Watching Strictly, damn good television, like Bakeoff, but it's interesting watching the amateurs (most of whom have no movement or rhythm, like me) as against the professionals (with those fixed smiles but body movement) - then compare them with the sublime Fred (the Top Hat routine shooting dancers was stunning) and Ginger (every move absolutely perfect).

Donny Osmond - an excellent judge - book him full-time.

Bruno (an old friend - check out some stories in my autobiogs) is becoming a caricature.

Judy Murray has absolutely no rhythm at all has she? Wooden. Rigor Mortis was very kind. I thought she's been worst two weeks running. How on earth can she teach tennis?

JK2006 wrote:
Watching Strictly, damn good television, like Bakeoff, but it's interesting watching the amateurs (most of whom have no movement or rhythm, like me) as against the professionals (with those fixed smiles but body movement) - then compare them with the sublime Fred (the Top Hat routine shooting dancers was stunning) and Ginger (every move absolutely perfect).


Another comparison with the old RKO movies - Astaire always insisted on showing the whole dance, the whole bodies, on screen. It's how you judge a dance. They're DESIGNED to be watched whole. Strictly lacks the courage to do so, constantly cutting even though it makes judging a dance barely possible. The excuse of course is that the TV screen is smaller and you need close ups, but just watch an old Astaire movie now on TV - there's no problem whatsover (and anyway, screens are getting bigger all the time). What TV directors (who seem to be getting more dogmatic by the year) fail to appreciate is that are two, not one, ways to convey movement on the screen: one, true, is to move the camera, but the other way, which they have no faith in, is to show things moving. You don't really need more than, say, two medium cuts and one close up, if you must, to show a Strictly dance, but instead of that they average a cut every few seconds, which is just stupid.

Thank you Pru; I was hoping for the return of your Warning Spoiler posts (I have no interest in X Factor spoilers if they could ever exist). As I said in another thread, watching Top Hat and The Gay Divorcee, for the first time I was captivated by the camera work on the dance numbers. The positioning of the lens was as perfect as the dance movements. Fred and Ginger owed a lot to their camera teams (and directors and editors).

But also the backing dancers were superb. How about the Top Hat number when Fred pretends to shoot dead all his dancers? Not one was out of time (a fraction of a second after the Fred "shot"). Astaire never got it wrong either. The dancers all "died" brilliantly, ending up in the perfect crouching "dead" position, again captured by the camera. Not just accurate syncopation but quite extraordinary level finishes (remember - not everyone is the same height and the camera had to take that into account, the angle of the shot, as well as the dancers getting to precisely the correct level). I literally gasped out loud at how not one in the entire team got one note wrong throughout.

Including, of course, the magical music.

And they hadn't even invented colour in 1935.

Incidentally, personally I think the two absolute no talenters are Judy and Scott; they almost find it impossible to WALK with rhythm.