Nancy Meyers looks like she could star in her own films. Much like her movie heroines, Meyers is attractive, stylish, well spoken, classy and very funny. She has the wry experienced point of view of a woman who has been there, done that, and never mind the tee shirt, she wouldn’t wear it anyhow. In fact, the best way to describe Meyers is via some of the titles of the films she’s written (and often directed.) After experiencing Irreconcilable

A bored, middle-aged man stares vacantly at his television, as a little sun on the end of a stick extends from the screen and pokes him on the nose. His eyes go blank and he melts into his chair, as his bodily essence pours out the cuffs of his pants and streams into a grating on the floor, dripping into a sculpture mold that, one by one, churns out millions of identical families — naked but for their socks, glasses, and Mickey Mouse ears — who populate the world with mindless compliance. Director Terry Gilliam’s animated intro sequence to Monty Python’s

The Meaning of Life represents all that he lives to joyously dismantle. Institutionalized conformity is the enemy and whimsical thought is his weapon. As a college student he twisted the school’s literary magazine into biting satire, as the lone American member of Monty Python he helped topple British society’s deference to authority, and as a

As we walk into the Greenwich Hotel, Robert De Niro’s new boutique spot in downtown Manhattan, we are directed to the lounge, where our subject is sitting on one of the many dark leather armchairs, by a fireplace that burns gloriously the carefully placed wood. There is something strikingly attractive and quite mysterious about playwright and author, Yasmina Reza.

Walking on the campus of Princeton University on a recent winter afternoon, looking for her interviewee — a prominent soul who has shaken and marked the American intellectual arena for the past several decades, an electrifying spirit who carries with elegance and humility many titles: philosopher, author, civil rights activist, educator, critic, artist — the interviewer stops to ask the way, as the printed map fails to guide. “That building,”

 After working thousands of gigs, night after night for the last 20 years, comic Susie Essman has earned the right to her cathartic kicking of Larry David the hell out of her house on HBO’s long-running mega-hit, “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Essman is a poster girl for the requirement of tenacity in the world of standup comedy, where it can take decades to make it big. At 54, the brash, snarky, and charming comedienne has caught her wave, and is riding high on a show that’s approaching the realm of television institution. As Susie Greene, the tackily dressed wife of Jeff Garlin’s character, Jeff Greene, Essman has amassed a legion of followers — fans

James Horner has visited many musical worlds during over three decades that have made him into one of Hollywood’s top composers. Perhaps one of the biggest reasons for his success is how Horner’s boldly emotional sound can place a viewer so effectively in the skin of the characters he scores, from the mystical Indian heritage a cop explores in Thunderheart to the ethereal, exotic jungle a boy grows up in Where the River Runs Black. Or it can be the choral battlefield valor of soldiers charging into Glory, as well as the ferocious jungle danger unlocked when two children play a game of Jumanji.

It isn’t necessarily great news for an actor to hear that the television series they’ve been starring in is going to be “retooled” in its second season. Your character can be retooled right out the door. Or, it can develop significantly. The latter has fortunately been the case for actor Ross McCall, who has been playing Kenny Battaglia on “Crash” for both of its two seasons.

We’ve breathed easy the past two decades, believing the red dust had finally wiped the Visi­tors from our planet for good. But the reptilians are back, along with the concept of a subtle, insidious alien invasion that provided chatter to our schooldays and nightmares after dark.