We'll get this out of the way first: yes, it's irritating and vaguely infantilizing when a young person makes a big show of how sassy and sharp an elderly person is. THAT IS NOT THIS. Or, if there is an element of it to be found here, I apologize. Someday old age will come for me too, and some young person will try to explain to me how great it is that I'm still telling it like it is and putting…

If the Oscars weren't relevant, they wouldn't exist. We wouldn't talk about them. We wouldn't watch the broadcast. E! wouldn't dedicate exhaustive coverage to the ceremony before, during, and after. We wouldn't offer up our opinions. We wouldn't be disappointed when our favorites are overlooked. Certainly, the Oscars are irrelevant to many people but they are relevant to me. Why? I love movies. I love the idea of Hollywood. I love what lurks beneath that…

Previously in the Femslash Friday series: Frenchy and Rizzo, Grease's butch-femme pairing for the ages. I'm in Hollywood this week for the Turner Classic Film Festival, as is my yearly custom, and for reasons of both convenience and thematic what's-the-word-I-want-it-isn't-congruence-it's-something-else, I have decided to honor classic Hollywood with this week's entry. Let us step back to an era where every Friday was Femslash Friday, when having sex with Mercedes de Acosta and Alla…

If you’ve read or watched any of the coverage of Shirley Temple’s death in the last two weeks, you’ve probably seen a mention of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, the dazzling tap dancer who co-starred with Temple in some of her most memorable films. Temple probably had no idea at the time, but her dance routines with “Uncle Billy” were remarkable not only for their seemingly effortless precision and beauty, but also because they managed to shatter…

Everybody wants to work with Robert Townsend. He's the Sara Lee of quadruple threats (actor/writer/director/producer): nobody doesn't like him. Not in a harmless or an unobjectionable way; in the instinctive and helpless way you are drawn to someone who makes you believe in the best and most honest version of yourself. He is perhaps the only person in Hollywood to have directed himself as not one but two separate superheroes (Meteor Man in The…