reviews – Arleen Spenceley

From where I stood, the banner blocked the American flag that hung at the center of Citrus Park Mall in Tampa. It showcased ‘Jane the Virgin,’ the latest in an influx of TV shows inspired by sexual inexperience. It would premier, the banner said, on Oct. 13.

First, I asked what any virgin beneath that banner would: “WHERE’S MY BANNER?” Then, I marked my calendar.

The show, about a a virgin who — as a result of a doctor’s distraction — got artificially inseminated when she should have gotten a Pap smear, premiered as promised on Monday, and (spoilers to follow), I watched it. Here’s how I sum it up: Continue reading “Arleen the virgin gets a book, ‘#JaneTheVirgin’ gets a show.”

In forthcoming film The Song, on a stage in front of an un-enthused crowd at a bar too quiet for comfort, musician Jed King (Alan Powell) leaned toward the mic and sang a line that can’t not affect a good listener: “Love is a choice worth making.”

The life Jed didn’t yet know he would lead would put the line he sang into perspective. But that night, Jed — then young and single — sat offstage after the show, across from a manager who had no work to offer other than a gig a half hour from home at a fall festival hosted by a vineyard.

He met her there — “the most beautiful girl in the world,” he said in a song he made up as he went along, whose ex-boyfriend broke up with her “for the dumbest reason in the world” (she wouldn’t sleep with him).

She was Rose (Ali Faulkner), the vineyard owner’s daughter whose prudence inspired Jed’s. They dated, with the vineyard owner’s permission — it was Jed’s idea to ask him, not Rose’s — and decided, upon Jed’s proposal, to get married. Continue reading “The Song | A Movie Review”