Actually, my readers are reading David
Gates - Jernigen
The readers are listening to Travis
- The
Man Who
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©2000 by
Randy Shandis Enterprises. All rights fucking reserved.
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Because I was on vacation last week, the
readers filled in. Only two of you suckers actually bothered
to see "Center Stage" like I asked. Actually, only
one of you saw it, the other wrote a review anyway. Many more
of you wrote to ask me to review "Battlefield Earth."
Apparently it is okay for me to suffer, but not you. Here they
are:
roGER
said:
Of all known art forms, Opera is the most
ridiculous but Ballet (the
subject of Center Stage) comes a close second. So my expectation
meter
read zero as the titles rolled. But you know what? It isn't too
bad.
We're introduced to six wannabe dancers, three guys and three
girls.
They have a year to prepare for the dance school production
where two or three will be selected by professional ballet companies.
Every dance movie ever made seems to have this plot. The film
spends a
lot of time showing us how difficult and painful ballet dancing
is, but
it's still ballet and the end product is still ridiculous. Only
one of
the guys is gay, and he's not too stereotyped. Eva (Zoe Saldana-Eva)
is
Hispanic and that means (yawn) she's full of attitude, since
Hollywood
can't show a minority character who's as dedicated and professional
as
the whites. The other girls are our heroine Jody (Amanda Schull)
and her
ambitious and obsessive room-mate Maureen
(Susan May-Pratt). Maureen is
the best dancer in the school but has a (stereotyped) pushy Mom
(Debra
Monk). Jody is supposedly technically limited, has "a body
problem," but
has "presence." In reality Schull
can dance great but has limitations in
the acting department. It doesn't matter,
since her body problem means
she has a great ass. Director Nicholas Hytner knows this and
his camera
spends a lot of time lingering on her hips. Which is true to
Ballet's
history - stuffy European aristocrats wanted to leer at young
girls in
short skirts while pretending they were engaged in high culture.
Meanwhile, the straight guys dance with the straight girls and
there are
a few romantic entanglements along the
way. As in so many films the best
acting comes from the supporting cast -
Jonathan Reeves is good as the
slimy and egotistical dance director, and Donna Murphy is outstanding
as
the senior instructor. The predictable
plot even contained a few twists
at the end. Its definitely a "girlie" picture, just
as "Fame" and "A
Chorus Line" were, but it's surprisingly enjoyable. Three
pirouettes
then, for "Center Stage" (and if Hytner had shot some
communal shower
scenes it might have got four).
Cal wrote:
I've been too damned busy lately to go
see Center Stage. Instead, I looked
at the promotional material, grabbed a couple of quick pieces
from the net,
and sat down to write this on my employer's dime:
As we all know, Center Stage is about a
bunch of motivated teens looking to
make it big in ballet. So from that we can surmise they're all
freaks,
passionately involved in something that 98% of the population
doesn't give a
rip about, and approximately 45% of which spontaneously convulse
at the mere
mention of the word. The pictures of the cast didn't interest
me at all -
but at least somebody had the guts to try to float a movie without
some name
actor. Then I noticed Peter Gallagher - but does he count? Does
anyone see
a movie because he's in it? Do they even put his name on the
movie poster
credits? Anyway, they're all nobodies. No doubt we're forced
to watch what
amounts to an excruciatingly long episode of Fame (which interestingly
enough was actually based on the classic Western "The Man
Who Shot Liberty
Valence"). We can be certain there's a love triangle, a
talented
underachiever, a substance abuser, and a backstabber, because
these are the
things that the movie's target audience want to relate to. If
I were to
actually view the picture, I'd probably be thinking about dropping
out with
the substance abuser.
Again, I didn't see the movie, but this
one message board comment probably
sums it up: "I actually became less intelligent from watching
this movie."
I'm at the edge right now, and just not willing to risk it. Additionally,
there's a fairly high likelihood that there would be lots of
shots of guys
in tights, and I'm nowhere near comfortable enough with my sexuality
to
watch that kind of thing.
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