Joni Mitchell in 1972. Photo: AP

The Oscars are over, last year's movies are exactly that. But there's one scene I can't let go of.

But first, an aside. Hollywood pictures have been milking scenes of actors singing or emoting to pop songs for about three decades now, ever since that too-cute "Big Chill" gang rocked out in the kitchen to "Ain't Too Proud to Beg," and - much more amusingly - the incarcerated Eddie Murphy howled "Roxanne" under the headphones in "48 Hours." There have been countless imitations since, and it's pretty hard to be charmed or surprised by any of it anymore.

Then along come Annette Bening and Mark Ruffalo, bringing a fresh twist to a tired gimmick in "The Kids Are All Right." It's the scene where Bening's lesbian character and Ruffalo's straight one psychically bond while singing Joni Mitchell's lovely "All I Want" as an a cappella duet over dinner. (Meanwhile a perplexed Julianne Moore, whose character has been sleeping with each of them, looks on forlornly, utterly excluded from their vocal hookup.) The scene became significant for me with Bening's declaration: "You don't meet too many straight guys who love Joni Mitchell!"

Now, I don't pretend to know how other straight men feel about Joni Mitchell. (Notoriously, we do not talk about our feelings.) But this movie made me want to say it loud and proud: I love her.

There was a time I was somewhat afraid to say so. Like in high school (mine was of the all-boys variety), when it would have been socially unwise to admit that I found ZZ Top's "Tush" dull, if not obnoxious, but, hey, have you checked out the way Joni Mitchell uses that Burundian drum ensemble on The Hissing of Summer Lawns?

If you don't love Joni Mitchell, there's a good chance you've never even heard of The Hissing of Summer Lawns. It was the 1975 followup to the previous year's Court and Spark, which had been one of the few albums of the era to qualify both as artistic triumph and commercial breakthrough. Hissing was where a lot of people got off the Joni bus. Up till then her albums had managed to define inventive lyrical and musical territory while still containing a healthy enough number of pop-inflected songs like "All I Want" to allow her to sell a bundle of records.

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