Yes, it’s that time again. I’m making my list, checking it twice, and counting down the naughtiest and nicest videos of the year now drawing to a close. There are a lot of strong contenders, so as you have no doubt noticed this year’s list goes up to 11.

Speaking of which, the number 11 video on my top ten is one that surfaced only days ago. It is the work of Alex Karigan and Zac Hammer of the Amy Marshall Dance Company, none of whom I’d heard of before… but oh, I have now. I’m not sure how to preface this video other than to say that it caught me off-guard.

What can I say? I find it both cheese-tacular and totally irresistible. Right down to the goofy socks, raspberry leotards with the little rosettes at the neck, and the no-holds-barred lip-synching to a Mariah Carey holiday jingle that I had previously thought was annoying.

On the dancers’ YouTube channel, TheYahsInitiative, I read several well-meaning comments advising them to procure a Steadicam. I actually think the slightly-shaky-but-I’m-doing-my-best handheld camera technique is part of the video’s charm. Especially when the camera itself pirouettes, seemingly caught up in the terpsichorean reverie of it all.

So bravo, Alex and Zac. Don’t go changing to try and please me.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, after the most protracted virtual drumroll in history, here it is: my numero-uno favorite web video of the year 2010. Which by now may seem like a long time ago, but the hell with it.

Apparently xtranormal.com has been live on the web since 2008, but I didn’t encounter it until 2010. It’s a site that enables users to create animated video clips with stock characters. The user’s script is “spoken” by the characters via text-to-speech technology; the user can further manipulate the product with a limited shot selection and range of character movements. Pixar it ain’t — but as the following video proves, the constraints of the Xtranormal toolset can provide a unique brand of deadpan comedy.

Like most any other actor I have ever known, I have on innumerable occasions been obliged to carry out the conversation depicted in this video with remarkably few variations. The video cracked me up in part because it is auto-spoken by robots, but in much larger part because it’s true. We laugh as an alternative to weeping.

Back me up, fellow show folk — and while you’re at it, got any amusing, painful, or amusingly painful permutations of the dreaded so-what-have-I-seen-you-in chat? Put ‘em in a comment, whydontcha!

The moment you’ve all been waiting for has arrived. Here it is, the thrilling conclusion of the quiz from Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule which I began in the post before this one. Let’s get right to the action:

1. Best Film of 1979.
   Absolutely, definitely, unequivocally Manhattan.



2. Most realistic and/or sincere depiction of small-town life in the movies.
   The one that made the biggest impression on me was All the Real Girls.
3. Best horror movie creature (non-giant division).
   Hurh? How big can a creature be and still be “non-giant?” …Whatever, I’ll avoid making a call on that by going with the creepy little thing outside John Lithgow’s airplane window in Twilight Zone: The Movie. And yes, nerds, I’m aware that it was based on an episode of the old TV show where the passenger was played by William Shatner. I’ve seen it, and it’s not scary — the monster was, by the look of it, nothing more than a guy in a gorilla suit. That’s not menacing, it’s comical! In the Lithgow version, though, it’s this bug-eyed, slimy reptilian thing that zips around really fast and pops up right in your face. It looks like it really could claw apart the wing and bring down the plane. I was a kid when I saw the movie in the theatre, and that lizard thing freaked my shit out.
4. Second-favorite Francis Ford Coppola film.
   The Godfather (behind only The Godfather: Part II).
5. Name a one-off movie that could have produced a franchise you would have wanted to see.
   A tough one, because I’m a little weary of movie franchises. You know what? I think I could be psyched for a sequel to Heathers, updated to flip the bird to the pretensions of a later time period. Obviously you wouldn’t have the three Heathers anymore, but so what. All that’s important are the Veronica (Winona Ryder) and J.D. (Christian Slater) characters, and the misanthropic comedy. And yes, musical theatre nerds, I’m aware that they’re adapting Heathers into a Broadway musical. I’d be more intrigued by it if I weren’t depressed by the fact that the only new musicals that get produced on Broadway are stage adaptations of movies. It’s almost enough to make me wish Andrew Lloyd Webber would stumble across another book of poems. Almost. As for the show I predict will be daringly titled Heathers: The Musical, I’ll admit that I did get a kick out of the news that it will include a number called “I Love My Dead Gay Son.”
6. Favorite sequence from a Brian De Palma film.
   I’ve gotta say the prom humiliation/revenge sequence from Carrie. De Palma is sometimes guilty of over-indulging in cinematic flashiness, but the Carrie scene directly called for DePalma’s whole bag of movie magic tricks. And oh, did he bring it: He pulls out slow motion, swelling lyrical music, split screen, trippy kaleidoscopic image and sound editing, and his trademark buckets of blood (in an actual bucket, no less). Put it all together and you’ve got a mini-opera, a dream-turned-nightmare-turned-explosion-of-supernatural-vengeance. Bravura filmmaking, and totally badass.
7. Favorite moment in three-strip Technicolor.
   The dream ballet from Singin’ in the Rain.
   
8. Favorite Alan Smithee film.
   Where Alan Smithee credits are concerned, I think “favorite” is really not the right word. In any case, the only Smithee-credited film I’ve seen is the first segment of the afore-mentioned Twilight Zone: The Movie, on which the 2nd A.D. “smitheed” after actor Vic Morrow was killed during the filming of an action sequence.
9. Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) or Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau)?
   Excuse me? Crash all the way! I’m putting the signs down, Meat. Just follow the signs.
10. Best post-Crimes and Misdemeanors Woody Allen film.
    Bullets Over Broadway. See also the “Part I” post of this quiz re: Jennifer Tilly as Olive Neal.
11. Best Film of 1999.
    Magnolia, hands down.
12. Favorite movie tag line.
    The Fly. Concise, effective, and as it turned out, sticky enough to become part of the general pop culture lexicon.
13. Favorite B-movie western.
    Does Silverado count? Yeah. I say it does.
14. Overall, the author best served by movie adaptations of her or his work.
    Margaret Mitchell, since to my knowledge only the one book of hers was made into a movie.
15. Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) or Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard)?
    I at this time must invoke my right under the fifth amendment to avoid the possibility of, in a manner of speaking, incriminating myself, or at least revealing the depths of my cinematic illiteracy vis-a-vis Bringing Up Baby and My Man Godfrey.
16. Favorite musical cameo in a non-musical movie.
    The only one I can think of at the moment is Dooley Wilson’s iconic rendition of “As Time Goes By” in Casablanca.
17. Bruno (the character, if you haven’t seen the movie, or the film, if you have): subversive satire or purveyor of stereotyping?
    I haven’t seen it, so I’ll say subversive satire. From what I hear, seeing the movie might change my mind, though.
18. Five film folks, living or deceased, you would love to meet.
    I have a hard time answering this kind of question, for the extremely trite reason that there are so, so many people in the history of the movies whose work I admire greatly and whom I would love to meet. Therefore, these five feel quite arbitrary, because I could name dozens of others whom I’d be just as pleased to meet. Anyway, I’ll say Billy Wilder, Meryl Streep, Maggie Smith, Groucho Marx, and Peter O’Toole. The first three simply due to my profound admiration for their body of work, and the last two partly for the same reason but even more because were/are delightful raconteurs. Here’s a little example of the kind of anecdote I’d hope to hear, from a 1993 interview of O’Toole by Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” As the clip begins, he’s been talking about the filming of Lawrence of Arabia.

Bob Fosse‘s masterpiece isn’t merely a self-portrait: it’s a self-referendum, so revealing that it feels like an act of penance. One imagines that by surviving for another eight years after the film’s release, Fosse surprised himself. All That Jazz is fraught with an confessional urgency, as though his eventual death of a heart attack at age 60 were actually right around the corner – or indeed, already past.

The film establishes a netherworld meeting between Fosse alter ego Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider, in his finest performance) and a dulcet-voiced Angel of Death (Jessica Lange), and from there refers back to Gideon’s earthly life and its merits and demerits. The glib assessment would be to say that there are more of the latter, but this would both oversimplify and mis-characterize the object of the film, namely: is there redemption for Joe Gideon?

There’s a lot to redeem. The real-world, present-day bulk of the film establishes Gideon in the process of working himself to death by directing and choreographing a new Broadway musical and simultaneously directing a feature film. He puts his dancers through marathon rehearsals and butts heads creatively with the show’s producers, and then heads across town to burn the midnight oil in the editing bay with his film. All the while he smokes relentlessly and pops pills regularly (and does both during the repeated “getting ready in the morning” montages, each of which end with Gideon announcing to the bathroom mirror, “It’s showtime, folks!”).

Yet Joe Gideon is not a complete asshole. Obsessive and intense though he is, he inspires loyalty in his dancers, and even reciprocates it a little. His estranged wife Audrey (Leland Palmer), pre-teen daughter Michelle (Erzsebet Foldi) and live-in girlfriend Kate Jagger (Ann Reinking) all adore him, even though the latter two end up spending a disproportionate amount of time with each other while Joe neglects them both.

Their affection for him — and each other — is well evidenced in this clip:

Speaking of loyalty and affection for Gideon/Fosse, consider the fact that the role played by Ann Reinking in All That Jazz was based directly on herself, i.e., her own role in Bob Fosse’s life. She was a dancer in one of his shows and became his live-in girlfriend, while he remained married to Broadway star Gwen Verdon (represented in the film by the Leland Palmer character), the mother of his daughter Nicole (the Erzsebet Foldi character; Nicole herself has a non-speaking cameo in the movie). Furthermore, by the time of All That Jazz Reinking and Fosse’s romantic relationship had ended — not that it stopped her from playing the role in the movie. In fact, both Verdon and Reinking worked with Fosse multiple times after their personal breakups with him. In further fact, when Verdon eventually left her role in the original Broadway production of Chicago, Fosse hired Reinking as her replacement; later, Fosse cast Reinking in the lead of the Broadway revival of Sweet Charity, a role created in the original production by Verdon.

Bob Fosse’s early triumphs (The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, etc) contained little of the somber cynicism would characterize his mature works (Cabaret, Pippin, Lenny, et al.). Significantly, it is the opening number of Fosse’s 1975 show Chicago – the cheeky vaudevillian tale of nihilism and murder – that is echoed in this film’s title. The “jazz” of Fosse parlance doesn’t simply refer to the so-named genre of American music, but rather to a broader type of expressive distortion. Jazz is the spiky prism through which the plain nature of things is twisted and refracted. Throughout the Fosse oeuvre, “jazz” is used variously as a euphemism for sex, greed, dance, music, alcohol, drugs, and so on. Jazz is everything fun, naughty and a bit dangerous, the stuff we all like a little more than we’re willing to admit. All of us, that is, except for Bob Fosse, who was perfectly willing to admit just how jazzy he was.