I know I'm a bit tired, but I fell asleep twice during that dance number, which I'd rather have had replaced with actual plot-related interaction between characters. I'm not saying it had to be replaced with dialogue -- they could have danced or sung the interaction. But it felt so gratuitous to me -- just an "Oh, dear, we have all these ideas and are almost at the end of the movie!"

ita, have you seen The Red Shoes? Because if I'm remembering correctly, I think Gene Kelly was inspired by the long ballet in that film and he wanted to do one too. He had to fight for it too, because the studio thought ending a movie with a hugely long dance piece with no singing or dialogue was commercial death.

Edited to say that I'm a little partial to the Gershin ballet myself.

Am I missing the bit where it says where the music is from? Is it ripped from the movie itself? Is it from the original recordings?

He had to fight for it too, because the studio thought ending a movie with a hugely long dance piece with no singing or dialogue was commercial death.

How did it pan out, commercially and critically? I mean, I got nothing against the principle, just that...nothing happens.

Wow. This is the Netflix summary of An American In Paris...

Opportunistic American artist Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly) -- once a struggling painter -- lives in the City of Light enjoying the patronage of a well-heeled, amorous American gallery owner. Until, that is, he meets and falls desperately in love with a willowy French street urchin (Leslie Caron, in her big-screen debut) who happens to be engaged to Mulligan's best friend. Seven Academy Awards went to this tour-de-force movie musical.

Am I wrong in thinking:

• she's not a gallery owner
• she's not an urchin
• she's not engaged to his best friend?

For varying values of "she."

Every song in the movie is a Gershwin song. The ending ballet is set to Gershwin's 'An American in Paris' instrumental piece. They wrote the movie to fit the songs.

I think the movie was very successful at the time and won the Best Picture Oscar.

I just read that 6'2 Christian Bale dropped down to 120 pounds for The Machinist. That's going to make it extra hard to watch.

Saw that small photo in EW. I'm not sure I can watch, and what's more I feel it's my moral duty to smack that guy really hard (also, his director). It's just gross and unnecessary. I don't care if it's a movie about starving people; we got enough real starving people in this world already.

Sort of like, you can never cast Daniel Day-Lewis as Luke Skywalker, because at a key moment he would actually cut off his own hand, in order to 'feel the truth' of Luke's handlessness. Friends don't let friends immerse themselves that far in the Method.

Well, if there was surgery to replace the hand once filming was done, I'd see your analogy. Even if he didn't get full motor skills back.

I have no idea if CB needed to drop the weight to do justice to the role, nor what health problems he's going to take on as a result. He'll still probably average out healthier than your general eternally starving intermittently yo-yoing starlet.

I suppose they could have cast one of the actual starving people, but chances are the starving is the easy part, and the acting the challenge.

I saw the picture in EW too - -ick.

Also, why are the posts here suddenly too wide for my screen? Is it my computer? Or something else?

It was a long link in jimi's post -- I edited it.

At least the Batman role means Bale had to put on a lot of muscle weight after The Machinist. I'm sure the boomeranging can't be healthy in the long term, but he's probably not going to die of consumption now.

I saw Aliens vs. Predator this evening. Now, bearing in mind that my $5.50 was already well-spent in seeing Ben Affleck smacked in the head with a snow shovel, I enjoyed it enough. I think the worst of the reviews dipped too far into hyperbole regarding the Alien's appearance and the Predators' fighting acumen. Both seemed fine to me. I did have problems with Lance Henrikson's Aliens 3-contradicting appearance, the idea of Aliens having been on earth for millenia, and both the heroes and the Queen Alien apparently being able to outrun a small thermonuclear explosion.

I was amused by Raoul Bova surviving through 3/4 of the movie for no discernible reason aside from Joss' "Too Pretty to Die" hypothesis. But of course, this being the Aliens franchise, being a male model gets trumped by being the hot, badass woman with the most common sense (but not enough to avoid the situation altogether) .

Also saw trailers for Blade: Trinity and Taxi (no Christian Kane though), both of which look quite enjoyable.

Anybody know anything about the remake of Zatoichi? It's playing in DC; should I make the effort to see it?

The Takeshi one? Absolutely. It's a gorgeous film and deserves a big screen.