LIST: Top 40 Dance Videos (Part Two)

Here we go, #30-21...

30. Ed Sheeran - Don't

Phillip "Pacman" Chbeeb is positively dripping with charisma - has been since his very first audition on So You Think You Can Dance. So what a treat it is to just watch him do his thing in this video. I'm not really a fan of Ed Sheeran, so I will often watch this with the volume turned waaaaaay down, but it's still incredible to watch as he walks around a California neighborhood in his patented liquid-like popping style.

LIST: Top 40 Dance Videos (Part One)

Lists are, if you'll pardon my French, fucking DIFFICULT. I hate making them with a flaming passion. But I also LOVE them. They feel so representative, so orderly, so... SATISFYING. But compiling them? They're hard enough to order as it is outside of a few selections near the top usually, but then just when you think you're done you realize you completely forgot something and it screws up everything, or you realize that one thing dominates more than half the list, or you can't find a crucial piece of info or even proof of the existence of one of your entries, causing you to question your sanity... NIGHTMARE.

But sometimes, you just feel the need and come hell or high water or no sleep, you HAVE to make a list. And so here we are.

Because of that one episode of Hit Me With Your Best Shot a few weeks back, music videos have been on my mind recently. Mainly in an "Are they still a thing?" way, but I felt a list coming on, so I decided not to fight it... only there were entirely too many videos to choose from when making a list of the greatest of them all. But then I went back to my roots and decided to do a list of the Best DANCE Videos, and everything fell into place. Kind of.

Granted, you could make a list that consisted entirely of Michael and Janet Jackson videos and it would arguably hold water, so dominant are they at creating dance-centric clips... but a list of dance videos without Madonna? Without Paula Abdul? Inconceivable!

But on the other hand, there are AT LEAST six Janet videos that could be considered definitive for her, compared to one for pretty much everybody else, and they all pretty much trounce the competition. Leave it to Janet to always bring the next level shit - the tilting dance floor in "Doesn't Really Matter", the mixture of Afro-Cuban dance, breakdance, and stepping in "Escapade" - and also to show the young-uns how it's done ("All For You" and "All Nite" are some of the most intricate, stylish dance videos of their respective eras). I mean, yes, "Rhythm Nation" is her best overall video, but can you really put it on a dance-centric list above the incredible solo in "Pleasure Principle" or the killer chair routine in "Miss You Much"?

Anyway, this has been on my brain for long enough. So I finally decided to throw caution to the wind and just publish the damn thing already.

I had only one criteria for this list: The dancing has to be the star. So any clips in which dance plays a supporting role ("Chasing Pavements") or in which the dance routine just doesn't get enough screen time ("Marry The Night" and pretty much anything else by Lady Gaga) had to go, unfortunately. Videos that were one-take wonders got extra consideration due to degree of difficulty. I decided to cap it at 40 because Top 40 is a big deal in music. If there's enough interest or if I feel like it, I'll post ten Honorable Mentions to bring it up to 50. I'll be posting 10 a day until it's done.

Let the countdown begin!

Against the Crowd Blogathon

Welcome to my post in the 2015 Against the Crowd Blogathon, hosted by Dell on Movies!

The blogathon's theme is pretty much what you'd expect: Pick a film that "everyone" loves (at least 75% on Rotten Tomatoes) that you hate, and a film that "everyone" hates (at most 35% on Rotten Tomatoes) that you love. Then say why.

This was far more difficult to do than I thought it would be, but the fact is: Since time is (unfortunately) a finite resource, I tend to only see films that I know I'm going to like, and there are very few cases in which I saw something despite terrible reviews. I almost didn't find films that fit the criteria Dell set up! Except in the case of a film that "everyone" loves but I hate. I kept trying to find another one, but I just couldn't do it.

I HATE THE DARK KNIGHT. I didn't want to step in it with this film AGAIN, but I don't think there's a film as universally loved as this that I dislike so much. In general, I prefer my comic-book adaptations to be true to their source material - i.e., FUN. The Dark Knight is not fun. Not that this is necessarily a problem; Batman has always been a "darker" superhero, and after the numerous terrible superhero movies we got before 2008, it was definitely time for someone to go there and put a superhero in the "real world", and deal with the real consequences of his actions. I was ready to like The Dark Knight. I really was.

BUT.

The Dark Knight is two-and-a half hours of relentless darkness, with a murky, byzantine plot that on repeat viewings only shows more and more holes. It is a punishing film, not just because that amount of cynicism and darkness over that length of time would make anything a tough sit (and the film is far too long to sustain the mood effectively), but because there's not a single moment of levity in the whole damn thing. Heath Ledger gives a great performance as the Joker, no doubt about it, but he's not funny in a fun, belly-laugh way - he's funny in a queasy, sick-to-your-stomach way. He's insane, and he renders Bruce Wayne/Batman the biggest idiot in the world with his mere presence. The man was trained by the freaking League of Shadows... AND THEN BEAT THEM, and yet he's not smart enough to figure out that the freaking Joker is not exactly a man you can trust to tell any part of the truth. AND, despite their admirable ultimate choice in the ferry boat standoff, the citizens of Gotham are proven to be the ultimate sheep, blindly following whatever voice screams at them the loudest in the moment, blaming Batman for the Joker's reign of terror instead of the police, the federal government/policing agencies, or, ya know, the clearly crazy Joker himself (they get even worse in The Dark Knight Rises, BTW). Which wouldn't necessarily be a problem, except that it begs the question: These are the people Bruce Wayne is so intent on saving?

And despite the strength of the film's cinematography, the editing is all over the place, often resulting in action sequences that are very nearly incoherent. And if you haven't yet done so, I urge you to take a look at the video below, which goes into detail on this very topic.

In the Cut, Part I: Shots in the Dark (Knight) from Jim Emerson on Vimeo.

But my biggest problem with The Dark Knight, the one that completely outweighs all my other problems with it as a film in its own right, is that it's basically the film that was responsible for the cult surrounding Christopher Nolan, a group of people who think that every thing he does is an instant work of genius solely because he deigned to touch it, and that the man himself is infallible. Nolan is clearly very talented, and I've been a fan since Memento, but after The Dark Knight, a film wholly unworthy of being called his best, he was put on a pedestal as The Greatest EVER by a squadron of comic book fanboys, and it has become impossible to get a word in edgewise or have even a slightly negative view of Nolan or any one of his films without getting ripped to shreds.

But hold off on the ripping of me to shreds for just a little bit, because...

...WAIT FOR IT...

Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Angels In America

Written as part of the series hosted by Nathaniel R. over at The Film Experience.

Tony Kushner's Angels in America is the greatest dramatic work of the twentieth century. Possibly of any century. The play is sterling, radical, moving - a tour de force of theater. So I mean it as the highest possible praise when I say that Mike Nichols's miniseries version of it for HBO is the film it deserved, in just about every possible way.

The performances are, to a one, superb: Justin Kirk as AIDS-stricken prophet Prior Walter and Ben Shenkman as his cowardly partner Louis Ironson; Patrick Wilson as closeted Mormon Joe Pitt and Mary Louise Parker as his Valium-addicted wife Harper (was there ever an actress so perfect for this part???); Jeffrey Wright and Emma Thompson in multiple roles but most notably as the nurse/former drag queen Belize and The Angel, respectively; and of course the headliners, Al Pacino (realizing for once in his late career that underplaying was the right way to go) as closeted Republican superlawyer/Devil Roy Cohn and Our Lady of Divine Actressing, Meryl Streep as both Joe Pitt's mother and the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg taunting Roy on his deathbed (and also as the Rabbi who gives the opening monologue... FLAWLESSLY).

Everything about the production is perfect - the production design by Stuart Wurtzel, Thomas Newman's iconic score, the costumes by the legendary Ann Roth, Stephen Goldblatt's cinematography... and of course, the direction by the one and only Mike Nichols, who considered this his magnum opus. Every single directorial flourish - inserts of paintings and old photographs, select tracking shots which daringly push in to another scene happening at the same time in a different place or out to reveal an "angel's-eye view", the numerous Cocteau references - lands with a beauty and grace rarely seen on screen, be it big or small.

I could be ballsy and pick a best shot from each of the six episodes. I could be equally ballsy and go on and on about the brilliance of the text and then randomly plunk down a Best Shot at the end. Or I could just pick my favorite shot from my favorite scene from anything ever and call it a day.

Or I could do none of those things.

I didn't have time to rewatch all of Angels in preparation for this. I only made it through Millennium Approaches (or, for those of you unfamiliar with the plays, the first half: Parts 1-3), and I had intended to pick just one shot overall, but I got carried away and wanted to feature one from each part. Plus, I have one from Perestroika that I just love. So I now share with you my Best Shots from each part of the first half of Angels in America, and some of Kushner's gorgeous prose to go with them.

PART ONE

"Deep inside you, there's a part of you, the most inner part... entirely free from disease."

(This is my favorite scene of anything ever.)

PART TWO

(This one gets no text, because it's the first time we really SEE Roy. We heard him before, when he told his physician "Roy Cohn is not a homosexual. Roy Cohn is a heterosexual who fucks around with men." And GOD is Pacino brilliant in this part.)

PART THREE

"Prepare for the parting of the air... The great work begins. GLORY TO-"

ALSO:

Emma Thompson once gave Meryl Streep an orgasm.

NEVER FORGET.

This is my favorite shot in all of Perestroika. It's a bit of a cliché shot, but it's such an unbelievably perfect way to end this scene. And the entire project is full of these visual punctuation marks at the end of scenes - very nearly as many as there are great lines that punctuate the scenes in the script, which is no mean feat. It's only real rival is this one:

Perfect reading of that monologue, and I love that it's a (mostly) unbroken shot of her from outside the airplane. Harper may have an "astonishing ability to see such things", but we have the ability to hear such astonishingly beautiful words thanks to Tony Kushner and Mike Nichols and, in this case, Mary Louise Parker.

I could go on and on about Angels and how brilliant it is all week. So I better stop now before I do.

Except to say that the play is just as timely now as it was when it premiered in 1993, in ways that are completely surprising. If you haven't seen it, you owe it to yourself to do so. If you have seen it, you owe it to yourself to do it again.

Thursday Movie Picks - Movies with Devastating Crushing Endings that Makes You Want to Weep

Written as part of the blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join us by picking three movies that fit the week's theme - it's fun and easy!

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... Movies with devastating crushing endings that make you want to weep, huh? Well... I've already used Dancer In The Dark and Imitation of Life in other weeks... And to be honest, most movies with devastating crushing endings just make me feel depressed and/or angry, and most movies that make me want to weep do so from something that may be sad, but is also beautiful in a way. This topic calls for something beyond both of those. It took some digging and soul-searching, but I found three films that will give you the ugliest of ugly cry-faces:

West Side Story (Robert Wise, 1961) In my opinion, the best screen version of Shakespeare's immortal Romeo & Juliet. And it's even more devastating than its original source material, in part because it allows Juliet (in this case, Natalie Wood's Maria) to live. Watching Maria take her anger out on those who allowed the tragedy to happen, only to crumple to her knees in tears after she is unable to pull the trigger proves far more devastating than Shakespeare's original double-suicide ending. Add in the underscore, a mournful reprise of Tony and Maria's love theme (which was, let's be honest, already a pretty sad song), and it's definitely a recipe for weeping.

La Strada (Federico Fellini, 1954) I love many things about La Strada, beginning with my beloved Giulietta Masina's great performance as the simple Gelsomina, a young woman who gets sold to a brutish strongman as replacement for her sister (who died while working for him). He teaches her to play instruments and clown a little to help him make money. Eventually she meets another street performer, a clown and high-wire artist, and a love triangle emerges. Anthony Quinn's primal wail by the water after learning the fate of his beloved Gelsomina is as heart-wrenching a sound as was ever put on film.

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1928) There are great films, and then there is Carl Th. Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc. There are great performances, and then there is Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc. There are films with devastating, crushing endings that make you want to weep, and then there is The Passion of Joan of Arc. Do yourself a favor and watch it with noise-cancelling headphones on. There isn't a more stunning silent experience in cinema.

The Film Emotion Blogathon

Conman at the Movies started a blogathon (thanks as always to the ever-amazing Drew at A Fistful of Films for shining the light) that is just too good to not participate in. Inspired by the best film of 2015 thus far, Pixar's Inside Out, the Film Emotion blogathon is about finding a film that stands in for each of the main emotions in the film:

Joy: "A movie that makes you happy. The kind of movie that you put on whenever you’re in a bad mood that never fails to lighten your spirits."
Sadness: "The movie that made you cry the most."
Fear: "The movie that gave you the most nightmares."
Anger: "A movie that you flat out hated. Not a movie that was dull or boring, but a movie that fills you up with rage just thinking about it."
Disgust: "A film that makes you cringe."

So without further ado, here we go!

Joy - I have a number of go-to movies when I'm in a bad mood, but the one that I probably turn to the most is Singin' in the Rain. Not only is it my #1 All-Time Favorite Film, but it is by far the one that gives me the most pure, unadulterated joy. I could just put on Donald O'Connor's brilliant "Make 'Em Laugh" number, but why would I want to deny myself the joy of the opening "Fit As A Fiddle" segment? Or the first meeting between Gene Kelly's Don Lockwood and Debbie Reynolds's Kathy Seldin? Or the one-two punch of joyousness that is "Good Morning" into the title number? Whenever I'm feeling down, any second of this movie will instantly make me happy again.

Sadness - I'm sure I've written this story a million times on the internet, but I don't think I've ever done so here. When I first saw Toy Story 3, I was in tears from the incinerator scene onward. And not polite little tears welling up in my eyes and dripping down my cheeks, either. I'm talking a goddamn RIVER of tears streaming down my face and great, loud, heaving SOBS in a completely packed movie theater. Every little thing about the last fifteen minutes of this beautiful film just hit me like a ton of bricks in different ways. I won't go into it all here, but this movie was one of a few that actually made me look at my life, assess it, and make a change. Even now, just thinking about that PERFECT final scene makes me choke up a little bit.

Fear - Oddly enough, the film that cost me the most hours of sleep is one that I haven't even seen, but one that I've only seen little bits of: Poltergeist. It's all about the TV. The one recurring nightmare I've ever had is one where I turn a TV off but it keeps turning on by itself, sometimes to static and sometimes to something that I don't know what it is. I've traced it to seeing the previews for this on TV when I was REALLY young. Thankfully, The Ring came out when I was much older, so even though those dreams started up again after seeing it, I was able to handle them much better.

Anger - SIGH. I've never been so offended by a film's quality that thinking about it actually fills me with rage. I've come close precisely once - Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones - but mostly I didn't actively hate it, rather I was just bored by it. HOWEVER, I truly detest The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies for the mere act of EXISTING. So much so that I haven't even seen it yet. There is simply no good goddamned reason to make that book into three movies. NONE. And given the padding present in both An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug, I just don't have the patience to sit through another one of these movies. Which pains me so much, because I am a full-on fanboy of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And then Peter Jackson went entirely up his own ass and turned my favorite book into a slog (Benedict Cumberbatch's AWESOME Smaug notwithstanding).

Disgust - There are plenty of films that I've seen that I don't feel the need to watch ever again, but only a select few that are so difficult to watch that I specifically don't WANT to watch ever again. The big kahuna of those is easily Requiem for a Dream, a film that makes me cringe so much that I just want to curl up into a little ball and die. I'm not sure exactly when that pit in my stomach opens up, but by the time Jennifer Connelly... I can't even write about it here it's so awful. Given that the film's subject matter is drugs and drug addiction, I have no doubt that that's the feeling the film was meant to leave us with. So job well done, everyone, but... I can't watch your film again. EVER.

Thursday Movie Picks - Alien Invasion of Earth

Written as part of the blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Play along by picking three films that fit the week's theme and telling us about them!

The alien invasion subgenre of sci-fi got some seriously good play when I was growing up in the 90s. Even though I don't generally LOVE this kind of story, these three films are some of my all-time favorites.

Mars Attacks! (Tim Burton, 1996) But of the three, this one is probably my favorite. Tim Burton's masterfully silly send-up of old-school B-movies has an incredible All-Star Cast (Annette Bening, Sarah Jessica Parker, Pierce Brosnan, Sylvia Sidney, Pam Grier) and plenty of delightfully absurd moments (what ends up defeating the aliens? Tom Jones's "It's Not Unusual", which makes their heads explode). The martians themselves are perfectly designed, and memorably voiced ("ACK ACK ACK!"). Plus, Burton cast perhaps the greatest First Family of all time: President Jack Nicholson, First Lady Glenn Close (in PERFECT Nancy Regan drag), and sarcastic First Daughter Natalie Portman.

Independence Day (Roland Emmerich, 1996) The prototypical Dean Devlin/Roland Emmerich blockbuster is still their best, largely thanks to an incredibly charismatic lead performance by Will Smith in the first of his string of July 4th hits. Bill Pullman's classic climactic monologue has been spoofed a lot recently, but it's still pretty damn inspiring in the context of the film, which has held up surprisingly well despite its 90s-ness  - Jeff Goldblum as a master computer hacker, anyone?

Men In Black (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1997) The glory of this comic adaptation is two-fold: The crackling, surprisingly perfect chemistry between Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, and the fantastic alien designs by master makeup artist Rick Baker. It's also REALLY funny - again, mostly thanks to the dynamic duo that leads the film. Jones's deadpan is a perfect foil for Smith's looseness as the veteran, seen-it-all agent showing the newbie the ropes as they police Earth's hidden alien population and protect "the galaxy" from an alien bug.