Free event: Pina

With films like Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams and the upcoming The Great Gatsby by Baz Luhrmann, 3D is film is exploring more than mainstream kids movies and action hero stories these days. This is a profile of the choreographer Pina Bausch, completed by director Wim Wenders after her untimely death in 2009.

Pina (in 3D)
Friday, November 30, 2012
7:00 p.m.
Univ. of Chicago Film Studies Center
5811 South Ellis Avenue
Cobb Hall 306

Step Up Revolution

This is part of a group of movies called Step Up which has dancing as part of its plot; this is the fourth one and I have not seen any of the others.  The movies often follow a basic formula: the dancers come from urban backgrounds, there is a romantic couple that is divided by the plot of the story, there is some other urban issue, but there is always a happy ending.  And of course, lots of dancing!

In Revolution, the most central character is Sean (Ryan Guzman) whose dayjob is as a waiter at an upscale Miami hotel owned by real estate mogul Bill Anderson (Peter Gallagher). Sean and his friends, which include a few who work with him at the hotel, have an underground flash mob dance group called The Mob. They currently remain anonymous and are trying to win an internet contest by getting the most viewer hits on their videos.

Sean sees a pretty girl at the beach, Emily Anderson (Kathryn McCormick), neither at first knowing their respective connections to Bill Anderson. When Sean learns who her father is, he keeps that fact from his friends, especially when Anderson fires Sean's friend Eddie for being late and Eddie becomes resentful and in a dance segment attacks Anderson as being a fatcat.

Later the friends learn that Anderson is buying up riverside property to develop more hotels, which currently house small businesses by local citizens. The Mob decides to move their target from winning a contest to making a statement, and try to draw attention to the needs of the small business owners and local residents, and sabotage Anderson's meetings about his real estate development.

Mao's Last Dancer

This film chronicles the real story of Li Cunxin, a male ballet dancer from Communist China who came to the U.S.  Mao's Last Dancer was directed by Bruce Beresford and costars Bruce Greenwood, Joan Chen, Kyle MacLachlan, and dancer Chi Cao in the lead role.