Hollywood to paid tribute to the firefighters

Universal Studios Hollywood paid tribute to the firefighters who saved lives and homes during the recent Southern California wildfires by dedicating this year’s holiday tree-lighting ceremony to their heroic efforts and announcing an offer of free admission to all Firefighters, Law Enforcement Officials, Paramedics, Red Cross Employees and 911 Personnel, good through December 21, 2007.

The lighting of the theme park’s towering six-story Christmas tree marked the official start of the festive holiday season at the Entertainment Capital of L.A. and served as the backdrop for the announcement of this timely gesture of gratitude.

Adorned with an award-winning collection of movie-themed and commemorative ornaments, the Christmas Tree -- located at the heart of the theme park -- will illuminate nightly. Guests can also enjoy specially-choreographed “Christmas Spectacular” dance performances by a cast of dancing characters and a troupe of professional dancers all kicking up their heels five times daily.

Coupled with the theme park’s popular “Buy A Day, Get 2008 Free” annual pass, which enables guests to purchase a single days admission ticket and enjoy a full year of entertainment, including the new mega ride based on the blockbuster movie and TV series, “The Simpsons” in Spring 2008 -- Universal Studios Hollywood offers guests unlimited reasons to spend more than just the holidays at “The Entertainment Capital of L.A.”

The holiday celebration will extend onto CityWalk at Universal Studios Hollywood with lively entertainment including gospel choirs, rock-and-roll bands and eclectic holiday street performers from November 23, continuing through December 31, 2007.A glittering backdrop of thousands of twinkle lights, lush garlands and oversized ornaments spread throughout the entertainment and retail promenade will accent the joyful atmosphere of the season. The world’s largest mistletoe dangling from CityWalk’s “Santa” Kong will add to the ultimate merry “kiss-mas” spirit.

Weekends at CityWalk will feature a festive and fun holiday atmosphere with local street performers throughout the day and high-energy bands and choirs performing at night. On Friday’s from 7:30 p.m. – 10:00 p.m., the popular CityWalk stage will host traditional holiday gospel groups entertaining guests with their visual costumes and melodious carols.
Saturday’s from 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m., the stage will reverberate with edgy Rock n’ Roll bands jamming rhythmic and upbeat versions of popular Christmas classics. Sunday Nights from 5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m., CityWalk will host regional musical acts and school choirs entertaining crowds with holiday favorites.

On December 4, the 15-foot, 1,000-lb Menorah will light up Universal CityWalk for the 6th annual Chanukah Festival from 5:00 – 9:00pm as hundreds gather at the free Festival of Lights celebration.

From December 26 – 30, CityWalk will amp up the entertainment with daily concerts performances from popular bands beginning at 7:30 p.m. Southern California’s largest New Year’s Eve party kicks-off at CityWalk as the 2008 countdown begins at 9:00 pm on December 31. The free celebration will rock to live bands and DJ performances, a global countdown culminating with blasts of confetti cannons.

To learn more or to purchase the “Buy A Day, Get 2008 Free” pass, log on to www.UniversalStudiosHollywood.com, and for more information on celebrating the holidays at CityWalk, access www.CityWalkHollywood.com or call 818-622-1111.

Universal Studios Hollywood, The Entertainment Capital of L.A., includes a full-day, movie-based theme park and Studio Tour; the CityWalk entertainment, shopping and dining complex; the Universal CityWalk Cinemas; and the Gibson Amphitheatre concert and special event venue. Universal CityWalk features over 60 entertainment-themed restaurants, nightclubs, shops and dynamic entertainment options. Universal CityWalk Cinemas, offering the best movie-going experience in Los Angeles, features 19 screens including one of Southern California’s largest IMAX® venues and newly renovated stadium-style seating. The theme park features such groundbreaking attractions as “Revenge of the Mummy™ – The Ride,” “Shrek 4-D™,” “Jurassic Park® – The Ride,” the world-renowned Studio Tour, which takes guests behind-the-scenes of such landmark TV and movie locations and sets as Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds,” and the upcoming Spring 2008 new mega-attraction based on the blockbuster hit movie and TV series, “The Simpsons.” Universal Studios Hollywood (www.UniversalStudiosHollywood.com) is a unit of Universal Parks & Resorts, a division of Universal Studios, a part of NBC Universal. NBC Universal is one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news, and information to a global audience. Formed in May 2004 through the combining of NBC and Vivendi Universal Entertainment, NBC Universal owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, and world-renowned theme parks. NBC Universal is 80% owned by General Electric, with 20% controlled by Vivendi Universal.

The Salsa Craze - will it take Hollywood ?

With the dance smash " Salsa " the movie, though just broke even at the box office, still there as not been a popular series of dance genre films attached to this dance style.

What is " Salsa "

From the Wikki Free Encyclopedia website states ( whihc is where the photo above comes from ).

Salsa danced according to the above description is called Salsa on One, or briefly, "On One", because the break step is one beat 1 of the 8-beat pattern. This is by far the most common count used in Europe and North America.

If the break step occurs on count 2 or 6, it is called "On Two". There are two main variants of this:

The "Power 2", "Palladium 2" or "Ballroom Mambo" style. The Power 2 basic is simply the On One basic danced one beat later.

"New York Style 2" or "Eddie Torres Style". The ET2 basic step starts on beat 6 with the leader breaking forward on the left foot, replacing on 7, and pausing on 8. Then on 1 the left foot steps slightly back, ready for the break step back on the right on 2, and the left replacing on 3. 4 is a pause and 5 is the right foot stepping slightly forwards ready to begin again at 6.

"Puerto-Rican 2". This is exactly as the Eddie Torres 2 except the leader breaks forward on 2 not 6.

Power 2 can fit better with commercial "Mambo" music of the 1950s, e.g. Perez Prado.
Eddie Torres Style is so called because it was widely formalized and popularized by Eddie Torres whose clear teaching style and production of instructional videos opened up access to Salsa for many New Yorkers. It is not claimed that he invented the style.

One of the cited advantages of ET2 is that the follower begins her turns on beat one, having been 'prepped' on 6,7,8. This means that a good leader can have the follower hit the crescendos in the music with the more climactic dance moves.

Some consider dancing "On Two" to work more closely to the clave rhythm, the fundamental rhythm of salsa music, as the steps start on the first tick of a 2-3 son clave. However, dancing "On One" hits just as many beats in the clave and hits the first tick if the music is using a 3-2 style son clave.

Dancing on 2 means that the break step synchronises with the accented slap of the Tumbao pattern played on the Conga drum. For this reason it is said to be more punchy and rhythmically oriented, whereas on 1 is more melodically oriented.

End of Article...

However, though touches upon some interesting items this explanation lacks a sense of the greater diversity, and the ethnological roots and personal character of thios dance form.

Simply everything went amiss since Salsa replace the words Latin Dance, the english translation of Latina Danza.

In Cuba, especially in Havana, there was diversity in how one expresses to clave rhythms ( which within its dynamics also had variations ).

Mambo the break is on the " 2 ".

Son Montuno the break is on the " 1 "

It is that simple and reflects the ethnic - racial diversity, as Afro Cubans would emphasize the " 1 " and the Hispanic would focus of the " 2 ".

None the less, as one probe even deeper, one come away with the real understanding that it is how personal interpretation enters into the picture. the simple reason behind this attitude is that the break step is only for a change of direction of the movement of dance.

It is here where simple explanations become even more clearer, and the more concise one trys the more one losses the point.

To enjoy oneself.

Now all we need is a dancer with film presence who has load of Chaisma, and then see what happens at the box office when a Latina Danza Musical hits the screens. Then Hollywood could one day regain a portion of its faded glitter.

Yours,

Mr. Roger M. Christian
Ithaca, New York

A personal View by Reg Reeve

On Hollywood Musicals

"The Hollywood musical film dates back to 1927, when Warner Brothers developed the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system that gave a voice to the movies. The first singing voice introduced on film was that of Al Jolson, who gave up his top starring Broadway career to take the leading role in The Jazz Singer, essentially a silent film with several sequences of songs and spoken dialogue synchronised with the action on screen. Premiered at the Wamer Brothers flagship theatre in New York, The Jazz Singer caused a sensation among cinemagoers, changing the face of the film making industry forever. Bizarrely, The Jazz Singer was frequently shown as a silent film because very few cinemas were wired for sound at that time. By 1928, when Jolson's second film, The Singing Fool, was released, most cinemas were equipped with sound systems, and the film set a record for box-office takings that stood for eleven years until it was overtaken in 1939 by Gone With The Wind.

Other studios had caught up with Warner Brothers by 1929, when MGM won the first Oscar awarded to a musical with The Broadway Melody, a story of life in the popular musical theatre. Variations on this 'back-stage' theme were used for many of the early film musicals in order to provide a plausible reason for members of the cast to sing or dance. It wasn't until some years later that film producers, encouraged by the success of early film versions of European operettas such as The Merry Widow and Naughty Marietta, came to realise that movie audiences would readily accept the 'integrated' musical film, in which song and dance were used to advance the story line, comment on the action or throw light on the personalities of the protagonists.

Before that degree of sophistication was reached, the movie industry relied largely upon the glamour and personal appeal of the performers to retain the interest of audiences rapidly becoming disenchanted with the repetitious story-lines of the early backstage musical films. In the period of depression following the 1929 Wall Street crash, which saw the closure of many New York theatres, stage stars such as Fred & Adele Astaire, Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor, Maurice Chevalier, Marilyn Miller, Helen Morgan, Nelson Eddy & Jeanette MacDonald, among others, soon followed Al Jolson to Hollywood. Lucrative contracts tempted Broadway songwriters and librettists, too, into the new medium, and Broadway producers were easily persuaded to sell to Hollywood the film rights to their shows.

Stage shows found a wider audience when they were given a new lease of life on film. One of the earliest Broadway musicals to be screened was Whoopee. Filmed in two-one colour, in 1930, and starring Eddie Cantor, Whoopee introduced dance director Busby Berkeley, who helped to reshape the film musical. By the use of a revolving stage, mirrors, close-up and overhead shots, unusual camera angles and clever editing, he wove exotic, and often covertly erotic, fantasies that kept audiences flocking to the cinemas In that decade of depression, the movies offered an inexpensive means of escaping briefly from the daily struggle for existence that characterised the lives of most people.

Despite some notable failures, quickly consigned to oblivion, the musical film made steady progress during the 1930s. Among the outstanding fins of this period were Dames, Top Hat, 42nd Street and, in 1937, the first animated musical, Walt Disney's Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs. MGM's The Wizard of Oz, released in 1939, is generally accepted to be the first Technicolor film musical masterpiece. Although by no means the first integrated musical film, it set a standard by which others would be judged.

Successful Broadway shows continued to provide material for the film makers during the 1940s, a decade that also saw a return to the back-stage musical with the beginning of a proliferation of film biographies of songwriters and musical theatre performers. Among the composers honoured in this way were George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Jerome Kern, as well as the song-writing team of composer Richard Rodgers & lyricist Lorenz Hart. Songwriter/showman George M. Cohan received a similar tribute. Performers receiving the accolade of a 'biopic' included Nora Bayes, Marilyn Miller, The Dolly Sisters and bandleaders Tommy & Jimmy Dorsey. Al Jolson featured twice in this nostalgic look back at the golden days of American popular musical theatre, with Jolson Sings Again, in 1949, following the phenomenal success of The Jolson Story. As it moved into the decade that saw the genre reach its peak in the 1950s, the Hollywood musical was in good shape.

The 50s opened on a high note with the filming of songwriter Irving Berlin's Broadway hit, Annie Get Your Gun. Film versions of other successful stage musicals, including Rodgers & Hart's Pal Joey, dominated the Hollywood scene. Among other successful transitions to the movie screen were Irving Berlin's Call Me Madam, Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate and Silk Stockings, and Richard Rodgers' Oklahoma!, Carousel, The King & I and South Pacific, all four written with his new partner, librettist and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein 2nd. Hammerstein's 1926 success, Show Boat, written with an earlier collaborator, Jerome Kern, was filmed for the third time, and songwriter Frank Loesser enjoyed spectacular success with Guys & Dolls. Among a plethora of great movie musicals were three more Broadway imports, Li'l Abner, The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees The decade also saw the release of Singin' In The Rain, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Calamity Jane, High Society, An American in Paris, The Band Wagon, The Great Caruso and Royal Wedding.

By the mid-fifties, however, the advent of rock and roll had revolutionised tastes in popular music, heralding the end of the golden era of the musical film. Rock Around The Clock, released in 1956, and Jailhouse Rock, the following year, were early harbingers of a new era. Hollywood continued to make musicals in the old tradition but fewer were made as production costs spiralled and television took its toll on cinema audiences.

Although fewer in number, some of the best of the Hollywood musicals were made after 1960, including probably the greatest of them all, Broadway songwriting team Alan Jay Lerner & Frederick Loewe's My Fair Lady, following upon their success in the 50s with Brigadoon and Gigi Lerner & Loewe, one of the great musical partnerships of Broadway and Hollywood, scored further hits in the 60s with Camelot and Paint Your Wagon.

In 1974 MGM finally acknowledged the demise of the Hollywood musical when they released That's Entertainment, a compilation of extracts from the studio's archive of great musicals. That's Entertainment, Part Two followed a year later. So, in little more than forty years, the Hollywood musical had run its course. For me, however, and for many of my generation, the performances and songs that brightened our lives, through good times and bad, continue to entertain and delight us still today when we slip a treasured tape into the video recorder or watch an off-peak TV screening of an old musical film. Although some are showing their age, due to changing fashions and the regrettable deterioration of the film stock, they provide a priceless record of a shining age of show business that, sadly, will never return. To quote Frank Sinatra: "You can hang around for as long as you care to, waiting and hoping, but you're never going to see their like again."