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His latest film, "Femme Fatale," starring Rebecca Romijn-Stamos as a jewel thief and Antonio Banderas as the freelance photographer who busts her cover, is already splitting critics down the middle. On one side are those who say the film is trashy, kinky fun. On the other are those who say it's just sleazy. De Palma is used to as much.

The Sarah Lawrence-educated auteur made a modest name for himself in the late '60s and early '70s with a couple of zany, subversively risqué satires ("Greetings" and "Hi, Mom!") featuring a young Robert De Niro. Following the marginal success, De Palma did a creative 180 and tackled a genre that would eventually become his stock in trade: the psychological thriller. "Sisters" (1973) is a creepy, blood-drenched chiller starring Margot Kidder. While many deemed the film a worthy homage to Alfred Hitchcock, others dismissed it as rank plagiarism -- right down to the claustrophobic close-ups and the piercing Bernard Herrmann score. From here on out, every other article about De Palma would call him a "Hitchcock wannabe."

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That the film succeeds is as much a credit to Spielberg's direction and Cruise's sturdy performance as it is to Alex McDowell's inspired production design. Helping McDowell achieve the look and ideas of the film were a coterie of self-styled futurists assembled by Spielberg prior to filming. This "think tank summit" (as it's been widely dubbed) hosted a cross section of philosophers, scientists and artists. Two of these conceptual consultants, Harald Belker and John Underkoffler, spoke with Salon by phone from their respective offices in California.

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The only distinguishable thing about this summer's "event" releases is their utter inertness -- particularly those in the action department ("The Sum of All Fears," "The Bourne Identity," "Reign of Fire"). The problem is that not one of them has a real action star. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, two of the bigger names to appear in this season's blockbusters, just don't measure up.

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What is she really like? That's what everyone who knew Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey wanted to know when the documentary team began making "Monica in Black and White." By interspersing archival press footage with a Q&A session conducted by Monica Lewinsky at New York's Cooper Union College, the two managed to get us closer to that answer than anything we've seen before.

The absorbing and well-crafted documentary chronicles Lewinsky's ascendance from lowly White House intern to entrepreneurial gadabout. The film has a conspiratorial, "All the President's Men" feel, but probably the most shocking aspect of the documentary is the utter obliviousness and insouciance with which Lewinsky characterizes her dalliance with the ex-president. "I think I just thought it would be a fun fling," she says at one point. "I judged him in the sense of thinking, 'Well ... oh OK ... whatever. You know, I'm young ... it's the president ... he's cute. It's kinda cool. Irresponsible ... but cool.'"

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"24" stars Kiefer Sutherland as Counter Terrorist Unit operative Jack Bauer. Jack's job is to stop a labyrinthine conspiracy to eliminate a popular African-American presidential candidate (Dennis Haysbert). The assassins, however, draw Jack into their plot by kidnapping both his disgruntled wife (Leslie Hope) and his angst-ridden daughter (Elisha Cuthbert). Add to those troubles a few untrustworthy CTU agents, a spurned paramour/co-worker (Sarah Clarke) and a couple of murders and it's no wonder Agent Bauer is wearier than a drugged-out Michael Corleone.

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Yet like this season's "24" and the prematurely defunct "Homicide: Life on the Street" (another Fontana creation), "Oz" has managed to fly low on the Nielsen radar while attracting an unshakably faithful audience attracted to the sheer ballsiness and uncompromising sophistication of the material.

Set in the fictional Oswald State Correctional Facility, "Oz" is a testosterone-drenched male soap opera centering around the inmates of "Emerald City" -- an experimental, maximum-security unit of Oswald. With its glass-enclosed cells and suffocating architecture, Em City looks and functions like a human ant farm, playing home to such motley residents as a gay serial killer, a homicidal skinhead, a Muslim writer-turned-arsonist, a junkie basketball player, a slut lawyer and an evangelical preacher played by Luke Perry.

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Salon recently spoke with Al Franken by phone as he prepped for an upcoming comedy festival in New York.

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1) Merchant-Ivory presents "Me So Horny, You So Pretty"

What do you get when Hollywood's foremost purveyors of ponderous period pieces tackle a genre as populist as the gross-out comedy? A $40 million tax write-off. Touted by Miramax as a cross between "A Room With a View" and "There's Something About Mary," the film stars Uma Thurman (in her most convincing faux British accent to date) as a virginal horticulturist who journeys to the Big Apple with her sexually repressed stepmum (Madonna, in her least convincing faux British accent to date) in search of a hotel room overlooking the Hudson.

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Headed by James Gandolfini (acutely playing the agita-prone Tony Soprano), the series boasts a pitch-perfect ensemble cast of actors who give their dissolute characters an uncommon honesty and humanity. Although Gandolfini is certainly the show's capo, you'd be "stoonad" to think the show would be half as good without its costars.

Dominic Chianese plays Tony's family foil and covert cunnilinguist Uncle Junior. John Ventimiglia costars as Tony's childhood pal, gregarious, morally conflicted restaurateur Artie Bucco. And Federico Castelluccio and Steven R. Schirripa play soldiers Furio Giunta and Bobby "Bacala." I spoke to all four actors about real-life mobsters, their favorite movies and their careers as character actors over a chattering conference line. At the end, Furio finally told me where to get a good braciola.

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Putting together one show takes three months, and each year, the spectacle of a show names 24 winners. At the same time, nearly 1 billion people are examining the show with a magnifying glass, looking for the screwups of live television and the miniature scandals set off by this winner or that. At the end of the day, the news shows don't talk about the logistics that go into scripting the stars into fairly seamless live television, with almost every conceivable reaction shot readied, with fail-safe after fail-safe preparation for emergencies. Instead, they talk about the ever-increasing running time, the vapidity of the dance numbers and a few tasteless dresses. The producer can't win.

You'd never know it listening to Gil Cates.

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1) From "The Pen" to prime time
Doing their part to curb the recidivism of prison-prone celebrities, studio honchos have benevolently turned their soundstages into refuges for addicts, ex-cons, wife-beaters, drunk drivers and other pathological lowlifes. While criminal scandal once ended a performer's career (Fatty Arbuckle, Lenny Bruce), nowadays legal skirmishes and lawless behavior only seem to up a star's professional appeal. This regressive phenomenon is typified in the continuing employment of scandal-plagued celebrities like Rob Lowe and Hugh Grant and the recent reinstatement of actor-jailbirds Robert Downey Jr. and Charlie Sheen. In any other vocation, Downey and Sheen would have doubtlessly been shit-canned after their first court appearance. Are these men talented? No question. Are there sober SAG members who could have just as capably carried off the same roles? No question.

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Best known as the acid-tongued correspondent from Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," Black manages to stand out among other comics with his subversive, distinctly manic personality. He also has brains. He's a playwright and a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. But unlike fellow ranter Dennis Miller, who uses smug references to show off his intellect, Black vents with the exasperation of an everyman. His cathartic routines -- performed live, on television and on his CD, "The White Album" -- are literate without being esoteric, didactic without being condescending.

I recently sat down with the grumpy gadfly prior to a sold-out show at the Gotham Comedy Club. If he's irascible onstage, he was perfectly affable and generous off.

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