Theirs was a conspiracy of empty smiles.
Katherine Heigl plays Abby, a producer for a ratings-challenged Sacramento morning television show, the kind that specializes in empty smiles, cooking tips and weather updates.
As Mick Haller (Mickey in the books), Mr. McConaughey keeps his focus tight — Mr. Furman making sure his camera does the same — doling out empty smiles to the guys with the badges and going straight for the clients whose innocence matters less than their wads of cash.
It will be the same as every year, empty smiles plastered over pained grimaces, desolation and foul reminders of the bleakness of the human condition on display at every turn.
"Do I think about what?" Nonette looked at me, her face bland and empty, smiling.
The simpleton Michael may be an odd career choice for an actor courting stardom, but even with a goofy, empty smile, Prateik has charisma.
His stock in trade was the wink, the nod and the empty smile, and the men who worked on the outer reaches of his universe despised him for his cheapness, his cunning and, as one of them, Frank Graham Jr. said, the way he affected the "Irish pol manqué." The men closer to him admired his intelligence and understood that his was the game of making money, even if he took winning far too seriously.
That left the empty seat, a smiling Dillard and a stoic Katz to enjoy a few seconds of airtime.
She's standing by a window listening to a song that seems unlikely to be part of her usual playlist, Smile Empty Soul's "This Is War": "I drove in a car and flew in a plane/to come to your house and kick your door in".
The singer might be speaking from the cradle of his lover's arms, or chasing her down a street, or watching the lights of her train diminish in the night; he might be crouched alone in an alleyway, or wandering an empty house, or smiling for all the world to see while his words rattle, unspoken, inside his skull.
Other bands that have been inspired by Alice in Chains include Creed, Nickelback, Taproot, Stone Sour, Puddle of Mudd, Queens of the Stone Age, A Pale Horse Named Death, Godsmack, Smile Empty Soul, Avenged Sevenfold, Cold, Hurt, Incubus, Mudvayne, 10 Years, Breaking Benjamin, Days of the New, and Tantric.
