STREETDANCE 3D

Starring:
Nichola Burley, Rachel McDowall, Richard Winsor, George Sampson, Ukweli Roach, Diversity, Flawless and Charlotte Rampling

Directors:
Max Giwa and Dania Pasquini

Running Time:
98 mins

Out to buy on Blu-Ray/DVD 27/09/10

"What? Put Ballet and Street together?"

After the leader of her crew left after they qualified for the British Street Dance finals, Carly (Burley) has to step in and take over. Struggling to get somewhere to rehearse and trying to keep the crew together, Carly meets Helena (Rampling), the head teacher of a prestigious ballet school who makes her an offer. She can have the full use of her school’s facilities on one condition, that Carly includes some of her dancers in her new street dance crew.

The dance flick has become a stalwart of cinema for decades but this has mainly been the facet of US cinema but can the British beat them in a trans-Atlantic battle?

Dance has always had a major influence on cinema since its inception. Ever style from ballroom to break dance has had a plot influence on many different movies, from an all out musical to comedy but it is the stories set around dance that have become extremely formulaic and predictable and the bad news it that ‘StreetDance 3D’ is nothing original but it does do something different.

While we have always seen young people or kids rise up from the streets to become stars either winning a prestigious scholarship to a dance school or blowing away their rivals to win a competition, these stories have always taken place in New York, Los Angeles or another major American city. ‘StreetDance 3D’ transfers the dance to London and rides on the wave on interest in reality show dance sensations like Diversity and Flawless. It is also the first British movie to embrace the new cinematic 3D technology and the first film in 2010 to use the tech to show its potential.

The film industry would like you to believe that 3D is the future of cinema and home entertainment but they have yet to convince the movie watching public. While ‘Avatar’ set the standard for 3D and made the inclusion of the technology an integral part of the filmmaking process, it is the retrofitted so called 3D movies that are making audiences feel like they are just making films with the extra dimension to hike up the admission price. Films like ‘Clash of the Titans’, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and most of the animated films in 2010 have had 3D added to the film after the completion of production, making then transformed into and not made for the technology. ‘StreetDance 3D’ on the other hand was produced with the technology in mind and shows that if a movie is planned to be in 3D it can be used to showcase what it can do. Here the dance sequences come alive, with dancer’s arms, legs and themselves popping out of the screen and the 3D adds real depth to the extremely well choreographed dance sequences.

The film itself, as with all films in this genre, is clichéd, predictable and very silly but the execution makes the film a lot better than it should have been. Dance crews coming together to battle each other for the National Street Dance Championships and Carly and her Crew are on the verge of becoming the next big thing. When one of her key dancers leaves however, the crew is left with nowhere to go and a lack of direction. This all changes when Carly meets Helena, the head of a ballet school who has an offer for her. Helena will allow Carly and her crew unlimited access to her studio only if she includes some of her most talented ballet students. Of course this leads to a clash of styles and cultures and you can pretty much figure out the rest but it is executed really well.

‘StreetDance 3D’ is never going to win any awards for acting or original screenplay but as a dance flick, it is head and shoulders above anything that has come from across the Atlantic. Using the 3D technology to great effect, this is a movie that street dance fans will adore and one that shows how talented some dancers and choreographers can really be.

3D Home Version
The DVD/Blu-Ray version also includes the 3D version of the film but this the old style red/green lense version and not one optimised for the new 3D TVs, PS3 or Blu-Ray technology. The 3D effects do work quite well but the changed colour of the screen takes alot away from the experience. You'll watch it once but you won't watch it again.

Disc 1 Includes:
StreetDance 2D version
Making of
Anatomy of a scene
StreetDance Tour Video
On Set and much much more ...

Disc 2 Includes:
StreetDance 3D version


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