Tag: dance movies

CATEGORY IS… – Choreography

The May miniseries CATEGORY IS… chugs along this week with Choreography! You know we love talking about dance on film, so this was a category we couldn’t pass up discussing. We’re talking about the three (early) years that Oscar once awarded Dance Direction, when the lines might blur between choreography and fight choreography, iconic musical numbers throughout movie history, when there might have been showdowns between dueling worthy dance movies, “Shipoopi,” So You Think You Can Dance, and the ten films we would retroactively honor with a choreography Oscar.

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380 – The Company

After the tremendous success and Oscar comeback for Robert Altman with 2001’s Gosford Park, the idiosyncratic director delivered a more understated work for what would become his second-to-last film, 2003’s The Company. Set within Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet, the film follows a dance company both on and offstage, all in their sometimes less than glamour pursuit of artistry. With Neve Campbell as the star ballerina and Malcolm McDowell as the company’s boisterous artistic director, the film earned positive reviews but its subtleties make for minor Altman that seldom earned enthusiastic consensus.

This episode, we talk about Altman’s possible second place in Director for Gosford Park and his honorary Oscar in 2006. We also discuss Campbell developing the project and pursuing Altman, the payoff from the film casting real dancers, and the film’s shoehorned romance with James Franco.

Topics also include “Maloja Snake,” Diane Warren: Relentless, and dancing in the rain. 

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