Here’s a Joan Crawford Fan Video Set to Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” December 14, 2012

Sure, this is a bowl of gravy and a pint of Bugle Blast and a playlist consisting solely of “Someone Like You” away from a three-hanky PUT-DOWN-THAT-SPOON! intervention (Betty Draper, er, Francis knows what we’re talking about); and yes, Adele has been such a pop-zeitgeist omnipresence that we’re all probably rolling in the fatigue (BOOM! See what I did there?); but whatever.  I’ll take any chance I get to honor Joan Crawford’s perfectly-framed-by-shadows-single-tear sorrows, so pull up a chair and hand me a spoon, ‘cos this video’s giving me a case of the feelings.

One More Time, With Squealing… August 25, 2012

The problem with taking a break from moonlighting as a highly adored, internationally famous blogger is that you constantly have a gaggle of screaming fans begging you to go back to blogging. “Oh, how we miss you! Oh, how we need you!” their gaping maws craw like sickly orphans starved of camp, wit, and the “occasional” Showgirls reference.

Naturally, I’m may be exaggerating a tad seeing as:

1. By gaggle of screaming fans, I mean two friends.
2. By internationally famous, I mean One of them is from England.
3. By highly adored, I mean sometimes my mother reads this, too.

Anyways, it’s become rather clear that my public (two friends and a mother…on occasion) needs me, and who am I to refuse? So, like the above photo of Joan Crawford returning to MGM Studios to film Torch Song, I too shall come back to the old fold. (This is nothing like that whatsoever, but let’s pretend.) Or, to mix iconic-camp-moment metaphors:

Joan Crawford! “Flashdance…What a Feeling”! Halleloo It’s Friday! February 10, 2012

I’m sorry, maybe it’s the beast of a week I’ve had, or maybe just me being that queen (very likely), but this video is an utter and absolute delight! I mean, Irene Cara’s “Flashdance…What a Feeling”! Who doesn’t love that song? (Nobody.) And Joan Crawford dancing! Who doesn’t delight in Joan Crawford dancing? (Bette Davis, Christina Crawford, fools who refuse the imperative to dance.) My point is that this video’s as marvelous a salve to the week as it is a start to the weekend. And best of all:

This Guy LOVES Him Some Hockey April 2, 2011

I’ll admit that I don’t really know much about hockey, save for the fact that it always strikes me as a hilarious excuse to watch grown men on ice skates beat the crap out of each other over a little disc. Is it like some bizarro butch version of Joan Crawford’s The Ice Follies of 1939?

I don’t know.

What I do know, though, is that Joan’s costumes are absolutely glamour-gonzo, a young Jimmy Stewart wants to do things on ice that have never been done before (!), those ice skating numbers look like bargain-basement Busby Berkeley insanity, and why haven’t I seen this movie yet?!? Again, I just don’t know, but what I do know is that this guy LOVES him some hockey:

Here’s a Video of the 100 Greatest Movie Insults of All Time July 1, 2010

When a video is titled “The 100 Greatest Movie Insults of All Time” and begins with this warning:

You’d best believe this video isn’t going to mess around.  But when it actually includes some of the greatest movie insults of all time, including a Joan Crawford ZING! from The Women and a priceless exchange from Mean Girls (you go, Glenn Coco Tina Fey!), well, it’s just worth it.  ”The 100 Greatest Movie Insults of All Time,” y’all:

Today’s Fabulous Image in Cinema: Joan Crawford in Humoresque (Yes, Again.) July 1, 2010

Because you can’t appreciate the Humoresque sweet without having to taste Humoresque sour, and because I can never get enough Joan Crawford (particularly until I’ve finished reading David Bret’s epically salacious Joan Crawford: Hollywood Martyr) here’s Joan Crawford’s Helen Wright shedding a single tear of profoundly agonized longing for her violinist lover, Paul Boray (John Garfield).  He’s playing the Liebestod from Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, she’s drowning her sorrows as she listens to him on the radio, and my head’s exploding from having a moment appeal to the Crawford queen AND the opera queen in me.

Today’s Fabulous Image in Cinema: Joan Crawford in Humoresque June 30, 2010

Because Jean Negulesco’s Humoresque–aka, the one with Joan in glasses!–is as much an unheralded masterpiece as it is my favorite Joan Crawford movie, so why wouldn’t I give this gem a little more blog time?  Besides, if John Garfield’s Paul Boray can bring Joan Crawford’s Helen Wright to a state of transcendental sexual ecstasy just by playing Symphonie Espagnole on his violin (as is happening in the above image, if you couldn’t tell from the perfect visual metaphor of Joan’s glistening, parted lips), just imagine what his virtuosic playing will do to you.  (*SPOILER ALERT!*: It’ll blow your damn mind.)

Oh, and don’t hesitate to click to enlarge and appreciate the fabulousness of it all.

Important Findings in the Album Art for Christina Aguilera’s Bionic June 11, 2010

Over on Facebook, a friend of mine described Christina Aguilera’s Bionic as mostly consisting of “transparent attempts to pander to obnoxious queens.” I recognize that taste is a subjective thing, so he could be wrong, but he did study music production, so I’m willing to trust his critical assessment on this matter.  Besides, it probably explains why I’m enjoying Bionic so damn much.  After all, if Christina Aguilera’s latest album was an early-to-mid-90s Marvel Comic character, she’d be Nymphomaniac Robotranny Joan Crawford 2099:

In which case, how could I not love this nonsense?

Some of the songs, like the “I Am” (co-written by Sia and painfully lovely in its chamber pop minimalism) and the glorious “My Girls” (a Le Tigre-penned track with a Peaches rap interlude, so electropop fantastiche), are legitimately good songs; other songs, like the ode to muff diving called “Woo Hoo” and the oh-so-unsubtly titled “Sex for Breakfast,” feature lyrics so cartoonishly sexual that they could fit right into Showgirls: The Musical (book and lyrics by Joe  Eszterhas, music by Andrew Lloyd Weber on a burritos and meth bender).  And then there’s “Vanity,” a song that scales to such heights of camp absurdity that it’s another post all unto itself.  Bionic may be neither a work of high art nor a pop masterpiece, but much of it’s so frequently batshit crazy and so thoroughly listenable that I find it irresistible.

ANYWAYS, as I was flipping through the album art for Bionic (which is as bonkers and fabulous–if not even more so–than the album itself), I had a revelation, and that revelation was that Christina Aguilera and I both share a love of Karen Black in The Day of the Locust.  Here’s Karen Black on the poster for The Day of the Locust:

In Honor of the 105th Anniversary of Her Birthday, Here’s a Bevy of Joan Crawford Doing What Joan Crawford Does Best March 23, 2010

From a still for the 1932 film Letty Lynton, here’s Joan Crawford epitomizing 1930s glamor in front of the most glorious Art Deco revolving doorway I’ve ever seen:

I’d like to imagine that this is the gay man’s version (or at least this gay man’s version) of Saint Peter and the Pearly Gates, but that might count too much of a good thing even by Heaven’s standards, so I can be willing to settle for just the doorway.

Here’s Joan Crawford’s cameo in the 1949 Doris Day vehicle It’s a Great Feeling:

Or as I like to call it, “Joan Crawford in furs, birthing cinematic Postmodernism.”

And then there’s Queen Bee, which leaves me without many words whether it’s as a single image:

Joan Crawford Knows Kung Fu February 2, 2010

Sure, technically it’s Judo, not Kung Fu, but let’s focus on what’s important in this video, and what’s important is that this is from a movie that stars Joan Crawford as a mental hospital’s head nurse who teaches Judo to the other nurses so they may use it against the ward’s patients.  And even moreso?  This movie exists, and its poster is fabulous:

Sweet mercy!  I’m happy enough that The Caretakers features Evil Nurse Joan Crawford with karate-chop action.  I mean, Joan Crawford performances are like Pokemon toys for gay men: you gotta catch ‘em all!  But then I’m confronted with all these images female hysteria in the poster, and I get so overwhelmed, and all of a sudden I’m out in the streets making a scene.  Sorta like Polly Bergen in The Caretakers: