Moulin Rouge Fest

Is the music of Moulin Rouge this season's Carmen? With big names such as Virtue/Moir, Karen Chen, Vincent Zhou, and supposedly Ashley Wagner all slated to skate to the music of Baz Luhrmann's maximalist melodrama, it certainly looks like it.

One of the upsides of skating to Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge is that one has a lot of music selections to potentially choose from--in addition to the background music, the film features a good deal of musical numbers, most--if not all--of them opulent covers of well-known songs done at a manic pitch. Despite the dizzying variety of songs to choose from, however, the majority of skaters skating to the music of Moulin Rouge somehow all end up skating to El Tango de Roxanne, Moulin Rouge's cover of The Police's Roxanne with generous dollops of melodrama, sex, and operatic excess added in.  Coincidence? Or creative bankruptcy? Take your pick.

Anyway, in honor of Moulin Rouge seemingly being the musical flavor of the season, let's take a stroll down memory lane and re-watch some Moulin Rouge programs of years past . . .

2016-2017's Best and Worst Dressed

Ah, the figure skating post season--with the next competitions a mere glint in the milkman's eye and scant news available about our beloved skaters, now is the time of the year for figure skating fans to indulge in favorite pastimes such as arguing over disputed, decades-old competitive results, swapping tales of rink gossip and intrigue, and engaging in costume-related discussions. Incidentally, the lattermost topic happens to be the focus of today's post: my picks for this year's best and worst figure skating costumes.

2017 World Team Trophy: 20 Questions

Twenty questions about everyone's favorite end-of-season cheesefest . . .

A Change

In the latest twist to the perennial off-season coaching drama of the figure skating world, there appears to be confirmation that Nikolai Morozov is now coaching Kaitlyn Weaver/Andrew Poje (!!!).

This development is paradoxically both unsurprising and surprising at the same time.

Grand Prix Final 2015: Everyone Else

The men were so awesome they get their own post. Everything else that happened at the senior Grand Prix Final 2015 goes in here.

Let's do this twenty questions style:

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day!

For those of the non-Canadian persuasion, Canada Day is the day when Canadians ride their pet polar bear and/or moose to the local curling rink, where they gather together to eat poutine and drink from bags of milk. On this auspicious holiday, Canadians are often found garbing themselves in maple leaves (in contrast to their usual flannel lumberjack attire) and being proud of the fact that they are not American. If you find yourself talking to a Canadian today, you can endear yourself to them forever by congratulating them for having a universal healthcare system or gun control. Alternatively, you can delight a Canadian by merely acknowledging the simple fact that Canada exists, and that you are aware of a national holiday at the beginning of July that is not on the 4th of July.

Though ice hockey holds the lion's share of the collective Canadian consciousness with regards to athletic endeavors, Canadians nonetheless have had an illustrious record of success in the sport of figure skating. In lieu of eating poutine and garbing yourself in maple leaf paraphernalia, you may thus celebrate Canada Day in the comfort of your own home by watching the following assortment of memorable programs by Canadian skaters:

Judge Bait

Earlier this year, Eddie Redmayne won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. At the time, my roommate passionately decried the Academy's decision to reward Mr. Redmayne the Best Actor award, calling the whole affair yet another example of the Academy's collective shortsightedness in awarding Oscar bait. Oscar bait, otherwise known as the pejorative term denouncing a film that appears to have been carefully calibrated with the sole intention of winning awards, particularly that golden Art Deco statuette awarded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. To put it simply, critics of Oscar bait denounce films of that bent as products of pure naked pandering as opposed to true originality or creativity.

As a pretentious snob, I am practically contractually obliged to hate Oscar bait and their ilk. Therein lies the evils that gave rise to mediocrities such as Crash (ugh!!) and Shakespeare in Love (double ugh!!), both of which happen to be Best Picture winners at the Academy Awards in their respective years. And yet, and yet--there are some examples of Oscar baiting films/performances that I loved, or at the very least was impressed by. Charlize Theron was astonishing in Monster, for instance, and I found Schindler's List incredibly affecting (its sequels Schindler's Fist and Schindler's Pissed less so, however). Is Oscar bait inherently bad? Can pandering rise up above its desperation?

All this talk about Oscar bait (yeah, this is an old post) reminds me of one figure skating program this season that has been repeatedly been fingered as a program that has been specially conceived and choreographed to win titles this season, especially the World title: Weaver/Poje's Four Seasons. On its face, it really does seem like Weaver/Poje's Four Seasons has been calibrated to strike directly at the hearts of figure skating judges with its classical warhorse of a musical choice, relatively conventional choreography, among other factors.

Favorite Performances of 2014

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a figure blog on the cusp of a new year, must write a retrospective listing favorite performances from the year past. And so here are mine for 2014.

Note that I said "favorite," which may or may not necessarily correspond with "best." Insert usual caveats such as de gustibus non est disputandum, etc., here.

Grand Prix Final 2014, Day 3: One Sentence Reviews (Part I)

The Grand Prix Final, though not a competition with quite the prestige factor or importance of the World Championships, features the top skaters going head-to-head for the first time in the season and thus can provide viewers with a rough idea of the present pecking order so far.

Having an idea of the current pecking order had been especially important in ice dance, given that the retirements of Davis/White and Virtue/Moir as well as the dissolution of Ilinykh/Katsalapov created a conspicuous vacuum at the discipline's apex which quite a few teams have scrambled to fill during the Grand Prix season. Similarly, even though the men have not be roiled by retirements to the same extent as their counterparts in ice dance, injuries and implosions have created a sense of turmoil among the rank and file.

Grand Prix Final 2014, Day 2 - One Sentence Reviews

Brevity is the soul of wit, Shakespeare says.

For this post at least, I agree.

A Last Post...of 2012

It's that time of the year again, that time when we look back at the year that is rapidly on its way to passing us by and ponder those time-worn questions: what was good? What was bad? How much alcohol is needed to forget it all?

When it comes to looking back at the 'good' in figure skating, I find that it isn't necessarily the programs in their entirety that endure the longest in my memories, but certain indelible moments within those programs. That glorious, wind-beneath-the-wings feeling evoked when Akiko Suzuki flew down the ice during her choreographic sequence after nailing all her jumps at the NHK Trophy, for instance, or the memory of seeing Virtue/Moir's brilliant, furious closing lifts in their Carmen free dance at Skate Canada for the very first time. Another great moment that imprinted itself into my mind was watching Takahiko Kozuka skate his beautiful spread eagles set perfectly to the beating of the drums in his short program at Skate America, and who can forget Carolina Kostner's sinuous, sensual step and choreographic sequences and her final, very late 3S right to the music of her Bolero long program.

Facta, non verba

Approximately two years ago, I wrote a sincerely gushy blog post about a young and promising dance team: Elena Ilinykh and Nikita Katsalapov.

However, I have since attributed that blog post to the vagaries of youthful indiscretion, something akin to past follies like wearing sweatpants out in public and getting into drinking contests with a bunch of frat boys twice my size.

Ten Things Worth Watching from 2011-2012

My top ten list of favorite performances this season, in video form....i.e. stuff that I'd actually bother re-watching in the future.

Four Continents 2012

The 2012 Four Continents Figure Skating Championships happened.

It did indeed.