Films, chats and skits warm icy days

I had a busy weekend in New York during the rainy season, and my shoes squished everywhere I went. But when it was over, I’d seen Julianne Moore on-screen in the highly overrated “Far From Heaven” (a campy exercise, where they drive vintage ‘50s-type cars through autumn leaves and telegraph everything about to happen in a totally artificial world) and then in person in the Cipriani having supper Sunday night.

In the afternoon, I experienced “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” and had to have a 4-year-old explain it to me. (“Lizzie,” he said impatiently, “it’s just all about magic -- and power!”)

During this eventful 48 hours, I went to a private dinner uptown for a film director who never wants me to write his name. But while that went on, I had a lot of fun with Evelyn de Rothschild and his all-American wife, Lynn Forester, because Evelyn knows everything there is to know about the British royals and can discuss them without resorting to gossip. (The realities are better than the rumors.)

Topping off the slushy, icy weekend was Mike Nichols’ production of “Short Talks on the Universe,” a benefit that featured some of America’s best writers and actors.

Matthew Broderick, dressed as the devil, and Tony Roberts as a Broadway producer were my two favorites in hell, as envisioned by playwright Jon Robin Baitz.

Then, there was the one and only Bette Midler performing Nora Ephron’s “I Hate My Purse,” plus Alec Baldwin and Ellen Barkin in a windup of two lost souls at a cocktail party, dreamed up by Elaine May.