Make way! The 2nd Annual “SEX! (now that I have your attention) Blogathon” is here!

Ready to usher in summer with some major hotness? Join us at this blog for the next three days, as bloggers chime in about movies that cleverly suggest sexuality rather than graphically depicting it.

If you are one of the blogathon entrants, please post the URL to your blog entry in the “Comments” section below, and I will link to it as soon as possible. Please have your entry posted by the end of the day on Tues., June 21 (and if I may, the sooner the better!).

If you are just stopping by for some great reading, please give this blog bookmarked, as entries will continue coming in for the next three days. Enjoy, and be sure to have a fan directed at you while you’re reading — you might get a little hot under the collar!

Here are the blogathon’s entrants:

Movie Movie Blog Blog – Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

Serendipitous Anachronisms – A Room with a View (1985)

Moon in Gemini – A Place in the Sun (1951)

BNoirDetour – Scarlet Street (1945)

The Flapper Dame – The Seven Year Itch (1955)

Outspoken & Freckled – It (1927)

Love Letters to Old Hollywood – To Catch a Thief (1955)

Defiant Success – A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Thoughts All Sorts – Pride and Prejudice (2005)

Flickers in Time – Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)

Meredy.com – Red-Headed Woman (1932)

Pop Culture Reverie – The Moon Is Blue (1953)

Realweegiemidget – When Harry Met Sally (1989)

Silent Wierdness – Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925)

Pfeiffer Pfilms and Meg Movies – The Age of Innocence (1993)

Dell on Movies – Double Indemnity (1944)

DEEP IMPACT (1998) – Barely makes a dent

The following is my contribution to the Nature’s Fury Blogathon, being hosted by Barry at the blog Cinematic Catharsis from June 18-20, 2016. Click on the above banner, and read bloggers’ critiques of movies with the theme of Mother Nature striking back!

Deep Impact has anything but. The title refers to a fictional meteor that’s set to destroy the Earth within two years, but for all of its state-of-the-art hocus-pocus, the tinny message of this big-budget movie is that there’s nothing like a global disaster to bring us closer together.

Like that other hanky-soaker Titanic, Deep Impact wants to find out how civilized humans would be affected by imminent destruction. But if movies like this one get destroyed in the process, I say bring on the apocalypse.

The movie’s problems begin with a credibility gap that would have shamed Bush Administrations I and II. Here, the President (Morgan Freeman) goes on TV every so often to update us on the impending disaster and what the American and Russian astronauts are doing to thwart the meteor. And he’s straightforward about the whole mess — no hint of a cover-up, or of any American or Russian leaders trying to save their hides.

The President’s contingency plan is unwittingly uncovered by a nosy reporter (“Madam Secretary’s” Tea Leoni) who mistakes “ELE” (the code for an Extinction Level Event) for a White House bimbo named Ellie. And the President never even thinks to check out this cub reporter and find out just how much or how little she really knows. This fictional President might be more noble than the real item, but he sure needs better undercover men.

As in Titanic, the ostensible disaster is really just an excuse to get together a bunch of one-note characters with whom we’re meant to identify. There’s the reporter, who has long discussions with her mother (Vanessa Redgrave!) that would be played for comedy in any other movie but are meant to be gravely serious here. There’s the seasoned astronaut (Robert Duvall) who goes on the meteor-squashing mission despite objections from his younger cohorts. And there’s the teenaged astronomer (Elijah Wood) who could use his newfound clout to run for shelter but decides he’s just gotta stay with his sweetheart. (To make the Titanic connection complete, the teenager’s name is Leo.)

Everything in the movie is strictly functional. Each little scene is reduced to its simplest component and then shunted aside for the next cliche. Even disaster-movie freaks will be disappointed; the “money shot,” with a killer tidal wave knocking the Statue of Liberty around a bowling pin, doesn’t come until about 20 minutes before the end and is surprisingly abrupt.

This was only the second feature from director Mimi Leder (who did The Peacemaker, also for Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks studio like this one), but all she proved with this apocalypse wowser was that she could make big-budget movies as crassly as any male director. And as evidenced here, her work with actors rises and falls with the actors’ stock. The movie’s old pros (Freeman, Duvall, Redgrave) rise far above the material, while Tea Leoni doesn’t convince even as a cyber-reporter. Watch how Leoni wrings her hands whenever she’s doing a live broadcast. Then imagine how you’d feel if this woman were reporting an apocalypse to you.

Only one week until our “2nd Annual SEX! Blogathon”

The 2nd Annual “SEX (now that I have your attention) BLOGATHON” is only one month away!

Announcing “The 2nd Annual SEX! (now that I have your attention) BLOGATHON”!

It’s never too early to start planning for a summer vay-cay, now, is it? Having struck quite the touchy nerve with my previous SEX! (now that I have your attention) BLOGATHON last year, I thought I’d do it again for this summer.

If you’re unfamiliar with last year’s ‘thon, the idea is to blog about movies that are a turn-on in the way that they suggest sex rather than graphically depicting it. Movies from the Production Code era are ideal examples, but you don’t have to limit yourself to that time period. If you’re stuck for ideas, click here to link to last year’s SEX! Blogathon, and read some of the entries.

The rules for this year’s SEX! Blogathon are the same as last year’s, as follows.

The Rules

Your blog entry can be about any single movie, as long as it fits the following criteria.

1. You need to write about an entire movie that you find sexy, not just a single scene. The upside-down kiss in the 2001 Spider-Man movie was undeniably sexy, but unless you can make a case for the entire movie being a turn-on, please don’t write about it.

2. The movie you choose can be from any era (even silent), but it needs to be a movie that subtly suggests sex. No writhing, naked bodies, and no explicit dialogue about how much one person wants to go to bed with another.

That’s not to say that your choice can’t be a modern movie with adult dialogue. If you can make a solid case for something like, say, Body Heat (which was a modern homage to 1940’s-style movie sex), I’ll accept it.

3. Explain why you think the movie is sexy. Your explanation does not have to be lurid or explicit, just a simple description of why the movie “does something” for you.

How Do I Join the Blogathon?

In the “Comments” section at the bottom of this blog, please leave your name, the URL of your blog, and the movie you are choosing to blog about. At the end of this blog entry are banners for the ‘thon. Grab a banner, display it on your blog, and link it back to this blog.

The blogathon will take place from Sunday, June 19, through Tuesday, June 21 (the first day of summer). When the opening date of the blogathon arrives, leave a comment here with a link to your post, and I will display it in the list of entries (which I will continually update up to the beginning of the ‘thon, so keep checking back!).

I will not be assigning particular dates to any blog posts. As long as you get your entry in by the end of the day on June 21, I will be satisfied. (That said, the earlier the better!) Duplicate entries about the same movie are welcome as well.

Again, be sure to leave me a comment and grab a banner, and have fun with your blog entry!

Here’s the line-up so far:

Movie Movie Blog Blog – Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

Serendipitous Anachronisms – A Room with a View (1985)

Moon in Gemini – A Place in the Sun (1951)

BNoirDetour – Scarlet Street (1945)

The Flapper Dame – The Seven Year Itch (1955)

Outspoken & Freckled – It (1927)

Love Letters to Old Hollywood – To Catch a Thief (1955)

Defiant Success – A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Thoughts All Sorts – Pride and Prejudice (2005)

Flickers in Time – Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)

Meredy.com – Red-Headed Woman (1932)

Pop Culture Reverie – The Moon Is Blue (1953)

Realweegiemidget – When Harry Met Sally (1989)

Silent Wierdness – Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925)

Pfeiffer Films and Meg Movies – The Age of Innocence (1993)

Dell on Movies – Double Indemnity (1944)

 

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