More Weekend Musicals On DVD
Left: Hospital hallucinations.
Picked up three DVDs, and looked at two: my favorite movie of all time, 1979's Bob Fosse quasi-autobiography, "All That Jazz" , a musical look at Fosse's heart attack while working on the Broadway musical "Chicago", plus 1980's disco-roller skating musical "Xanadu", Gene Kelly's last major motion picture, and a strange mish mash of 40's and 70's influences.
I just love the scene when Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider), Bob Fosse's alter-ego, escapes from his hospital bed, and winds up in the water-logged basement, where he kicks and splashes in the world's most-pathetic imitation ever conceived of Gene Kelly in "Singin' In the Rain". Gideon stops, looks up at the camera, and plaintively asks the audience: "What's the matter? Don't you like musical comedy?"
At my funeral, I will need to have "All That Jazz" on closed-loop video feed....
Then there is Gene Kelly himself, leading the roller skating pack (much later, mocked by roller skating Goldmember in Austin Powers III). What I like about "Xanadu" is that it seems to be ground-zero for many stylistic ideas that inspired Kylie Minogue (who was a very impressionable 12-year-old when this movie came out). Many Kylie ideas lay around like unexploded dynamite, waiting for later use: the Green Fairy from Moulin Rouge; the open eyes emblazoned on the Tubes' drum set; the white regal outfit used in the finale of the "Showgirl - Homecoming" tour (and also claimed by Cher); and in the very same dance, the odd hats adapted for the "Chocolate" video; the "Fever" cityscape, the Village People-type dance corps in "Step Back In Time", etc., etc.
Two things about these movies made a big impression. First, the lead dancer in the extended 'Take Off With Us (reprise)' dance number in "All That Jazz", Sandahl Bergman, also played Muse #1 in "Xanadu". Amazing - two very different movie musicals, more-or-less coinciding in time, and she was in both! Plus, Kenny Ortega, the director of "High School Musical" (watched that last weekend!) also was co-choreographer of "Xanadu", and therefore worked closely with Gene Kelly, as well as being choreographer for many other 80's and 90's musicals: "St. Elmo's Fire", "Pretty In Pink", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", "Dirty Dancing", "Newsies", etc. etc.
Amazing - there is an astonishingly-short, two-generation direct line between 1952's "Singin' In The Rain", and today's Disney "Cheetah Girls".
Left: Hospital hallucinations.
Picked up three DVDs, and looked at two: my favorite movie of all time, 1979's Bob Fosse quasi-autobiography, "All That Jazz" , a musical look at Fosse's heart attack while working on the Broadway musical "Chicago", plus 1980's disco-roller skating musical "Xanadu", Gene Kelly's last major motion picture, and a strange mish mash of 40's and 70's influences.
I just love the scene when Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider), Bob Fosse's alter-ego, escapes from his hospital bed, and winds up in the water-logged basement, where he kicks and splashes in the world's most-pathetic imitation ever conceived of Gene Kelly in "Singin' In the Rain". Gideon stops, looks up at the camera, and plaintively asks the audience: "What's the matter? Don't you like musical comedy?"
At my funeral, I will need to have "All That Jazz" on closed-loop video feed....
Then there is Gene Kelly himself, leading the roller skating pack (much later, mocked by roller skating Goldmember in Austin Powers III). What I like about "Xanadu" is that it seems to be ground-zero for many stylistic ideas that inspired Kylie Minogue (who was a very impressionable 12-year-old when this movie came out). Many Kylie ideas lay around like unexploded dynamite, waiting for later use: the Green Fairy from Moulin Rouge; the open eyes emblazoned on the Tubes' drum set; the white regal outfit used in the finale of the "Showgirl - Homecoming" tour (and also claimed by Cher); and in the very same dance, the odd hats adapted for the "Chocolate" video; the "Fever" cityscape, the Village People-type dance corps in "Step Back In Time", etc., etc.
Two things about these movies made a big impression. First, the lead dancer in the extended 'Take Off With Us (reprise)' dance number in "All That Jazz", Sandahl Bergman, also played Muse #1 in "Xanadu". Amazing - two very different movie musicals, more-or-less coinciding in time, and she was in both! Plus, Kenny Ortega, the director of "High School Musical" (watched that last weekend!) also was co-choreographer of "Xanadu", and therefore worked closely with Gene Kelly, as well as being choreographer for many other 80's and 90's musicals: "St. Elmo's Fire", "Pretty In Pink", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", "Dirty Dancing", "Newsies", etc. etc.
Amazing - there is an astonishingly-short, two-generation direct line between 1952's "Singin' In The Rain", and today's Disney "Cheetah Girls".
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