Maybe the 'No Chariots' sign, from outside Sodom town hall." The geologist Graham Harris is almost serious. He and his colleague Anthony Beardow are convinced that, 4000 years after its destruction, they have located the original Sodom, on the edge of the Dead Sea. Quite simply, "the jigsaw puzzle now fits," according to Mr Harris. The biblical story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, he says, is based on geological reality, not myth "The biblical story can be rationalised. Instead of something like Atlantis, or the old Norse legends, we can show that rational geological thinking corroborates the story."In short, Sodom could be the next Pompeii - a catastrophe unearthed. (Together with Gomorrah, which is rarely allowed a separate existence, and is remembered only as an ampersand in sin. "That if people came to see it with their boyfriend, they would quit their boyfriend."Houston plays a TV producer in an affair with the man who stays with his wife for the sake of the children.

But the most telling role is Robin, a good-time girl played by former Eddie Murphy co-star Lela Rochon, in a permanent struggle to get out from under men who don't perform, sexually and otherwise.Professor Todd Boyd, an expert on black Americanculture, charts Exhale's success in more cynical terms - it's based on a best-selling book, was released into a big holiday market, has a good soundtrack and casts one of America's most popular singers."It's a terrible film. A lot of the men there were embarrassed because they saw themselves."Across town at Mann's Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, a young black woman is hurrying in with her companion and son "I heard it was a woman's movie," she said. Nursing a drink in the corner of the bar is Evelyn Jase, a twice-divorced saleswoman for Estee Lauder cosmetics, who went to the film with her 23-year-old daughter. It reminds women they have choices, she said, and explodes the myth that they need a man "It is a film everyone should see.

Twentieth Century Fox, which paid $15m to make it, suggest it will earn perhaps three times that. In Exhale, when her wealthy businessman husband of 11 years leaves her for his secretary, she sets his BMW on fire and takes him to the cleaners in the divorce court.The insult is worse because the other woman is white.Gagnier's is one of the best-known African-American eateries in Los Angeles, discreetly stylish with a firmly middle-class clientele. The company is hoping to expand its appeal across the racial divide.In Boyz N the Hood, Bassett played the stereotypical long-suffering single mother raising a troubled teenage son. Defying industry cliches, there is not a gun and hardly a good man in sight, but images of middle-class life, smart cars and champagne.