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Better Living Through Circuitry (1999)
A Digital Odyssey into Electronic Dance Culture
Filmmaker(s): Jon Reiss

A documentary about the Electronic Dance movement of the '90s. It is the first such full-length film on the topic. It was produced by Cleopatra Pictures and Entertainment Group, presided by Cleopatra Records founder Brian Perera. The film features interviews with BT, The Crystal Method, Electric Skychurch, Genesis P-Orridge, Frankie Bones, DJ Spooky, Roni Size, and DJ Keoki.

Honest Music, Dishonest Business trends are often shaped by strange overlaps in market forces. You have to have a steady stream of “artists” who are compelled to do their thing, driven primarily by an urge to express. We have that in this music, because the...


Published July 14, 2023
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Moulin Rouge! (2001)
No laws. No limits. One rule. Never fall in love.
Filmmaker(s): Baz Luhrmann

A celebration of love and creative inspiration takes place in the infamous, gaudy and glamorous Parisian nightclub, at the cusp of the 20th century. A young poet, who is plunged into the heady world of Moulin Rouge, begins a passionate affair with the club's most notorious and beautiful star.

Glorious Absinthe Prostitution film is crafted of many common narrative elements: The rich cad versus the poor lad for the girl (with the conceit that love is unavailable to the wealthy 'unreal' class) The girl who must renounce her love to save her lover (only to lose...


Published May 21, 2023
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The Band Wagon (1953)
Get Aboard!
Filmmaker(s): Vincente Minnelli

A Broadway artiste turns a faded film star's comeback vehicle into an artsy flop.

42nd Street in the Rain colour musical film is a strange beast. Hollywood explored many of its possibilities. And people did buy lots of tickets. But until very recently, musicals were all but dead. That’s because they were never able to create a self sustaining...


Published May 17, 2023
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Annie Get Your Gun (1950)
Biggest musical under the sun!
Filmmaker(s): George Sidney

Gunslinger Annie Oakley romances fellow sharpshooter Frank Butler as they travel with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

Missing could have been a miracle. It could have featured Judy Garland who in her prime was the most committed performer (with talent) in movies. She prepared the way for Brando. It could have been arranged by Busby Berkeley, who in his prime invented the notion...


Published April 4, 2023
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Animal Crackers (1930)
The maddest comics of them all!
Filmmaker(s): Victor Heerman

The well-known explorer and hunter Captain Spaulding has just returned from Africa, and is being welcomed home with a lavish party at the estate of influential society matron Mrs. Rittenhouse when a valuable painting goes missing. The intrepid Captain Spaulding attempts to solve the crime with the help of his silly secretary Horatio Jamison, while sparring with the anarchic Signor Emanuel Ravelli and his nutty sidekick The Professor.

Missed Marks periodically revisit the Marx films to recharge my own desire for creative anarchy. This time around, I became more aware of how unclever this is as film, and how clever they got later in the medium as fast learners. Its not anarchy yet. This...


Published April 4, 2023
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An American in Paris (1951)
What a joy! It's M-G-M's Technicolor musical!
Filmmaker(s): Vincente Minnelli

Jerry Mulligan is an exuberant American expatriate in Paris trying to make a reputation as a painter. His friend Adam is a struggling concert pianist who's a long time associate of a famous French singer, Henri Baurel. A lonely society woman, Milo Roberts, takes Jerry under her wing and supports him, but is interested in more than his art.

<strong>Sienna Shoes Red Shoes' changed the world of film. It was deeply self-referential (a performance about a performance with the two enfolded) and had the extra advance of sometimes making the camera a dancer. So Gene Kelly tried his own ‘Shoes’. MGM refused to...


Published April 2, 2023
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Alice in Wonderland (1972)
Made in Wonderland, the most magical musical of all!
Filmmaker(s): William Sterling

An all-star cast highlights this vibrant musical adaptation of Lewis Carroll's immortal tale. One day, plucky young Alice follows a white rabbit down a hole and discovers a world of bizarre characters.

Words Without Misunderstanding am an Alice obsessive. I recently saw the Depp/Burton project and was horrified at the opportunity missed. So I turned to this, surprised that I had not seen it before. This at least has a couple advantages. Though far less colorful and lacking...


Published March 8, 2023
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Billy Elliott (2000)
Inside every one of us is a special talent waiting to come out. The trick is finding it.
Filmmaker(s): Stephen Daldry

County Durham, England, 1984. The miners' strike has started and the police have started coming up from Bethnal Green, starting a class war with the lower classes suffering. Caught in the middle of the conflict is 11-year old Billy Elliot, who, after leaving his boxing club for the day, stumbles upon a ballet class and finds out that he's naturally talented. He practices with his teacher Mrs. Wilkinson for an upcoming audition in Newcastle-upon Tyne for the royal Ballet school in London.

Battle Dancer is a replacement comment. Though the dance was passable here, the story is so vapid and unembellished, I sat there looking for another movie. And I found one, battling to get out. It was clever and true, overlooked because of the mediocrity placed in...


Published August 27, 2023
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Lady Maiko (2014)
What does it take to be a lady?
Filmmaker(s): Masayuki Suō

Country bumpkin Haruko only ever wanted to become a maiko, an apprentice geisha. Initially rebuffed for lack of references, Haruko's strong accent intrigues a linguistics professor, who undertakes to coach her.

Adaptation story itself is about adapting from a not ideal Japanese state to the purest state, a Geisha. In Japan, the rural north is considered to consist of country bumpkins, something like in the US we associate with the South. A Geisha’s training includes many...


Published February 24, 2023
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August Rush (2007)
An incredible journey moving at the speed of sound.
Filmmaker(s): Kirsten Sheridan

Lyla and Louis, a singer and a musician, fall in love, but are soon compelled to separate. Lyla is forced to give up her newborn but unknown to her, he grows up to become a musical genius.

Yellow Bricks Heard are three kinds of film that I value and treat differently: those who truly leverage dance, space or sound. I have not yet found one that exploits mathematical space, and would add that when it appears, probably from Ruiz and Greenaway who...


Published December 24, 2022
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