NEW YORK: BAM starts up its second posthumous tribute to Paul Newman that kicks off with The Long Hot Summer, the project beloved by Newman fans as the one where he and Joanne hooked up, before concentrating on the late-middle end of the actor's long career. Included: Slap Shot (1977), which features the best of his many performances for director George Roy Hill; his Oscar-winning return to the role of Fast Eddie Felsen in Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money (1986); and two films he directed, Rachel, Rachel (1968) starring Joanne Woodward, and the 1971 Ken Kesey adaptation Sometimes a Great Notion, starring Newman and Henry Fonda.

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Listen, I’m a man of few words and I’ve got skulls to impale with a rusty machete, so I’m gonna make this short and sweet. The Screengrab ran down my entire history this week, with Precursors: Friday the 13th Parts I-III, IV-VI, and VII-X. Frankly, I don’t think they showed me the proper reverence, but I’ll make my displeasure known at the appropriate time. I’m also a little miffed that I was left out of Bloody Valentines: The Worst Relationships in Cinema History (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven). Every one of my relationships has ended with a hunting knife sticking out of someone’s eye socket, which should be your first hint that I belong on the list. But again, I’ll make sure the right people hear about this, and they won’t be happy.

Meanwhile, here are some more Screengrab posts to read. Be sure to leave the light on.

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In the 1980s, a restaurant chain called Showbiz Pizza Place captured the imaginations of children lucky enough to live in proximity to one of its 200 or so locations (and fortunate enough to have parents with enough patience to put up with repeated visits). Showbiz offered not only pizza and all your favorite videogames from Asteroids to Zaxxon, it also featured singing robots. What more could a kid want? The animatronic revue called the Rock-afire Explosion was headlined by overall-clad bear Billy Bob, ably assisted by Fatz Geronimo (a keyboard-playing gorilla in a tuxedo), Mitzi Mozzarella (a cheerleading mouse) and an anthropomorphic array of colorful characters. When Showbiz bought the struggling chain Chuck E. Cheese’s in the mid-80s, it was the beginning of the end for the Rock-afire Explosion, which was phased out of existence as all the Showbiz locations were repurposed into the familiar Chuck E. Cheese’s that are now the bane of every parent’s existence.

If, like me, you didn’t grow up with Showbiz Pizza, the new documentary The Rock-afire Explosion is like a slice of ‘80s nostalgia from a parallel universe.

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