Monday, December 9, 2013

Favorite Movies and a Dance

It is Day Nine at Kickin' it Old Skool blog-a-thon, and today's prompt is to share our favorite movies.This is a terrible question for me. While I enjoy movies occasionally I don't watch a lot of them, and when I do I can't remember much about them. I need the help of people I've seen movies with to recall much about them. That said, I might mention a couple of guilty-pleasure, old-fashioned movie musicals and also some random ones I happen to think of right now. My list would for sure be different a week from now, and not because I'd seen a new film, but because I can't remember what I've seen!

Movie musicals
Singing in the Rain
Funny Face  (Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire)

Only now, while putting up the IMDB links did I find out these were by the same director, And, I just learned that he directed the movie musical version of The Little Prince that I recall from my childhood! I must put that on my Netflix list pronto.

And then a couple of movies I can remember adoring:
Smoke Signals and Moonrise Kingdom

And a movie I found gripping and human and complex:
Black Book


And now today's entry, part of my "teensy bit of writing each day in December." I went dancing yesterday afternoon and...
First Dance

He invited me to the floor, and I didn't know him, nor did I recognize his face as familiar in my years of moving through Argentine tango salons. I was barely aware until we began that the music would be the uptempo and energetic milonga. Had I known, I would have hesitated. It's a good thing the way he invited me felt reassuring, and with the first steps he removed the worries I have of dancing a milonga with a partner before I know how he dances the tango. Milonga is a tricky dance to make enjoyable. Most leaders have a less fluency in this dance, limited vocabulary of moves and even less the musicality of phrasing in their bodies, legs, feet. I could feel his thin frame moving, hear his breath in my ear. That's what I noticed first. When I write these things it makes it seem the tango is a very intimate dance, and while two human bodies are very close it is not about that at all to me. It is about the collaboration and improvisation: how two people can listen closely to the music and to each other while navigating through a crowded room.

6 comments:

  1. "Smoke Signals"... an excellent movie! I need to watch that one again. Love the "traffic report"... :)

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  2. I love the story of The Little Prince, but I think to me it will always remain a early childhood memory, in French and in the form of a book. I wonder if the movie is able to do justice to the book?

    I'll have to explore the other titles. Now I'm curious about Smoke Signals, I don't think I've watched it yet.

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  3. Doh! I forgot to add "Singin' In The Rain"!! So many luscious costumes. Gene Kelly is a dream in that film. :)

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  4. Oh I think I need a musical marthon. I love imagining I can dance despite all evidence to the contrary. ;-)

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  5. Oh my God, I loved The Little Prince! Thing is, I saw it long after I'd read the book. Years after. I'd read the book several times over and then saw that this movie existed and got my hands on it and was blown away at how it pretty much exactly matched my own imaginings of the everyone and everything in the story. What an amazing film.

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  6. I love that you could still come up with a few Helen, and it's so true that the answer to this question could easily change at any time. And that looking thins up on IMDb can lead to more movie watching :)

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