ALL THAT JAZZ

All That Jazz may not be the best picture ever made but it's a pretty good start for a conversation. I say this because I just saw it for at least the fourth time on the FOX Movie Channel and I was awed once again by the creativity of the late Bob Fosse. But there is even more than his creativity on display here, the sheer audacity to try new things on almost every level is apparent in almost every scene. When you compare a new movie like Dreamgirls to Jazz you just shrug and shake your head. Dreamgirls has no aspirations to be better than a Motown bling; a Top 40 with fancy photography and great costumes without a single creative element that is new. All That Jazz reached for the stars and comes ever so close. The Dreamgirls crew would barely be a pimple on Bob Fosse's ass. And if All that Jazz was produced today, the Hollywood assholes would transform it into a lecture on the health care system and an agit-prop for Socialized Medicine, all to music that is at least fifty years old.

All That Jazz is still a must tape. A must see.

I have the Dixie Chicks concert which was done at the local Kodak Theatre last year as a fund raiser for PBS. The audience was at least 95% dykes and looked great on TV until you consider the fact that the Kodak only seats 3,500 and that is probably the lesbian population of the LA West Side/South Bay. Project that into album sales and you can see the end of their careers. Their only remaining markets would be the lesbians in New York, Chicago, LA, and San Francisco. Too bad. The concert is terrific if you care. BTW the Chix jumped the shark with their World Tour Tape, a cheapo effort in which concerts in various venues are joined together within songs. Result? Costume changes within songs that are jarring. But the gall to put together something like that spells "bye bye."