CENTER STAGE review

I was feeling down today. Don’t really know why. Just the doldrums I suppose. I just didn’t feel very good.

I’m not miraculously cured at the moment. I’m still not all the way better, but ya know sometimes you get the feeling that there is a siege going on, and when I feel like that it’s time to leave the cave and do something.

I called up all my friends, only to not be able to reach anyone. Being gone for part of Memorial Day weekend generally means that you are excluded from any and all activities for the duration of the vacation. I think a lot of it has to do with the debauchery and exhaustion I have sustained from Moriarty’s 230th Birthday Party in Los Angeles last Friday night, sandwiched between two long flights and very little sleep all the way around.

Then there was the realization that my dang CONAN THE BARBARIAN special edition dvd was being held hostage by the Postal Service on account of the holiday. I couldn’t get my car inspected. Two stores I tried to visit were closed on account of the holiday, and then the temperature soared to around 103 degrees according to one bank temperature read out.

Like I said... I just wasn’t having a good day. I went to Threadgills, had my salad and steamed broccoli and mint hibiscus tea... and that didn’t put my spirits any higher.

Father Geek noticed my attitude and lack of inspiration and asked if there was a movie I wanted to see.

So I drug out the Austin Chronicle and began scouring about their movie listings.

I’d seen everything. There wasn’t a film playing town that I hadn’t seen. God I hate that. I hate it when you’ve seen everything but the ‘one star’ films. I noticed that the Chronicle had rated CENTER STAGE as 1 star out of five.

I started giggling as I began thinking of my live chat Newman, FLMLVR... and how much he loved the film. So I started to read the review, but as soon as I saw Nicholas Hytner... and realized... hey, wait a second, this is the bloke that might be directing the long in development hell MIRAMAX adaptation of CHICAGO from Broadway to film.

Other than Peter Gallagher, I didn’t recognize a soul in the cast, but they all had that sneaky ever so Ballet Body types. Not only that, they all could do helluva great balletic moves. My god... you mean, the film production didn’t hire Keanu Reeves, and dangled him from a billion wires, then spend $12 million in wire removal to give the illusion of fluid balletic movement?

Hmmmm.... One star from the local paper, or some bloke in Arizona calling himself FLMLVR...

So I went with the geek route.

Boy am I glad I did.

I didn’t like CENTER STAGE. I didn’t really like CENTER STAGE. I absolutely fell in love with the film.

Why?

What makes a geek like me fall head over heels for a film about a bunch of Ballet folks struggling to get a career?

Well, first off... I have an insane musical fetish.

Have you ever sat in the backyard, or upon a cliff or at a park and just marveled at how birds fly? I mean... God it looks so easy, so lovely. Can you imagine the elegance required to gracefully float upon the air?

To move unencumbered with cement feet? You see, prior to my accident, I loved to dance. Now, I wasn’t skinny, I was shaped more like Belushi in THE BLUES BROTHERS... and I loved to dance. Just the sheer joy, the emotion of letting your body just flow with the music. Picturing steps in your mind that you saw on videos, that you saw Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire make effortless... and give them life within your own body.

To an observer I probably sucked, but in my mind, in my head and at least in my partners’ eyes I didn’t see a look of pity. Instead I saw the excitement of dancing.

As a young boy here in Austin I studied gymnastics, swimming and dance. I adored it. To me, this is what you studied to become a superhero. As my body type changed, I tried to fight it, I’d win 50 lb victories here and there... but when that dolly hit me...

I lost my sense of balance. I was scared of going down stairs. All of a sudden I was struck with acrophobia and vertigo. Though it’s been 4 years since the accident, I’m only just now regaining a more advance sense of balance, but I’m so heavy now. I will lose it, it’ll take time, but I will lose it.

Sorry about that, I got distracted.

I went into CENTER STAGE with very little expectations or desires other than to see the primary purpose of a ‘dance’ film realized... and that was to see some excellent dancing.

I was not disappointed.

Now... this isn’t THE RED SHOES by Powell and Pressberger. It isn’t a surreal work of art like that. This film attempts to be anchored firmly here in the world of gravity and reality.

My only regret with the film is that Peter Gallagher’s character wasn’t being played by Mikhail Baryshnikov who, I felt would’ve been the absolute perfect person for that role. That’s not really a fault with the film. Peter is very good as the character he plays, but... having someone as iconic as Mikhail in that position would’ve been grand. Besides, I miss Baryshnikov. God, remember when he defected? Man, that was amazing.

Now the story is a simple ‘Chorus Line’ / “We’re throwing a show and who will be our stars?” plotline. As a result, if you know the rules of the dance/musical, then you instantly know who will be picked at the end of the film to be... the elite.

But, ya know... sometimes a film isn’t about SIXTH SENSE twists or ‘She has a penis’ moments. Sometimes, it’s about the journey these characters take.

One of the most beautiful moments in the film has nothing to do with dance. It has to do with an instructor placing her hand on the ballet bar, and telling a student that ‘This is home’.

That moment, for that student... that was the defining statement. That simple... ever so easy bit of knowledge that she needed to unlock and dump her baggage. And that character becomes magic after that.

For another, it’s just discovering a different angle to dance. It’s merely feeling the music, expressing your emotions, letting go. For so long she had worked so hard on the individual techniques that she forgot that you can’t make poetry by concentrating on the individual letters, it’s about phrases.

Still another brilliant technician, it’s about learning who she is.

Scattered amongst these stories are the typical school romances and hardships.

But NEVER FORGOTTEN is dance and the celebration that is ballet. The grace and beauty. Watching these engenues watching a beautiful production and seeing the longing in their eyes... that look of watching the beauty and expression they wished they could live to express for themselves to onlookers from around the world.

The cast is the magic for the film for me. I mean here in this film are faces and talents that we have never seen before. Fresh and new. And perhaps it was the double feature trailers of BOYS AND GIRLS and LOSER that pointed this out so strongly. I don’t want to see the same people in the same things every time. Every now and again it’s the greatest thing in the world to look up on that screen and see a whole host of living breathing artists that I’ve never seen.

If you love films like CHORUS LINE, DIRTY DANCING, FOOTLIGHT PARADE, and so on... GO RUN SEE THIS MOVIE.

After several weeks of films leaving me emotionally empty... it’s nice to find one that lifted me up and filled me with awe. Not from a bigger better explosion or jump.... but with a beautiful leap and twist. That moment where they seem almost on the verge of escaping reality. God.... I loved this movie.

You know, it's stunning to me how closed minded so many of you 'machismo male' types are. Does someone have to be 'gay' to like a musical? Oh gosh... Hmmm, let's see... You would prefer to watch Tom Cruise scale a big rock flexing his muscles, watching his hair flow in slow motion, but watching a room filled with 60 of the finest female forms stretch their legs over their heads causing amazing camel toe would denote you as being a 'gay male'? Hmmmm.... Interesting. Oh... but wait, there's more. These women are dressed in skin tight leotards showing off pert nipples and perfectly muscled asses? Eeeeeek, to look at them must turn you gay. No no, I will be secure in my masculinity by watching men shoot guns at one another. So... you got something you wanna say?