Gray's Anatomy and And Everything is Going Fine

The stage is empty but for the chair and small table. The table is empty except for the glass of water and small notebook. And the chair is empty until a man shuffles onstage, a nervous late thirtysomething still youngish but verging on middle age, or a slightly older man in a tweed coat flush with first-time success, or a graying family man playing corny 90s songs on a boom box (remember those?), or an old man sad and wincing with pain, hobbling on crutches after a devastating accident, but still - for the moment - driven and curious. And as soon as these men speak they fill not only the space onstage but our imaginations - with stories, jokes, memories, maybe the occasional tall tale; worries, regrets, hopes, musings, dreams, nightmares, questions that sometimes can't be answered but must be posed anyway.

Remembering the Movies, Dec. 24 - 30

Every Friday, we look back at films released 10-100 years ago this week.
Visit Remembering the Movies to further peruse the past

Despite the holiday season, there is not much Yuletide spirit on display this week - only drug lords, gangsters, and mad scientists, as well as a dumb blonde and brunette Ginger. As with last week, we must reach back 100 years ago to find something Christmas-themed (also as with last week, there's no capsule by me; I'm hoping to be able to resume the full-fledged approach in the new year). If you're looking for something in the spirit of the season, check out yesterday's visual tribute to A Charlie Brown Christmas. Otherwise, follow the Ghost of Christmas Past through the jump...

The Girlfriend Experience

Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience was shot quickly and cheaply in the fall of 2008, as a historic election loomed and the entire economy collapsed. The film, which leaves a bitter aftertaste, is a perfect statement of the Bush era zeitgeist right at the moment it all came undone. References to current events (which already feel a little dated, like yesterday's front page) pop up perpetually throughout the film, but in a way they are unnecessary. Soderbergh captures the time and place just as well through the hideousness of his characters and his setting - New York in the throes of a yuppiedom so impeccable yet inert, it makes one long for the tackiness of the 1980s. No tackiness here - porn star Sacha Grey is cool as an Apple-designed cucumber in her "straight" debut as high-class call girl Chelsea. Just as the title suggests, Chelsea is there to look good on her john's arm, to discuss movies intelligently (or rather, superficially but with a veneer of intelligence), to eat at the finest restaurants and listen to her "dates" whine about how they're only going to make a few million this year. And to sleep with them, of course, but the sex is almost an afterthought, and sometimes - in peeved tones - she complains in her meticulously recorded bookkeeping about the lack of intercourse. She's a pro, then, in every sense of the word, and what she sells is not so much her body as her image. What the men are buying is the faux "experience" of having her as a girlfriend; she's just one more accessory in the age of the iPod.

Filmmakers of the Fall

A preview of coming attractions for the fall, with the focus on the directors behind the camera…

(Update 2010: links lead to the eventual reviews of these films)

Though the season does not officially begin until September 22, one doesn’t need the equinox to know autumn’s in the air. Every year, like clockwork around Labor Day, a breeze picks up, the air grows cooler, and one begins to detect a slight browning or yellowing on the edges of the still lushly green leaves. As the station wagon is packed one last time, the children cast melancholy glances at the twilit beach, to be abandoned for schoolbooks in a matter of hours. Yet with the shuffling off of lazy summer days, a new sense of purpose wafts in the air as well.