NEWS & FEATURES

Camille Dodero says what began as a rough millennium for Boston turned around in 2004.

This election year saw right-leaning religious leaders defining our vastly homogeneous country as a deeply polarized one, with Christian believers pitted against godless secular humanists. David Bernstein says the real conflicts, however, may lie not outside their churches, but within.

As the national spotlight rested favorably on Massachusetts again and again in 2004, Mitt Romney should have been able to polish his GOP-golden-boy rep to a near-blinding shine. Instead, he's taken needless risks, irritated constituents, and generally ended up looking silly. Adam Reilly reports.

This month, everyone from neocon warmonger William Kristol to an array of US senators on both sides of the aisle began publicly calling for Donald Rumsfeld's ouster on grounds of incompetence. But, Jason Vest wonders as the year draws to a close, will the defense secretary's critics cop to being just as guilty as he is for bollixing up Iraq?

Dan Kennedy shows how it took Janet Jackson's costume malfunction last February to reveal FCC chairman Michael Powell's naked ambition to save his career, principles be damned.

With genocide raging on his doorstep, hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina sheltered - and, ultimately, saved - more than 1200 people during the Rwandan massacres in 1994. Tamara Wieder talks to director Terry George, who is bringing the hotelier's extraordinary story to the big screen.

In "Savage Love," Dan Savage on sex and the occasional relationship.

In "Out There," Steve Almond's New Year's peeve.

In "Urban Buy," Darcy Heitzke gets two for the price of one.

In the Phoenix Editorial: The Bush administration is embarrassed into backing away from its censorship of foreign writers. But the battle isn't over yet.

Letters to the editor

Moon Signs

Plus, this just in:

THEATER

Carolyn Clay's picks include Elaine Stritch, The Playboy of the Western World, Sonia Flew, Bad Dates, Trinity Rep's Shakespeare, and the ART's Molière and Sophocles.

Sally Cragin waits for The Syringa Tree to grow at the ART.

DANCE

Marcia B. Siegel and Jeffrey Gantz look back favorably on Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Mark Morris, Boston Ballet's The Lady of the Camilias and The Taming of the Shrew, and Suzanne Farrell at Harvard.

Nina MacLaughlin previews Boston's annual New Year's bash.

ART

The year-end picks from Christopher Millis and Jeffrey Gantz include Paul Rahilly, Paul Gauguin, Cerith Wyn Evans, Joseph Sudek, Boris Mikhailov, Art Deco, and Renaissance Italian painting at the Gardner.

BOOKS

In books this year, our critics went for Nicholson Baker, Philip Roth, Orhan Pamuk, Rachel Cohen, Bob Dylan, Thomas Frank, Art Spiegelman, and more.

TELEVISION

In an unexpectedly rich year for un-reality television, Joyce Millman liked Lost, The Sopranos, Rescue Me, Nip/Tuck, Veronica Mars, Saturday Night Live, and more.

HOTDOTS: CHRISTMAS EVE 24: 8:00 (25) The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (movie). The 2000 feature film starring René Russo, Jason Alexander, Randy Quaid, Robert De Niro, Janeane Garofalo, and Carl Reiner. Plus the title animated figures. By Clif Garboden

FOOD

SPECIALS