Darth Vader’s not “up” for any awards this year. Downer.

With the Oscars only days away, and with this being my first experience of living in LA and actually having to deal with Oscar traffic in the middle of the day, and because I was reminded by the ever thorough and on-topic sex educator and researcher Cory Silverberg at about.com that this is the biggest movie week in Holly-wood, I’ve decided to share (yet again) two of my favorite sex scenes on film, one of which is already old enough that John Cusack’s about to star in a movie that brings him back to the 80s, where Revenge of the Nerds take place only two years prior to the year of “hot tub time machine” travel. And neither of these scenes has likely been nominated for anything other than corny goodness, but still, I do love them.

Okay, that was the longest sentence ever…

The first one is the Darth Vader/Cheerleader Moon-Bounce sex scene in the original Revenge of the Nerds. That’s the scene between nerd Louis and super sorority chick Betty. They get it on because Betty thinks that Louis is her boyfriend Stan. Afterwards she decides, and we cheer, that he’s better than Stan. I love that he doesn’t take his mask off for a while and the scene leaves the really hot stuff to our imagination. At the tender age of 10, that’s how old I was when the movie came out, that scene turned me on big time. It was the kind of sex I one day wanted to have, and still actually want to have. I think next time I’m in love I’m going to rent a moon bounce.

The second is a solo sex scene, since I’m a big time advocate of the self love. It’s the masturbation scene in Pleasantville, because a) Joan Allen’s character - also named Betty - has never touched herself before, b) it’s after she has her first orgasm that the entire world around her explodes with change c) it’s a masturbation scene set in a bathtub - which makes it much steamier, I mean there is hot water in the bath. Betty’s front yard goes up in flames when a fire bursts forth from a tree, and this symbolizes the power of female pleasure, and really I see it as showing us how magical we are when we allow ourselves to experience pleasure. Again, it’s not an overly explicit scene, and although a lot of it is left to the imagination (the brain is the most powerful sex organ), the message is hot, literally.

I’m trying to think of a sex scene that has really struck me in the past six months. I haven’t seen enough film that isn’t animated to choose wisely, and although there’s that Avatar love, eh, and that Jell-o awkwardness in Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, it’s those two above scenes that have stuck with me through the years.