Open thread 6/13/2025
Funny thing, but it’s not always easy for dancers to walk and look casual. Gene Kelly does it masterfully here. And watch his leap onto the post at 0:54. Amazing:
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
Funny thing, but it’s not always easy for dancers to walk and look casual. Gene Kelly does it masterfully here. And watch his leap onto the post at 0:54. Amazing:
Dance is almost always an example of visual storytelling.
I was rewatching Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” Not his best, but not bad. Near the end there is a long scene shot during a big symphony performance at the Albert Hall. The music is the whole sound track, but it was only when there is a shot of Jimmy Stewart & Doris Day talking to each, and the viewer can’t hear any of their speech, that it dawned on me that the entire stretch of 10 minutes had no dialog at all. Visual storytelling.
Hey!
Mullahs there!
If y’all don’t feel like dancin’ this morning, let Thomas Tallis be your Huckleberry!
I wonder if the current historic Israeli counterattack against Iran will take the wind out of the “No Kings” anti-Trump demos scheduled for tomorrow.
Those demos will be a test of the left’s resolve to put bodies in the streets.
I forecast fizzle.
I’ve seen that move a number of times
It’s the perfect balance on spotting the landing that impresses me
Almost like a camera editing trick.
Wonderfully elegant
Yes that ‘no kings’ is all wet
There is another Kelly leap that I remember, from the movie The 3 Musketeers. It’s a sword fight scene in a tavern – a bar fight – and Kelly piles over the bar, gets up from the floor behind it, and then ‘Doop!’ simply jumps up onto the top of the bar, a two-legged standing vertical jump about 3½-4 ft, with that same seemingly effortless dancer’s grace. He had tremendous leg strength.
He’s a lion but with one finger the lion tamer stopped him in his tracks and made him leap onto that railing. It was almost enough to make me want to go out and buy a pack of cigarettes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EnWl35OtRU#ddg-play
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Gene Kelly’s foray into television sketch comedy, 1971. Cancelled after thirteen episodes. Of the eleven performers on the stage, Michael Lembeck (now age 76) and Pat Finley (now age 86) survive.
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Funny, but a depiction of performing in 1971 does not seem that remote. To an old man in 1971, how remote did a silent film released in 1917 seem?