Tag: Dance

I can say with most certainty, that two months ago, I definitely had no urge to watch Stomp The Yard in my life. Ever. I forgot it existed, and my life was fine with that. But then two things happened.

1) One of my students said it was their favorite movie. Out of 48, only 5 students picked a movie that I hadn’t seen before, and that was one of them. Grrr… Kind of have to watch it now.

2) I saw Battle of the Year, made a joke about this movie, and realized I should hurry up and watch it.

I am not expecting really anything, some sort of college dance movie. Let’s do it. I mean, shit, I liked Drumline.

Hey, at least we have people doing flips. Like a cheerleading movie!

DJ (Columbus Short) and his brother Duron (Chris Brown) used to be street battlers. They had a crew who would battle other crews in clubs for cash. They also used to be alive.

After the battle at the beginning, they go cocky and accept a double or nothing offer. They win, pissing off the local crew even more, who want revenge. In the fisticuffs, Duron is stabbed and killed (Yes, Chris Brown dies). Well, that kind of puts a damper on things, so DJ quits the crew, moves out of LA and into Atlanta to live with his Aunt and Uncle (Harry Lennix, Valarie Pettiford), who got him into Truth University.

He gets a roommate, Rich Brown (Ne-Yo), and a new group of friends, but he doesn’t care about anyone. He just misses his brother.

Anyways, long story short, Truth University has two fraternities who are on top and great at stepping, both making it to the nationals every year. Unfortunately, one of them has won seven years in a row, and the other always comes up short. Guess who DJ ends up choosing? Well, after he is convinced that stepping isn’t just some pussy dance stuff.

He picks the underdogs, lead by Sylvester (Brian White), mostly because the girl he wants, April (Meagan Good), is dating Grant (Darrin Dewitt Henson), second in command of the other frat, and a total douche.

Then dance movie stuff happens, predictable plot turns like his past coming back to haunt him. You know. Normal stuff. Jermaine Williams is also in this movie, with a face that looks like I have seen him everywhere, but basically just in Fat Albert.

This movie is about step team dancing and colleges. Holy shit, why did no one tell me about this before?

I love watching step teams perform. Going to college in NC, I was actually able to see fraternities do this kind of stuff live. Probably not the high quality presented in this film, but it is still cool to see live. Honestly, only mainly black fraternities do this, so if you don’t live at a place with them, you won’t really know much about them. There are zero step teams in Iowa, for example. Just a guess.

As it is a dance movie, I must judge its dancing. Early on, when they were battling? That first part of the movie was horrible, a mess. The camera was all shaky, you couldn’t tell what was going on, just ugly. When they started stepping? Hell yeah. It got good then. But it could have been a lot better. The camera shouldn’t cut away as much, because part of it is watching the unison and everyone working together.

The plot was predictable, and some major drama moments just came up short. The overall story wasn’t too original. Pretty typical of a similar sports movie, about a kid getting off the streets. So there are no bonus points for the story. Only bonus points for the really fun dancing to watch and every once in awhile, a joke that actually made me laugh.

There is a serious problem happening in America. Right now! All around us! Unfortunately, most of us have closed our eyes to this problem.

We are no longer the best country at breakdancing, or “b-boying” despite the fact that we invented it. Hip-hop is losing its appeal in America, and it is sad. Grr, I hate it when we don’t win everything!

Because of these true indisputable facts, the movie Battle of the Year 3D was created. Sure, their trailer had the wrong release date until a few weeks before coming out (listing January instead of September) and looked entirely like a parody, but the director hopes to bring light to this definitely real tournament through exciting dance sequences, flashing lights, and Chris Brown.

Basically, the exact same thing he did six years ago with his documentary Planet B-Boy. (Except that one didn’t feature the internet’s most hated man.)

Step 1 to making a big movie? Cast this guy!

The movie starts off quite serious. A boardroom meeting lead by Dante Graham (Laz Alonso), a big hip-hop record executive who is worried about a decrease in sales. Why? Because no one in America cares about B-Boying anymore. Why? Because there is a big international tournament that we haven’t been able to win in 15 years (fact).

So he decides to bring in a coach this time to whip these young boys into shape. How about Jason Blake (Josh Holloway) who used to coach basketball successfully until he lost his family in an accident? Don’t worry, he isn’t some random scrub. He also used to B-Boy in the 80s with Dante.

Yeah. This will go well.

After hiring random office guy Franklyn (Josh Peck) as his assistant coach, he decides the only way to win is to get rid of the current team, and start from scratch. He wants to make a B-Boy Dream Team, the best dancers from the best crews across America. Then he will only have nine weeks to train them, make them a cohesive unit, and make very difficult cuts the entire time.

Of course during this time he has to go through almost every sports team problem in the history of sports movies. His two best dancers, Rooster (Chris Brown) and Do Knock (Jon ‘Do Knock’ Cruz) are at each others throat over a girl from years before. They have an openly gay dancer (Richard Maguire) and people who are pretty homophobic (Sawandi Wilson). They have players who sneak out at night consistently, last minute disqualifications, last minute injuries and a whole lot of ego that stands between them and the gold.

Let’s not forget the coach has a drinking problem! Crap, our hopes lie within a bunch of entitled young adults. At least they have a choreographer (Caity Lotz)? That will make a difference? Maybe?

“How do I reach these keeeeeds?“

Battle of the Year 3D is an interesting movie, in that you know the director actually cares about the subject matter, given he made the documentary a few years back. He also uses a a real event and real details. Of course the idea of the dream team crew is completely fictional, so I almost think that it is his own personal idea for bringing the gold back home.

At the same time, I feel like he also is just trying to promote his own stuff. There are many scenes in this film of the characters watching his own documentary, which one refers to as “The Bible of our culture!” Whoa now, Benson Lee, calm yourself down.

I learned that Chris Brown is actually a great dancer. Sure, I knew he was in Stomp The Yard, but who actually watched that movie? The majority of the actors in this film are actual B-Boyers so you know the dancing you get will be quality. The problem with this film is that it tries too hard to be a generic sports film instead of a dance movie.

What do want and expect out of a dance movie? Lots of dancing, of course! Unfortunately, most of the film is spent in the training, so instead of great dancing, we just get working out and small dance moves. Most of the dancing doesn’t happen until the end, leaving us only with sport cliches, and that is unacceptable. Also, the actual format of the competition means that the coolest dancing we see happen well before the finale, in the preliminary round.

A dance movie without a lot of dancing? What a mistake.

The crowd at the Battle of the Year events must be pretty bored. I think there was five shots of them throughout the film just standing around doing the wave.

Wait. This is a hip-hop competition that takes place in France, with the audience constantly doing the wave? Damn, that country is literally living 20 years in the past.

I sometimes watch the worse movies. Today’s excuse was going to the rental store, finding out what came out on DVD that day, and picking the weirdest looking one. Shit, I used to watch /every/ new movie that came out on DVD, regardless of how low budget or weird, so I need to do it every so often to get back to my roots.

Well, this time I picked StreetDance. It looked like some bad cross between You Got Served and Step Up. That’s right, a cheap knock off of those two. You know its going to be ridiculous. Or cliche. But as a dance movie, it could secretly be the grail we are all looking or.

These are the bad guys. You know it, because they wear (and are?) black.

Oh yeah. This movie is totally British. Set and filmed in that UK.

A street dance crew, called Jay 2.0 (I believe) is attempting to become the best street dance crew in the UK. Seriously. It opens with their audition to the contest, or whatever. The Surge is a dance crew that has won the last few years, and they are the bad guys. Grr them.

Well, after their performance, they find out that Jay (Ukweli Roach), their leader and obvious name inspiration is going to quit dancing. He has too many responsibilities, and decided to quit right after they qualify. Da fuq? His girlfriend in the group is shocked, and then becomes the defacto leader. Unfortunately, Carly (Nichola Burley) also loses their rehearsal space, and has very little money, so they are basically screwed.

Well, Carly finds herself accidentally in a big ballet studio to inquire about renting space and the cost. Well, Helena (Charlotte Rampling) is worried about her students losing passion in their dance. They can ballet the shit out of some dance, but they don’t have that desire anymore. After watching the crew perform, she agrees to let them use the space for free, only if she will take on five of their dancers.

What?! Ballet and street dance? Can these two art forms interact? Can she teach them how the streets move? Can she incorporate their skillset to make their street dancing even more off the chain? Will she fall out of love with Jay, who is a liar, and fall in love with Tomas (Richard Winsor) the main ballet guy? Yes.

Can you guess if these people are street dancers or ballet dancers?

Fun fact about this movie. It was released theatrically in 2010 in the UK, and came out on DVD by 2011. But not in America. It didn’t come out to the US on DVD until Aug 20, 2013. THREE YEARS after it was released theatrically. I feel slighted by our old country parents.

As expected, a lot of this movie was pretty shitty. Cliches everywhere. They actually ended the movie on a freeze frame of two people raising their arms in the area together, in a moment of triumph. The plot is not unique. They had a food fight when the two groups weren’t friends yet, only so they could throw food for 3D purposes.

But something else happened. The dancing was fantastic. Some of these dance movies I get even more pissed off when I don’t think the dancing is cool enough. This dancing was great. The final dance where they figured out their dances and their knew style to give a unique performance was insanely sexy. It incorporated the street+ballet dance far better than Step Up.

In addition to the great dancing, I liked each and every song on the sound track. A lot of them were mixes with older and newer elements, perhaps creating the theme for the whole film. I enjoyed every song. Here was one of my favorites: Ironik – Tiny Dancer (Hold Me Closer).

Shit. A good soundtrack? Good dancing? Shitty plot and acting. Well. There ya go. Also, the main girl was one of the three chicks in Donkey Punch. I was very amused to find her name already tagged on my website (and shocked).

So I just learned that Step Up: Revolution is not the original name of this movie. Nope, originally it was called Step Up 4: Miami Heat. Wow. If anything, I can say that they did a good thing with the name change.

After all, who doesn’t love a good revolution? Wait. One second. Turns out people in power don’t like revolutions. Hmm. This title could be a controversy then.

Well that is good, after all, who doesn’t love a good controversy? Oh what’s that? Shy people hate controversy? That is fine, we can ignore shy people. They generally aren’t going to be dancers anyways.

Pictured above: No shy people

Miami has a lot of things going for it. One of those things is that people like to live there. But in this world, they have this crazy never heard of thing before called Flash Mobs. But instead of a regular flash mob, it is the “same people” every time, and they are a public disturbance, because they are the only type of Flash Mob. Heck, they even call themselves The Mob, for creativity purposes.

Lead by Eddy (Misha Gabriel Hamilton, who has past roles as Dancer and Detroit Dancer) and Sean (Ryan Guzman, first role!), they rock the streets and get them recorded and put on the youtubes. Why Youtube?

Because for whatever reason, they are in a competition to be the first to get 10,000,000 views on a video (or overall their videos? Not sure). Because the first to do that gets $100,000, so they do these dance flash mobs to get hits. But what if they can turn their mobbing into a message?

Emily (Kathryn McCormick, formerly Dancer, Audience Member 1, and Sexy Girl 1) is in Miami to audition for some fancy dance company, but her father, Mr. Anderson (Peter Gallagher, yes he gets no real name) doesn’t really approve. In fact, he is a real estate grabber, for his new and fancy hotels, and he plans on buying up a huge plot of land in Miami to renovate and make awesome luxury spots. Turns out this involves some of the best hang out spots and homes of some of our main cast, and that is bad.

So after she secretly joins their group (because she needs to learn to let her wild side out more in her classical /modern dance stuff, by adding some street moves), they come up with the idea to protest this stuff, making them become bigger and more powerful. But I mean, can dancing stop commerce? Also featuring Cleopatra Coleman as their DJ and Stephen Boss as another main dancer.

Just imagine how uncomfortable standing in the middle of that would be. Closeness on an escalator, gross!

You know what, there are a lot of plot problems in this movie. I could ignore them, but fuck that, lets talk about them.

First off, the youtube competition makes no sense. Everytime they mention it, I cringed because they made it seem like they didn’t even know how the internet worked. Was a vague competition, and tons of videos already have over 10,000,000 views in real life. Similarly, a video wouldn’t take months to reach that high either.

Secondly, what the fuck Emily plot line. Really? She needs to add more fire and passion to her dances? And so she starts doing hip hop crazy stuff on the streets? How is that not pretty much the entire plot from the first Step Up?

Anyways, this is a dance movie though. That is what is important! Well, first off on that, I hated the music. Pretty much every time. The best DJ in Miami my ass, what was that shit?

The dancing to the music? I wasn’t impressed. I am pretty sure I have seen dancing like that before, and well, it wasn’t as cool watching it in this movie. The only dance scene I really liked was the above fedora/business scene, their first protest dance. But hey, I might have just liked that more for the outfits and props.

Should I have complained that the movie theater staff never came out and flash mobbed our theater? Probably.