The Most Charming Trailer I've Ever Seen

April 6, 2005 8:26 AM

A few of you may have seen this trailer on Kottke's site yesterday, but its just to wonderful to miss. "Mad Hot Ballroom" is a new Paramount Classics documentary about a junior competitive ballroom dancing circuit up north. To state the completely obvious, its like a "Spellbound" with the kids dancing instead of spelling.
posted by JPowers (12 comments total)

One of my friends mentioned this film to me the other day, and my immediate reaction was "I wonder how much parental pressure is involved in this competition". I'm happy to see the trailer addresses that by having a couple of the kids mention how much *they* want to compete...and I loved Spellbound, so I can't wait for this one.
posted by ArsncHeart at 8:42 AM on April 6, 2005

It looked to me like some of the competition scenes take place in the Wintergarden at the World Trade Center. Am I just imagining that?
posted by bcwinters at 9:18 AM on April 6, 2005

I saw this movie when it was here during the Bermuda Film Festival. The audience was cracking up the first 30 minutes - it is absolutely hilarious and very sweet.

And yes, I think the competition at the end is near the World Trade Center because one of the teachers looks up and down at empty space and says to one of the students something to the effect of "it is hard to imagine that something so big like that is just *gone*".

I have been recommending this movie to anyone that will listen - it is fantastic.
posted by MrFancypants at 9:48 AM on April 6, 2005

The Winter Garden is at the World Financial Center.

On an unrelated point, am I the only one who is annoyed by the misuse of the word classic to refer to movies that have just been released? First Disney started referring to all of their animated features as classics, including crap like Pocahontas. Now we have Sony Pictures Classics and Paramount Classics, which release new movies!
posted by grouse at 10:18 AM on April 6, 2005

grouse: "classic", unfortunately, seems to be a euphemism for "arthouse", since the word "arthouse" seems a little off-putting for people not automatically into arthouse or indie-like movies. plus, the powers-that-be probably think that these films will stand the test of time and be more classic than the films that bankroll these.
posted by pxe2000 at 10:36 AM on April 6, 2005

Movies like this (well... Spellbound) are interesting and entertaining because the MacGuffin (the thing for which they compete) is completely ridiculous. Or am I pointing out the obvious?
posted by basicchannel at 10:42 AM on April 6, 2005

oops... meant to link MacGuffin.
posted by basicchannel at 10:43 AM on April 6, 2005

basicchannel: you're talking about the documentary spellbound and not the hitchcock spellbound, right? (i mean this in a bemused sense, given the use of the word "macguffin".)
posted by pxe2000 at 10:58 AM on April 6, 2005

Awesome. Learned a new cinematic word and heard about a great new movie in the same thread.

I accept the "Classics" moniker as meaning "More Destined to be called a Classic" -- It begs the question "What about all the movies put out by Paramount's non 'classic' imprint?" And the answer to that question is often pretty obvious.
posted by VulcanMike at 11:28 AM on April 6, 2005

I saw the trailer yesterday and made all my coworkers watch it. It totally hooked me in, everything funny, touching and just pitch-perfect. Hopefully the film is as good as the trailer.
posted by letitrain at 12:01 PM on April 6, 2005

For a long time, "classics" divisions were used by studios to distribute foreign-language or non-American films. After the 90's, in which Miramax proved a nice little profit could be made off of "art-house" films, a bunch of the studio's began using their classics division to distribute and, eventually, develop and produce arty films. The idea is to use the classics banner (i.e. Fox Searchlight as opposed to 20th Century Fox) for these type of projects so as not to water-down the image of the parent-studio. Today, the following are the most successful speciality film divisions:

Fine Line Features
Focus Features
Fox Searchlight
Screen Gems
Sony Pictures Classics
Warner Independent
posted by JPowers at 12:16 PM on April 6, 2005

Film looks fun but I've got to say I don't know how happy I feel with all this (to quote) "There is no second, no third, only this trophy" attitude being forced on children at that age.

I'm more than happy with kids being competitive, but (from the trailer) I wonder why so much importance has to be placed on winning alone.
posted by ciderwoman at 5:50 AM on April 7, 2005