The above clip, a mashup for scenes from The Bandwagon and Daddy Long Legs set to Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal,” is just the latest in a long line of mashups, through which Fred Astaire magically dances from the 1930s, 40s and 50s into the 80s, 90s and beyond. There’s “Fred Astaire’s Billy Jean“, “Fred Astaire Hip Hop,” “Fred Astaire Brings SexyBack,” “Fred Astaire Is Bringing SexyBack,” and surely more I’ve yet to come across.

Although each clip has its nice moments of intertexual collage (I especially like the way the same footage from Royal Wedding is recycled to different ends: in “Billy Jean,” set to the line, “The kid is not my son,” it’s a contemplation of paternity; in “Brings SexyBack,” it’s a placeholder for seduction) “Smooth Criminal” really draws attention to this way this method of mashup makes the entirety of filmed dance history seem less like a timeline than a series of arrows pointing back to the same point. For all of their ability to tap into and inspire the zeitgeist of their respective heydays, dancers like Michael Jackson and Justin Timberlake resemble Astaire more than anything else in their contemporary cultures. For whatever reason, the iconography of the solo male dancer is always looking back, as if there’s nothing new do with the male body set to music that Fred Astaire hadn’t thought of.

This theory does give short shrift to Gene Kelly, who had a distinct style and presence that was not chiefly Astairean, but for whatever reason, the evidence suggests he’s been less influential on pop stars of the future. Maybe it’s because, compared to someone like Timberlake, he was built like a boxer, and with the exception of Singin’ in the Rain, his characters were often (gasp!) working class, or at least certainly not the blinged-out party crashers that Astaire tended to play, which make his images so compatible with lines like “VIP, drinks on me,” never mind lyrics that equate seduction to some kind of surreptitious crime. Does Gene Kelly have an analgous modern pop star? And if so, where’s that mashup?

• Oh, so THAT’S why the studios didn’t send a rep to that L.A. City Council meeting about how the writers’ strike has devastated the local economy––their bottom lines are doing just fine. According to Jill Goldsmith at Variety, shareholders love the idea that the conglomerates are finally “cutting costs [and] getting tough with talent,” and thus seem prepared to support the AMPTP companies through the long haul.
• The Anti-Defamation League has decided to forgive Will Smith for telling an interviewer that Adolf Hitler “woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was `good.”’ Yes, on the Thursday after Christmas, this is news enough for me.
• Dancer/choreographer Michael Kidd has died. Kidd won an special Oscar in 1997 for his work directing dances for such films as The Band Wagon, Guys and Dolls and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. You can see a scene from The Band Wagon, featuring Fred Astaire an Cyd Charisse, above.

In my first week as a SpoutBlogger, I linked to Kevin Lee’s video essay on Dario Argento’s Inferno. Twelve weeks later (putting us at last weekend), I met Kevin for the first time in Real Life, and he told me that the next installment of his project has going to investigate one of my favorite musicals, the Busby Berkeley-choreographed Dames. It’s now up at his site.

The actual video essay breaks down the film’s title number, one of the most batshit insanely kaloidoscopic musical sequences of Berkeley’s career, into symbols and meanings; the page it lives on is tricked out with quotes from the film’s original reviews, unadulterated clips of other musical numbers, and Lee’s own analysis.

My favorite part of the whole thing comes at about the 3:55 mark of the video, when Lee stops in the middle of his analysis to ponder the one scene that appears to have gotten away from Berkeley.

…Read more

“He made three great musicals and two of them, Cabaret and All That Jazz, effectively retrofitted the musical for a generation skeptical of artifice, incorporating techniques from the European New Wave and even neorealism. He didn’t only do it first. He did it better than just about anyone, and, despite is fame, he remains under-appreciated as a filmmaker.” On November 10, Bob at Forward to Yesterday is sponsoring Fossethon, a blogathon dedicated to the work of director/dancer/choreographer Bob Fosse. We are so there. Above, you’ll find Fosse dancing in a clip from 1953’s The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, alongside Debbie Reynolds, Van Johnson and Barbara Ruick.

New Hairspray director Adam Shankman is responsible for some of the most profitable/least watchable films of the past decade. But he started out as a choreographer, and below you’ll find his best work: the disco dance scene from Boogie Nights:

The Cinetrix went to Independents Week at the Harvard Film Archive, and came back raving about the dance scenes in three of the films that screened there. The films were Hannah Takes the Stairs, Quiet City, and a film I had not previously been aware of called Finally, Lillian and Dan, directed by a local filmmaker named Mike Gibisser. Here’s what The Cinetrix had to say:

[In] all three films there are spontaneous, visceral dance sequences that soar. Mike Gibisser’s real-life granny dances rapturously to a Jolie Holland tune; Hannah and roommate Rocco rock out as they work through Hannah’s romantic confusion; and Jamie, Charlie, Robin, and Kyle dreamily groove to an r&b track replaced by the diegetic music of Keegan DeWitt [rights issues]. These inarticulate idealists connect through the physical movement to music in a way that makes the cinetrix’s bricolage-lovin’ heart sing.

The ‘trix goes on to seek suggestions on great “musical moments in non-musicals.” I saw Hannah and Quiet City at SXSW in March, where they formed another non-musical dance scene trio with a film that did not screen at Independent’s Week, Ry Russo-Young’s Orphans. The dance scene in Orphans is a dizzying concoction of love, envy, double entendre, competition, ill-fitting party dresses, resentment and Absolut Citron. It’s not only my favorite of the three scenes, but it’s probably one of my favorite scenes in any American film of this decade.

I find it fascinating that naturalistic dance scenes are becoming as much of a hallmark of these Mumblecore films as improvised dialogue and hand-held video. Within the context of these relatively static narratives, the dances become as spectacular as a climactic car chase or series of explosion in a Hollywood movie.

I also recently watched Macao for the first time, a non-musical which has an amazing scene of Jane Russell singing “One For My Baby.” But that’s not really a dance scene, so I’ll save that discussion for another time.

I guess Harvey hasn’t totally given up on the idea of flogging Death Proof and Planet Terror as separate films just quite yet. Robert Rodriguez’ zombie-centric half of Grindhouse has been slotted to screen at Europe’s largest open-air venue at the Locarno Film Festival next month.

Speaking of Harvey flogging, the Weinstein Company has acquired North American rights to Make it Happen, after brokering sales of international rights to other parties at Berlin and Cannes. The film, which was penned by the guy who brought you Save the Last Dance and Step Up, tracks an aspiring dancer who moves to Chicago and becomes a stripper. So, basically, it’s a remake of Flashdance.

Variety has confirmed that Kevin Spacey will be back as Lex Luthor in the next installment of Bryan Singer’s Superman franchise. In the piece, Spacey also vociferously refutes rumors that recently claimed he was retiring from movies. “In no way did I use the word retirement. Someone else pulled that out of thin air. It’s false, there’s not a lick of truth to it.”