by Marc Hustvedt on March 8th, 2010
The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers lit up the Oscars stage last night (above) on ABC with a medley of all of the Best Original Music nominees. Talk about a killer (and free) promo for their upcoming web series The LXD from director Jon M Chu. Check out Madd Chadd’s legendary robot skills in the UP section of the routine. [YouTube]
The Guild’s creator-star Felicia Day is going to star in a SyFy Channel Saturday Original Movie where she will portray “a werewolf-hunting descendant of Little Red Riding Hood.” “In the action-packed Red, Red (Day) brings her fiancé home, where he meets the family and learns about their business – hunting werewolves.” The movie, set to debut in 2011 on SyFy also stars Kavan Smith (Stargate Atlantis) and Stephen McHattie (Watchmen). [Bloody Disgusting]
DigiVenture is hosting a Women in Digital event tonight in Los Angeles hosted by Joanne Griffith that will feature a panel representing audio, visual and print media professionals, including: Carmen Dixon, former ABC producer and creator of the blog Allaboutrace.com, Zadi Diaz, founder of the web TV series, Epic Fu, and Shani Byard-Ngunjiri, founder of Media Message Ed. The free event will be held at Otis College of Art and Design on Monday March 8th from 7-9pm and parking is free. [DigiVenture.org]
Funny or Die tapped director Ron Howard to rope together the best SNL prexys from the past few decades in a Presidential Reunion video (below) that already broke 2.5 million views on in under a week on site. Darrell Hammond stars as Bill Clinton, Jim Carrey as Reagan, Dan Aykroyd as Dick Cheney, Fred Armisen as Barack Obama, Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford, Dana Carvey as Poppy Bush, Will Ferrell as George W. and Maya Rudolph as Michelle Obama. The video is part 1 of three in the series. [Funny or Die, MainStreetBrigade]
by Joshua Cohen on November 30th, 2009
The problem with dance movies isn’t the dancing. Everyone enjoys watching unrealistically attractive teen and twentysomethings manipulate and contort their bodies in unbelievable ways to hip-hop driven beats. And I mean everyone. I’m no anthropologist, but I’d say humans have a universal, positive association with cutting a rug. Dance, after all, is the world’s oldest art form, and after thousands of years of being an integral part of our culture, it’s fun to watch people do it well. YouTube proves my point.
The problem with dance movies is the storyline. The exposition generally sucks. It’s difficult to pay attention to or care about plot developments so hackneyed they’re fodder for a Wayans flick. Watching outsiders or underdogs endure life-changing experiences – the death of a close family member, the attainment of a love interest, a montage – is unbearable when all we want to do is see them step up, bring it on, or stomp the yard.
The solution to dance movies is Jon M. Chu’s The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (aka The LXD). The web series from Agility Studios and the director of Step Up 2: The Streets borrows a few moves from sci-fi television and applies it to the dance genre. The storyline follows “heroes and villains with amazing powers of dance, that band together in rival factions, with an epic back-story and mythology woven around how the various dance styles in the hip-hop world came to be.”
Sounds awesome, right? Paramount Digital Entertainment thinks so, too. The development and distribution subsidiary of Paramount Pictures just closed a deal with Chu and Agility to distribute The LXD.
by Marc Hustvedt on April 6th, 2009
Remember YouTube Live? A little 7 year-old breakdancing prodigy known as Lil’ Demon shuffles out on stage kicking off an elaborate ensemble dance routine and thrusting Jon M. Chu’s Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (LXD) onto the web scene.
Director Jon M. Chu sits atop Hollywood’s street dance scene. The 27 year-old is himself a bit of prodigy, fresh off an impressive $150 million box office draw from his studio feature debut Step Up 2: The Streets. It’s his mastery of web video, using his YouTube channel as a hub, where he has built a devoted following of amateur dancers of all sorts. Chu in fact discovered Lil’ Demon (Angelo Baligad) after video of the young Hawaiian dancer shot by his mother were posted to YouTube and linked on Chu’s page.
Now the popular dance troupe is becoming a full-fledged interactive franchise, announcing today a partnership with Agility Studios to create an original narrative web series dubbed The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (LXD). PUMA has signed on as lead sponsor for the series, which will feature the dancers sporting the company’s new 917 line.
