Ponders the myriad pathologies of pop culture.
Obsesses about actressing at the edges.
Loves grilled cheese.
ARCHIVE OF SUPPORTING ACTRESS SUNDAYS & THE SMACKDOWN
His singularly brilliant performance as the insufferably nerdy/needy/neurotic Sheldon just makes me happy. Hap hap hap hap hap happy. Happy! And then when I see pictures like this, and realize that he appeared in this play (directed by a college friend of mine no less), I get even haphaphappier. So, I offer this -- my personal definition of "adorkable" -- to share my haphaphappy with you.
StinkyLulu offers the following as my contribution to the monthly FILM CLUB instigated by Final Girl. This month brings our attention to a curious classic of the "When ____s Attack" genre that became so ubiquitous in the 1970s. And even though the film didn't inspire my imagination so much (see my unedited ramblings on the film here; click image at above right to be routed to the trailer), The Car (1977) did provide several moments of surprising, delectable delight. 
Ahhh, the rich pungency of 70s studness. 
Perhaps my favorite moment in the entire film happens in the first minutes when one of The Car's first fatalities pauses his bike race with his girl friend. They roll to a stop, giggling and chattering. And then -- for reasons that remain unclear to me -- the boy sniffs his hand and makes a massive stinkface. (It's a fleeting moment of veritas, akin perhaps to the legendary Brando-glove business, just nasty tacky.) Between the "sniff" and my impulse to confirm that that screaming girly is indeed my beloved Nikki, I can confirm that, having carefully screened this tiny sequence scores of times, its inexplicable delights endure.
A long drink of man. Naturally smooth, naturally strong.
Of course, my favorite character was the school principal lady. A girdled nightmare of hairspray, polyester, cat-eyes, and moral righteousness in one scene; a grimacing wild-haired gorgon in the next. My kind of character.
Any film that spends several minutes staging a scene in which one character teases, taunts and torments James Brolin's manly bits is a film that I will forever appreciate.
As a child of the 1970s southwest, I must say this film does observe a principle I grew up witnessing on a fairly regular basis: hitchhiking hippies carrying weird musical instruments and throwing attitude to the locals are indeed at severe risk of being run over. Not judging, just saying.
By 1977, I think I envied Kim Richards even more than I did Melissa Gilbert. (And that's saying a lot.) Kim Richards was soooooooo lucky. She got to be Tia (opposite my 2nd grade dreamdate Ike Eisenmann) in Escape from Witch Mountain and she gets to have James Brolin for a dad? No fair, no fair, no fair. (That scene in the "hopped up on Holly Hobby" bedroom when Brolin pops in wearing his velour mini-robe? That single image realizes I don't know how many of my elementary school fantasies... All at once.) Though considering the above picture, and recalling all the times I rode on the back of a motorbike, terrified by the ride but thrilled that I was clutching some 70s man's abdomen, I think I would have wanted to be the one in the red helmet.
If doing a paint-by-number painting of your boyfriend, and then getting run over in the middle of your living room, and then having that paint-by-number emerge undamaged and carefully lit from amidst the wreckage -- if that ain't proof of true love, I dunno what is.
Indeed. It. Is.
to demand that web cinephiliacs shirk their carefully constructed attitudes and let something delightfully embarassing hang right out there... And it took me a moment to settle on something, but thanks to a fleeting encounter with Grease2 on television this weekend, I was reminded of an obscure genre of cinematic pleasure which just stirs my very soul: unexpected musical numbers in films of the later 1970s and early 1980s in which men get nearly naked. I'm not sure why I thrill so. I suspect it's a combination of the innocent irreverence of male nudity in the 1970s, coupled with my giddy delight at the well-positioned (and well-proportioned) musical number, as well as my personal concupiscence when I first encountered these scenes. And they're all prior to that time when Tom Cruise lip-synched in his underpants, an admittedly excellent scene which nonetheless transformed the nearly naked musical number into something peculiarly innocent. No, there's something about the at once overt and oblique sexuality of these numbers that I do fill me with the requisite "complete and unbridled fucking retarded JOY." Truly, I could just watch these clips on loop for hours on end. Oh, I love each of them so... So, lovely reader, with my giddy blessing, please enjoy:
A silly song transformed by the genius of Bob Fosse in All That Jazz (1979),
Silly, yes, but hicks doing high kicks while wearing jock straps? Good times.
The polymorphously perverse recasting of this lusty song
Don't dream it. Be it. With everyone in the pool.
Michael Ontkean gives all to win his team the championship
