State O' The Blog and a plug for my work at Next Projection!

It's heading into the fall, and soon enough after that we'll be in the middle of the holiday season.  Time to take stock of what will be coming in October and November!

Articles here will include:

1. My last Two Girls of Summer Articles!
2. A series of reviews I've entitled Witchy Women: Witches in Televised Pop Culture (There will be a bit of Bewitched, a bit of Charmed, a bit of Sabrina - but don't count out Winnie from Free Spirit).
3. Two Alpha Assholes I Have Known Articles
4. Two So Why Aren't You Watching....
5. Recipes!
6. A Hamster!

You can also follow my recaps of Brooklyn Nine Nine, The Goldbergs, Modern Family and Bob's Burgers on Next Projection!

The Girls of Summer - Satisfaction

If the 70’s brought on a wave of retroactive worship of the 50’s in reaction to Watergate, economic instability and presidential fallibility, the 80’s brought about a retro flashbacks to the 60’s in reaction to Cold War-related saber rattling and nuclear fears.  Everything was suddenly beachy again, as a fetish for all things California, a fitness and bodybuilding craze and a fondness for the shore suddenly collided in a perfect storm of beach movies.

Not only did Where The Boys Are get another run (revamped as Where The Boys Are ’85), the Nerds hit Paradise, Frankie and Annette went Back to the Beach to lampoon themselves, and even Barbie crimped her hair and took up surfing lessons.  There was even a Gidget revival!

The girliest of these nouveau beach movies is definitely 1988’s Satisfaction, which hoped to springboard Family Ties’ Justine Bateman into movie stardom…but instead exists today as a curio for Liam Neeson and Julia Roberts fans who want to see their favorite actors in early roles (in Roberts’ case, her first, and the last before Mystic Pizza won her the critical acclaim she needed to land her immortal role as Shelby in Steel Magnolias, which would eventually win her a best supporting actress nomination at the Oscars that would shoot her onto the A list).

The Girls of Summer: Rock N' Roll High School

The 70’s were an odd time for the teen movie genre.   Torn between the radicalized sentiments of the 60’s in its early years and the later period idolation of the 1950s, it was a rare movie that managed to present itself as entirely original and reflective of the period in which it was filmed.   Daring drive-in grindhouse pictures and adult fare like Midnight Cowboy gave way to disco pastiches and callbacks to other eras, as if the trauma of war, political turmoil, riots and had exhausted the nation to the point of sadness.  People just wanted to have FUN.   And yet the closest it ever got to a beach for the entire decade was in the opening scene of Grease.

The girls of summer in this decade were actually the girls of all seasons; Grease covers a full school year at Rydell High – thanks to its California setting there’s nary a parka in sight – and American Graffiti takes place over one late spring night just before graduation.  The big summer movies were out in space, set during a disaster or hidden deep within the ocean’s heart.  The closest the seventies ever got to a female-led summer movie about teenage life was in Roger Corman’s cult classic, Rock N Roll High School.