Taxi Driver

Bill Parcells' day began with reports he would rebuild the Atlanta Falcons. It ended with him on the cusp of taking the same job with the Miami Dolphins. Parcells and Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga agreed yesterday on a 4-year contract to be Miami's vice president of football operations, according to ESPN, which employs the two-time Super Bowl-winning coach as an analyst. The Dolphins declined comment, only saying no contract has been signed. Parcells previously coached the Giants, Patriots, Jets and Cowboys.

Five feet of sinew crowned with blade-sharp cheekbones, Jodie Foster is flexed, vexed and primed to strike in The Brave One, an exploitation flick with top-flight talent and arty pretensions. The revenge fantasy directed by Neil Jordan insists that a vigilante is a liberal who's been mugged, a message roughly 30 years past its sell-by date. After thugs attack Erica Bain, a public-radio host, and her fiance, David, in Central Park, she lies in a coma for three weeks. And when she awakens, the city she loved is unfamiliar, the man she loved dead.

Jodie Foster is in Queensland, Australia, on the phone, in a room looking over the ocean. It's early morning, and a storm is blowing. "There's rain and huge waves - sideways rain," she reports. "And there's been a drought here. It hasn't rained for months and months. They've been complaining that there's going to be no drinking water . . . and then suddenly it's like this epic deluge. " It's winter in the antipodes, and Foster is making a children's movie - Nim's Island, from the bestselling book.

NORTHERN UGANDA - Jennifer Anyayo's reunion with her family would have to wait. First, our taxi driver took us from Entebbe International Airport to Kampala to exchange currency and grab breakfast. We sat down at the pricey Speke Hotel - and that's where Jennifer, 16, first flashed some of the attitude she picked up in America. She didn't like the eggs. "Oh, these eggs are salty. Why do they do that? I don't like salt," she said. "My doctor told me not to eat salt. " Still, she finished her meal, and she, Inquirer photographer Michael Wirtz and I piled back into our minivan taxi.

REMEMBER THE 2005 Oscar nominees? Every one of the movies up for Best Picture last spring was touted as daring and provocative, the work of directors determined to break new ground and test their limits. Ah, innocence. Moviegoers are facing a slate of films that will challenge them to such a degree that last year's movies will look like, well, yesterday's news. Thought two gay cowboys were shocking? Get ready for the pansexual gymnastics performed - in full-frontal glory - throughout John Cameron Mitchell's "Shortbus.

An organization representing cabdrivers in Philadelphia yesterday called for a strike in response to a court ruling that upheld the use of global positioning systems in taxis. "We are going to call for an indefinite strike," said Ronald Blount, president of the Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania. Blount, clearly angered by the ruling, declined to say when the drivers would strike, then hurried out of City Hall. Minutes earlier, Common Pleas Court Judge Joseph A. Dych had ruled in favor of the Philadelphia Parking Authority's efforts to have the GPS units installed in all taxis in the city.

I would like to clarify exactly why Philadelphia taxi drivers are opposed to the installation of GPS systems. The adverse effects of this contract are far reaching, and not limited to drivers. Longstanding customers will not be able to be serviced with any certainty or regularity due to drivers being forced to accept unwanted calls while en route. Once a fare is picked up, the driver will have to follow a computer-generated route, regardless of traffic, construction, etc. As for driver safety, it is absurd to let a computer randomly dispatch calls to the city's 1,600 cabs.

This entertaining musical comedy casts a tuneful vote for middle-class values (marital fidelity, financial responsibility), before coming to the rueful, if obvious, middle-aged conclusion that "you can't have it all. " Perfectly suited to the intimate stage of the Walnut Studio, well sung and amusingly staged, The Thing About Men is a good way to launch summertime theater and conclude the Independence Studio's season. The plot begins when philandering Tom (Dan Sharkey) discovers a hickey on his wife's neck he didn't put there.

About 1,600 Philadelphia taxi drivers, angry over new regulations set by the Philadelphia Parking Authority, are set for a one-day strike today, officials said yesterday. The drivers are protesting new rules that include a 250,000-mile limit on taxis and the required installation of global positioning systems (GPS) in each of the city's cabs. Ronald Blount, president of the Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania, a "hybrid union" that represents Philadelphia-area taxi operators, said the strike would be the first of several throughout the peak spring and summer convention season.

With the help of 2,200 plows and squadrons of shovelers hired by the city, not to mention sunshine, New Yorkers dug out yesterday from Sunday's record-breaking snow. Despite the historic blast of 26.9 inches, a city official said, workers by 7 a.m. yesterday had salted and plowed all of New York's streets, a total of 6,300 miles, more than twice the distance from here to Los Angeles. City schools were open, and most New Yorkers tramped through knee-high snow and toe-numbing slush to work, though noon was a more common starting time than 9 a.m. Some parents pulled their children to school with technology that was more 1806 than 2006: sleds.