Sizzling Ballroom Revue "Burn the Floor"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 05 January 2010 16:31

Written by Lucy Komisar

Created & Directed by Jason Gilkison
With: Henry Byalkov, Sasha Farber, Anya Garnis, Patrick Helm, Pasha Kovalev, Peta Murgatroyd, Trent Whiddon,  Damian Whitewood, Robin Windsor

It starts with a light ball setting off two figures; she is in black underwear. Hot Latin drums keep a frenetic double time. Then for a change of pace comes a Lady in white silk and a man in a tux; they waltz and execute twirls through the air in a way you hadn’t seen. After that, 20s/30s jazz dancing; the guy wears a fedora and vest. A sailor and his partner jitterbug. A woman in pink is squired by a guy in a black leather jacket. (Costumes are by Janet Hine.)

The choreography is sophisticated and sensual. Some of the sounds are swing, some are brassy. The production is gorgeous. In one subtle exciting number, the female dancer is blindfolded and she dances with six men, then walks away seductively. A tango is campy.

Burn the Floor is an exciting review of ballroom dancing through the decades, from Latin and Afro-Brazilian rhythms to modern jazzy idioms. Through you never saw any of this in a real ballroom. The numbers, the wild fast movements, come out of competitive dancing that these couples have done all over the world. Their origins span the globe from Australia to Russia and Latin America.

The group has been touring since 1999 to over 160 cities in 30 countries. Some met on the competition circuit. They are ballet trained and do ballroom with a contemporary edge. The duos change. Most of the dancers are 18 or 19 years old. It’s a high energy craft. They insist it's not jazz dancing, though in some cases I’d beg to differ.

In any event, it’s a thrilling genre, not to be missed for those who love the dance.

Burn the Floor
Longacre Theatre
220 West 48th Street
New York, NY
212-239-6200
Opened August 2, 2009, closes January 10, 2010

For more by Lucy Komisar: TheKomisarScoop.com

 

Kevin's Digital Week 7 -A Genesis to Summer

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 31 December 2009 11:37

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-ray of the Week
(500) Days of Summer
(Fox)
Although debut director Marc Webb tries hard to make (500) Days of Summer as unwatchable as Away We Go, he’s blessed with much better actors in the leads, and consequently the movie doesn’t grate on the nerves. Rather, it gets by on the charm of Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who make an attractive couple worth rooting for even though they are doomed from the start. Deschanel and Gordon-Levitt compensate for the too-cutesy quirkiness that Webb and writers Michael Weber and Scott Neustadter cram their movie with, including an embarrassing song-and-dance number, unnecessary clips from The Graduate and a “clever” ending that should have been cut from the script’s first draft.

And jabs at the greeting-card industry are like shooting fish in a barrel. But the stars nearly make one forget all that’s wrong with (500) Days of Summer, which has been given a good though not stellar visual treatment on Blu-ray. Among the usual extras (commentary, deleted scenes, a music video, audition tapes), there’s a Blu-ray exclusive, a half-hour making-of featurette.

DVD of the Week
Genesis: The Movie Box 1981-2007
(Rhino)
The fifth and final indispensible Genesis boxed set—following three sets covering the band’s studio albums and a fourth comprising the live albums—contains DVDs of four concert tours, all featuring Phil Collins as the lead singer: 1981-2, 1983-4, 1986-7 and 1992.and The Mama Tour have never been released on DVD before, while Live at Wembley Stadium and The Way We Walk are re-releases. Although the video quality of the older films is not completely up to snuff, the audio has once again been remixed by Nick Davis into DTS 5.1 sound, which are as revelatory as those done for the other sets. In addition to the four concerts, the fifth disc contains a new edit of the band’s Behind the Music episode, which originally aired on VH-1 in 1999.

There are apparently no full concerts of the Peter Gabriel-led band to be released, which is a shame: still, at least until Collins began overdoing the shtick during 86-87’s Invisible Touch tour, Genesis was a formidable live band, and these concert flicks prove that. Bonuses include bonus Three Sides Live audio-only tracks and behind-the-scenes documentaries from The Mama Tour and Wembley.

Gilliam Greets Doctor Parnassus

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 29 December 2009 11:23

Written by Kevin Filipski

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Directed by Terry Gilliam
Starring Heath Ledger, Colin Farrell, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Christopher Plummer, Tom Waits
The first 15 minutes of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus would make a fantastic short: crammed with director Terry Gilliam’s usual surfeit of dazzling imagery, the opening is so breathtaking in its casual sleight-of-hand—including references to Gilliam’s animation for Monty Python’s Flying Circus—that it can’t help but make the rest of Parnassus a let-down.

Gilliam’s latest jinxed production is the film Heath Ledger was working on when he died of an overdose. It was at first uncertain if Gilliam could go on with filming, since Ledger was playing a pivotal role as Tony, a cheating charity owner rescued from certain death by members of a traveling circus led by the immortal Dr. Parnassus, including his child-like 16-year-old daughter Valentina and two sidekicks, the lovestruck teenager Anton and the grumpy dwarf Percy.

Gilliam and co-writer Charles McKeown re-wrote sections of the script, plugging in actors Depp, Law and Farrell to play Ledger’s role without losing a beat. How? The contraption of the title serves as a gateway to the doctor’s vivid imagination, and whenever Tony enters it in each of three fantasy sequences, he “becomes” one of the other actors.

Gilliam plugs in amusing in-jokes as Tony sees himself in these scenes and notes unhappily that he looks different; but the poignancy over Ledger’s loss occurs more often when he is onscreen giving a racy, incisive and distinctly unmannered performance. (On the other hand, the trio of replacements labors hard to act like Ledger, and only Depp partially succeeds.)

Parnassus is truly a sight to behold: the eye-popping colors, sublimely silly juxtapositions of varied styles (similar to the stew that drove the Beatles’ animated feature Yellow Submarine) and witty visual jokes are typically Gilliam. What was once innovative and revelatory now seems stale, maybe because CGI effects can conjure anything, and the bluest sky and greenest grass that’s ever seen don’t make one shake one’s head in wonderment any more.

Unfortunately, Gilliam limits what his actors can do, since they are all at the service of his visual primacy. In addition to the frisky Ledger, Plummer nearly pulls off the miraculous feat of making us sympathize with the immortal Parnassus, and it’s only because Gilliam and McKeown’s script that he doesn’t register as a real human being. Still, Plummer’s immense charm comes through, especially during his deals with Mr. Nick (a k a Mephistopheles, whose Faustian bargain Parnassus accepted, played with little charisma by an unsinister Waits): you believe he could charm the devil himself, not the other way around. Plummer also looks the part of an elderly fool, like a regal King Lear turned into a mad Don Quixote.

I would also love to admire the camerawork of Nicola Pecorini, but when much of the movie is CGI, how does one figure out the cinematographer’s actual contribution?