terb’s world: my favorite things

Here are some of the reasons why I love STEP UP.

#1 The story didn’t focus on the rich girl – poor guy angle (also known as the heaven and earth plot line, which is so overused in Philippine movies). Instead, they focused on the differences of Tyler Gage and Nora Clark as individuals.

#2 Tyler and Nora didn’t get together until AFTER she has broken up with her boyfriend Brett. Cheating on your boyfriend, no matter how big an ass he may be, is just a huge no-no in my book. I mean seriously, can’t you at least make a phone call to break up with the person you’re with before you hook up with someone else?

#3 The dance sequences and the music were really interesting. I have this thing for combining two different genres, like old-school church hymns with punk rock tempos (like “It Is Well with My Soul” my Jars of Clay” or sappy love songs like “Always Be My Baby” with hot rock star vocalists like David Cook. So combining ballet with hip-hop, and strings with percussions (such as in Bout It by Yung Joc featuring 3LW and Imma Shine by Youngbloodz) really worked for me.

#4 I totally understand Tyler about not wanting anything so that it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t get it. I’m like that myself sometimes (or most of the time? I am SO unambitious). But I guess it’s time to “think I can have them” too.

#5 Channing Tatum – Channing Tatum – Channing Tatum. (Sorry, I’m getting fan-girly again!) Seeing him on screen is enough of a reason to like any movie. After seeing him in Step Up and researching about him on the internet (mostly on his official website, Channing Tatum Unwrapped where I also got most of the pictures for my blog), I realized that I’ve seen him before in Coach Carter and She’s the Man, and in the music video of “Get Up” by Ciara. But the obsession really started only when I saw him dance in STEP UP.

Today marks my first week as a fan of the movie STEP UP (and of Channing Tatum of course, I don’t think you can be a fan of the movie without being a fan of the guy who plays Tyler Gage). So I’m writing about all my other favorite scenes from Step Up since I’ve already talked about the club scene in my previous post.

#1 The finale (or senior showcase). The music was fantastic, and so was the choreography, which mixes ballet and hip-hop. You’ve got to give props to both Channing and Jenna Dewan for their dancing. I love the part where Tyler catches his cap after pushing it off his head – it’s at 00:37 in the Youtube link (watch the bloopers in the DVD, it was funny how he couldn’t get it at first). I also love the part where a backup dancer helps him into his long-sleeves while another throws him his cap while dancing – it’s at 2:04 in the Youtube link (watch the bloopers again, they couldn’t get the timing down and had to do it over and over again). By the way I realized that it pays to buy an original DVD since it has those bonus features like bloopers, deleted scenes, etc.

#2 The rooftop dance. I really like the song, especially the line, “You must be the reason I’m alive.” I loved the effect of the late afternoon sun when they were staring at each other’s eyes and it seemed like they were about to kiss, then Tyler said, “Ummmm” and stepped away. I loved the dancing of course, but what I really really loved about the moment was that they didn’t kiss. Nora still had a boyfriend, so it was wrong if they hooked up at that point. The attraction was electrifying though.

#3 The walk to remember, right after the club scene (which is still my favorite). They were talking about how Tyler thought it was better not to want anything so that if he didn’t get it, it wouldn’t matter. Nora asked about him maybe wanting to go to MSA and he replied, “There are a lot of things I want now that I didn’t use to. Sometimes I catch myself thinking I can actually have them.” Then he moved in for their first kiss. Talk about a line that would want any girl kiss you (and after showing off your dancing at the club too!).

#4 The ballet class of Nora (both times). The first was when Tyler told Nora that he would do anything for her to trust him again, and Nora had this sneaky look and said, “Anything?” Next shot was her in a ballet class of five or six year old girls in leotards, and then there’s Tyler in tights! Haha. The second was when he was sitting and just watching Nora. His eyes looked really in love! In fact, when I was watching it for the first time (and I had no idea that Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan were actually a couple in real life), I thought, “Is that just really good acting or is this guy actually in love with this girl?” I guess it’s a combination of both.

#5 The lifting, with Tyler in his “garbage man jumpsuit.” I talked about this a bit in my first post, as this was the scene that pulled me into watching the movie with full concentration. Talk about sweeping a girl off her feet! And look at Tyler’s jaw in this picture. So cute.

If you’ve seen STEP UP, then you probably remember the club scene, which is my favorite. After seeing it for the first time, the first thought that popped into my head was – can any girl NOT kiss a guy after dancing like that? (Warning: This is extremely fan-girly, and was written on a day when I slept only three hours the night before.)

Here are my favorite moments in that scene, with that really cool song “Till the Dawn” playing (in chronological order, not in the order of preference):

#1 When Tyler said, “You look beautiful” to Nora (that was before the dance sequence); because it was as if he could finally get it out since Nora has already broken up with her boyfriend.

#2 When Nora asked Tyler, “So, are you gonna ask me to dance?” and he replied, “I didn’t know you could dance without your tights,” while taking off his jacket. Seems like he couldn’t resist ribbing her a bit, to which Nora replied, “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” referring to the line dance the people do during that song, which he didn’t know of course.

#3 When Tyler realized (before the chorus of the song) that everybody was doing the same thing and he tried to follow, and he asked Nora, “What was that?!?” He looked clueless and somewhat sheepish as he tried to learn the steps.

#4 When he did this slide to get in front of the guys and freestyled. There was this part where he did like a shrugging move and then gave this look to Nora. If you check the link to Youtube, it’s at 2:00.

#5 When he popped his collar during the freestyle. That’s at 2:05 in the same Youtube video.

#6 When towards the bridge or the coda of the song (whatever it’s called, I hope you get what I’m saying), everyone was jumping and he was jumping along. Then came the line “Once again, you can shake your thang and there aint no cost” and everybody stopped and did this pose, except for Tyler. That’s at 2:30 in the Youtube video. He looked so embarrassed and scratched his head because he was the only one who jumped. Haha. It makes me giggle every time.

#7 When he did a back flip and some turns during the second to the last chorus. So cool!

#8 When he did the steps facing Nora or right behind Nora during the last chorus. During all the turns, he had his hands on Nora’s hips to guide her so that she would always be next to him. I love that.

07 May 2008 was an important day for me for one simple reason… It was the first time I saw the hit dance movie STEP UP, and it’s now officially my favorite dance movie.

Okay, okay, so Step Up is a pretty old movie, and it was shown here in the Philippines about two years ago I think. It’s probably not the best movie to write about for my first blog entry since it’s not very current. For some reason, although I am a huge fan of musicals and dance movies, I didn’t watch Step Up when it was showing because it seemed formulaic and predictable to me. Rich, stuck up ballerina meets edgy bad-boy street dancer. They fight. They fall in love. They dance together in the end – maybe she does hip-hop, or he does ballet (ew).

My boyfriend Sidney (who’s a pretty good dancer himself) has seen the movie before and liked it, so he told me about a month ago that it was going to be on Star Movies and that I should try to catch it. I said okay half-heartedly, without really planning to check it out. I remember even being a bit irritable when he asked me for the fourth or fifth time if I’ve already caught the movie on cable, and I had to explain that I really didn’t have time to watch TV lately.

That is, until it was the deadline for my Shelfari challenge with Mike R. I was planning to stay up late on the night of May 7 just to add all the books I have previously read in my lifetime to my Shelfari account in order to win a geeky bet. I flicked on the TV to keep me company, and I chanced on Step Up. It was the scene where Tyler Gage (played by Channing Tatum) was cleaning the muddy floor of MSA (which is in the first one third of the movie, so I wasn’t missing much). I called my boyfriend to ask whether this guy was a janitor or something, and he explained the whole community service thing. I thought Tyler was cute, in the generic pretty boy type of way. No real, immediate appeal since I felt like he looked like every other cute white actor out there.

I got sucked into the story though when Nora Clark (Jenna Dewan) held auditions for her temporary partner, and these lithe ballerinos (is that even a term? ballerinos as opposed to ballerinas who are female?) showed up and couldn’t manage to lift or hold on to her. That was so hilarious, and I found myself leaving my seat in front of the computer and taking a seat in front of the TV to enjoy the movie better. Then Tyler went down the ladder (after he finished cleaning the windows), wiped his hands, and approached Nora:

Tyler: I’ll do it
Nora: Do what?
Tyler: I don’t know, whatever y’all were trying to do out here.
Nora: (looking at him in disbelief) You want to lift me? Are you kidding?
Tyler: (with a tough-guy expression) Does it look like I’m kidding?

By the time they started rehearsing, I knew I was already hooked. It was funny, and sweet, and had an interesting plot – never mind my previous apprehensions on the storyline, they didn’t really focus on the rich girl-poor guy angle that I loathe. I also instantly noticed that they were doing their own dancing (unlike in Save the Last Dance where it was SO obvious that Julia Stiles had a dance double in the ballet sequences). Then came the club scene, and I… uh, fell hard (for Channing Tatum that is).

The very next day I watched the club scene repeatedly on Youtube and bought a DVD of Step Up before I went home. I was up until the wee hours of the morning just watching the movie again and again, especially the dance sequences. After seeing Tyler bust his moves, I forgot all my thoughts on his being a generic pretty boy. Man, that guy can DANCE!

When I was in high school, I got this really huge thing for this wrestler named Bret “Hitman” Hart. It got so bad that at one point, my classmates began calling me Bret (which is interestingly enough the name of Nora’s ex-boyfriend in Step Up). I had all sorts of information and trivia and pictures and posters and magazines of him, and this was during the pre-internet days, so I really had to dig!

I outgrew my crush on Bret Hart after four years or so of manic obsession (although the nickname stuck around till college (TERB is actually Bret spelled backwards – more about how that came to be in another future post). I’ve had crushes on male celebrities after that (such as Reggie Miller of the Indiana Pacers, Freddie Prinze Jr of the chick flicks She’s All That, Boys and Girls, etc) but nothing got as bad as my Bret Hart phase. That is, until I saw Step Up, and realized that I’m on the brink of another obsession.

I’ve always wanted to have my own blog, but for some reason I never got around to doing it. Sure, I wrote a couple of blog entries for my Friendster blog account, but I was never serious about keeping it because I felt like I was going to run out of topics sooner or later. But now, I think I have one topic I can talk about for a couple of blog entries worth.