Next Year in... Las Vegas??
Even Depression, it seems, must come to an end. I may have been bouncing back and forth between Busby Berkeley and Step Up for the last month of so, but all of that has been part of the larger series of Depression/Comedy that we've been exploring since January. The Busby Berkeley "musicals" of the 1930s were a direct product of that era, but I hope it has become obvious to everyone by now just how much the "Step Up" franchise owes to the Busby Berkeley model. While many film-makers over the decades have tried (with sporadic success) to emulate the "look" of a Busby Berkeley dance routine... ...the Step Up films have followed the tone, the structure and even specific plot-points of the earlier films. And they have been wildly popular and successful with audiences. Whatever one thinks of the music, the acting, or the complexities(!) of the plots, these films appear to have met a need with modern audiences. The response to them has been dramatic and u