With characteristic flair and polish, Bertrand Tavernier's film painstakingly documents the racial tension and dissolution among the colonials, but there is little payoff in a work that "seems strangely lacking in momentum and direction" (Maslin).

To the Editor: Anthony York writes in his review of Marvin Kalb's "One Scandalous Story" (Books in Brief, Dec. 16) that "Kalb painstakingly documents the plot to ensnare President Clinton, forcing him to commit perjury in an attempt to drive him out of office."

Filming between 1999 and 2001, Mr. Wang and his sound engineer, Lin Xudong, painstakingly document the death throes of the Tie Xi industrial district in the city of Shenyang, in northeast China, a once-vibrant symbol of a thriving socialist economy.

Though the artists painstakingly documented every detail of a scene, by doing so they created a world complete in and of itself.

In the City University case, in which Judith Vladeck painstakingly documented past faculty salaries, the judge ruled that the university had discriminated against women for 15 years.

"Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood" painstakingly documents the scripting and shooting of all extant Hawks films.

Kalb painstakingly documents the plot to ensnare President Clinton, forcing him to commit perjury in an attempt to drive him out of office.

Mandira Sharma, who leads the Advocacy Forum, a nonprofit group that painstakingly documents rights infractions, wants prosecution of what she calls "gross" human rights abuses over the past decade.

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The A.P. won for painstakingly documenting a decades-old cover-up of atrocities by the United States military in the first weeks of the Korean War.