taking that respect now

FROM January 30, 2004

Due to the fascinating enthusiasm/PASSION? over "You Got Served," and because I have cherished, purchased, bootlegged, home-recorded and daydreamed about more urban dance films than anyone I know and probably more than this dude (pointed out by Jay Smooth), I vow to review it this weekend, after I check it out at the matinee, FOR THE GOOD OF THE WHOLE.

That NYT review, actually, is distressing. Is it humanly possibly he could have missed the sordid beauty of Honey, its plasticene altruism, the olde english "Boricua" emblazoned precariously across the ass of Jessica Alba's yoga pants? Could he have ignored the surface-skimming but ultimately triumphant tension of interracial teen love, played out in dewy sequences of club freaking, between Mekhi Phifer and Julia Stiles in Saved the Last Dance (not the first of which films paired classical choreography with from-the-street b-boying)? (Or from-the-video b-boying, anyway.) Was he unaware that when he said "Chinese martial arts" he really meant "capoeira," and when he said "Gene Kelly and Jerome Robbins," he really meant "Don Campbell"?
I only ask because I care. A LOT.