There are few things in this life that I can look forward to, movie-wise. A trip to New York is good, as I know I can return to all of the marvelous theatres in the best cinema town in the US. Terror Tuesday’s upcoming showing of Psycho II is also pretty damn exciting. I even look forward to the Paramount Summer Series, because, while it may be classic film-lite, it is still the best film series in Austin.

New releases are harder to get excited for. Yes, I look forward to the semi-regular films by auteurs like Woody Allen, Jim Jarmusch, Paul Thomas Anderson, etc. I am thankful that Stephen usually compiles our weekly Cinema Opportunities list, because it makes me sad sometimes to think of the poor things that we have in our future.

But, there has been some buzz this past week that has got me pretty damn excited. Lindsay Lohan has been cast in a Linda Lovelace biopic!

She's beautiful as Marilyn, we can only imagine what she can do with Lovelace

You might think I am being sarcastic. You are very, very wrong. Here are the top five reasons why I am more happy about this than any other movie slated to be released in the next decade (with the 3D Star Wars excluded, naturally):

1. Lindsay Lohan really is a beautiful young girl.
2. She is a competent and talented actress whose personal life is a mess, and the electric self-destructiveness she exudes can only be good for a movie about such a tormented figure.
3. This movie will feature (God help us) some interesting pop history of stag films and hardcore pornography, hopefully educating some people about this stuff that I care about.
4. In real life, Lovelace shot stag films in which she engages in oral and genital sex with a dog. Even if it is only implied, it would be the most awesome and horrifying sex scene of the new millennium.
5. The whole idea of Lohan doing a biopic about a porn star is so absurd that it’s got to be REALLY GOOD in order for anyone to allow it to happen. No one would set themselves up for this much mockery without a lot of confidence that it won’t ruin the careers of everyone involved.

I can’t wait to see how far Lindsay Lohan will go to untangle her tingle.

Hey, did you know the Criterion DVD for Bergman’s The Seventh Seal was so similar to the poster for Herzog’s latest film?

Weird. Maybe there’s an original image I’m not aware of that both of these are playing off?

In this brilliant Italian picture from 1949/1950, the young and devilish Mangano steals the film and every scene away from the director, all of the actors, the landscape; you name it, Mangano will shine it out.

I don’t know much about Mr. Colin Firth. I enjoyed him in A Single Man. So did Stephen.

I recently saw him in Shakespeare in Love. To be honest, I didn’t really recognize him. So I searched him on Google Images (he passes the nudity test, by the way), and what I found was two different men who both went by his name. In his earlier career, he is a soft-faced dream, too flattering sweet to be substantial. In A Single Man, his face is distinguished, there is maturity in the folds of his cheeks. Not since Harry Dean Stanton have I seen an actor so benefit from aging. He’s got character now.

I have just been building a French New Wave women banner, and I started on the most beautiful of them all, Catherine Deneuve.

It is a great compliment to a famous woman who has appeared naked in films that, when you google-image her name, nude pictures of her do not start until the fourth o, or the fourth page of search results for you squares.

That is all.

Who knew? A young Bardot makes your eyes flop around the room.

Anyway, one of the harsh realities I discovered in searching the Internet was that I could not in good faith include these knock out pictures of Brigitte Bardot. They haunted me in my dreams, however, so I was forced to create this post to show off the sex kitten.

An older Bardot in an iconic image. Still a knockout.