November 20, 2005

For children of anonymous sperm donors, finding a sibling — or in some cases, a dozen — can feel like coming home.

REMEMBER the 90's? Is it too soon to be nostalgic for the quaint era of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, Whitewater and Y2K, impeachment hearings and Internet stock bubbles, George Costanza and the Jeep Grand Cherokee? For much of the decade, ''Seinfeld'' dominated the airwaves, and starting in 1992 Grand Cherokees seemed to shade every suburban driveway where a Ford Explorer wasn't casting its shadow. Jerry Seinfeld described his show as being ''about nothing''; likewise, from today's perspective, the sport utility craze of the 90's, like most fading fads, seems like much ado about very little.

IT was perhaps a little embarrassing to learn that the British producers of the latest ''Pride and Prejudice'' released a different ending for American audiences: a swoony moonlit scene of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy in dishabille, kissing and cooing in a post-coital clinch. It was as if NASA had prepared an international mission to Mars and felt a need to lace the Russians' Tang with vodka.

GROUPS that hand out awards can be suckers for acting stunts, from Nicole Kidman's fake nose in ''The Hours'' to Adrien Brody's near-starvation for ''The Pianist.'' The tradition is so entrenched that Kate Winslet, playing an outrageous comic version of herself in the HBO series ''Extras,'' listed a surefire way to get that elusive Academy Award. ''Daniel Day-Lewis in 'My Left Foot?' Oscar. Dustin Hoffman, 'Rain Man?' Oscar,'' she says. ''Seriously, you are guaranteed an Oscar if you play a mental.'' Irreverent, imprecise (the Day-Lewis character was not mentally troubled) yet essentially true. This season she might have added: playing gay. There has been an explosion of Oscar-baiting performances in which straight actors play gay, transvestite or transgender characters. Philip Seymour Hoffman melts into the role of the gay title character in ''Capote,'' while Cillian Murphy plays a transvestite in 1970's Ireland in Neil Jordan's witty, endearing ''Breakfast on Pluto.'' Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger play lovers in ''Brokeback Mountain'' (set to open Dec. 9), already better known as ''the gay cowboy movie'' and already a Letterman joke.

O