Bookworm Room

What do you get when you cross a Bratz doll with a Smurf?  A Na’vi.
Yup, folks, I finally caught up with my pop culture and went to see Avatar last night.  Seeing it made me realize why I so seldom bother to catch up with pop culture.  The movie was a snoozer.  The first two [...]

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You’ve got to see this one.  It’s so right — and it really resonates with me because I work so hard educating and inoculating my children against the omnipresent Leftist pop culture.  I think the video also works for me because, as a history major who has always rejected Marxist and deconstructionist approaches to history, [...]

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I’m not a Woody Allen fan, but occasional scenes in his movies stick in my memory.  There’s one scene I remember, although I don’t know if I really saw it or if my fertile imagination invented it.  It was from one of his late 60s/early 70s movies.  As I recall, it shows him riding on [...]

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When the law finally caught up with Roman Polanski, self-confessed rapist of a 13 year old girl, the entertainment and fashion worlds leaped into action.  Without even attempting to claim Polanski was innocent (hard to do, since he admitted the charge as part of a plea-bargain), the petition assured the world that Polanski deserved freedom [...]

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There’s yet another movie coming out about the way in which the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq destroy lives and turn young men into pathetic losers:
There is a grim timeliness to the release of “Brothers,” Jim Sheridan’s movie about the effects of war on the family of a Marine serving in Afghanistan. Whatever the other [...]

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The big buzz is about James Cameron’s Avatar, which is supposed to be to modern movies what The Jazz Singer was to the silent film:  It will remake movies.
I don’t know about that, but having seen the preview a few days ago when I took some boys to the movies, I can tell  you that [...]

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Hollywood is quite sure that Roman Polansky should be forgiven for raping a 13 year old because, considering his value to the artistic world, it wasn’t really rape.  It was so long ago, he’s so talented, she’s so over it, whatever . . . .  “All is forgiven, dear.  Come home.  I miss you terribly.”  [...]

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I remember the huge buzz that surrounded Matt McConaughey’s debut in motion pictures.  I remember it not because I was particular taken with him, but because he was from Texas, a place I value.  I also remember how quickly I realized that, despite the buzz, McConaughey wasn’t going to set the world on fire.  He’s [...]

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It’s actually hard to find old patriotic songs from WWII era Hollywood because not many are loaded onto YouTube.  Here’s a short one, though, from Hollywood Canteen:

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I should have posted this yesterday but, since late is better than never, I post it today.  I am reminded, watching this video, of the absolutely beautiful way in which Swayze used his body.  Some people can be trained to dance, and some are just born dancers:

Sphere: Related Content

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In the 1980s, I was quite the Patrick Swayze fan, admiring his looks, his physique, and his adequate acting chops.  Although I outgrew that youthful infatuation, in the last few years I’ve become an even bigger fan, since I admired his valiant fight against cancer.  Sadly, the cancer finally won:  Patrick Swayze passed away today, [...]

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I was listening to some Cole Porter the other day, and it occurred to me that some of his songs have a rather creepy quality to them.
Stalking love:
Obsessive love (yucky recording, but you’ll get the point):
And masochistic love:
And yet they’re all such lovely songs.
Speaking of lovely, here’s the beautiful Cyd Charisse dancing up a storm [...]

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Many, many years ago, I had the good fortune during the Aspen Music Festival to be present in someone’s living room when some of the guests, musicians all, decided to do some sight reading for their fellow attendees.  I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences, although perhaps not quite the same caliber of [...]

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Back in 2006, I wrote an optimistic article for American Thinker in which I saw some hope in Hollywood’s approach to manliness.  I’m going to quote here at some length from my earlier article, because I want to make the point that I was lauding an enormously successful movie because it celebrated traditional male virtues:
The [...]

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Today is the 70th anniversary of Germany’s bombing campaign against Poland, the official start of World War II.  I thought, therefore, that this song from 1941’s Babes on Broadway was just right.  It is an explicit tribute to beleaguered Britain, which was, at the only time, not only the sole nation fighting the Nazis, but [...]

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Up in Arms, from 1944, was Danny Kaye’s break-out movie. The musical number supporting the war effort starts at 4:30:

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Apropos my post about patriotism during Hollywood’s golden age, Bruce Kesler sent me this great video showing both Jimmy Cagney and Mickey Rooney doing their George M. Cohan impressions:
Since I’m an avid fan of old musicals, I may, for a few days, scatter throughout my posts video links to patriotic songs and dances from Hollywood’s [...]

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Hollywood and the media establishment as a whole are inescapable parts of American and, indeed, world culture.  It’s fascinating, therefore, to think about the type of patriotism our American media now espouses and that which it embraced in the past.   Depending on how one defines patriotism, whether as love of country or love of a [...]

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From 1933’s Going Hollywood:

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Last night, I went with a friend to see Julie & Julia, a movie that abruptly lost me exactly halfway through.  Although it’s a movie that has all the trappings of a good chick-flick, with enough beautifully photographed food to appeal to male foodies too, it contains some calculated insults that should drive all conservatives [...]

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I went to NBC’s site looking for something else entirely, and got waylaid by a link to Hollywood brainiacs.  I found it somewhat interesting, at least initially.  Before I begin, though, let me say that I’m absolutely certain a lot of the actors and actresses profiled are indeed really, really smart.  Having said that, there [...]

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One of the lesser known gems of MGM’s great musical era is a 1945 Fred Astaire movie called Yolanda and the Thief, with Fred as the thief and Lucille Bremer as Yolanda.  (Lesser know, probably, because it was a huge box office bust with end-of-the-war audiences.)  The plot is paper thin, but the visuals are [...]

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I came of age in the 1970s, when Farrah Fawcett was probably the most popular pin-up in America.  Whether running dashingly around on Charlie’s Angels, or smiling brightly, yet provocatively, in her famous red swimsuit picture, she was everywhere.
Those images are so vivid in my mind, it’s hard to believe that this fixture from my [...]

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As you all know, over the years I’ve been fascinated by male and female roles in America.  As the mother of a very manly little 10 year old, I take male role models in this culture very seriously.  I’ve therefore noticed (and commented upon) the way in which our society consigns boys to perpetual adolescence.  [...]

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In my Friday Open Thread, I promised that I’d blog about Zac Efron.  First off, let me clear the air here and explain that I haven’t developed some pathetic “middle-aged woman/teenage boy” obsession with him (although he does bear an uncanny resemblance, girlish hair and all, to the teen idols of my youth).  What makes [...]

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