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Shall we dansu? (1996)
An attempt to break the Japan's traditional cultural divide regarding ballroom dancing
The movie starts with a Shakesperean quote, then to a ballroom featuring couples dancing, and focuses on trying to answer this question--"How can the Japanese embrace ballroom dancing where traditional customs of Japan discourage intimate partner contact that comes with this type of dancing, in certain situations that are often taboo in that country?"
This Japanese flick is also an allusion to the prohibition of public dancing in Balmont city limits as mentioned in another1980s movie, "Footloose", where rebels try to fight back against this decree that keeps them from dancing the way they want.
As the movie starts further, we see a Japanese office worker, who was good enough in his work ethic in corporate circles, but wanted more. Then, riding on a Japanese commuter train, he sees a ballroom dance studio, and gets interested. His female friend (probably her sister) starts to suspect that this office worker is taking dance lessons in order to find a new lady to love (because this worker is already married), but not until he gets deep into doing lessons.
At the ballroom studio, we see two instructors--an older instructor who is much more helpful (regular instructor), and a more strict, advanced instructor who had strong dancesport experience. We also see the crazy ballroom dance student named Aoki (obsessed with wearing wigs), who loves the Latin dance categories--using dance moves that are sometimes too extrovert. Once the office worker mastered the basics in the lessons, he decides to up the ante by practicing in the train station outside, causing the advanced instructor to gain interest. At first, the advanced instructor was afraid that he would hit on her too early, recalling the nightmare she had with her former partner in the Blackpool competition, but she is focused on competition preps now.
As the JADA competition in ballroom dance approaches, both instructors prepare both the officer worker and Aoki for contention, and it is decided that the office worker would focus on the Modern dances, and Aoki would focus on the Latin, with their female partners. We get deeper into their dancesport preps when the advanced instructor teaches the quickstep and waltz routines for the office worker to practice on.
As the competition happens, Aoki, who danced the rumba, gets harassed by another couple due to his wig he wore, takes it off before dancing again in the paso doble, and fortunately, the harassing couple gets disqualified afterwards. Meanwhile, the office worker, now in a tuxedo, dances the waltz and quickstep with his partner, but with his family watching, the leader dozes off in the middle of the quickstep, and loses concentration from the shouts of his family, and another couple collides into them, but the office worker was able to protect his partner from falling down in the crash, although the follower decides to run off from the ballroom. The worker's family members almost accuse the dancer of being in an affair with the instructor but the dancer said he danced for the love of the dance. Meanwhile....
The advanced instructor then gives in and writes an intimate letter to him, and tells the office worker that he danced quite well in the competition and protected his partner, and she tells about her Blackpool nightmare and her recovery, and invited him to a special dance party before she left for Europe to study dance. The worker's family forces the worker to teach his sister a basic step, which he reluctantly does, before the big dance party. Then, on the song, "Shall We Dance", the worker at the party dances with the advanced instructor in a spotlight dance before the other couples take to the floor one more time in an exciting spectacle-finale of ballroom dance, bringing the flick to its conclusion.
Top Gun (1986)
A good movie on what it takes to be the best Naval fighter combat pilot
Well, in a real firefight, Maverick (call sign for Lt. Pete Mitchell) meets up with an bogey over the Indian Ocean, and target-locks it and it bugs away without Maverick firing a shot, and then Maverick meets up with another bogey for a Polaroid shot, and it goes away.
After one pilot gives up one's wings after the two incursions, Goose (Maverick's combat friend) and Maverick, thanks to their very instinctive dogfight tactics in real-world combat, are admitted for training at the Top Gun school in Miramar, CA, where they meet Hollywood, Viper, and Jester as new Top Gun recruits.
The first Top Gun combat simulation in the air focused on Maverick trying to avoid the no-go zone above 10,000 feet (the hard deck area), but he took a shot at a simulated bogey above the line, and he and Iceman did a fly-by buzz over the Miramar airport tower afterwards. They are scolded by their Top Gun commander for this misconduct and told not to do that again, or they face expulsion from Top Gun school.
The second combat simulation focused on multiple bogeys, and at that point, Iceman was in the lead for the Top Gun Trophy and Maverick close behind. In the middle of the fight Maverick was obsessed with stopping Viper as a simulated bogey and avoids staying away from his wingman, and as he locked-on Viper for the kill, at the same time Maverick gets locked-on by combat student Jester, but as he turned his head to find his bogey, he found out it is too late--Maverick is simulated dead. Then after debriefing, Maverick is told not to leave one's wingman during combat.
Charlie, who works as a Pentagon informant on fighter jet combat and is an assistant Top Gun instructor, starts to recognize that Maverick is more than just a fighter jet master. She finds that Maverick is larger than life--even away from the realm of the Top Gun environment, and starts romantic interests with Maverick, being careful not to make herself be in big trouble with loving that student, so she keeps her romance with him a secret from the Top Gun brass in Miramar. She still loves Maverick even if his best fighter tactics seem to the Navy status quo as reckless.
The third combat simulation ends very differently. In the middle of the simulation, Maverick and Goose, dogfighting in simulation in their F-14, ends up with the jet spinning out of control after a jetwash which permanently stalled the only 2 engines in the jet. Both knew they had to eject before impact, but Goose ends up very dizzy as both tried to eject from their seats, causing Goose to eject too late and causes Goose's head to hit very hard on the jet's canopy after their ejections, killing him. Maverick ejects safely into the sea and finds that Goose is bloodied and embraces him in the water as the Coast Guard cutter picks Maverick up.
Maverick is severely ashamed now that Goose is gone, and when he goes to the NCIS proceedings as he mounrs about the loss of Goose, the NCIS absolves him from blame on Goose's death and Maverick is allowed to fly again. But after he starts flying again in a new combat simulation, he refuses to fire, a tip-off that he is so saddened about Goose's death, and tries to quit. But the Top Gun commanders tried to get him back to flying, and when they fail, one of the commanders tells Maverick that he has enough points to graduate from Top Gun school, even though he will not get the trophy as he had wanted.
Then, after Maverick is invited to the graduation ceremony and party, he finds out that Iceman won the Top Gun trophy, but then, word is out that there is a crisis happening over the Indian Ocean waters where the battleship Leighton is stranded in hostile seas and enemy MiGs are around them, cutting the party short for some of the graduates. Maverick accepts the call to fight on this tour duty as well as Iceman and Hollywood.
As Maverick sits in his F-14 ready to fight on a naval aircraft carrier, he finds out that his comrade Hollywood's figther plane was hit by a bogey's sidewinder missile and he had to bail out as the plane goes down, and Slider calls for Maverick to back up and join in the fight against 5 bogeys, which he sometimes disengages in the fight, and then reengages. Although almost too late, Maverick's instincts takes over, and the squadron shoots down 4 bogeys (with Maverick waxing 3 of the 4), forcing the other bogeys to bug out and it is over. In the middle of the fight, he decides not to leave his wingman, which helps Maverick as well. As the gppd fighters land back on the flattop, Maverick and Iceman are celebrated, and Maverick throws the dog tag of Goose into the sea.
Back at Miramar, Maverick gets an option to be a Top Gun Instructor, and with Charlie realizing the acceptance of the option, they fall in love with each other. Just before the end credits, Maverick and Iceman do a twin 360 aileron rolls in their fighter jets in the sunset over the Miramar environs--a tipoff that Maverick is now enjoying the fruits of being a Top Gun Instructor with Charlie's romantic help.
Die Hard 2 (1990)
This action movie allows one to go deeper in airport and airline lingo
Well, unlike the Nakatomi hostage event in the original "Die Hard", "Die Hard 2" is better than the original. It allows us to understand some of the intricacies of aviation and military communications.
Well, it is good that the screenwriter mentions "Instrument Landing System" in the scene where terrorists shut down the field lights on the runways and shut down the control tower's ability to land the planes. Later on, you hear a line in the script that mentions the landing system in an acronym....said by character Colonel Stewart....
"This is Dulles Tower. We have you on radar and we also show you on ILS--you're in the glide path...."
The movie also shows not only some of the stuff usually only pilots and ATC personnel at airports know to a general audience, it also tells us a bit on how military communications are done in real-time. For instance, Col. Stewart says, after the antenna array was blown up in the airport by annex skywalk terrorists (after all of them were killed by LAPD cop character, John McClane), "...give us a sit rep." "Sit rep" also mentioned by character Major Grant too, but the writer doesn't tell us exactly what "sit rep" means - I think he did not mention it because it would not allow the story to go forward - by the way, it meant "situation report."
Also, whenever the number 9 is mentioned in military communications, it is actually expressed as "niner". For instance, Col. Stewart says "You are cleared for ILS approach on runway two-niner. Contact Dulles tower frequency at the outer marker..." in a scene just before Windsor flight 114 crash-lands at Dulles Airport and bursts into flames, killing both the crew and passengers upon impact. We also hear Col. Stewart in hacked ATC communications mention "two niner-niner two", which meant the Windsor plane's altimeter said 2,992 feet as Col. Stewart told the pilot to calibrate the altimeter pre-landing, which is a gauge in the cockpit that measures the altitude of the plane. (This happens just before the fatal crash.)
At the control tower itself, we learned more vocabulary used by the ATC workers that we do not know. Words like, "mis-approach" or "missed approach", "code red alert", "sector", "outer marker", "approach control." So I am guessing that the screenwriter should have had pilot experience and probably so but I cannot confirm.
Then there was the final fight scene involving McClane fighting against Major Grant and then the scary Colonel Stewart on a moving cargo conversion plane. I liked the way they set up the fight to dig more into the intelligent character McClane has - after he kills off Grant, he sees the fuel dump on the conversion plane, and opens up the fuel dump door ready to be deployed in a way that Stewart would not see it. Then, as the Colonel kicks McClane off the wing, McClane deploys the fuel dump and the fuel spills out as he falls down on the runway. He does survive to light his lighter and expose the flame to the exposed fuel to set off a flashback fire that eventually hits the plane as it takes off, and quickly afterwards, cause the plane to blow up. After the plane blows, we realize the fire trail that was used to land the stranded planes finally on one runway at Dulles that had no lights at all illuminated.
So with that McClane does a double-take - killing off the terrorists and Col. Stewart and at the same time, saving the lives of many more passengers and crew as they finally get a chance to land in the snowstorm over Dulles airport - which fortunately - at the time they land - comes to an end.
Above all, "Die Hard 2" presents the protagonist - cop McClane - as something like Richard Dean Anderson who played MacGyver - McClane tries to be the working man's hero trying to do his professional duty of being a police officer.
Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004)
Not too exciting as the original movie, the sequel does have a few new twists
Well, on the heels of the original 1987 "Dirty Dancing" movie that featured the electrified "pachanga" sensation in Latin EDM, 17 years later, "Dirty Dancing' got its sequel with two brand new Latin EDM songs that were going to be popular-the dubstep-packed mambo called "Don't You Only Wanna Dance" (2004), and a song that appeared 4 years prior to the movie release---which introduced party dancers to a new type of Latin sound-called "New Jack guajira", "New Jack guaracha", or "New Jack" cha-cha-called "Represent, Represent-Cuba!" (2000).
The movie sequel focuses on the island of Cuba, in the year 1958, on the heels of the end of the Fulgencio Batista regime, where the character Romola Garai, an American student who lives with his American parents, who all then visited Havana (played by Katey Miller), eventually gets enamored by a cook named Javier Suarez. Somehow, with the help of the dance class teacher (played by Patrick Swayze), who appeared in the first "Dirty Dancing", Romola and Javier prepare for the big Latin dance contest at a Cuban hotel, doing a sensual mambo with several other competitor couples, and in the first round, they dance very well and eventually make the cut to dance later on in the finals, and during that time, they use the La Luna Negra (or "The Black Moon"), a Cuban nightclub, to hone their dancing skills and their chemistry. Later on, as they dance in the finals of the Latin dance contest, just before Javier and Romola were about to finish their winning routine, Javier detects something suspicious-another cook from the hotel who was probably part of the Castro Revolution encroaches the competition floor and fires a gunshot and Javier reacts by stopping the intruder, but the discharge causes people to flee from the competition finals-evacuating to the outside of the hotel. Eventually, the couple finds out that Fidel Castro drove Florencio Bautista out of the country, and the Cuban people celebrate in response to Bautista's fleeing waving Cuban flags and shouting in the streets, and finally, Cuba regains its social and political stability again. After a romantic orgy later on, Romona realizes-and also Javier-that the Castro regime would mean much more severe restrictions on their way of life in Cuba, as well as their expression, their dissenting, and most of all-the Cuban people themselves who could face severe poverty in the midst of the country's rise to Communist revolution. Romola now realizes that her stay in Cuba has to end because freedom in Cuba there is going to come to an end---but even with the change of governmental rule impending, Romona tells Javier that their romance will live on no matter what type of Cuban government lives there. So they decided to say farewell indefinitely, and just before Romona goes back to the States, she dances one more time with Javier at the La Luna Negra, but this time-the patrons who watched them dance there probably for the last time treated them as if they were Latin dance champions, cheering and praising strongly for them-- even if they never got 1st place-so the movie has a sort of 'bittersweet ending" unlike the original movie in 1987.
The mambo version of the original "Dirty Dancing", which had "De Todo Un Poco", was not terribly EDM- related, but in the 2004 version, Mya's "Don't You Only Wanna Dance" has a mixture of rhythms to make it a futuristic type of mambo-regular mambo rhythms, some dubstep, some samba-packed swing, and even some salsa mannerisms too.
Sudden Death (1995)
A hockey game, bombs, fires, explosions, gunfire, fighting--this movie has it all!
The main show happens at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena. A packed crowd is there to see professional hockey excitement known as the Stanley Cup - the 7th and deciding game between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Looks like the movie organizers had permission from the NHL to allow the teams' likenesses and the trademark "Stanley Cup" to be used in the movie.
Now in the height of the action on ice, something else terrible is about to take place as the championship hockey match was going to happen. Armed terrorist-captors had already took over parts of the stadium and the perimeter away from the arena, and rigged part of the arena and outside environs with bombs--with the inside arena periphery also rigged with powerful C-4 explosives ready to blow by the captors' remote control. Just before the game starts, they took over the vice president in the press box and his friends/proteges/staff in there, and threaten to kill hostages one-by-one until their ransom from different foreign banks can be transferred to their required minimum amounts at each end of the hockey periods. And if anyone tries to interfere in any way, the captors would also set off fatal bomb blow-ups leading to a lot of casualties.
Darron, a fire marshal who knows the arena well and aware that hockey action is going on, had help from the outside--by the Secret Service--to stop the terrorist-captors and try to rescue the hostages. But each time the Secret Service tried to storm in, terrorist bombs blew up outside or lethal rocket launchers were used to frustrate efforts. In mid-game, Darron finds a run-around he thought was successful - he uses a control leading to the arena's Jumbotron billboard outside, and sends this SOS message - "Bldg Rigged C-4: Will Try Disarm", but terrorists blow up the billboard afterward, frustrating Darron, and he decides that he will stop the rest of the terror carnage on his own. And even worse - Emily - Darron's daughter who was a spectator, is later ensnared by the captors as a hostage-pawn and sent to the press box. So he not only had to stop the terrorists - he needed to save Emily also.
As the captors do kill some of the hostages in the press box, Darron does nearly everything to stop the terror - like disarming the C4 bombs (most of them), fighting off terrorists and some of the moles in the Secret Service on the side of the terrorists, and even masquerading as Pittsburgh goalie Torville and saving an attacking shot from a Blackhawk winger from going into a goal by his glove.
With options running out as sudden death happens and the game tied 4-4, he goes on the roof of the arena, then goes into the top above the scoreboard, and breaches the press box with a satchel charge, and was able to kill more terrorists and was able to save Emily. Before that, a terrorist trying to stop him at the roof slips. Falls and slams into the scoreboard blowing it up, causing the game to be abruptly stopped as the players and fans then evacuate.
Then Darron's attention towards Emily (as they go to the main floor concessions) wanes as one of the C4 bombs does successfully blows and creates a flood in part of the floor, allowing an opportunity for a captor to kidnap Emily once again. Emily and the captor go to an awaiting chopper, and leads to a final fight against the armed captor, freeing Emily from the captor; Darron was able to take his gun away but was able to use the chopper's escape ladder to the chopper as Emily watches. Then Darron goes up on the at the escape ladder, gets the captor's gun as the chopper is about to go up in the air and Darron suddenly fires shots at the chopper's cockpit, hitting the captor and the driver, causing the chopper to stall and then dive straight down. Darron does let go from the ladder and lands on the roof, and watches the chopper go down through the roof - to the arena towards the ice - and then, the chopper explodes into flames as it crashes into the stadium ice, killing both of them. Darron and Emily watch the dramatic ending in awe as the terrorist threat finally ends.
Darron, now spent and injured, ends up in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, but Emily knows he will live once again - because he was the main hero of this flick.
Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)
Probably one of the best sequels in the "Lethal Weapon" saga
Well, it is joyful that the first sequel of this action cop-buddy flick starts with a car chase as both cops - Sgts. Murtaugh and Riggs - try to pursue drug dealers masking as consulate officers from South Africa. The bust is a failure but they do find some South African Kreugerrand money in one of the suspect's crashed cars, and later on in another bust where cartel member Hans is killed off by a flying surfboard in the accident following another police pursuit.
After meeting up with federal drug informant, Leo Getz, Leo tells to those sergeants a bit more about this cartel group who seems to have immunity from prosecution because they are diplomat employees. Both Murtaugh and Riggs find out the hard way that you cannot arrest such drug dealers who have this so-called "diplomatic immunity". But Riggs is obsessed with taking the whole cartel down, and the cartel retaliates by rigging Murtaugh in his own house with a C4 bomb bobby trap under his toilet. Riggs and the LAPD bomb squad arrive and find a way to get Murtaugh out of the toilet and dive into a cast-iron tub before the bomb blasts, and both cops live to fight another day.
Then, Riggs makes a ruse at the actual consulate site with security so he can make a romance with Rika Van Den Haas, the consulate secretary., with the help of Leo and Murtaugh protesting South African apartheid openly at the consulate before they are kicked out to an awaiting crowd and continue the protest outside. Then Riggs sneaks in and takes away confidential information about Rika's whereabouts, meet up again in a store, and then, eventually move to a private trailer where Riggs is, on the beach.
The consulate-cartel is tipped off about the breach and wages revenge on the LAPD, assassinating some of the officers involved in stopping the cartel with planned hits (either through silencer gunfire or terrorist bombs). Murtaugh himself faced two hitmen but he kills both of them with a nail gun before they could kill him, but at the same time, Leo is kidnapped by other cartel members in Murtaugh's station wagon and forces him into their house of stilts far away. Other cartel members do still another planned hit on Riggs' beach trailer in the height of him in passionate love with Rika with automatic machine gun fire, but Riggs's past military training was able to fend off the assassins, and Rika and Riggs - and his dog - all survive unscathed.
Riggs then brings Rika back to her private home in his own car, says good bye to her after a bit more romance, but then is pistol whipped by a few cartel members, and shackled near a body of water at a pier. Riggs is eventually thrown into the water and was able to free himself from the chains with a shoulder pop but saw that Rika's neck was broken - the hitmen who threw Riggs in the water did it. Riggs, now in full anger, resurfaces and finds a chain link and was able to use it to kill off one hitman, and then slam another hitman into the car, killing him also. But sadly he had to take the dead Rika all the way back to where his beach trailer was. She is dead - he cannot love him anymore.
Riggs now has a death wish on the surviving cartel people in the house of stilts, because Murtaugh knows Leo is captured by them, but not before Riggs found out about how many LAPD the cartel assassinated. Now they realized that immunity they have is now no excuse for that. They go up to the house and was able to rescue Leo and then destroy the house, but not until the cartel enforcer flees. Leo is finally let off by the cops to turn himself in to the Feds to try to take those drug dealers down, even though he displays his torture wounds from the dealers.
Finally, the cops go into the shipping yard to one docking area, and spot the cargo ship, Alba Varden, where the cartel was going to use as a escape boat to head to South Africa. The cops try another last bust, finds a trailer near a boat that had drug money but the cartel locks them in the trailer. There is a car inside, and Riggs starts the car after lacing the money in the car's back with gasoline and blasts the car out of the trailer and bursts into flames and dives into the water, making the money useless. The cartel is tipped off and make a final deadly assault on the two cops, and even though Riggs gets badly hurt in the final conflict, they think they killed off the rest of the cartel but Arjen Rudd, armed, comes from behind and shoots Riggs multiple times, wounding him, but Murtaugh answers with a gunshot right into Arjen's head - and it is all over. The danger for them, that is.
Murtaugh then goes over and tends to the badly-wounded Riggs as the LAPD backup comes toward the docking area, with sirens flashing. Riggs tries to light a cigarette but Murtaugh tries to keep him from doing that, fearing this could cause a higher change of a wounding death, and then they joke about their victory against those drug dealers masquerading as consulate agents. Scary enough for them.
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Better than "The Longest Day" would have re-enacted involving the Normandy Beach Landing
Well, the movie starts with what was a part of Omaha Beach, called the Normandy memorial now, filled with the graves of Allied soldiers who fought and died in the Normandy invasion. He finds the gravestone, along with his family, of soldier John Miller, and then recalls the fateful day of the invasion in his mind.
There are reminders of the cheesy movie known as "The Longest Day", as the Omaha Beach invasion scene in "Private Ryan" takes full swing. Over 15 minutes of terror, fright, and blood-letting as heavy German resistance with mortars and endless sprays of machine-gun fire rained death on the Allied soldiers who landed on the beach with their landing craft.
The Allies get stopped by the heavy and deadly resistance but finds their way to get through the enemy in the beachhead with Bangalore torpedoes, flamethrowers, and sniper rifles.
When all was over, we see that Daniel Ryan fell dead on the beach, and we get the first words on three Ryans who fell in World War II, but not James Francis. We get word on the parachute mis-drops that were part of the Normandy invasion which meant James Francis Ryan did not know that all of his 3 relatives died in combat, so a rescue mission deep in the German-held front lines of France is in store.
We then get the first scenes of John Miller, who is picked to find a small platoon for the mission. He finds soldiers, and then the mission is on, right into the French countryside.
First skirmish against the Germans is in a small French town in a heavy rainstorm where one of the platoon soldiers, Mr. Caparza, finds a French baby whom a French family wants to liberate. Caparza takes the baby, but because he was mistaken as a Nazi soldier (he was really an American soldier, but he was bald-headed), a French resistance soldier-sniper takes Caparza down with one shot in the chest. The platoon realize this and decided to find the sniper but have to leave Caparza alone and tell him not to move or he would get shot again. Fortunately, the sniper was taken out but Caparza eventually dies on the ground.
More small skirmishes against the Germans were in store upon finding James Francis Ryan. In one lull in the fighting, they almost got the soldier they wanted who was James Ryan but with a different middle name (which was, regrettably, Patrick), so the search continues.
Then, after a German prowler (a half-track) was destroyed in another French open field as the search continued, the platoon finds another platoon that destroyed the tank - it was the platoon with James Francis Ryan. The platoon got their man.
The final thing was for his survivors - the platoon itself and the surviving Ryan, to fight against a small German army that almost outnumbered them, in the town of Ramelle. The firefight had to be creative because they used ammo that was just left - not too much. James Ryan does survive and the firefight ends when the P-51 Mustangs finished off the Germans, but John Miller gets shot and dies in the combat.
James Ryan survives, still looking at his fallen soldier on the Normandy beach memorial, thinking about his duty for country that he had done on this major turning point in World War II.
Strictly Ballroom (1992)
If you like ballroom dance, this is the movie for you!
"Strictly Ballroom" was probably the best ballroom movie since "Dirty Dancing", and it helped me get inspired to take up ballroom dancing several years later!
Here, the movie, shot in Australia, starts in the Waratah Championships, a setup for the big Pan-Pacific Ballroom Championships later on. Scott Hastings had already danced a great Viennese waltz with former partner Liz Holt in this competition, and then, as the scene shifts to samba, I saw Scott Hastings start out great with Liz, and then, in the middle of the samba version of "Tequila" in the background, Scott explodes and does his overkill-laden solo trick steps way beyond what Liz could follow. Les Kendall, Scott's dance coach, explains the reason why Scott wanted to free himself--in the start of the samba, Les said that he was "boxed-in" by Ken Rallings and Tina Sparkles, which caused Scott to release a freedom type of dancing anger. Liz tries to keep up with Scott's unacceptable solo dance showmanship but then, Australian Dance Council chairman, Barry Fife, penalizes that couple major points causing Ken and Tina to win the Waratah title. Liz then finally cuts off her dance partnership with Scott after the competition at the next scene in the Kendall Dance Studio.
Then, I see a tyro dance partner, Fran, accosts Scott at the studio and make a ruse to be new partners and practice their routine in light of the upcoming Pan-Pacific Dance Championships. Fran's flamenco dance ability is given away a bit when she demonstrates a short tap sequence. Learning from the dancesport debacle in Waratah, Scott is still stubborn and decides to strongly bend the dancesport rules with "new steps" for the Pan-Pacific championships to try to impress Barry Fife. Barry is not happy about it and decides that Scott's "new steps" will never, ever be in the books in competition as long as Fife remains in power in Australian dancesport.
In the middle of the movie, Tina Sparkle decides to retire from her partnership from Ken Railings, doing their final honor dance at a pre- competition social ballroom dance party, while at the same time, Scott and Fran, do a theatrical dance in quasi-silhouette to "Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps." This is where the disapproval of their partnership increases. Les Kendall now warns Scott that if you dance with Fran, you will never win the Pan-Pacific competition, but then suggests to Scott that if you partner up with Tina, you will have a 100 percent shot of winning the Pan-Pacific title. I liked that scene because this reminded me of my relationship that I had with Michele.
But then, I see that Fran and Scott are caught by Fran's flamenco music family, forcing them to dance a paso doble, and then, eventually, Fran's father then teaches him the authentic Spanish paso doble. The solo focusing of the paso is the beginning of the recipe for almost total disaster on the start of the Pan-Pacific championships.
After being forced to dance the paso doble with the family of Rico, I saw Fran join in and I would get deeply the roots of why flamenco dancing became a very integral part of dancing the paso doble. The party atmosphere I saw resembled something like a night in Baranquilla, Colombia, but it was no salsa party. But when I saw Fran and Scott dance their paso doble as the guitarist did a "rasgueado" (or strumming) version of the Spanish Gypsy Dance, I did not even know some of the advanced moves they did, like the stag leap in Side-By-Side Challenge position, or opposition flamenco circular walks, or the contra continuous spot turn (or "vuelta") with flamenco arms. When I saw the Rico family who watched them dance laughed loudly, that definitely reminded me of my unacceptable bursts of laughing, and when Scott broke the dance off from Fran and said to Rico, "Hey! What's so funny!", it was like Sofia Zukerman's version of saying "What's so funny?", and guess what-I laughed.
Now, later on, I saw that Rico, played by a famous flamenco dance star in the early 1990s-Antonio Vargas, dressed in red and black with a strong stack of black curly hair, said to Scott, "Paso doble?....PASO DOBLE!". I saw him take off his suit and get ready to dance. As the Toledo flamenco guitarist did a G#-B#-D#-A (or G#b2) chord in continuous tremolo and said something like a Roma-gypsy lament, which I deciphered as "Ay ay, yeah-ay-yo, ooh-ye, yeeeeea-ay--ahhhhh, yoooooh, I saw Rico's overt flamenco style as he started off with the banderiillas pose, then a step back, and then a T-pose, and then he calls on Ya-Ya to join him as he turns her around in a sort of "circulo grande" (grand circle)-which is known also as fregolina in paso doble, and then he breaks hold with Ya-Ya.
And then the excitement begins as the "subida"-a flamenco technique of speeding up the tempo, begins in the guitarist and in the basic foot-tapping rhythms by Rico to the rhythm of the opening of the Spanish Gypsy Dance. Rico adds flourishes with solo toe spins between the taps. The taps get louder, the speed of the music goes faster and faster, and Scott is just shocked....finally, I saw Rico do a final spin, into the last three taps that were very loud - I call them "coup de grace" taps, or "golpes" as they are called in Spanish, and ends in a strong flamenco pose, ending the dance and the music. The family responds with generous applause instead of laughter, but at that point, I realize if I could dance like him, I would feel that I wanted to be a flamenco star too, but at this point, in the early 1990s, I stuck with the paso doble.
So as I see in the Pan-Pacific competition dance scene, in the appetizer paso doble heat in the competition floor, Fran does dance with an unknown lady, to background music of "Toreador" from Bizet's opera "Carmen", and then, as Scott arrives to face the forced partnering of Tina Sparkles with him for the Latin championship round, I see something that I used to often do with my some of my bad decisions that I used to make in my self-management skills; Scott decides at the last minute to dance with Fran in the second paso doble around with several professional Latin dance couples dancing. I then see that Barry Fife, acutely incensed, catches Fran and Scott in the action and orders the music powered down, and disqualifies both dancers for good. Fran and Scott, however, refuses to leave the floor and instead, with the help of Fran's family, dance a spectacular Spanish flamenco dance with strong paso feel, shocking the audience, and even Barry Fife himself. In the end, the audience comes out to the dance floor to get their chance to dance, and the guess is that even if disqualified--you can shock a crowd if you do a great unique dance, and that's what Fran and Scott did. They won their hearts, even if it is not a championship trophy!
Mad Hot Ballroom (2005)
The flick makes me red hot all over in my ballroom dance
The way the movie sets up reminds me of my ballroom dance days in college, where you take a lot of ballroom dance classes leading up to the college's own dance competition.
So, in "Mad Hot Ballroom", here are some public school teachers in New York, dealing with K-8 students as they teach them ballroom dancing. Some of the K-8 students are, obviously, latch-key kids who are having rude attitudes and antisocial behavior, as those teachers take those young students on a journey to what competitive ballroom dancing is like. At the end of the movie,
these young dance sport competitors realize that if you can succeed in dance sport, you can succeed in other areas of life, way, way from the dance floor.
It is almost amazing as the teachers teach them the waltz, merengue, swing, tango, rumba, and foxtrot.
The flick reminded me of "Music From The Heart" featuring Meryl Streep, because in this big project, New York public school teachers and students wanted something that would make those who slashed funding for the arts in public schools take a second look at ballroom dancing as probably equally better as music to help them increase their grades in school courses not related to ballroom dancing.
I strongly focused on one of the competitors named Tara, who joined in a group of student competitors called the "Green Team". Tara was almost like me, because as a ballroom dancer myself, I love to give it my all on the dance floor. Therefore, Tara was immediately believable in character. I followed Tara all the way in one of the local dance competitions where she shined in her favorite dance--the swing. She wails, she rocks, she shimmies her
way in the first round of competition and she gets one of the level trophies. Then all of this ballroom bliss turns to shock for Tara when she finds out that she was not picked for the semifinal round. I see Tara's disappointment as she cries as if she lost her favorite friend.
Later, I realized that her overconfidence in her dance skills was probably why she did not make the semifinals.
But as the finals came in, the movie became better and better. I can reminiscence the days when the 1990s had two good periods--the rebirth of salsa and the swing. Especially when the swing number "Hot Line" ("706-6655") by the Jet Set Six, caused both the competitors and even spectators to excite themselves. There were two good merengues also that made
me get off the chair and dance.
Then I focused on the bald-headed guy who was for the Indigo Team when the team competed against the Green Team for the Challenge Trophy. Another believable character too, as he shined especially in the Latin dances, especially the merengue.
The biggest tension came when the emcee said "...There is no third-place, there is no second-place; there can be only one Challenge Trophy". As the Indigo Team was announced as the winner for the trophy, it was almost like a madhouse as the bald guy is surrounded by the victorious mob, as if the team won the state high school basketball championship, even though it is not a basketball championship game--just a dance sport event. You see
the Green Team members frozen in shock, and in disgust.
Then the Indigo Team guy shows the greatest sigh of relief as he holds the trophy. That ending of the movie shows perhaps the greatest innocence---that which New York needed after being terrorized by the 9-11 attacks.
That is why "Mad Hot Ballroom" is a great hit. "Mad Hot Ballroom" is is not just for fans of "Shall We Dance?"--whether in the Japanese version or the new twist on the flick featuring Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez. "Mad Hot Ballroom" is for the ballroom dancer in all of us!
This is very great, and that is why I adore this movie highly.
The Blues Brothers (1980)
One of the best movie-musicals with a Chicago theme in the 1980s
This famous of all Chicago-related movies was better than "Code of Silence" and even better than the recent "The Lake House".
The movie seems to be in two big parts. There is the famous duo, John Belushi and of course Dan Aykroyd, who play Joliet Jake Blues and Elwood Blues. Of course, the scene starts at the infamous Joliet Correctional Center where Jake is going to be out on parole for an armed robbery conviction, with Elwood in an old police car to pick him up from prison walls.
Their mission (where the famous "Mission from God" phrase occurs over 5 times in the flick)---to get the Penguin (which is actually Katherine Freeman, who owned the St. Helen of the Blessed Shroud Orphanage in Calumet City, Illinois), called that because she was dressed in white and black like a penguin (she is actually a nun) to pay a property tax bill of $5000. When the Penguin refuses to pay that money (because she considered the brothers as sinners who were not able to repent) and kicks both of them out of her room and out of
the building, the only way they can accomplish the mission of raising funds for paying the tax bill is "to put the band back together"---The Blues Brothers Band, of course.
But I also saw that another character, Carrie Fisher, who plays the "Mystery Lady" or "Mystery Assassin" (the latter is better), had other plans. She had a death wish on the famous two-man duo.
She had a variety of weapons for the assassination of the Blues Brothers, which the two men dodge bullets, explosions, and fire by this hard-headed lady. The first assassination attempt used a rocket launcher at the transient hotel's entrance where the two men were; the next was detonation by dynamite of a transient hotel, thwarting even the police dynamic entry to the room where the two singing men slept. The next attempt was using a
flame thrower at a propane tank near the telephone booth where the two man were talking in. The tank blows, causing the booth to go up and then tumble down, but the two men survive all that. Then, getting out of the Palace Hotel Ballroom in a water logged tunnel, the lady uses a semi-automatic weapon but the two men's verbal pleadings saved them from murder.
But it was not just John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and Carrie Fisher that were important to me in that rhythm-and-blues movie that made Chicago rock. There were other characters that would eventually make up the backup band for the Blues Brothers-Steve "The Colonel" Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Willie "Too Big" Hall, and Don "Bones" Malone, with a keyboardist-singer leading them-a character named Murph (played by Murphy Dunne).
They sound like famous boxing stars, but I realized all that in the Ramada Inn scene that these aforementioned characters played for a band called Murph and the Magitones, a fictional name for a gigging band that usually plays for parties. Then Dan (who played "Elwood Blues") and John (who played "Joilet Jake Blues") meet up with them and then this was probably the turning point, with Jake bringing out one of the important lines in the movie, "We're puttin' the band back together."
But besides the plot I like, I adored most of the music of the soundtrack that featured some of music's greatest superstars. I especially liked the dance scene where Ray Charles sang the R and B number, "Twistin'" and introduced the whole movie audience to some of the rock-and-roll and bop dances that we grew up with, especially in the heyday of the James Brown era. (Ray Charles played the character of the store owner of Ray's Music Exchange, and even while being visually-impaired, I perceived him as a second "Stevie Wonder" of some sort.) The shot for this Ray's Music Exchange scene most likely, with my autistic hunch, in the Rogers Park neighborhood, just near the Wilson CTA stop, and I saw a lot of dancing extras in the film - probably 200, children and adults.
In the soul food café scene, there was the great "Queen of Soul" herself, known
for the R-and-B vintage hit, "Respect"-yea, Aretha Franklin. When I saw her in the flick doing "Think", which was a stepped-up version of this R-and-B number (coming from her own soul album called "Aretha Now" in 1968), I realized how modernized American rock-and-roll can be in that period of start of the 1980s decade. The extras in the film who sang as backup singers in "Think" (I did not know who they were) reminded me of Diana Ross' Supremes. I realized that the Blues Brothers were there to try to increase the forces in the backup band-they found Mac "Guitar" Murphy who played guitar, and "Blue Lou" Marini, who played the saxophone, who also worked at the soul food watering hole.
But my favorite other song from the soundtrack was "Sweet Home Chicago",
which was actually based on a 78 single by blues singer Robert Johnson, on Vocalion Records, which was recorded in 1937 in Gunter Hotel, in San Antonio, Texas. I also found out that John Belushi, one of the Blues Brothers, said something about the song attributed "to the great Magic Sam". But in 1980, I did not know Magic Sam as a blues artist-I only knew a bit of Koko Taylor, who was starting to become one of the greatest Chicago female blues artists on the planet. So I realized-after digging into Wikipedia, that Magic Sam was the stage name for Samuel Gene Maghett (1937-1969), who was born in Mississippi. The name might mean that he might have been a boxer, but he was not-just simply a blues artist.
So, from learning a lot from this song's past, I found out that this the song "Sweet Home Chicago" started its history in Texas, and then moved into the Mississippi Delta, so the blues song that Magic Sam performed had a bit of a Mississippi Delta Blues twist.
That is a lot to say for just one blues song that was famous not just for Chicago's blues enthusiasts-but all other blues enthusiasts in the United States. When I saw "Sweet Home Chicago" being performed live in the movie with the Blues Brothers twosome, their backup blues band, and an energetic audience in the scene at the Palace Hotel Ballroom-looks like I have to make an educated guess that what was an acoustic blues number was modified for today's 1980 audiences-they wanted the song more powerful, with more instrumental forces than just a guitarist-singer-and that is I think what the audience got.
Then, I learned about other songs that were R and B favorites in the flick. I hear
"Soothe Me" by Sam and Dave, which is a West Coast Swing type of R and B number (a shuffle), and then, the up-tempo, funky, 4/4 "Hold On, I'm Comin" by the same group with the Memphis Horn section and rhythm guitar, in the scene where the Blues Brothers were pulled over by a state trooper.
There was also classical music in the supposedly "all blues" flick---the "Ride of the Valkyries" by Richard Wagner, from the opera "Die Walküre", which I heard in the climax of the final car chase just near the end of the movie. And there was a song that was never credited generally in the film which sounded classical-a Viennese waltz by a string and piano ensemble still remaining unidentified at that time, but it was called "The Romantic" in the key of A major, composed by Joseph Lander (1801-1843), which sounded something like a salon type of waltz, but not in the way Johann Strauss Jr. Would
compose; this song appeared in the Chez Paul restaurant scene in the flick. ("Chez" - is a French term that un-literally means "at the home of"). This was when Jake and Elwood try to find that maitre'd, Alan Rubin, who had the character "Mr. Fabulous", who was a trumpet player.
Superman III (1983)
Superman III Features New Supercomputer That Goes Wild
When I first saw this flick, Ross Webster now becomes sort of a offshoot of the evil Lex Luthor in the Superman and Superman II movie.
With that, Ross in Superman III focuses on Gus Gorman (a computer expert played by Richard Pryor) to defeat the powers of Superman by modifying all of his regular behaviors of what Superman stands for--good, kindness, and sincerity.
I then realized that the attack on Superman was three-prong. First, Ross forces Gus Gorman to alter the weather satellites on a computer mainframe system, so that the altering will cause a major tropical storm in Colombia that would destroy the country's coffee crop and terribly destroy the world markets that
depend on that valuable crop.
I also see that Gus does his evil deed but was informed that Superman countered this super-storm over Columbia by his common super-strengths (like turning a twister upside down or blowing strong winds with his mouth to dry up the flooded crops), which made Ross mad.
Then, the second prong is to find Superman's chemical qualities, which included of course, Kryptonite, made of course from the planet Krypton, which detonated completely by the super-heating sun in the first Superman movie. Gus gets back to a mainframe computer station and does find the exact chemical qualities in the Krypton, and then, that Krypton rock is sent to Superman, and then, Superman becomes two parts--one angry and drunk--called "bad Superman", and the other part, called "good Superman."
This leads to the final battle in a garbage dump between the two different Superman beings...finally, a choke hold by the good Superman ends the bad Superman for good. When I saw that happened-it was a sigh
of relief!
The third prong attack on the good Superman (with the "bad Superman" now gone) focuses on Gus's design of a supercomputer somewhere in the desert Southwest. I then saw that Ross then beckons Superman in the final conflict, and Superman knows that he has to be stopped before the supercomputer
rules Ross's goal of world conquest that could lead to worldwide chaos and destruction.
I found that this third prong attack was in 2 stages. In stage 1, as Superman comes towards the location of the cave from the outside, he is greeted by plenty of surface-to-air rockets (part of the computer's exterior defense system) that aims toward him, but Superman does evade the destructive
missiles as Ross, along with two lady assistants, uses the supercomputer as some type of video game as they were destined to kill Superman. When those regular missiles were ineffective, there was a call to fire the MX--a much bigger surface-to-air missile, which does hit Superman and he falls to the ground near
the cave. At the same time, Gus Gorman goes into the cave and sees his computer creation come to life.
Gus then is greeted graciously by Ross, to join in the computer's bells and whistles to try to finish off Superman.
Superman does get up and go right into the supercomputer cave, and tells Ross that this game is over. This leads to Stage 2 of Ross's attack, when Ross then stops Superman with the computer's Krypton laser pulse--the chemical Gus made. As Superman is stunned in terrible pain and collapses, Gus
then runs into the main power switch and pulls the plug, turning the whole computer off.
This buys time for Superman, but suddenly, the computer goes on again, and Gus realizes that the computer wants to be something like a monster. It had gone completely mad, and one lady assistant is entrapped by the device and becomes an evil cyborg. Superman leaves the cave and comes back with a
closed special acid canister that is inert. And as he was about to attack the computer, the computer was counterattacks and stuns Superman with shock hits, and then with a backing laser magnet that forces Superman into the supercomputer's inner core to fatally entrap him; at this point, he opens up the acid canister, and the acid does its work. It eats away and then destroys the whole supercomputer from the inside out--starting with small--and then big--explosions.
After all of the explosions were over, I now find that the supercomputer is now rubble with twisted and bent steel, and I then see that Superman comes out from the destruction, was able to find Gus alive (he hid somewhere to evade the carnage), and takes Gus back alive, out of the cave, to his original
workplace. Superman says that the other people will be brought to justice, including Ross.
From all of the seriousness of this flick, there is a lighter part of this movie where Lois Lane is introduced to a brand new writer for the Daily Planet, Lana Lane. She appears brighter in appearance than the original Lois. The ending of the movie was, I thought, something that Superman had which was
a new trait--the ability to bring a historic structure back to its normal place, and that is what Superman did to bring the Tower of Pisa, which went straight up when Superman turned bad, back to its original leaning position. The Italian clay makers who saw Superman, as I see it, realize what happened and
decided to use a chisel to destroy a number of clay replicas of the straight Tower of Pisa.
We Live in Public (2009)
Josh Shows How The Internet Can Be Very Dangerous If Done Wrong
Through the help of Andi Timoner, the filmmaker, I saw Josh's very ambitious way he wanted to use the Internet to make it big and send his Internet gifts to the masses in a unique way. He started out in New York and took some Internet classes and then found that the Internet would be the biggest medium of all since television and radio. He had to strike at the opportunity to be a Internet star fast because the Internet had already lured successful stars in the 1980s.
And then, Josh hit it big by founding Jupiter Communications somewhere in the 1990s, and then, added some sex chat platforms from Prodigy to make even more money from WW, and eventually, when Jupiter went public on the NYSE, Josh became a millionaire instantly.
From there he threw a lot of modernized loft parties, and eventually founded the first Internet television company, Pseudo, which was mainly an adult platform where talented hippie-newbies (mainly well-to-do) can do conservative stuff all the way to NSFW stuff, such as full-nudity shows and even porn. CBS almost cracked down on Pseudo as Josh's idea of Internet TV almost became a fraud, but then, as he abruptly changed into his alibi-pseudonym, Luvvy, the other Pseudo members disbanded from him completely, forcing him to walk away from his TV company, but still smiling with a lot of money from Pseudo's stock share.
Then, from Dec. 1, 1999, he founded a new project--spotted a loft tenement somewhere in Manhattan, and created one of the craziest and most dangerous DIY projects in the world, called "Quiet". It involved part-party, part torture experiment, part millennium cult, part strip club, and part gun-shooting range, with a shower, live bar area and even a church, but the big thing was those bunks that all were affixed with cameras--so you have no privacy whatsoever. With roughly 100 or so people inside, the gunplay and the worsening flip-outs tipped off authorities on the height of NYE Millennium celebrations, and at roughly daybreak on Jan. 1, 2000, the bunker was shut down and the guinea-pig people under Josh were all evicted, and Josh had to move on to a new project.
During a boat party after "Quiet" folded, Josh founded Tanya Corrin again, who was in the program "Cherry Bomb" for his Pseudo-TV, and fell in love with her. Eventually they decided on another experimental project - "We Live In Public" at Tanya's modern loft apartment. The apartment was retrofitted with cameras everywhere, even in the bathrooms, and for the first months of what I call a "24-hour virtual Internet soap opera", Tanya and Josh were all right in love, but with cameras watching, sadly, Josh later on turned terribly wrong, committing domestic sexual battery on Tanya as cameras watched. This started a downfall cascade with the project with the dot-com busts exposed, and Josh's chat audience dropped to nearly nothing after Josh raped her. Josh's "downer" cascade worsened with the demise of Pseudo and lots of Josh's millions vanished in the dot-com busts, forcing Tanya to give in and leave the apartment forever, leaving Josh alone to finish the project but with great disappointment. With the breakup of Tanya, Josh turns more and more depressive, cynical, and crabby, and decides that enough is enough, and leaves the loft for good with cameras still rolling, and retreat in a secluded farm just outside Manhattan.
Then, after going back to Manhattan finding out that broadband in 2006 was the hot Internet trend, I saw that he tried to use another Internet television medium called Operator 11, which operated good for a few years, but sadly, Tanya's rape at his "We Live in Public" was publicly exposed - which also blacklisted Josh from acceptance of his Internet pitch with top Internet executives, who did not want any more of Josh's bad reputations, and with Josh losing a lot more money, he had to dismantle Operator 11 for good.
Now realizing that he is the scarlet letter of the Internet, his finances close to being in severe penury, and facing a blacklisting as bad as 1950s McCarythism, he decides to expatriate to Ethiopia, where he can be welcome again with real human friends, and can focus on real human communication, and decides not to deal with the Internet any more there. At the end of the movie, there is speculation of Josh trying to come back to repair the major damage to his Internet reputation - but Josh will keep the audience guessing in his new African home whether he will return to the states or not...ending the movie.
Batman Returns (1992)
Probably the best of the Batman feature movies ever
Well, the whole story behind this "Batman" movie sequel--would be the Danny Elfman story. This film composer's movie soundtrack to "Batman Returns" was probably one of the best ones I had seen in any other movie since "Star Wars" of John Williams. The way Elfman treats the film is almost like a clinic on how to create musical leading motives for the protagonist--Batman, and the two antagonists--the Penguin and Catwoman. Batman's musical theme is powerful and angular--the Penguin has stepwise notes that depicts his walking gait with his webbed black feet, and Cat's theme focuses on a four-note series of 2 minor seconds that depict her stalking walks, scratching and meow sounds.
This Batman movie takes place in two major spaces - Gotham City on the edge of Christmas time, where an entrepreneur/corporate juggernaut, Max Shreck, runs his own business and department store in that downtown area, and the Penguin's lair, which has two substrates - an on-earth area of snow-packed zoo animals seemed to be stuffed, called "Big Zoo", and the zoo's attachment-attraction, "Arctic World", which leads to the subterranean lagoon where The Penguin lies.
The main beginning of "Batman Returns" is the Christmas tree-lighting ceremony at Gotham, featuring the Ice Princess who switches on the lights, which goes well. But then, Penguin's evil circus army crashes the ceremony in an all-out attack on its citizens, but Batman steps in to stop the carnage.
When the Penguin reveals itself, after luring Max Shreck into an underground trap and is forced to meet up with that villain in his lair, Penguin reveals some of his special "umbrella" dual-use weapons to him, such as a Twilight Zone umbrella that fires rifle shots, or another umbrella that is a flamethrower, and then another one that displays a long knife. Penguin also explains to Max about one part of the lagoon that has hazardous waste--called toxic effluent--from the textile plant that he owns, but Max retorts that he shreds the negative pollution evidence from his company from prying eyes. Eventually, the Penguin wants in to get out from being imprisoned from years in the sewer, and Max gives in to helping him out of it with his own celebration. When the Penguin does reveal himself in that first media celebration aboveground, he reveals that he wants to delve deep into the city's vital records to learn not only his family--but also what was his real name. The Gothamites do allow him access to the records and after that, the Penguin reveals that he did not want to be that anymore - he is actually Oswald Cobblepot, his real self. He tells the crowd that when he was raised as a son, his parents (Tucker and Esther, the parents who sent him into the lair at the movie's overture, who were now dead) mistreated him badly, but now, he pardons them publicly. Then, he decides to become mayor of Gotham City, and Max Shreck decides to be his DIY publicist for his campaign run.
In between, there was Selina Kyle, who works for Shreck as probably her secretary. In one scene, Max Shreck catches her inadvertent reading of his confidential files, and then is stealthily forced into an outdoor window, and when he kisses Selina, it is forced and this causes Selina to crash through the window and falls to her death hundreds of feet below. Eventually, she is resurrected as a flurry of cats bite on what was Selina's corpse and as soon as she gets a second life, she goes to her home and her behavior has greatly changed, leading to the formation of Selina's alias--Catwoman, or Cat.
Meanwhile, Oswald Cobblepot orders his evil circus army to bring destruction to Gotham's downtown, with additional work by Cat, as part of his run, who, with Oswald's help, thwart Batman's ending of the second evil circus carnage with an unsuspecting romance. Later on, Oswald wants the re-lighting of the Christmas tree and wants Batman to keep order, and preceding that, Batman and Selina start a romance at Wayne's home, which had to stop for some reason and word came out that the Ice Princess was abducted.
While all that is going on, Oswald orders his evil cohorts to change the Batmobile's intricacies after Batman goes to save the Princess, but Cat frustrates Batman's efforts, and as Batman tries to save her who was fettered with ropes on a pedestal ledge a few hundred feet up, Oswald throws a "lawn dart" of bats that attack the Princess and forced her to fall way, way down straight to her death, but not until putting on that tree light switch on her fatal impact to the ground, which in turn causes a large swarm of bats to hover around the audience. The Cat is then congratulated by Penguin, but then, when Cat refuses Penguin's new evil proposal, Penguin rejects the Cat forever, making her fly away in his own umbrella helicopter. The Cat does release herself and falls into a greenhouse, and then screams out - fortunately that is the 3rd life she saved herself. Then Oswald goes to try to manipulate the Batmobile's controls as Batman drives through downtown in a wild way, but Batman was able to detect the foreign object after doing great damage, and escapes. Then, as Oswald makes his public outdoor speech, Batman and Wayne jam the frequency of the speech, and the crowd boos, marking the end of Oswald's mayoral campaign. In anger, Oswald fires shots with his umbrella and goes back into the lair in a Duck Car. Finally, in anger, he says Oswald is no more and he wants to be the evil Penguin again. He plans a destruction of all of the first-born sons of Gotham as revenge for the destruction of his mayoral campaign, by bringing them to their death in their toxic effluent area of the lagoon.
Meanwhile, Shreck holds an executive masquerade party, with Max and his friend, Chip Shreck, attending. Batman (Bruce Wayne in disguise) and Selina Kyle also attend the party later and embrace in a slow dance, but Penguin crashes the party in a big explosion, warns the partyers that the first-born sons will be doomed, and demands Chip Shreck to send him to death in the sewer - but Max decides he is the one who deserves to die, because he helped Penguin. The Penguin gives in and forces Max to the Duck Car, and off to the Penguin's lair they go. The Penguin then restrains Shreck in a locked bird cage above the water that is not toxic.
As the evil circus army train-car rolls in to take some of the first-born sons to the deadly lair, Batman intervenes and snatches away the main train-car driver. A message by Penguin's pet monkey about the first deadly plan being frustrated angers the Penguin ten-fold.
Now, with a larger Penguin army with missiles on their backs, the Penguin now is waging war on all of Gotham's people, wanting all of them dead. As the army encroaches in on Gotham Plaza to fire its missiles, Batman and the old man in the Wayne's home jam the frequency and forces the penguins to turn away from the plaza back to their lair, making the Penguin nervous. Then, they hear the Batmobile coming in, and even Penguin's daring escape in his Duck Car was not good enough, and the Batmobile crashes into the Duck Car, knocking that car out for good. Their last short combat ends with Batman revealing a buzzing homing beacon, which then reveals the penguins with all of their missiles around the Big Zoo. The Penguin presses the red beacon button thinking it will lure them, but instead, this fires the missiles that eventually destroy the Big Zoo, and at the same time, the Batmobile releases a series of bats that attack the Penguin and then, he crashes through a window and way down to the toxic sludge water below.
Batman realizes the Big Zoo is going to be destroyed and escapes through a zip line down into the Penguin's Lair itself, but before that, just as Max was about to escape from the cage with the monkey's help, his leg is snatched by a rope and he goes down hard into the water - it is the Cat trying to stop him. After the zip line, Batman stops Cat, now armed with a whip, but not before Cat slams Max under a high voltage capacitor in the lair's electrical substation area. At that point, the missiles do the final job of completely destroying Big Zoo.
Then, Batman tries to make Selina reconcile herself and recognize that Batman is actually Bruce Wayne and they have the same dark sides. Batman unmasks himself to prove a point, and Selina realizes that he is for real. Then as Batman was about to kiss him, Cat scratches him and says she does not want to have a relationship with him anymore, and Max reveals that because of her cat behavior that was unacceptable to him, Max fires her. Then Max shoots Batman with one shot, and then, Max shoots 4 shots at the Cat, trying to put an end to the Cat nightmare, but as Cat approaches very close to him, with both under the capacitor, Max runs out of bullets.
This leads to the last chapter. Cat wants out of Max for good, so she makes a kiss on Max with her activated stun gun, which then goes up to the electrical capacitor, and as she kisses Max, Max gets electrically fried, and the whole substation and capacitors - get energized with a grand finale of arcing and sparks and explosions. After the explosions are done, Batman, surviving the bullet wound, goes into the electrical damage and finds Max burned hard to a crisp. Meanwhile, the Penguin emerges from the toxic water, now more slimy and greenish blue from the toxic effects, and as he gets up on land, he does one last ditch attack at Batman with his last umbrella weapon, which turns out only to be an innocent carousel, and eventually, the Penguin falls near Batman's feet for the last time, and perishes there. The Emperor penguins do a funeral memorial, taking the dead Penguin down to the non-toxic area of the water, letting him sink there for eternity, and Batman can only watch helpless.