matt keeslar

With the second season of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse about to premiere, we thought new or lapsed viewers could use some catching up. IN THE BEGINNING... Joss Whedon wrote a show for Eliza Dushku.  

Somehow I don't think this new gig will be as much fun as her old one. But out of love for The Middleman , I will be happy that Natalie Morales has been upgraded to series regular on White Collar . The job started as a two-episode guest spot, so I guess somebody was impressed with our Dub-Dub. If I can't have one of the best shows of the past several years, I should at least be satisfied when the people that brought it to life find new gigs.  

We're both mixed on T he Last Days of Disco (1998). It was his most expensive film, with a longer shooting schedule but correspondingly greater angst as the budget tightened. He based it on his own clubbing in the early '80s, and came to regret recreating those experiences in Jersey City, NJ's palatial, then-disused Loew's movie theater, a big space that swallowed extras and production design and distracted him from his usual minimalist aesthetic.  

In one form or another, everyone belongs to a subculture—a sort of meta-society comprised of those sharing a common interest or passion. Because these groups are comprised of those closest to a subject, they oftentimes become the target of criticism, as the perspective of others is generally limited to their own interests. Understanding others merely for the sake of understanding seems like a wasteful practice—such information is hardly relevant to our own, closeted lives.  

 

If asked to make a movie about how the yuppie ascendancy of the early '80s helped squeeze the funkiness out of New York, most filmmakers would make the yuppies the bad guys. Not so Whit Stillman. Stillman's 1998 comedy The Last Days Of Disco follows a group of privileged young New Yorkers as they strive to cobble together a social life and an identity while embarking on careers in advertising, publishing, law, and nightclub management.  

Stillman's an odd case, a whitebread version of Woody Allen except without the work ethic (the fact that he hasn't made a movie since Disco is a bit of a head scratcher, although supposedly he's toiling on an adaptation of Christopher Buckley 's Little Green Men at the moment). In any case, I wasn't nuts about his two other -- apparently equally autobiographical -- chronicles of the frustrations of haute WASP twenty and thirty somethings adrift in the Reagan years ( Metropolitan and Barcelona ) but Disco ,  

The fine line between religious inspiration and lunacy is explored in "Audience of One," Mike Jacobs' riveting documentary about the members of a San Francisco church who received a vision from God, along with orders to make the greatest movie of all time. The man with the plan is Richard Gazowsky, a Pentecostal preacher who saw his first movie in 1994 at age 40. That was about the time God gave Gazowsky his marching orders: "I want you to be the Rolls-Royce of filmmaking."  

Twelve episodes of pure geek nirvana loaded with great acting and extras. The Middleman: Shout!  

The fine line between religious inspiration and lunacy is explored in "Audience of One," Mike Jacobs' riveting documentary about the members of a San Francisco church who received a vision from God, along with orders to make the greatest movie of all time. The man with the plan is Richard Gazowsky, a Pentecostal preacher who saw his first movie in 1994 at age 40. That was about the time God gave Gazowsky his marching orders: "I want you to be the Rolls-Royce of filmmaking."