so we didn't get a ghost world this summer: a movie that everyone you know loved, and those few who didn't were interrogated about their lapse in taste with rolled eyes and shoulder shrugs. a movie we could see ourselves inhabiting, that championed a critical stance yet somehow remained conscious of just how difficult it is to perpetuate ironic distance as a lifestyle and to consistently relate to those we've proclaimed our comrades in alienation. a movie that understood that alternative has nothing to do with record store sections and everything to do with emotional life. a movie art directed, outfitted, scored and spoken like we want our lives to be, or maybe how we fear that they might turn out. a movie that really got us--as trollope put it--the way we live now.

what did we get this summer at the movies, a summer when unbearable heat and the state of the world demanded escape more than ever? a lot of crap actioners (xxx etc), a sort of scary alien movie (signs), a giddy b-movie about girl surfers (blue crush), the smutty and hilarious notorious cho, a quite decent wilde adaptation (the importance of being earnest, with the thinking woman's blank, colin firth) and a more than decent nick hornby one (about a boy, with former thinking woman's blank turned newly minted cad hugh grant). a boring indie movie with jennifer aniston (the good girl) and a vile as byatt adaptation that misused the considerable talents of jeremy northam and jennifer ehle. possession is the movie that should settle the question of whether neil labute should be allowed to direct anything other than mormon recruitment videos: put him to work and watch those missionaries come home empty handed. oh, and speaking of labute, we did get fire-breathing dragons and an extremely ripped christian bale in reign of fire. whither the squishy, pasty journalist-turned-glam rocker of velvet goldmine?

goldmine -- sigh -- brings me back to ghost world and the best movies I saw this summer. both would be fine additions to the festival of these films, all of which played on, in, or with music. call them the new musicals, while we wait for ozon's 8 women to arrive from france and recover from the bipolar assault of moulin rouge and dancer in the dark.

the one closest to ghost world in spirit and subject is me without you, written and directed by sandra goldbacher. it centers around two girls who are longtime friends: mousy, jewish, bookish holly, who, despite matching the general description of this writer, does not come close to inspiring the double-overhead waves of simpatico that enid did (how's my blue crush vocab working? okay, I'll stop). perhaps this is because holly is played by a girl from the wb's dawson's creek, michelle williams, who, though entirely too skinny, does a passing english accent and a fine acting job under a mop of slightly stringy and unfashionably brown hair. (for a cringeworthy accent-cum-performance see gwyneth in possession, but sneak in please so as not to raise the box office grosses one penny. and if you can explain her odd, pastel-ridden wardrobe to me I'd be eternally grateful.)

if holly is me, then you is tarty, brash marina, played by anna friel, who no one in america cares about but the british glossies just lurve. the narrative follows the girls from high school in suburban london in the 1970s, through college in the 1980s, and the friends years of young urban adulthood that follow. the will-they-or-won't-they dramatic tension engine is fueled by holly's crush on marina's brother, nat, played by oliver milburn, a dreamy cross between hugh grant and colin firth. (thinking women take note.) but the real story is one of best friendship and codependency, of holly needing marina to show her the world and marina needing holly for pretty much everything else. they fight over slimy yet sexy kyle maclachlan, a rakish american lecturer who rattles on about semiotics with holly and drugs and dances (badly) with marina. they have other affairs, hairstyles, and crises. they laugh, cry, smoke, drink, and wear fingerless gloves and fishnets--sometimes all at once.

throughout there is divine music: the clash, stranglers, and wreckless eric in high school; echo and the bunnymen and depeche mode in college. a hilarious scene with mrs. sting trudie styler, who plays marina's drama queen mother, and charlene's classic feminine lament "I've never been to me," manages to be poignant too. nick drake is right where he belongs for once, not like in the car commercials and -- ugh -- the end of serendipity. lovely & amazing, nicole holofcener's second film, got more play, but me without you is the superior movie. lovely has no one to love in it; its characters are shrill and self-loathing to the point of driving the audience away. goldbacher understands what many people who make contemporary women's films take for granted: that characters must be intelligent and committed to each other in order to demand commitment and intelligence from an audience. we need to like them as we do our friends, or even ourselves, flaws and all.

music is more than incidental to the action in both d.a. pennebaker's movie about david bowie as ziggy stardust and I am trying to break your heart, sam jones's documentary about wilco. but neither simply puts a band on stage and shoots, though the occasion of pennebaker's film is the last concert by bowie as ziggy. jones has a built in dramatic arc in the recording and rejection of yankee hotel foxtrot, and some extra spice in the firing of longtime band member jay bennett. jeff tweedy eats his cake with gusto and a swig of diet coke after selling his record back to aol time warner (reprise, which dropped him, and nonesuch, his current label, are corporate cousins). beautifully shot in black and white, the wilco movie--as it's called on the nyc marquee where it's showing--is a valentine to an artist who doesn't compromise but knows how to play the game. with lots of live music and studio goofiness, it's catnip for those who chose the winning side after the demise of uncle tupelo.

if you can get past the considerable nausea brought on by a very shaky camera, it becomes clear that pennebaker's movie cares more about bowie's mesmerizing fans than ziggy himself. it's particularly sweet on the nubile, pretty things wacked out on drugs and dolled up in their best striped eyeliner and platforms. the moments backstage are all too brief, just costume changes and a stilted scene between david and angela that makes it seem as if they've just met. though it's fun to see mick and the spiders do their inimitable thing, the unsteady camera is only happy where the girls are -- screaming, crying, swooning, and generally falling all over themselves and each other in the presence of the prettiest star. heart tells a triumphant story about a little band called wilco that may make fans out of a few moviegoers, but ziggy dramatizes the heartbreak and rapture of being a true fan.

being a fan is at the crux of michael winterbottom's 24 hour party people. so taken is tony wilson (played by foxy brit comic steve coogan) with punk that he starts putting bands on his local manchester television show, opens a club called the hacienda, and starts a record label, factory, to disseminate his discoveries to the world. everyone goes to the movie for joy division, stays for new order, and grumbles about the happy mondays, but it's important to remember that wilson is not necessarily the guy with the best taste (defenders of durutti column, speak up). he's the guy with the balls and the stamina to make things happen, even if what he makes happen is shaun ryder. party would fit nicely on a double bill with another engaging film about fandom featuring another gutsy impresario, producer bob evans, the subject of the kid stays in the picture. both films print the lies, as wilson says in party, but their subjects are vastly entertaining liars, doing it for the sheer love of art.

movies, music, miniskirts: it's the exegesis of the implications of fandom that was one of ghost world's compelling themes. seymour's passion for records and his "old-timey things," enid's thrift-store dream dècor and killer wardrobe, even becky's enthusiasm for an ironing board built right into the kitchen wall are all instances of a certain kind of devotion. just because it's about material life does not mean that it's shallow; trollope, who named novels after jewels and houses, understood this too. those things we collect and live among operate on a symbolic level, evoking a utopia of stylish castoffs and gorgeous soundtracks, of apartments with antiquated modern conveniences, and of friends who understand us (me with you, if you will). people who simply -- yet profoundly -- like the things that we like. CF