Fort Worth Star-Telegram from Fort Worth, Texas • 63

WWWSidt -Leleyi di I I Ina 000 0 I MP r--717 eS Music 0 I COMMENTARY A I 1 1 't IN 'I'll' i '-tos- 11 1 1 i -Jr 1 i Time slot could breathe life into Anatomy' I' 1 El 117'1 Bysteappingion'a gun 1 7 lt-- has in FXF found a home for her 2' disarming talent tt Li FX III ABC's new medical drama gets an iffy prognosis because there's nothing fresh about it By ROBERT PHILPOT STAR 1E1 EGRAM STAFF WRITER Grey's Anatomy is ABC's third crack at a medical drama in the past five years though neither 2000's Gideon's Crossing nor 2002's MDs got a fair shake A high-minded saga that concentrated on the ethical dilemmas common to medical work Gideon's didn't last a season despite much critical acclaim and a typically imperious and forceful performance by lead Andre Braugher The under- appreciated MDs a satire with William Grey's Anatomv Fichtner and John T3' at 9 tonight Hannah as a HawkWFAAChannel 8 eye and Trapper John for the HMO era got killed by the Law Order juggernaut and lasted only weeks Those shows weren't exactly original in their approach to the genre but at least they were a departure Airing on a resurgent ABC in a cushy post-Desperate Housewives time slot Grey's Anatomy stands a better chance of survival than its Alphabet Network predecessors even if it is distressingly ordinary The twist here such as it is puts the focus on a group of rust-year surgical interns including our heroine Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) With her pedigree and perky beauty she's the daughter of a pioneering female surgeon and she continually fights off the attentions of a persistent attending doctor (Patrick Dempsey) Meredith inspires jealousy among colleagues who think that she's got it easy But really she's just an everywoman who goes through the same troubles her fellow interns do Unless you've somehow managed to avoid ER and every other medical drama that's aired since the dawn of television you've seen these troubles and characters before: the idealistic intern who gets too close to her patients (Roswell's Kather me Heigl) the cynical intern who's too distant (Sideways' Sandra Oh) the underconfident intern who pulls off heroic feats (TR Knight) and the cocky intern whose brashness comes back to bite him in the rear (Justin Chambers) Isaiah Washington Chandra Wilson and The X-Fileslames Pickens Jr round out the principal cast as experienced surgeons who sigh learn as much from their students as their students learn from them If Grey's Anatomy were the only medical show on the air it might look a little better but right now it has nothing but its emphasis on youth to set it apart It doesn't have the oddball imagination of Scrubs its comic cousin nor a transcendently strong performance or character like Hugh Lau- rie's misanthropic doc- 14 tor on House The 11t4't ensemble show doesn't even have a title that makes sense unless 44 "anatomy" refers to Pompeo's I skinny frame All it has is a $04- network on the rebound and a good lead-in That might be 'V74t enough for a 44401: hit show but it's not enough for It compelling drama 4 Lq STORY BY CIIRISTOPHER KELLY STAR-TELEGRAM FILM CRITIC i it tOMIMMMPTIEIMEEMMIli She has always seemed a little too unyielding and difficult for mass embrace The angles of her pale face are a little too sharp her blue eyes are a little too icy When she casts that long pinched nose downward she makes you feel like you're in the principal's office about to be relentlessly chewed out Early on in her career it looked as if aloofness would become Glenn Close's stock in trade especially as the saintly nurse in The World According to Garp and the angelic girl-next-door in The Natural It was almost as if Hollywood unaccustomed to actresses who project such intelligence calm and steeliness was determined to neuter her by forcing her to play women so proper and refined that they were untouchable Lucky for us that Glenn fbtbi ItD FX Glenn Close as Capt Monica Raw ling plays everything close to the vest in The Shield Here she shares a scene with co-star Michael Chiklis center and Anthony Anderson who appears in a recurring role pleasure in sexual gamesmanship as men Alex Forrest and the Marquise de Merteuil were complex dangerous creatures who seemed to contain inside of them every contradictory Madonnawhore impulse of the entire feminist movement And while both women were ostensibly villains More on CLOSE on 8D Close was having none of it In 1987 and 1988 she landed the back-to-back roles of a lifetime first as Michael Douglas' mentally unstable one-night stand in Fatal Attraction and then as the conniving French aristocrat in Dangerous Liaisons A pair of women-of-a-certain-age who dare to take as much guilt-free Robert Phi (817) 390-7872 Ellen Pompeo and Patrick Dempsey ABC REVIEW 1 CD Beck takes a cruise through the old 'hood ot By CARY DARLING STAR-TELEGRAM POP CULTURE CRITIC A 1 -7 1 i 7 I' '01 As 4 IP terscope yscope ous" album Mutations The Spanish word "guero" is slang for "white boy" what a young Beck often found himself called while coming of age in central LA But Beck instead of becoming angry used it as part of his SoCal soundtrack The song Que Onda Guero (What's Going On White Boy?) partly recorded at LA's storied MacArthur Park and sporting a Control Machete-style Latin hip-hop beat is a colorful musical snapshot Throw that in with the guitar crunch of the already ubiquitous single E-Pro the gangly funk of Hell Yes the borrowed blues of Scarecrow the whimsy of Girl and Rental More on BECK on 8D Lobos Stan Ridgway and of course Beck And that LA moves up front in Guero Beck's return-to-his-roots record that with its blend of boho hip-hop summery pop riffin' guitar and schoolyard Spanish dances nimbly along Guer California's cultural fault lines rye With the release of the spare tal Sea Changes three years ago it looked as if Beck were abandoning his old sonic mixmaster in favor of maturation and musical modesty On Guero in stores Tuesday he's back with his rhythmic mash-ups and the Dust Brothers who produced his 1996 breakthrough He's also showing off some of the lessons learned from Sea Changes and his other more "seri Guero al1Bnet Los Angeles as often imagined in popular music is a land of exotic extremes It's the surf's-up paradise of the Beach Boys the cocaine-in-the-canyons debauchery of Hotel California the stinging stridency of Black Flag Rage Against the Machine and Linkin Park or the bullet-ridden bravado of NWA and Ice-T But for most people who grew up there it's a life neither luxurious nor lethal It's the flatlands so far from mountains and sea but more than close enough to Tommy's Burgers and Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles It's this everyday LA that provides the social backdrop for the likes of Ozomatli Los UNIVERSAL 'S -S-- r-' 11:3 19.