This is Woody Allen for the post-9/11 world, a world and a New York still funny and neurotic and overly preoccupied with love and death, but whose paranoia seems now more than justified.

There is much to recommend this film: the great typically Allenesque comic dialogue; the wonderful songs of Billie Holiday; the beautiful, little-heard Peggy Lee ballad given a heart-wrenching reading by Stockard Channing (part of a fine, quirky performance); Danny DeVito's over-the-top scene in the restaurant... Contrary to what you may have read, the leads do a fine job here, and the character played by Allen himself is at once hilarious and disturbing and most fun to watch and listen to. His scenes with Jason Biggs, many showing off the beauty of Central Park in summer, by themselves are worth the price of admission.

Dr. John and Harry Connick Jr. both acknowledge Booker as the greatest of New Orleans piano players. So who are we to argue? The beauty of music in New Orleans has always been the blurring of musical categories: blues, jazz (both traditional and modern), r&b, gospel, and Caribbean-infected funk were and are played in the Crescent City by the same great artists who also happen to be great entertainers. It's a gumbo town. And no one embodied this gumbo spirit better and with more virtuosity than James Booker. He could play it all, including classical, separately, at the same time, or all at the same time! I think this is Booker's best studio recording, and it is true that the version of "King of the Road" on this record is by itself worth the price -- trascendent.