Sick of holiday blockbusters? Skip ’em in favor of a smart series.

This week’s film festivals rack up the frequent-flier miles.

A quintet by the late, great John Frankenheimer, at Film Forum.

Lincoln Center is doing its best to prop up the airline industry, flying in a veritable world congress of talent for this summer's Lincoln Center Festival. (For a full list, visit lincolncenter.org; for tickets, call 212-362-6000.)

The stars of the New York Shakespeare Festival get the banner headlines. But thanks in large part to such celebrities, the Bard has become as essential to summer as flip-flops and beach-house shares.

Everyone has an opinion about who's going to take home a Tony, but here's an inside line. Start that office pool -- the party's June 2.

A red-diaper baby with roots in New York's avant-garde theater, director Jessie Nelson gets tough guy Sean Penn in touch with his soft side (Hello, Oscar!) in I Am Sam, about a complicated dad and his struggle to win back his daughter.

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Wetlands Sinks

After winning comparisons to Pynchon and Morrison, writer Colson Whitehead returns to skewer the culture of myth-making with the savagely funny John Henry Days.