My "Top Posts" highlights continue in anticipation of my 5th anniversary this July. Each day I will be posting an intro with a link to one of the pieces I consider my best. Today's entry features a video montage on "42nd Street".
As always, please don't link to or attempt to comment on this intro page, which is a temporary bump and will be deleted when a new "Top Post" is featured tomorrow. You can link to, comment on, or recommend the original post.
Yesterday's Top Post, if you missed it, was a video tribute to "42nd Street". Also, I recently posted another #WatchlistScreenCaps round-up.
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This is an entry in the Wonders in the Dark musical countdown - an epic enterprise; make sure you check out the whole thing!
If writing about movies is like dancing about architecture, then writing about musicals is like trying to draw a blueprint for a tap dance. Here I try to make both ends meet.
The words below the fold are from Arlene Croce’s seminal “Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book.”
The images (some fragments, some fully framed) are from a single number, “Night and Day,” the only sequence in the film where Fred & Ginger dance by themselves, three minutes out of nearly two hours but the very essence of the picture and their partnership.
Finally, there is a video clip of the number in its entirety. Music and lyrics by Cole Porter, choreography by Fred Astaire, dancing by you-know-who.
The hope is that, senses sharpened by the indirect evocations of Croce’s prose, and the lingering snapshots of motion, you will view the piece with renewed appreciation, much as one might press one’s nose up against a pointillist painting, viewing all those little dots as isolated phenomena before stepping back to take in the big picture, all without losing sight of the magical details which give it its essence.
As Arlene Croce writes, opening her study of the sequence, “This incomparable dance of seduction is a movie in itself.” Enjoy.
If writing about movies is like dancing about architecture, then writing about musicals is like trying to draw a blueprint for a tap dance. Here I try to make both ends meet.
The words below the fold are from Arlene Croce’s seminal “Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book.”
The images (some fragments, some fully framed) are from a single number, “Night and Day,” the only sequence in the film where Fred & Ginger dance by themselves, three minutes out of nearly two hours but the very essence of the picture and their partnership.
Finally, there is a video clip of the number in its entirety. Music and lyrics by Cole Porter, choreography by Fred Astaire, dancing by you-know-who.
The hope is that, senses sharpened by the indirect evocations of Croce’s prose, and the lingering snapshots of motion, you will view the piece with renewed appreciation, much as one might press one’s nose up against a pointillist painting, viewing all those little dots as isolated phenomena before stepping back to take in the big picture, all without losing sight of the magical details which give it its essence.
As Arlene Croce writes, opening her study of the sequence, “This incomparable dance of seduction is a movie in itself.” Enjoy.