Font Fetish is a glorious time-wasting Flash app, but might not be considered workplace-safe. Half of the fun is rocking back and forth over the rollovers that trigger sonic eruptions. Who's got your Bodoni, baby?!

(Thanks to Ira.)

posted: 4:13:36 PM  

Lisa Loomer's thought-provoking comedy-drama follows Ana Hernandez, Salvadoran refugee and resident of down-at-heel Huntington Park, and the overprivileged mothers of Santa Monica that she and her peers nanny for. Ana (Joselin Reyes) has two children of her own, Santiago who is with her and a second in El Salvador. When she conceals the existence of her California son, she lands a job with Nancy Robin (Holly Twyford), and this deceit gets the narrative started. It turns out to be the first of many lies that the mothers, rich white and struggling Latina, tell the world in order to get by.

One story ends in tragedy while another ends hopefully. Both bring home the theme that a mother's drive to be with her child can be a powerful force indeed.

Loomer's use of language is everyday, not showy (sharp ears might learn a new Spanish curse word or two). The narrative obstacles that she sets in Ana's and Nancy's paths—a suspected theft, a possible infidelity—are easily knocked over, as if to say that life's really hard problems are things like finding a way to pick up Santiago at soccer practice. In Ana's case, basic transportation needs really do have life and death consequences.

Director Wendy C. Goldberg isn't afraid to give a moment the time it needs to develop. Twyford's corporate lawyer Nancy has a nifty way of double-clutching a stage cross: she'll start to exit in one direction with her feet while the rest of her turns back for one more thought or look at her daughter, all in a clatter of high-heeled pumps. Reyes has a quiet reserve: we watch her making sure that she never misspeaks, that she remembers to address her employer as "Mrs. Robin." White-bread David Fendig as Nancy's husband and Susan Lynskey (a Californicated blonde for this role) provide comic relief.

James Kronzer's Taliesin West-inspired set, on a double revolve, looks great.

The script's echoes and parallels of the mothers' stories at times are too neatly drawn, but there are effective moments when scenes of the Robin family and Hernandez family overlap in time—and even once in space, when Ana's Bobby takes the TV remote from Nancy's Richard.

posted: 3:40:13 PM