Jan 4: That's Dancing! Modeled on the That's Entertainment! franchise, this featured famous Hollywood dancers introducing clips of classic dance scenes from the movies. This one was improved by not being limited to the MGM catalog, as the TE movies were. They included clips from RKO movies, which you really couldn't make a documentary about Hollywood dancing without. There's a good segment on Busby Berkeley, one on ballet in the movies narrated by Baryshnikov, and my favorite (of course!) was Sammy Davis Jr. narrating a segment about Bill Robinson. They start the segment by showing a clip of seven-year-old Sammy dancing in Rufus Jones for President, and then contemporary Sam does the same dance on a replica of the set! Even if the rest of the movie had been a bust, it would have been worth it for that.
On the downside, That's Dancing! was made in 1985 and therefore included far too much Flashdance. There's a hilarious scene in the beginning where Gene Kelly is standing on an outdoor basketball court talking about street dance, while a bunch of kids breakdance around him. I seriously thought he was going to bust a move for a minute there. That would have been so awesome.
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