Being a guy, Billy Crudup can't qualify as Best Actress, but he does a hell of a job playing the "most beautiful woman on the London stage." In the seventeenth century, women were banned from acting. Men played all the women's roles, and nobody did it better than Ned Kynaston (Crudup). His dying Desdemona in Shakespeare's Othello brought down the house. Just ask Margaret Hughes (Claire Danes), Ned's dresser, who yearns for the guy until she catches him going at it with the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Chaplin). But when King Charles II (Rupert Everett is a hoot and a half) rules that women can now strut onstage, Margaret is suddenly a and Ned must struggle to play men. Expertly directed by Richard Eyre (Iris) from Jeffrey Hatcher's play, the film is bawdy fun. But Crudup pierces the heart in an audition that has Ned trying to squelch his feminine side. When Ned and Margaret co-star in Othello — Crudup and Danes pair up beautifully — the gender role-playing puts spine in this period piece that is vital to the here and now.

“1999”

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.