Cranky Lesbian

Look what the homosexuals have done to me!

Author: Cranky Lesbian Page 10 of 54

Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.

Comedy of Errors

By

On November 20, 2022

In Uncategorized

It has been quite a week here, beginning with an ultrasound of my swollen underarm that revealed unsuspicious lymph nodes. As I primly and eloquently told my wife leading up to the appointment, “My doctors are so far up my ass that if anything was horribly wrong, they would know by now.” This returns us to square one, with my rheumatologist uncertain if it’s a reaction to Humira or something else that’s responsible for my arm pain and discomfort. Until she figures out our next move, there’s not much to do but suck it up and see if a steroid taper reduces the swelling.

In other intrigue, Crankenstein has been under the weather. When asked for a self-diagnosis, she pronounced her illness “F*ck if I know.” She had a sore throat, fever and fatigue. She is often exposed to COVID at work, including in the week leading up to her illness. Her initial concern was that we stay away from each other, so I played nurse from a distance until her fever broke. After three negative COVID tests on successive evenings, she escaped her bedroom exile and daringly sat on the couch—and then got sick again later that night. Now she’s back on the mend and probably relieved I watched Flood! without her.

Read More

In Flood!, a Schlock Deluge

By

On November 17, 2022

In TV Movies

Robert Culp and Martin Milner (with Eric Olson) fight water with fire in Flood!

There are scares to be found in disaster impresario Irwin Allen’s sloppy, schlocky made-for-television production of Flood! (1976), but few involve water, which is mostly shrouded in darkness when it’s shown at all. You might instead scream at a closeup of Francine York’s false eyelashes, probably the only structure in town strong enough to withstand the rushing currents.

Or perhaps you’ll shriek in fright as Robert Culp tries, and miserably fails, to emote during a dramatic revelation scene that screenwriter Don Ingalls (Fantasy Island) mangled almost beyond comprehension. Others might fear they’re losing their grip on sanity at all the age-mismatched couples. My favorite was baby-faced Abbie (Carol Lynley, enormously pregnant with a pillow) and Sam Adams (Cameron Mitchell, enormously pregnant with a bad toupee, his face pulled back so tightly it’s uncertain whether he could see).

Read More

The Flight Before Christmas: A Pleasant Diversion

By

On November 13, 2022

In TV Movies

Mayim Bialik and Ryan McPartlin find love in a hopeless place (Montana) in The Flight Before Christmas.

Casting Mayim Bialik as a shiksa in a Christmas movie is like casting Fyvush Finkel as Santa Claus, a potentially controversial observation that might alarm new readers who don’t yet know I’m Jewish. Despite their likability, neither actor would be particularly believable to some viewers (raises hand) as an evangelical Christian or devout Catholic. The producers of Lifetime’s The Flight Before Christmas (2015), including Bialik herself, compromise by making her character, Stephanie Hunt, the product of an interfaith marriage.

Stephanie has a Jewish mother (of course) and a Catholic father. Jennifer Notas Shapiro’s screenplay makes this clear first when Stephanie’s mother guilts her about holiday plans over the phone, and again when Stephanie clarifies the matter for anyone who struggles to tell ethnic moms apart. To best friend Kate (Roxana Ortega), she mentions her “meddling Jewish mother” in the context of a familiar joke: “I swear, one of these days I’m gonna find out she called my gynecologist directly to inquire about my waning fertility.”

Read More

The Softer Side of Burt Reynolds

By

On November 11, 2022

In Art

Apologies to anyone mildly frustrated by the wait for new content. I’m working on several reviews, including one of our first holiday-themed telefilm of the season. Progress is a little slower now than usual due to a health hiccup, but I expect to have something for you by Monday.

Longtime readers might recall I had a hard knot in my underarm over a year ago, and underwent several tests over a period of months lasting into this year. Nothing new and exciting was revealed, though there was talk of ceasing the Humira that I take for Crohn’s and arthritis, in case it was causing a reaction. Now the discomfort has intensified and spread. My doctor felt around and wants to take another look at it next week.

Read More

Voting, Peep Shows and Glory Holes

By

On November 8, 2022

In Politics

Mink Stole saw something nasty in the woodshed voting both in Pecker.

Many years ago, when this blog and I were young and didn’t have to slather ourselves in retinol cream every night to look less like our grandmother, I wrote a lot about politics—enough that a gay magazine offered me a spot as a political columnist. One of the many reasons I fervently wanted Obama to win was so that I could, at least temporarily, think less about politics. I did a one-off piece about the 2008 presidential election and left it at that.

This morning I walked through piles of leaves to my polling station and thought, as I always do on election days, of the dark and miserable morning of my first-ever presidential election as a voter. It was 2004 and the wind whipped at my face and numbed my hands as I stood outside for 90 minutes, hoping to vanquish an illegitimate incumbent prone to using my sexuality (at the behest of a vile and shameless gay traitor) as a wedge issue to increase Republican voter turnout. When George W. Bush was reelected, I wasn’t sure how I’d make it through the next four years.

To be gay, to be a woman, to be a non-Christian in America, is always fraught with a danger made more insidious by its relative invisibility. You accept this as a fact of life if you belong to any of those or other minority groups and possess even the slightest self-preservation instinct. These days I live in a liberal enclave, surrounded by elite academics with earnest yard signs assuring passersby that they believe in science and civility; signs testifying to their conviction that racism is wrong. In casual conversation, they reveal gaping blind spots: “Trump doesn’t really believe what he says,” was a common refrain, right up to the day of the insurrection.

Read More

Valerie Harper Says Goodbye, Supermom

By

On November 4, 2022

In TV Movies

Valerie Harper and Wayne Rogers in Goodbye, Supermom.

A semi-earnest social commentary obscured by empty sitcom yuks, 1988’s Goodbye, Supermom (also known as Drop-Out Mother) is a television movie that hates television. “Know what the ‘M’ in MTV stands for? Moron,” a teenage character tells her little brother. An elderly woman later declares “I have no skills, I’m not talented. I read People and watch Entertainment Tonight. I take Robin Leach seriously. I live through other people’s lives.”

If that isn’t compelling enough on its surface, you ought to know who wrote it. Supermom’s credited screenwriter was Bob Shanks, a longtime producer of The Merv Griffin Show. As an ABC executive in the 1970s, Shanks helped birth infotainment-peddling programs like Good Morning America and 20/20, which permanently rearranged the American television landscape—and not necessarily for the better. In the ’80s, he wrote a handful of telefilms that were variations on the theme of corporate burnout: Supermom follows Drop-Out Father (1982, starring Dick Van Dyke) and He’s Fired, She’s Hired (1984).

Read More

All Aboard a Star-Studded ’70s Death Cruise

By

On October 31, 2022

In TV Movies

The cast of Death Cruise.

Depending on how you look at Death Cruise, a 1974 made-for-TV movie produced by Aaron Spelling, it’s either about the horrors of matrimony or the nightmare of traveling with one’s spouse. Either way, it’s one of the more unexpectedly delightful entries in Kate Jackson’s oeuvre, with wardrobe changes galore and the revelation of an unexpected, and somewhat butch, talent—she plays a crack skeet-shooter.

A year removed from her devilishly amusing performance in Satan’s School for Girls, Jackson stars as Mary Frances Radney, the luminous bride of Jimmy (Edward Albert), a boyish attorney. They’re on a second honeymoon, having won an all-expense-paid Caribbean cruise vacation. They’re assigned to dinner table 24 with two other couples, also winners: staid suburbanites David and Elizabeth Mason (Tom Bosley and Celeste Holm) and the quarrelsome Carters, Jerry and Sylvia (Richard Long and Polly Bergen).

Read More

Ghosts (and Pumpkins) in the Machine

By

On October 29, 2022

In Housekeeping

Something spooky, and rather Sheena Eastonesque, has happened on this very site just in time for Halloween. Until a few days ago, I used a plugin called WPForms on the Contact page. This weekend it came to my attention that a mischievous ghost or malevolent spirit caused something to go haywire with that.

If you sent a message through the Contact form any time since October 4th, I have no record of it. I’m not sure what’s more frightening, that my “Thanks for reaching out!” auto-response wasn’t shown to anyone who submitted a note this month, or that a reader might’ve felt ignored after not hearing back from me.

Sincerest apologies for that snafu. For now, you can leave a comment directly on the Contact page (no WPForms involved) if you want to get in touch. While I can’t travel back in time and save or respond to lost notes, I can share with you conciliatory photos of pumpkins.

Read More

The Victim: Soggy Suspense with Elizabeth Montgomery

By

On October 28, 2022

In TV Movies

Elizabeth Montgomery in The Victim.

“When something’s dead, the only decent thing to do is bury it,” Elizabeth Montgomery’s younger sister tells her in the made-for-TV thriller The Victim (1972). Susan Chappel (Jess Walton) is referring to her marriage to Ben (George Maharis); she recently retained a divorce lawyer. But in a macabre twist, she’s soon dead herself—and certainly not buried.

As Kate Wainwright (Montgomery) inches closer to that horrifying discovery, we’re treated to 75 minutes of thunder and lightning and close calls with a corpse. Hitchcock’s Rope it ain’t, but The Victim (adapted by Merwin Gerard from a story by McKnight Malmar) derives its more twisted suspense from a body in a trunk. And this time it’s wicker and not entirely closed, allowing viewers to notice what escapes Kate’s attention in Ben and Susan’s dark basement.

Read More

The Golden Girls: “The Competition” Episode Recap

By

On October 26, 2022

In Friends of Dorothy Z.

The roommates are feuding again—over a trophy this time, not a man—in “The Competition” (S1E07), the first of many contest-themed Golden Girls episodes. The B-plot’s exposition is lined up right out of the gate: Sophia is preparing what Dorothy calls her “special 14-hour sauce,” which suggests a special occasion. Rose contributes to the conversation in her typical childlike fashion, exclaiming “Oh, Sophia, that smells heavenly! Is it Chef Boyardee?”

Before any useful information can be extracted from Sophia, Blanche enters the kitchen, showing off her new bowling ball. “I bought it to help Rose and me win the bowling tournament this year,” she announces. The bowling tournament is as out of left field as Dorothy cramming for a French exam in the previous episode, but let’s not get bogged down by details.

Read More

Page 10 of 54

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén