday, denying various rumors, including a RadarOnline report that Hustler honchos have seen the tape, which is up for sale. "We don't believe U, U need more people...AND ofcourse an actual sextape!" Rihanna tweets. J. Cole, for his part, goes direct 'n' succinct: "Gossip Gossip, [dude] just stop it. " Jim Carrey: I Emma Stone! Rubber-faced comic Jim Carrey sounds almost serious in a video love letter to Emma Stone posted on his website (Jimcarreytrulife.com)

LONDON - Britain's phone-hacking scandal intensified yesterday as the scope of tabloid intrusion into private voice mails became clearer: Murder victims. Terror victims. Film stars. Sports figures. Politicians. The royal family's entourage. Almost no one, it seems, was safe from a tabloid determined to beat its rivals, whatever it took. The focal point is the News of the World - now facing a spreading advertising boycott - and the top executives of its parent companies: Rebekah Brooks, former News of the World editor who is now chief executive of News International, and her boss, media potentate Rupert Murdoch.

By Lynn H. Yeakel and Rosemarie B. Greco Starting Thursday, "Vision 2020: An American Conversation about Women and Leadership" will gather a congress of national delegates at the National Constitution Center to focus on overcoming obstacles to gender equality. American women today earn about 80 cents for every dollar men earn. Women of color earn less than 62 cents on the dollar. And a recent study showed that over the past decade, women have made virtually no progress toward equal representation in management positions.

Agnès Jaoui lives to puncture the bubbles of her characters. The writer/actress/director of the keenly observed films The Taste of Others and Look at Me is the Parisian Elaine May, an A-plus student of human behavior that straddles the border between comedy and tragedy. The slightest of her films, Let It Rain is a farce revolving around characters whose dreams unravel and are re-woven. Jaoui is Agathe Villanova, a forthright feminist and aspiring politician who returns to Provence to sort out the estate of her late mother and float a campaign trial balloon.

She was the candidate's sister, the former president's sister, the wife of the former vice presidential candidate. Legend had it that she was smarter than any of them. I was nobody, 25, working on my first presidential campaign, the senior and junior woman in almost every meeting. I was, for want of any competition, in charge of what they used to call "women's issues" in the campaign. She did not agree with me on what was, then and now, the most explosive of those issues. Did not agree is putting it mildly.

When Condoleezza Rice was 3, she could read music before she could read words. "It was always clear in my mind that I was going to be a great concert musician," the former secretary of state told students yesterday at Bodine High School for International Affairs in North Philadelphia. "I studied and worked hard at piano. " But as a sophomore at the Aspen Institute, surrounded by music proteges, Rice had a "crisis of confidence. " "I met 12-year-olds who could play from sight everything it took me all year to learn.

"The Women" is a modernized, somewhat sanitized update of a 1939 classic about catty, gossiping, backstabbing society women. Rewritten and directed by "Murphy Brown" creator Diane English, the new version takes out a lot of the cattiness and backstabbing and replaces it with parables of independence, solidarity, self-actualization and up-to-date thinking about the balance between family and work. Whoa. I almost fell asleep writing that sentence, which mirrored what happened during the movie as English dutifully expunged or reconfigured all the retrograde and patriarchal notions alleged to abound in the 1939 version.

The big idea: Crossing borders as a career move and corporate-growth strategy. Gulyas came to DuPont Co. straight out of college, as a chemical-engineering graduate from the University of Notre Dame. After two years in engineering, five years in sales, and some time as senior technical supervisor, she threw her hat into the ring for an opening as a European business manager in Geneva, Switzerland. It was what you'd call a reach. "I really didn't have any business experience, and I did not have an M.B.A.

Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha's relationship choices on the HBO series Sex and the City were often painful to watch, but their fashion choices sparked major trends. (Can we say Manolo Blahnik, the pink cell phone, the Carrie necklace, Jimmy Choos?) As designers vied for snippets of screen time, fashion's role in the show grew . . . and grew . . . and grew. In SATC's long-awaited big-screen debut, fashion is officially the film's fifth main character. We see our favorite fashionistas search for, preen in, ogle at and simply walk around in a bevy of absolutely dreamlike, hot-off-the-runway ensembles.

Donna M. Coughey, president and chief executive officer of Willow Financial Bancorp Inc., has a strong reputation. "She's one of the best I've ever worked with," said James J. Clarke, a Villanova banking consultant, who was on Coughey's board at Chester Valley Bancorp Inc. So Clarke was mystified after hearing that Coughey's bank, based in Wayne, announced this week that it had given up trying to figure out why its books were off $6.2 million...