Perhaps the most elegant gay film ever made, Tom Ford's adaption of Christopher Isherwood's novel, A Single Man, should make film schools nervous. In what has to be one of the most startling debuts as a director, fashion designer Tom Ford manages to mix style and substance in a sexy blend of images and sound all with the confidence of someone making movies for a long time.

The 1964 novel is about an English professor in Los Angeles who has lost his lover of sixteen years in an auto accident. Forward eight months and professor George Falconer (Colin Firth) is preparing to commit suicide. Everything about Falconer is elegant—his dress, his house, his car and even as he prepares for his own death he neatly lays out everything, leaving notes for his funeral, noting that his tie should be a Windsor knot. Even the gun he plans to use is elegant. On an ordinary day, George delivers a lecture on minorities and fear, is confronted by a beautiful student (About a Boy's Nicholas Hoult), a Spanish rent boy and the peculiar musings of a neighbors young daughter in a bank. And yet is taken back by memories of his lover Jim (Matthew Goode) through the most seemingly inconsequential of moments— a random encounter with a dog, for example.

His best friend Charlotte (Julianne Moore) is equally elegant and lonely as the two recall their momentary sexual relationship that she has never quite gotten over. She is torn between sympathy for him and regret about what might have been if he hadn’t turned into a “fucking poof”. Suffice to say we see the return of the beautiful student and George's life takes on a new clarity and calamity—all beautifully art directed and photographed and accompanied by a lush score by Abel Korzeniowski.

Certainly Tom Ford pays homage to directors Ang Lee and Todd Haynes, but it is Douglas Sirk who most comes to mind as the score and visuals seem to rise up in melodramatic fashion. Ford stays just shy of "fashion" delivering an emotional film that is completely homoerotic. It is Colin Firth, who is already winning many film awards, that singularly holds the film together in a performance that is as complex as it is stylish. Firth moves through a series of emotions like a hand in water and for a film that takes place in 1962, his homosexuality is shockingly confidant. But that would be Christopher Isherwood after all. In a reminder of the inequality of that period, George is told he cannot attend the funeral of his dead partner, because it is "for family only."  How we deal with grief is always an entirely private matter and indeed, the ending may be a little convenient, but the journey getting there is one beautiful ride.

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It's a peculiar thing when someone you have known becomes famous. They move from their modest lodgings to the hills, high above the crowd in post-modern fabulousness. You begin to see them less as they have a multitude of meetings and events to attend...

When Glee premiered on television it was noted that one of its creators was Ryan Murphy.  Glee, for the uninitiated is rousing musical television show that manages to be fresh despite its well-worn plot devices of pitting teachers against teachers, discreet crushes on one another, football versus musicals and the usual hostilities to be encountered in todays high school. Glee is a musical television fantasy, something that Aaron Sorkin might have created, but a little less smart, which is a good thing.

Ryan Murphy never seemed all that musical. Having worked with Ryan at a magazine a few decades back, he is remembered as somewhat serious, proud of his Pulitzer and very fond of Hollywood. Fame is interesting because it doesn't usually portend unless it’s a prodigy or child star. There was never any indication that Ryan would create an extremely successful television show about a high school glee club—then again, he didn't seem all that interested in plastic surgery and he created Nip/Tuck. Glee has to be the happiest hour on television. With a penchant for reinventing old songs, mashing up musical genres at odds with one another and a cast that includes a brilliant Jane Lynch and sexy, sexy Mark Salling, Glee has the ability to dismiss today's horrible economics and current foul politics and make being an individual something to sing about.

Glee works best when in ensemble mode. Choreographed by Zach Woodlee, the musical numbers are extravaganza's of sound and movement with each episode reported to cost $3 million. It looks it. Glee stumbles when it attempts to be too current with homages to some other high school musicals, rap music and focusing too much on one character. Like any real glee club, the success of Glee comes from its numbers, its chorus of great talent and some fine prickly characters.

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