Five years after their sensitive collaboration on "Iris," Richard Eyre guides Judi Dench to another pitch-perfect performance -- make that bitch-perfect -- in "Notes on a Scandal," a deviously entertaining account of one woman's indiscretions as related by a not-so-disinterested third party. If the results suggest a crafty British spin on the Mary Kay Letourneau saga, the riveting interplay between Dench and Cate Blanchett draws blood with every scene, thanks to a precision-honed script and Eyre's equally incisive direction. Dazzling star combo and appreciative reviews will prove especially enticing to older, literate audiences, yielding solid specialized returns for the Fox Searchlight pic. Zoe Heller's compelling 2003 novel unraveled the sordid tale of a schoolteacher's affair with one of her young pupils, taking the form of a coolly perceptive and bitingly funny diary written by a close friend. The book's subversive achievement was to project the diarist's own gaze back upon herself, turning a salacious tabloid tale into a subtle and revelatory act of confession. What Heller achieved through tricky literary technique, Eyre and scribe Patrick Marber ("Closer") have inevitably rendered more explicitly, playing up the obsessive lesbian-stalker angle with a discreet nod in the direction of "Fatal Attraction." What makes "Notes on a Scandal" more than just a Lifetime-ready psychothriller -- as well as a satisfyingly nasty awards-season tonic -- is the ruthless economy of its execution from start to finish. From the outset, Dench's acerbic narration gives voice to the innermost thoughts of London schoolteacher Barbara Covett, a lonely spinster who reserves her bitter judgments of the world solely for her private journal and, by extension, the viewer. A juicy atmosphere of collusion thus established, Barbara begins to take an interest in Sheba Hart (Blanchett), the svelte, good-natured and very attractive woman who has just joined the faculty as an art teacher (and whose name is, not coincidentally, short for Bathsheba). The two women become friends after Barbara gives the inexperienced Sheba a crash course in student discipline; in turn, Barbara is invited to lunch with Sheba, her significantly older husband Richard (a terrifically boisterous Bill Nighy), moody teenage daughter Polly (Juno Temple) and Down syndrome son Ben (Max Lewis). With Barbara providing acid commentary on every detail, the film etches a fine-grained portrait of the Harts' bustling bourgeois lifestyle, with Blanchett ably conveying Sheba's love for her family as well as the quiet dissatisfaction of a woman who married too young and began her career too late. Sheba's discontent becomes clear when Barbara peeks into her classroom after hours and spies the woman in a compromising position with one of her students, working-class Irish youth Steven Connolly (Andrew Simpson, unnervingly blurring the line between schoolboy innocence and sexual menace). Plot point reps a departure from the novel that makes Barbara a much more overtly malevolent figure, as the seeds of manipulation hinted at in the book become a full-throttle portrait of emotional blackmail. Immediately, Barbara confronts Sheba, who, in a series of flashbacks, tearfully confesses the romantic entanglement that began with private tutorial sessions and culminated in messy trysts near the railroad tracks. Realizing the power she wields over her "friend," Barbara agrees to keep the affair a secret, though it's clear from her insinuating, creepily intimate manner that Sheba is still on thin ice. Bravura sequence reps an impressively cinematic weave and shows an unfussy command of the material, from Marber's intensely focused adaptation -- much of the dialogue lifted from Heller's book, but pared down without losing its bite or character nuances -- to John Bloom and Antonia Van Drimmelen's tight editing and the sinister, weblike repetitions of Philip Glass' score. But "Notes on a Scandal" is first and foremost an actors' showcase, and Dench rises ferociously to the occasion with her juiciest, most substantial performance since "Iris" and arguably "Mrs. Brown." Using her frumpy, diminutive stature as a weapon, Dench's Barbara invites the viewer (like Sheba) to pity her loneliness, so it registers as a genuine shock when she exposes the borderline-psychotic levels of neediness underneath. Worlds away from her work in this year's "Babel" and "The Good German," Blanchett convinces utterly as the willowy, self-destructive Sheba. Thesp manages the tricky task of portraying the woman's actions as foolish and reckless while commanding one's sympathy, even understanding. Eyre's veteran legit experience shows in a few scenes that barely steer clear of histrionics, particularly in the later going. But he doesn't hold back during the inevitable showdown between Dench and Blanchett,

Sometimes we choose to focus on a particular aspect of photography. “I do black and white” ... “I take photos of people”... “I’m into macro.” After all, photography covers a very broad territory. People like to carve out their niche, specialize in a particular type of photography, and hone their skills in that area, rather than become a jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none. They want to develop their individual style and establish their unique identity within the vast territory of people doing photography. In some cases, people are purists about sticking to what they do. They’re sure their type of photography is the real thing. We also slip into certain habits without even realizing it. Maybe you’re always shooting outdoors, or from a standing position, or using a high contrast method of post-processing. Usually they’re methods that produced good results in the past, so you keep using them. If it ain’t broke, then why fix it, right? I’d like to suggest that these routine behaviors might limit our skills and visions as photographers, whether we’ve deliberately chosen these areas of focus, and especially if we’ve slipped into habitual patterns without even realizing it. Stated simply, it’s good to try something new. Not many people are going to argue with that suggestion, unless they’re hardcore purists, stubbornly elitist, narrow-minded, or afraid to try something different for fear of failing. The more important issue is this: how do you go about trying something different? The first step is to identify your habits and style. It will be relatively easy to make a list of the subjects and methods that you’ve chosen consciously, deliberately. The harder task is pinpointing your routine behaviors that have developed without your realizing it. You might ask your colleagues for feedback. They often can see the habitual patterns in your work that you don’t. If you also look at the photography of other people, you’ll discover subjects and techniques that are very different than your own. Make a note of how their work is different than yours, even if you don’t like what you see. Then you could start experimenting, in whatever way strikes you as interesting. Do something that’s different than what you typically do. If you’re using other people’s photos as a guide, you’ll be tempted to emulate the photos that you like. But don’t limit yourself that way. Also try to recreate the images that you didn’t fancy. That last point is important, because it leads to the idea that I’d like to emphasize in this article: REVERSALS. When you identify a particular way that you’re doing photography, reverse it. If you always shoot color, try black and white. If you prefer portraits of people, start shooting non-human subjects. If all your photos maintain horizontal lines, try shooting with diagonal tilts. There are interesting psychological as well as philosophical reasons why I’m suggesting reversals – reasons why it might be a better method than simply experimenting on a whim. Our mind operates based on polarities. We understand color because we know what black-and-white is. We recognize sharpness because we've seen blur. If you don't understand and appreciate one, it's hard to fully understand and appreciate the other. The dynamic relationship between opposites runs deeper than these mechanisms of perception. Consciously, we dislike and avoid something, but on an unconscious level, there’s often something about it that entices us, or that we need, even though we might not think so. If you're always creating peaceful, soft-focus photos of nature, might there be something about sharp conflict situations that you need to understand and embrace? If you've always insisted on shooting black and white, what is it about color that you might be overlooking, that might benefit you? Eastern philosophies like Taoism, as well as some western psychological thinkers like Carl Jung, talk about how a healthy personality embraces the interaction and balancing of its internal opposing forces, like love and hate, strength and submission, happiness and sadness. We become stagnant, locked up, and limited in how we think, feel, and perceive when we repress one side of the dynamic polarity. Allowing ourselves to open up to the expression of opposing forces results in fresh insights and a wider field of view. Dialectical philosophy would describe it as challenging a premise with a counter-premise in order to arrive a higher truth that synthesizes the best insights of these opposing views. So identify the ways you usually do photography, then try reversing them. You might reverse your shooting techniques, your post-processing methods, or your subject matter. Reverse one element at a time, or several at a time. Figuring out a reversal can be a challenging and instructive process unto itself. For example, what’s the opposite of doing sports photography? Shooting people who are cooperating rather than competing, or perhaps people who are enga