Showing posts with label Fred Astaire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fred Astaire. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 11, 2023

SURREAL: Fred and Eleanor in extreme slow-mo

 

Oh how I love making animations! This is a small excerpt from Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell's classic tap number, Begin the Beguine. Even at this slowed-down speed, their grace is incredible. The music syncs up better than I had hoped! 

Still working on blog problems. . . I hope someone can see this, at least. I can't be sure.

Monday, July 6, 2015

Weirdball gifs






BACKSTORY. I got watching The Bandwagon again last night, Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, the incomparable Oscar Levant, etc. Astaire gave one of the best graceful, effortless comic performances of his career.

These odd little gifs aren't from that show. That show has a very, very strange number in it called Triplets, in which Astaire and Nanette Fabray and that other guy (? It was supposed to be Levant, but his knees were shot) play three supposedly-identical babies. I think they did it with their shoes on their knees. Long ago, I saw a sort of surreal version of this number in Spanish and posted it somewhere on my blog. But do you think I could find it? How to search for it? Spanish version of Triplets? There went my idea for a great gif.

Somehow I ended up with this strange number, Astaire with Eleanor Powell, one of his better dance partners (though the public loved Ginger more). But my usual program, Gifsforum, is down AGAIN and I had to use MakeaGif, which doesn't make a gif very well. You can go up to 20 seconds on them, which is nice, but look at how they come out! Jerk-a-rama. I decided to go for it and use it for effect. There are much better-quality clips of this dance, but I liked the surreal phosphorescence of this one.

Monday, June 1, 2015

The age of miracles





A beautiful, gorgeous, luscious chunk of movie impressionism, with Fred Astaire to boot. And he's singing Gershwin! Mr. Gershwin and I took a blow today - quite a bad one - someone claimed our relationship was bogus and in fact didn't exist. One wonders, sometimes, just who is the fraud. WE know what is important, and we know what transforms a life, and it's love, George, isn't it. You knew all about it and lived it through your songs. So away with the naysayers and phony psychic prophets. They know nothing, and are jealous of our connection, no doubt. We survived the hit, we survived the attempt to discredit us and hang us out to dry. Love will win: it always does. The age of miracles hasn't passed.