Halle Berry, in her best and most shattering performance since her Oscar-winning Monster's Ball, snagged a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress for this fact-based tale of Frankie Murdoch, a 1970s black stripper with a body all her own but a head occupied by at least two other personalities. One, Genius, is a scared child who still tries to look out for Frankie on her erotically charged forays into the Los Angeles club scene. The other, Alice, is a white racist who looks down on Frankie. When a series of blackouts gets Frankie labeled "crazy as a shithouse rat," Dr. Oz (Stellan Skarsgård) uses hypnotism to help Frankie make peace with her dissociative identity disorder, but it's a tough road. It's tougher for British director Geoffrey Sax, since he is working from a script with its own identity crisis, given the nine writers needed to concoct it. It helps that Skarsgård and Phylicia Rashad, as Frankie's mother, offer stalwart support. But this movie, with its flashbacks to past sins and traumas, rests squarely on Berry, a mesmerizer who makes every moment count.

“Alison”

On Elvis Costello’s country-tinged ballad, the lyric does not get too sentimental in recalling an ex who had since been with one of the singer's "little friends" and is now married. Some believe the song is about murder, due to lines like “Sometimes I wish that I could stop you from talking,” "Somebody better put out the big light" and, of course, "My aim is true,” which became the title of Costello's debut album. In 2002, Costello told Rolling Stone, “It isn’t [about murder]. It’s about disappointing somebody. It’s a thin line between love and hate, as the Persuaders sang.”