Today’s dance scene that I love comes from the 1957 musical Silk Stockings.
This is a special scene for me because it features one of my favorite dancers, the legendary Cyd Charisse. Many years ago, before I discovered that I wanted to be a writer, I dreamed of growing up and being a beautiful and talented dancer like Cyd Charisse.
In Silk Stockings, Cyd Charisse plays a humorless Russian who, when she comes to Paris discovers that life doesn’t have to be drab and boring. She discovers the joy of freedom and what better to express freedom than through dance?
Today’s dance scene that I love comes from 2000’s Center Stage.
Center Stage is one of those films that can be fairly criticized for a lot of reasons but — oh my God, y’all — I used to love this movie so much! Actually, I still do because every time I watch it, I feel like I’m 15 years old again and I’m just so in love with dancing and performing that I can’t even begin to put it into words. I think everyone has a film that they irrationally love because it reminds them of a certain time, place, or state-of-mind. For me, Center Stage is that film.
The scene below is a long one and the video is not the best quality but I still love it because it captures the excitement of both dancing and of being on stage. Add to that, I’d love to be in that show… (I look good in both black and red.)
Today’s dance scene that I love comes from the 2009 musical Nine.
To be honest, Nine is a terrible film that almost plays like it was specifically designed to parody flashy but superficial musicals. However, Nine is meant to be taken seriously and that’s is its greatest failure. Cinema Italiano is one of Nine’s better-known songs, despite the fact that, in many ways, it epitomizes a lot of what’s wrong with the film as a whole. For one thing, it’s obvious, from the lyrics, that the song’s writer knows very little about Italian cinema. (If anything, it sounds like the song was meant to describe the French new wave.)
And yet, I have to admit that I love the scene where Kate Hudson performs Cinema Italiano. I think it’s because, even though Hudson is not a great singer, she so throws herself into her performance that she wins the viewers over. This is the epitome of a guilty pleasure, a scene that I shouldn’t love and yet I do.
However, though I’ll be away for two weeks, I’m not going to let that stop me from sharing my thoughts here on the Shattered Lens. What can I say? I love film, I love this site, and, most importantly, I love our readers.
Now, if you know me, you know that I also love to dance.
So, I figured, why not combine my greatest loves? For then next two weeks, I will be sharing a special set of scenes that I love. These are some of my favorite dance scenes.
I’d like to start things off by sharing a scene from my favorite film of 2012. This deliriously romantic dance scene comes from Joe Wright’s brilliant adaptation of Anna Karenina and features Keira Knightley and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
If there’s one filmmaker alive today who probably deserves the label of genius it’s probably Mexican-born filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro. Yes, that’s probably hyperbolic high praise, but then with each new film he releases he shows audiences and critics something rarely seen before that gradually knocks down any doubts as to why he deserves the praise.
In 2006, Del Toro released the Spanish-language dark fantasy film Pan’s Labyrinth and people who had only known him as the guy who directed Blade II and Hellboy finally understood why critics both high and low were having such a major crush on the man’s work and talent. My favorite scene from this film was a major example why Guillermo Del Toro is such a genius. I’m talking about the scene with the “Pale Man” and Ofelia’s encounter with it during her second task given to her by the The Faun.
This sequence showed Del Toro not just juggling the dark fantasy aspect of the film, but also his talent for world-building and horror. This scene was the one which probably sold those still on the fence about the film as they watched it. It’s a scene which showed Del Toro’s love for monsters and he created one which has left an indelible mark on the film-going audience that still resonates to this day.
Tonight, TCM has been showing a marathon a Mamie Van Doren films. I just sat through The Beat Generation, a 1959 film where Mamie is among the many women to fall victim to a crazed beatnik known as the Aspirin Kid.
Now, to be honest, The Beat Generation is not a very good film. In fact, it’s probably one of the most anti-female movies that I’ve ever seen. Watching it, I found myself very happy that I was not alive during the 50s.
However, it did remind me of the far superior High School Confidential, another film that featured a bunch of faux Beatniks and Mamie Van Doren in a supporting role. Released in 1958 and directed by Jack Arnold, High School Confidential is a lot of fun.
And that brings us to tonight’s scene that I love. In the scene below, “beatnik” poetess Philippa Fallon recites a poem while secret drug dealer Jackie Coogan plays the piano. I love this scene because it’s just so typical of the way that exploitation films from the 50s tended to portray the beat generation.
I have to admit that whenever I see one of these old films that attempted to cluelessly portray (and mock) the beatniks of the 50s, I’m reminded of the similarly clueless way that bloggers are portrayed in most current films and Aaron Sorkin-penned television series.
The latest reboot of Superman by DC and Warner Brothers has now arrived. It’s bound to rake in the dollars and shake the foundations of cineplexes worldwide with its dizzying array of genocidal-level action and mayhem. Yet, we must not forget that before Michael Shannon donned the mantle of General Zod for Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel the megalomaniacal Kryptonian general was played by none other than The Limey himself, Terrence Stamp.
In one of the best scenes (and a favorite of mine) from Superman II (itself a film shouldering a continent-sized and kryptonite-laced amount of controversy over it’s filming) we find the original Zod easily subduing the defenders of the White House and matter-of-factly instructing the President of the United States to rise and kneel before him. Thus an iconic piece of pop-culture dialogue was born that day.
Myself, I watched The Adventures of Robin Hood on TCM. There I was, watching the film and posting comments on twitter about how superior Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood was to Russell Crowe’s when suddenly I realized that a lot of very strange tweets were appearing on my timeline.
One person tweeted, “WHAT THE FUCK, GAME OF THRONES!?”
Another tweeted: “OMG! #GoT”
And my personal favorite: “no, no, no, no, no #GameOfThrones.”
Later, I discovered that these people were reacting to the Red Wedding on Game Of Thrones. I have been using twitter since 2009 and I have never before seen so much anger and sadness as I did last night after the Starks were massacred on HBO.
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy Game Of Thrones and I DVR every episode but, at that moment, I was really happy to be watching The Adventures of Robin Hood.
Whenever I watch The Adventures of Robin Hood, I think about one of my favorite Monty Python skits, the story of Dennis Moore, the highwayman who attempts to steal from the rich and give to the poor and discovers that the redistribution of wealth isn’t as easy as he originally figured.
Or, as the Dennis Moore theme song puts it: “He steals from the poor and gives to the rich … Stupid bitch!”
In honor of The Adventures of Robin Hood, I figured why not share this classic skit? If nothing else, maybe a little absurdist comedy is just what the doctor ordered for those of you who still haven’t recovered from the Red Wedding…
Well, I mentioned in the previous post that one of my guilty pleasures was watching the 80’s film to Eddie Murphy’s growing egocentricism called The Golden Child. There’s one particular scene in the film that has always struck me as hilarious for some reason. It does so even more so now that Charles Dance (who plays the main villain, Sardo Numspa) has seen a resurgence in popularity as the badass Tywin Lannister, patriarch of House Lannister on HBO’s Game of Thrones.
Whether it was staring down Eddie Murphy’s Chandler Jarrell in this film or King Joffrey in Game of Thrones it’s always great to see Charles Dance get some proper due for the work he’s doing.
I just love how he plays the straight man in this scene and one could almost sense that he would find it quite satisfying to punch Murphy’s face off. If there was one a redeeming quality to The Golden Child it would be Dance’s work as Sardo Numspa.
Through the Shattered Lens 