Julie Christie in "Darling."

Julie Christie was the harbinger of 1960s London, the first tremor of the youthquake to come, this Mod who possessed the opposite of the British stiff upper lip. Christie's overripe underlip signalled a creature of variable moods, by turns determined, libidinous, petulant. Director John Schlesinger cast her in the career-making Darling (1965) -- centerpiece of Turner Classic Movies' Julie Christie day on Monday, August 2 -- emphasizing the  unusual juxtaposition of the masculine jawline and feminine pout that gave Christie both edge and voluptuousness. In that trendsetting film she strides spiritedly into the frame clad in a "terribly Chelsea" mannish pinstriped pantsuit. The form is contained, bankerish; the shoulder-length hair flyaway, flirty. The effect: galvanizing.

As model Diana Scott, Christie is meant to personify shallow hedonism and opportunism. Yet at key moments she subverts Frederic Raphael's glib screenplay, suggesting instead a malcontent with a deep suspicion of the status quo. For Diana life is a dressing room where she tries on modes and men with abandon, often slipping into clothes that "go" with her guy. (To complement her intellectual beau (Dirk Bogarde), Diana sports a schoolgirl's white-ribbed turtleneck and plaid skirt with kneesocks and loafers. She trades up for a caddish adman (Laurence Harvey) for whom she wears a shape-hugging white gown with a beaded bodice. When she lands an Italian prince (Jose Luis de Villalonga), she dons the jetset uniform of aerodynamic A-line dress and matching jacket.

Darling established Christie both as an actress (she won an Oscar for her performance) and an avatar of style (she shocked the Academy by wearing gold pajamas to match her gold statuette). Flickgrrl doesn't know why the glossy mags always celebrate the lovely but conservative  Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn as style icons and rarely celebrate Christie, who was really radical -- and could outact those two darlings without even trying.

TCM is offering a tasty smorgasbord of Christie -- Darling (9:45 pm EST), Petulia (midnight), Shampoo (2 am) and the underknown Demon Seed (4 am), a cybertronic classic in which her character is raped by a computer who loves her. The only essential Christie titles missing from the schedule (which includes The Go-Between, Dr. Zhivago and Far From the Madding Crowd) are McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Heaven Can Wait, Heat and Dust, Afterglow and the sublime Away from Her.

Your favorite Christie performance? Why? (I'm going with Darling, The Go-Between and Away from Her -- all performances as a lust object who seduces her subjects, But I'm also indecently fond of Demon Seed, adapted from Dean Koontz's futuristic novel.)

Olivia Newton-John and Travolta in "Grease"

"Summer fling, don't mean a thing, but uh-oh, those summer nights."

In a memorable split-screen duet, Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) and Danny (John Travolta) sang those lyrics in Grease, the 1978 '50s-nostalgia  musical that surfaced during the first days of disco and the heady days of punk.The chemistry between the blonde in the poodle skirt and the ebony-haired dude in the black  leather jacket -- playing off the timeless fascination of good girls for bad boys (and vice-versa) -- made them irresistible. While for Flickgrrl, then listening to Blondie's "Heart of Glass," Grease definitely was not love at first sight, she would now describe it as America's sweetheart.

The top-grossing movie musical of all time (though in adjusted dollars, the winner of that horserace is probably The Wizard of Oz), Grease is back, this time as a sing-a-along. Last month, a special screening of the Grease sing-a-long (the lyrics appear on-screen, like subtitles) at Love Park drew 1,000 Philadelphians. This Friday, the sing-a-long comes to AMC Neshaminy for an open run.

What is it about Grease, that movie throwback to American Bandstand-homogenized pop, that is so winning? In 1978, I laughed when Stockard Channing (as Rizzo) sent up Sandy's purity in the song "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee," but thought the movie and the music otherwise contrived. In the intervening years, I have looked back more appreciatively at the film as a stepping stone in Travolta's transition from Tiger Beat heartthrob to leading man, and as a fantasy of America in the 1950s. Like Good News, the 1940s musical set in the 1920s) and High School Musical,  the recentish Disney powerhouse that could be set in the 1970s, and Hairspray (the recentish musical set in the eternal 1960s), Grease is a peppy paean to an idealized American youth. Your thoughts? Alternatively, your favorite high-school or college musical? Any takers for Spike Lee's School Daze?

The original 1927 poster for Metropolis.

A prophetic look at the 21st century as imagined in 1926, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis is a visionary masterpiece that fires on all its Art Deco pistons.

Artists and architects still thrill to its picture of the streamlined skyline of the city of the future. Social critics respond to its picture of a two-tier society, where the rich enjoy fresh air and leisure and the poor operate machines in a subterranean hell to support the fancies of the privileged. Futurists remark on its stark vision of a society divided between human and machine, between natural movement and the escalators and mechanized people-movers that have replaced it. Fans claim it as the mother of all sci-fi movies.

Though this makes the film sound confusing than it is, at its heart Metropolis is a classic story about a tyrannical father and his democratic son fighting for the future of their city.

Now, for the first time since its Berlin premiere in 1927, the landmark has been restored of passages excised by its American distributor in 1927. (It opens today in Philadelphia @ Ritz at the Bourse.)

 Upon its release, Lang’s allegory polarized German audiences and left American distributors scratching their  heads. As historian Emanuel Levy wrote of its Berlin reception:

"The left-wing, appalled at the portrayal of an anger-blinded working class abandoning their children and destroying their own homes, found the film fascistic.

The right-wing… was equally disturbed by the destructive revolt of Metropolis’ Lower City denizens, and found the film borderline Communist.

Technocrats saw the film’s industrial nightmare world as being anti-science, and clergy found its vision of a sex crazed upper-class killing themselves over a libertine robot both prurient and reprehensible."

Accustomed to star-driven movies with easy-to-follow plots, Paramount Pictures, Lang’s American investors, didn’t know what to make of the film’s symbolism and politics. So the studio cut 60 of its 145 minutes, making the visually dazzling movie hard to follow.

This comprehensive 2010 restoration is the work of archivists who found a 2 ½-hour print buried in an obscure Argentine vault. The raiders of the lost archive deserve the gratitude of cinephiles and movie geeks everywhere for restoring the pillars of cinema’s Parthenon.

Metropolis has inspired filmmakers from Stanley Kubrick, who referenced it in Dr. Strangelove and 2001, to George Lucas, whose C-3PO is a cousin of the robot called "the False Maria." In which other films is the influence of Metropolis visible? Other thoughts on Metropolis?

Lindsay Lohan in court.

The bigger the star, the shorter the lifespan, that's what astronomers say. It's a phenomenon that likewise applies to movie luminaries, as the painful self-sabotage of Lindsay Lohan and Mel Gibson testify. Lohan, 24, and Gibson, 54, at their best charismatic and personable actors, are at their worst in this week's sequels to past bad behavior. Are both deliberately committing staricide, trying to end their careers?

Gibson's a big boy (although acting like a little one), and has been a star for almost 30 years. That's a century in Hollywood years. If he can't rebound, he'll be missed on screen, but he's had a good ride.

Lohan, however, is a symptom of a much more troubling syndrome: Teen-Star Disorder (TSD) -- the challenge of transitioning into adult life and adult roles.TSD effectively killed the careers of Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney and Macaulay Culkin. It may have been a precipitating factor in the deaths of River Phoenix and Corey Haim. Somehow, Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood, Jodie Foster and Leonardo DiCaprio passed through the awkward age and emerged relatively intact. Foster had the good sense (and grades) to go to college, taking herself off the Hollywood meat market until she had matured. (Natalie Portman and Claire Danes followed her excellent example).

Handled by handlers and also by parents for whom they are meal tickets, teen stars are rebels with a cause, rebels who often dump their guides at the time when they most need guidance.Should Hollywood be like the NBA and not draft teen stars straight out of high school, insisting that they take a gap year to mature?

Many teen stars hoping to graduate their adolescent fanbase and attract an adult  following do so by leaving PG behind for R-rated material, engaging in a kind of self-exploitation. Female teen stars court sex (as Dakota Fanning in Hounddog and The Runaways, and Lohan in Georgia Rule) and male teen stars court violence (as Leonardo DiCaprio did with The Basketball Diaries and Daniel Radcliffe did with the stage version of Equus). But what's rated R -- sex, violence, profanity and drugs -- although limited for adult consumption, is not necessarily adult.

From Annette Funicello to Lindsay Lohan to Miley Cyrus the company best known for manufacturing  and junking  teen stars is Disney. While I'm not willing to go quite as far as Danger Guerrero in this Disney-bashing piece where he accuses the corporation of creating "a perpetual whoredom machine," manufacturing jailbait cuties who appeal to males of all ages, I have to admit that he has a point.

Is there a cure for Teen-Star Disorder? Should Disney and Nickelodeon be obligated to send their teen stars to finishing school and prepare them for real adult life? Your thoughts?

Barbra as Fanny Brice in "Funny Girl."

Life's candy and the sun's a ball of butter! Don't rain on Flickgrrl's parade, haters. QFest, the rechristened Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, is celebrating all things Streisand over the coming week. Can you say divacious?

Barbrapalooza kicks off Saturday evening July 10 at the Gershman Y with a with a screening of the (and Oscar-winning)Funny Girl (1968), her screen debut as vaudevillian Fanny Brice, the singer/comic who laughs to keep from crying. Wednesday, July 14 will be a night of Barbra Karaoke at Voyeur (admit it, you know those "misty, water-colored memory" lyrics). Thursday July 15 impressionist Steven Brinberg will bring his Simply Barbra show to the Arts Bank.

Flickgrrl wishes Qfest had programmed more Barbra films, showcasing her work as a comedienne, singer and director. The Owl and the Pussycat (1971), where she plays a ditzy hooker who hooks up with professor George Segal, is quite nice. Nicer still, What's Up, Doc? (1972), a remake of Bringing Up Baby, as a free spirit who attracts geologist Ryan O' Neal. In her comedies, she purrs her dialogue like an alley cat rubbing up against the leg of a potential conquest. The Way We Were (1973) and A Star is Born (1976), opposites-attract melodramas, have their adherents although Flickgrrl is not among them. She prefers the films Streisand both directed and starred, Yentl (1983) and Prince of Tides (1991), riveting studies of misfits who stop trying to fit in and simply accept themselves,  which is the theme of almost every Barbra film. (And perhaps the reason that from the first the gay community has been so supportive of her.)

Streisand is shockingly underrated as an actress and a filmmaker. As a performer, she has a mockingbird presence onscreen, merry and wry, and also an intensity that brings the audience into her character's anxiety. As a director, she elicited performances of considerable depth from Mandy Patinkin (Yentl), Nick Nolte (Tides) and Lauren Bacall (The Mirror Has Two Faces). Flickgrrl never understood why Streisand is one of those polarizing figures -- like John Wayne and Spike Lee -- that people love to hate or hate to love. Do you?

Barbra thoughts? (And does anyone else out there fondly remember Barbra's CBS special that was shot, in part, at the Museum of Art?)

Tony Curtis (left) listens to Burt Lancaster in "Sweet Smell of Success": "You're dead, son. Go get buried."

Henry Hanrahan has compiled an eff-travaganza of a compilation video devoted to digs, kiss-offs and put-downs in movies. I would have posted the Youtube video, but it's strictly NSFW (not suitable for work) because of its emphasis on F- and S-word rebuffs.

Flickgrrl prefers more polish and less profanity in her ridicule, as in this denunciation of a treacherous frenemy in Patrice Leconte's Ridicule (1996): "Judas kept excellent company." And as in Burt Lancaster's kiss-off to Tony Curtis in Sweet Smell of Success (1957): "You're dead, son. Go get buried."

While Hanrahan's compendium includes those amusing allusions to low birth:  "Your mother was a hamster! And your father smells of elderberries!" (Monty Python and the Holy Grail); "You son of a motherless goat!" (The Three Amigos), it is missing the classic girl-on-girl putdown (from Joan Blondell to Ruth Donnelly) in Footlight Parade: "As long as there's sidewalks, sweetheart, you'll  have a job!"

Among Flickgrrl's favorites that overlap with Hanrahan's: "To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people!" (Jamie-Lee Curtis to Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda) and the zinger snapped by Jack Nicholson to a fan in As Good as it Gets who wonders how his writer invents such great female characters: " I think of a man and take away reason and accountability."
 

Among those that Hanrahan neglected: "You have sunk below the deepest layer of prehistoric frog [excrement] at the bottom of a New Jersey scum swamp" (Michael Douglas to Kathleen Turner in War of the Roses); and (read this in a French accent) "Sir, zee pigs have refused to find any more truffles until you leave!" (Steve Martin in Roxanne).

Flickgrrl's nomination for best putdown ever is from Mildred Pierce, where Eve Arden commiserates with Joan Crawford about her awful daughter, Veda: "Personally, Veda's convinced me that alligators have the right idea. They eat their young."
 

Your nominations?

Frances McDormand, the screen's most reliable -- and believable -- utility player.

Questions, questions, so many questions. Just the FAQS:

How many movies do you see a week? (Not counting movies Flickgrrl sees for her own pleasure, on average, four).

What's your favorite movie? (Varies day by day. Casablanca. The Earrings of Madame de.... Jerry Maguire. Ugetsu. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Dodsworth. Singin' in the Rain. Mississippi Masala. Clueless. -- and about 100 more.)

Have you ever walked out of a movie? (Once: Battlefield Earth. The projector broke down and Flickgrrl wasn't reviewing.)

Worst movie ever made? (Three-way tie:  Rawhead Rex, Cannibal Holocaust and Surf Nazis Must Die.)

But not until this week has Flickgrrl ever been asked: Who is your favorite American movie star of all time (and why)? *The asker was Marketwatch's Jon Friedman.

Favorites are projections of our ideal selves, and for Flickgrrl, it's a two-way tie between Barbara Stanwyck and Frances McDormand. Both are utility players who can do any genre -- thriller, comedy, drama -- and maintain a bedrock honesty. As for male stars, it would be either Cary Grant or Denzel Washington, both of whom simultaneously project darkness and lightness of character and are very appealing.

Your answer(s), please?

Taylor Lautner, Robert Pattinson and Jackson Rathbone pose, hand-in-pockets, refusing to share the secret star-is-born handshake.

The question of whether stars are born or made is one of those chicken-or-egg questions. Seems that every time there's a demographic shift in America, Hollywood throws young stars at the screen like so many strands of spaghetti to see which ones will stick and suit the taste of the younger generation.

The Andy Hardy movies of the late '30s introduced Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney and Lana Turner, who all rose to box-office fame in the 1940s. A Date With Judy (1948) launched starlets Jane Powell and Elizabeth Taylor and starling Robert Stack to great success in the 1950s and beyond. Rebel Without a Cause (1955) showcased James Dean (who would die before its release), Dennis Hopper, Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood. American Graffitti (1973) brought Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford and Paul Le Mat -- not to mention TV stars Ronny Howard and Cindy Williams -- wider attention. The mother of this periodic shift might be The Outsiders (1983) which starred the relatively-unknown Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Diane Lane, Rob Lowe, Ralph Macchio and Patrick Swayze (not to mention future director Sofia Coppola).

Other youthquake films in this vein are The Breakfast Club (1985, with Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson and Anthony Michael Hall),  Boyz N the Hood (1991, with Morris Chestnut, Ice Cube, Cuba Gooding and Nia Long) and Reality Bites (1994,  with Janeane Garafolo, Ethan Hawke, Winona Ryder and Ben Stiller in the definitive Gen X film).

The incubator of Generation Y stars would seem to be the Twilight franchise. The first installment made superstars out of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. New Moon, the second chapter, pushed Taylor Lautner over the top. Eclipse, which opens next week, promises to bring attention to Jackson Rathbone as Jasper, a member of the Cullen clan. As Rathbone is also in The Last Airbender, there's a real possibility that he will dominate movie screens this summer, imprinting on the younger demographic that Hollywood so craves.

This packaging of young talent in a youth-friendly franchise is a departure from the Old Hollywood manner of developing stars of tomorrow. Used to be that studios had a stable of starlets and starlings that got small roles in big films (like Humphrey Bogart in Dark Victory and The Roaring Twenties) and who got promoted to starring roles when the stacks of fan mail grew to redwood heights.Marilyn Monroe and Clint Eastwood are products of this system that assumes stars are made and not born. But for every star groomed in this way, there are the star-is-born surprises -- like Harrison Ford, who eclipsed co-stars Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill in Star Wars. Or Will Smith, who twinkled brighter than co-star Martin Lawrence in Bad Boys.

Methinks that the public likes to discover, rather than be force-fed, its stars. You? For me, Brad Pitt's brief scene with Geena Davis in Thelma & Louise might be the definitive star-is-born moment of my reviewing career. Youthinks?

Janet Leigh in "Psycho"

There's no shortage of movie classics hitting the big five-oh this year. Consider The Apartment, Breathless (see post below),  Spartacus, and Psycho, that mother of modern horror.

Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film updated Gothic terror for a new generation, substituting a stripped-down motel for the haunted house -- and then throwing in a haunted house for the classicists. (Hitchcock told Francois Truffaut that compositionally he liked the vertical block of the Gothic house next to the horizontal block of the motel, a juxtaposition that has the architectural effect of putting  1860 next to 1960.)

The story is simplicity itself: A moral crime (Marion Crane's adultery) is compounded by a felony (a robbery, committed in order to finance her life with her married lover) and as she worries about getting caught by the cops, she gets caught up in someone else's crime. An unsettling aspect of the film is its eerie quiet: Hitchcock described it as a "half-silent" picture, without dialogue for a full two reels.

"Much of its power comes from Bernard Herrmann's music, a score as iconic as the film itself, wrote Rider University professor Jack Sullivan in a splendid piece in last week's Wall Street Journal, where he argues that "The shrieking dissonance of 'The Murder,' surely the most imitated and instantly recognizable film cue, is the cinema's primal scream."

The reshaping of Robert Bloch's novel -- influenced by news reports of serial killer Ed Gein, whose horrific acts likewise influenced the stories of Halloween and Silence of the Lambs -- was left to Joe Stefano, the Philadelphia-born songwriter and screenwriter who would later produce The Outer Limits. "I solved the Marion Crane problem, Stefano told me in 1993. "In the book, she's killed on page 20 and you don't know or care about her. So I created this fundamentally nice girl who steals $40,000." Certainly it didn't hurt that Marion Crane was played by Janet Leigh, reprising her A Touch of Evil part of a lady trapped in a motel room. This demure actress with a centerfold body excited both audience sympathy and the pornographic imagination.

In Sullivan's essay, the late Stefano says that Herrman's music transformed the movie that Hitchcock thought of releasing to television -- into an opera.

Agreed? Your thoughts about other scores that had a similar transformative power on a movie? Alternatively, do you think Hitchcock broke with horror tradition? How?