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OMISSION: One thing I was surprised was never discussed was the notion that, in spite of the final performance being regarded as terrible by all, the audience in attendance not only disagreed, but managed to collectively and telepathically decide to stay in stunned silence at the end of their performance in an effort to fake out the performers, only to surprise them with thunderous applause. Can you imagine how hard it is for an entire audience to do this spontaneously? There wasn't a single person in the audience who decided to applaud at the end just to be polite.

It's time for... How Did This Get Named? So again this is a problem we've encountered before. So you've made a movie with unknown actors and you've given it maybe a punny name. I assume the name is a pun or some sort of play on words, again we're all confused on this. It's also word play that doesn't work or have a direct translation. Fun side fact: If you're in Japan you'll hear the phrase "high tension" a lot. However here it means somebody that we would describe as lively or excitable which is quite literally the opposite of what it means in English. So word play is out, banking on stars is out, what are you to do? Well you kinda go with the music and romance angle I suppose. I present to you... ハートビート (Haatobiito) aka Heartbeat! Music has beats and your heart beats and beats more when in love. I think it does as good of a job if not a better of a job than High Strung, B-b-b-b-b-bonus fact-t-t-t-t-t! When we get Western movies here sometimes we get the international versions. This results in sometimes certain scenes missing or extended or slightly altered. Most times its not noticeable at all. Sometimes they even have a different name. For me while the movie is called Heartbeat in Japanese the English title that appears on screen is "Street Dance: New York"

My absolutely favorite part of that exchange is when the main guy announces that the winner was decided "after heated debate." I can't even imagine what that argument must've been like. I've accompanied lots of dancers, pretty much all of them contemporary dancers, and I love them all, but even at they're most "heated" they still all talk like really respectful yoga instructors disagreeing over what kind of weed they just smoked. They communicate unhappiness, and all emotions, through emphatic abstractions, like "It should be more purple rainbow and less sticky-sticky!" Whereas the ballet instructor probably just called her a fucking moron and stormed off. If somehow they did have both classical and contemporary instructors on the faculty, I can't imagine they ever agree about much of anything. Though I'm not classically trained, I've had lots of opportunity to play with classical musicians, and they just seem to have a completely different relationship to music than I do, which is much more "drop the shoulders," if you get me. To them, it seems less about "emotional expression" and more about "fucking nailing it!" Playing those crazy-difficult lines, written 150 years ago by madmen who will never be topped. It's satisfying in a deeply competitive-with-yourself kinda way, where satisfaction comes from conquering your own body and its own stupid limitations. It's intimidating as hell, and I respect it, but those people never drop the shoulders.

As a professional musician and survivor of a conservatory education, I have to weigh in on High Strung: 1. I can't believe that anyone "playing" an instrument on screen here can be heard on the soundtrack. They did an okay job of trying to match the bowings and fingerings to the music, but it's not entirely believable. The posture and bow holds are also big giveaways. 2. Johnnie says that he got his violin from his grandfather, implying that it's a family heirloom, but there's no way that instrument is more than 10 years old - the patina and fittings look brand new. 3. Gigi-tastic is right - even a student violinist knows not to sword fight with bows because they are rather delicate and expensive. Especially not with an instrument you just borrowed from a section leader. 4. 75% of the violin playing in this movie is cheap special effects that any beginner can figure out. Most notably is a tremolo glissando - rapid bowing while sliding your hand up the fingerboard. It's incredibly easy to do. Another is bariolage - rapid string crossings. It takes a bit of bow control, but it's also really easy. These techniques look and sound flashy but musicians know that they're really not that impressive. 5. June is absolutely right - if a ballet dancer is 19 and hasn't found a place in a company, it's pretty much over. Ballet is rough and dancers usually retire by 35. A 19-year-old should be well into her career. 6. Ruby's teacher says that she'll never be able to market herself without skills in modern dance. Conservatory teachers DO NOT CARE about their students' marketability. Making sure you can get a job is neither their responsibility nor their concern. They only care about getting their students to reach a high artistic standard. Also, ballet dancers tend to specialize and there's hardly any call for them to cross over to other styles. 7. At the final performance, one of the judges turns up her nose at the hip-hop style and another judge counters with "Don't we want to evolve? Don't we want to progress?" This is total bull. The "classical" music world is extremely exclusionary - especially in the halls of higher education - and a conservatory judge would never for a moment consider Ruby's performance artistically valid. 8. I get that June finds the violin shrill and unpleasant but she might enjoy the viola! Violas are played like a violin but are tuned lower and have a rich sound, more like a 'cello. Here's a link to a great piece by Brahms (the soloist comes in at 1:03). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nQZOWpnFB4 9. Paul might have been joking about liking the recorder (probably because it's known as the screechy instrument kids use to play "Hot Crossed Buns") but in the hands of a master it can be gorgeous. Have a listen to Michala Petri playing Vivaldi - skip to 9:09 for some fireworks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X6GJWrZDtE

HA! Oddly it is just "High Tension" (ハイテンション　Hai Tenshon) which I imagine is confusing but the posters are very bloody to sell the horror aspect. I asked the teachers in the teachers room (6 Japanese women aged 23-35) if they knew the movie. All" no"s so I asked them what kind of movie they thought it would be based on the name. They all agreed comedy/action movie.

As far as recorders go, there's a very popular song we all know that has a very prominent recorder part: Stairway To Heaven. In the opening section, the instruments accompanying the guitar are recorders.

Amen to that. This is my biggest pet peeve with modern movie musicals. There's too much editing and you can't see the dancing. Just watch West Side Story or Singin' in the Rain or something (hello, Unspooled!). You're not doing better than that, so follow their approach.

I was surprised the hosts (yup, still calling them hosts) didn’t comment on the conversation the judges have during the middle of Johnny and Ruby’s performance. The female judge calls it “completely indulgent” and one of the other judges says “I disagree. Don’t we want to evolve? Don’t we want to progress?” I have so many questions about this conversation like - Is what they are doing really all that progressive? - If the female judge had such a negative attitude toward the performance, how did they end up winning? - And perhaps, most importantly, is this supposed to be the main lesson of this movie - to be more accepting of non-traditional expressions of art? That works better if the movie was centered around the school trying to stop Johnny from playing the style of music he wanted, but Johnny’s not a student and the school seems to fully embrace contemporary forms of dance and music. That conversation was as pointless as the subplot involving Johnny’s violin being stolen, which added no dramatic tension to the movie.

Quasar, you’re on the clock...

FELICIA DAY joins The Boys to make nerds show.

John Paul Jones is and always will be the coolest man in rock.

I'm glad that the audience member pointed out that Kramrovsky the ballet instructor was Belloc from Raiders of the Lost Ark, because while he was going through the "emotionally moved by what he beholds" B-roll footage ... ... I kept waiting, begging, for him to go for it and say:

Lett's all breath a sigh of relief, and try to remember how much less annoying things will be when we're dead.

For those who have seen Ex Machina, we already knew that Jazzy had the moves. (Sonoya Mizuno's career does seem to have outstripped her other young co-stars, as she's in this and Crazy Rich Asians and Annihilation and La La Land. No wonder everyone thought this should have been the Jazzy movie.)

I took part in the HDTGM Facebook group's secret Santa and my Santa sent me this book!!!!! I'm so excited!

And, as always, many thanks to @Cameron H.for always beeing so on the ball with these threads and organizing the discussion. Well done, sir.

OK, so there are a couple truly magical musical Christmas movies that I adore (Nightmare Before Christmas and Muppet Christmas Carol) that are perennial favorites of mine, but I have also seen those, you know, 8,000 times. Because they are great. SO, if the group is amenable, I will keep us in the Jim Hensoniverse and go with a Christmas special that I have only seen once, years ago.....

Lurk in subway stations like normal people.

But then how are they supposed to fall in love?

I get that the whole city is their campus, but I have to imagine that the community at large must be sick to death of all of these clowns. Everywhere these kids go, they’re trying to one-up the townies. If you live in that neighborhood, you must have to be constantly prepared to be shuffled off to the side so the conservatory kids can cut loose. Thinking of having a fun night at the club? Forget about it. A bunch of calorie deprived ballerinas have just cleared the dance floor to engage in some over-choreographed nonsense. Maybe you want to just go to the neighborhood pub and listen to some live music and watch some traditional dancing instead. Well, fuck you because the Madame Oksana’s contemporary dance class has just pushed the tables together and the nerdy, bad boy violinist with the serial killer smile just stole Angus’ instrument to play Swan Lake remixes. April even threatens one of the ladies dancing “You’re going down!” These people are just trying have a fun night out on the town for fucks sake, and they don’t need your hyper-competitive, rich kid bullshit bringing them down!

Did anyone else feel like it was wildly inappropriate for both Ruby and Jazzy to be sent to Madam Markova’s office together? Their infractions, such as they were, were completely unrelated. Jazzy was suffering from chronic tardiness due to sexy-fierce, forty-year-old dude fucking, and Ruby wasn’t, what, popping when she should be locking? I get Madam Markova was busy, but damn, it really felt to me like this might be a situation where two separate meetings might have been in order.

The one scene that made me laugh the hardest is when they are at that benefit and Johnny and the “villain” have their violin battle. Johnny starts and as he is playing, the orchestra conductor standing behind him starts to conduct the rest of the musicians. Why?!? First of all, why is he trying to help one of the waiters out? And how does he know what instructions to give his musicians? Even if he recognized the song Johnny was playing, there’s no guarantee that he will stick with the same tempo or the same song since he’s trying to outplay the other violinist and display his wide range of skills. You also inexplicably again have a crowd just stand around and act like this violin battle is totally normal, like with the subway dance battle earlier in the film. It is not until a tray of champagne gets dumped over that the snobby crowd suddenly demands that security escort the entire dance crew (and also the event’s entire wait staff) out of the building.

I agree with this. In fact I wish they had filmed the dance scenes better because I might have enjoyed the movie more. I hated this movie and was mostly incredibly bored by it so when the dance scenes started I thought "Finally some fun." Nope they went and ruined those as well. Part of what makes a dancer incredible is seeing them move. It's about what they're doing with their bodies. You don't need close ups of the face let me see their bodies move! While on the topic of horribly shot dance scenes, who was live streaming the subway dance battle? Were they just standing between the groups filming and how were they live editing it as well?

So "crematiing your pointes" is a thing. Pointe shoes can be worn through REALLY quickly. It's a way to keep your shoes going longer and stay stiff. I don't know if I've ever heard of the term in my reading on the history of ballet, but according to a dancer wear blog I found one way to do this is "Some dancers also use this method to revitalize dead shoes: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Swirl a floor polish like Mop and Glow inside the pointe shoes, the pour out the excess. Place the shoes on a baking sheet covered in foil, and place them in the oven. Turn the oven off, and let the shoes sit in the oven 8 hours or overnight. The polish will re-harden the box and shank of the shoes, but it stains the satin a yellowish color and makes them super stiff. This method is not exact, and it will take experimenting to find the perfect amount of polish. Practice this method on an old pair of shoes you don't need before you try it with the pair you are wearing. " http://thedancewearguru.blogspot.com/2014/10/how-to-make-pointe-shoes-last-longer.html I found a lot of recommendations to use Jet Glue which I think is pointe shoe glue? I also saw on a dance forum that some recommended putting shoes in the freezer for a brief fix. Or to use shellac http://www.dance.net/topic/8757237/1/Pointe-Beginners/Rehardening-pointe-shoes.html&replies=1

As a fellow man who is not flexible, I want to support Paul. This is the second episode his flexibility has been a topic. Let him be as flexible or inflexible as he is. Did anyone else think the dancing in this was very badly filmed? Especially the break dance scenes. The camera was very dynamic and the editing kept cutting back to different dancers. I get the desire to highlight a specific dancer, but the way this was filmed detracted from the dancing. The camera would often move with the dancer which made their moves seem less impressive. I think a more static camera would have benefited everyone.