Friday, March 24, 2006

Tuesdays with Zorro

One of these days I'll write a movie about a filmmaker who goes back to high school to teach inner-city kids how to write popular screenplays. You know, the basic stuff: teenage girls using their hairbrushes to sing along to a 30-year-old song, and the obligatory makeover in which a nerdy looking hottie becomes less nerdy looking. Oh, and just imagine... a montage in which the students learn how to create a montage!

Last night offered a sneak preview of Take the Lead. Antonio Banderas plays an instructor who is bored of preparing rich kids for the annual ballroom dancing competition, and volunteers to teach dance in an urban high school setting.

That picture (click to enlarge) pretty much says it all: work on enhancing your physique and Spanish heritage, and you too can spend your workdays dancing with a blonde lady who's way more attractive than Melanie Griffith.

This is another of those films that suffers from overediting, leaving in only the crowd pleasing dance scenes and omitting little things, like why this guy is being so generous with his money and time, and why everybody seems to buy into the whole dance-is-life routine. But on the surface it isn't bad, and much appreciated on a night when I needed some escapism.

55 Fiction Friday just wants to cuddle.


How does one negotiate with an exiled child prince running a Third World militia group? Using my UN contacts, I arranged for some Western pampering at the nearest city hotel.

Meeting shortly after breakfast, I laid out some policy suggestions.

“You cannot tell me what to do,” he snarled, his breath smelling of Cookie Crisp.

3 comments:

Neel Mehta said...

It was worth seeing, though a big part of that was the "free" in "free sneak preview."

As a fellow new attorney, I can tell you with full confidence that you cannot afford Netflix. I've got something even better: the public library. It's like Netflix, only free.

Here in Las Vegas, they put new DVD titles in their database long before they're available, so you reserve them in advance. Right now I have Flightplan, Chicken Little, Corpse Bride, Walk the Line, and The Island. I won't have time to watch those before Friday, but who cares? It's free. See if you can find something similar in Moral Turpitudeland.

Oscar Madison said...

Why I read your blog, Reason # 26:

"a montage in which the students learn how to create a montage..."

Neel Mehta said...

Well, now that you have Netflix, I can tell you how it would be better than the library:

1. No due dates and late fees.
2. Everything comes to you.
3. See what you want in the order you want to see it, not the order it becomes available.
4. You can say, "Oh, I Netflixed it" rather than "Oh, I libraried it."