Citizen Dame

This week we continue celebrating Tim Curry AND ushering in Spooky Movie Season at the same time with the 1975 cult classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In the longest-running film of all time, a young couple's car breaks down near an old castle in the middle of Ohio. When they knock on the door to use the telephone, they have no idea that they will spend a wild night in the company of a transvestite scientist from the planet Transsexual in the galaxy of Transylvania.

Joining Tim Curry is a fantastic cast that includes Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Meat Loaf, Richard O'Brien, Patricia Quinn, Nell Campbell, Peters Hinwood, Jonathan Adams, and Charles Gray.

*Clip from SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE courtesy of NBC Universal.

We continue our celebration of Tim Curry with the 1985 whodunnit homage/parody/board game adaptation Clue, directed by Jonathan Lynn, written by John Landis and Lynn, and starring a fantastic cast of comedic character actors as strangers who meet in an old dark house only to be swept up into a murder mystery. In a cast full of GOATs (including Madeline Kahn and Michael McKean), Tim Curry manages to make the film his own as Wadsworth, the butler who didn't do it (or did he?).

Next week, we kick off spooky season with Tim Curry's most iconic role in The Rocky Horror Picture Show!

This week we switch gears and begin a memorial series dedicated to the icon, Tim Curry. And we're starting off with his 1996 musical comedy, Muppet Treasure Island. Directed by Brian Henson and starring all your favorite Muppets, this adaptation of the Robert Louis Stephenson novel casts Curry as the one and only Long John Silver. In this episode, we talk generally about Curry's career, his much-rumored affair with Miss Piggy, and how this show very obviously inspired the series Our Flag Means Death.

This episode, the Dames talk Dolly Parton, the 1980s, and...Turkish Oil Wrestling!

In Steel Magnolias, based on Robert Harling's play of the same name, Dolly plays Truvy, the owner of a home-based beauty salon in a little Louisiana town that becomes the center of the friendships, love stories, and heartaches of a close-knit group of friends. Featuring a fantastic cast that includes Sally Field, Darryl Hannah, Olympia Dukakis, Julia Roberts, and Shirley Maclaine, this is one of the major films of the 1980s, and a beautiful way to end our mini celebration of Dolly's cinematic career.

Next up, we pay tribute to Tim Curry, starting with Muppet Treasure Island!

While we were on a break, the world lost some legends. This month, we are remembering Dolly Parton and Tim Curry. First, we talk about Dolly's 1982 musical comedy, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Parton stars as Miss Mona, the proprietor of a brothel known as the Chicken Ranch, a beloved house in rural Texas that comes under attack when TV personality Melvin P. Thorpe (Dom DeLuise) launches a moral crusade. Burt Reynolds stars as Ed Earl, the town sheriff and Miss Mona's longtime paramour. Charles Durning was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and Parton re-recorded her 1973 hit song, "I Will Always Love You" for the soundtrack.

The film was directed by Colin Higgins, who had previously worked with Dolly Parton on 9 to 5. This was his final film and Higgins passed away in 1988.

*Clip from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas courtesy of Universal Pictures.

We're back with a final alien invasion film and this one's a doozy: Steven Spielberg's post-9/11 adaptation of War of the Worlds, starring Tom Cruise as a Regular Guy who has to save his family when vicious aliens attack Earth. Of all the films we've done this month, this is both the most realistic and most frightening.

We will be on break for the month of August, but shall return with an entire month dedicated to Mel Brooks (!) as well as a fun new bonus series. As always, thank you all so much for your support!

We continue our month of aliens attacking America! with another 1996 gem, Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!

Based on the Topps trading card series from 1962, this hilarious, satirical alien invasion movie follows separate groups of Americans who all have very different experiences when Martians arrive and start indiscriminately killing everyone with their death rays. The movie stars Jack Nicholson in two unrelated roles, plus Glenn Close, Michael J. Fox, Martin Short, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Pam Grier, Jim Brown, Lukas Haas, Natalie Portman, Silvia Sidney, and Lisa Marie.

A trifle late, but happy Independence Day! This month we're talking alien invasion films, beginning with the ultimate July 4 movie, Roland Emmerich's Independence Day (1996). Will Smith was cool, Jeff Goldblum was hot, blockbusters were big, and we hoped for truly inspirational presidents!

Next week, everyone who wasn't in ID4 appears in Mars Attacks!.

This week we're finishing up our month of supposedly straight movies that are very gay, by talking all about the 2002 film, Bend it Like Beckham. from director Gurinder Chadha. Parminder Nagra and Keira Knightley star as two soccer players, one from a traditional Sikh family and the other with an overbearing, gender-enforcing mother, who connect through a women's team coached by Jonathan Rhys Meyers. They're supposedly fighting over him, but we can all see the truth.

Our month of "straight movies that are totally gay" continues with the 1954 western, Johnny Guitar.

Joan Crawford stars as saloon owner Vienna in a small southwestern town. When a heist leaves a man dead, his sister Emma (Mercedes McCambridge) declares war on Vienna and local gang leader the Dancin' Kid (Scott Grady). But Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden) is there to...help? This definitely totally straight western from Nicholas Ray subverts the western genre with its swapping of traditionally masculine and feminine roles, its thinly-veiled critique of McCarthyism, and the brightest red lipstick in the west.