From the Busy Basement

My youngest sister is now 15 (and a half, she would quickly point out) and I'm still working on my mission to introduce her to all the wonderful joys that classic Hollywood, feminist analysis, and various other pursuits and topics often unfamiliar to ladies of her age.  When I moved home for a while during a post-graduation unemployment slump, one of our favorite activities was to go troll through the Target, Walmart, and Best Buy DVD bargain bins for cheap films.  As a result, we watched everything from Labyrnith and Sabrina to An American in Paris and Funny Face.  Seeing as it was the summer of the final Harry Potter film, we also marathoned all of those films and attended a midnight screening of the final volume.

It probably shouldn't have surprised me that, having introduced her to many of the formative movies in my filmgoing experience, my sister has developed....fondnesses for many of the actors I was also fond of at her age (Bogart, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, David Bowie, Hugh Grant, etc).  Unfortunately, just as they were for me, many of these men (and others she crushes on) are not exactly age-appropriate or logical choices to her Beiber-obsessed peers.  I end up getting wonderful texts like the following, though:

Me: "I always get teased by my friends because I like older actors and musicians.  Like Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, and David Bowie, because I mean, they're gorgeous men.  And Gene Kelly, well he's Dead. That's like the oldest you can get."
xD Lmao.