Slate has a review of Whit Stillman's third installment of his "yuppie" chronicles, The Last Days of Disco:
Despite his reputation as a chronicler of WASP decline, and regardless of his engagement with issues of class and capital and labor, Stillman's real subject is society—small s and small scale: the dynamics of partygoing groups, the obligations of friendship, the "ferocious pairing off" (to use Charlotte's expression) that is the aim of courtship. These are universal. It's the style and tone that are eccentrically and unrepentantly uhb. It's one of the highest compliments you can pay a filmmaker to say that the characters he laughs with and at would be among the keenest admirers of his sensibility.
This weeks also saw the release of thirtysomething created by Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (who go on to make the equally exquisite teen drama My So-Called Life) and I agree with the author's conclusion, also over at Slate, since I wasn't even twentysomehting when it aired:
You know who loves to wallow in endless introspection and dwell on the teensy stumbling blocks of life? Adolescents. Which is, I now realize, why I adored the show when I watched it as a teenager. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense that Zwick and Herskovitz followed upthirtysomething with My So-Called Life. Here was another TV show about self-indulgent whiners, this time set in their natural habitat: high school.
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