- Hilarious comedy rules in Disney's THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE! There's something for everyone in this hip, funny movie with its dynamo cast, distinctive style, and great music -- featuring the Academy Award(R)-nominated song, "My Funny Friend And Me" (2000, Best Original Song). Emperor Kuzco (voiced by David Spade) is turned into a llama by his devious advisor, Yzma (Eartha Kitt), and he
Parties are not always as fun as they look like they should be. The distinction lies in the realm between watching people have fun and actually having fun. Case in point:
Groove. Set in San Francisco over the course of one night, this is the story of a rave, plain and simple. Preparation includes inhabiting an empty warehouse, finding the power supply, and sending out coded invitations. The movie kicks in as the party does, when people start arriving and the DJs start spinning. There's a nice moment earl! y on when a cop shows up asking for the owner of the building, who is then taken on a tour of "a new Internet start-up." It becomes even funnier when the cop turns out to be smarter and more compassionate than anyone would expect. Writer-director Greg Harrison does a smart thing by focusing the story on David, a novice who's never been to a rave before, which breaks the story out of what could have been the suffocatingly insular world of rave culture. Unknowingly dosed by someone (his brother?), David is adopted by Layla, an attractive but lonely East Coast transplant who has begun to regret her party lifestyle. Other characters include a guy who's just proposed to his girlfriend, a college teaching assistant selling his own manufactured drugs, a nefarious lothario, a DJ who gets to meet his idol, and a gay couple having trouble finding the party. If the characters turn out to be just character types, that's OK because the movie itself floats by on its own high-octane enthu! siasm.
Groove is light and frothy entertainment with a ! beat you can dance to.
--Andy SpletzerDance culture, and the rave scene in particular, has been a potentially ripe film topic for years, so when
Groove was released to heavy buzz at the Sundance film festival, Sony Pictures immediately saw a possible summer sleeper. With John Digweed making a cameo appearance, as well as a savvy mixture of featured music throughout the movie,
Groove's soundtrack will do nothing but contribute to the film's success. West Coast dance fixture Wish FM, a.k.a. Wade Hampton, serves as the film's music supervisor, and he comes up with a compelling mix that nicely parallels the momentum of the movie's broiling dance-floor sequences. Starting off with some light house, then darkening his touch into deeper, more trancing territory, Wish reaches a zenith with Digweed's "Heaven Scent," using its soaring keyboard refrain as a natural peak. There are peaks all over this record, though, as Orbital's "Halycon + On + On" and Scott Hardkiss's mix! of Alter Ring's "Infinitely Gentle Blows," with its electrified vocal mishmash, provide ever-entrancing moments of turntable bliss. The movie's director, Greg Harrison, has said he intended the film to act "as an authentic document of a time in youth culture history"--his movie's soundtrack is definitely that.
--Matthew Cooke Geneva Holliday’s juicy novel brings a lighter touch to African American erotica, setting the sexual escapades amid the real-life folly and drama of four very different friends during one incredibly hot summer in New York City. This funny, sexy book has something for everyone!
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S RAVE: Life begins when the sun goes down for a group of party-prone friends attending an L.A. rave. The music starts and the dream begins as party-goer Puck gives them each a sample of his "love potion". This glowing green liquid fuels their inner desires and allows the friends to connect with their long secret loves during this night of dancin! g, lights, and unadulterated fun. The weather is hot, the musi! c is pou nding, the mood is electric and the stakes are high in this modern adaptation of Shakespeare's most popular play. ROOFTOPS: Academy Award Winning director Robert Wise has made one of the most innovative, action packed adventures ever filmed. This is the story of a young man named T, a misunderstood loner who has escaped the heartless streets of New York's lower East Side to make a life for himself on the rooftops of abandoned tenament buildings. T and the other homeless kids live by their wits at an empty lot they call the Garden of Eden. In this rock 'n roll paradise, T encounters the alluring Elana. They are immediately attracted to eachother, and their passion soon grows into an explosive love affair. Unexpectedly, T discovers that Elana is connected with a ruthless street gang of killers. When he confronts her with the truth, T is suddenly caught up in a deadly, heart-pounding struggle.
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Funk emerged in the 1960s, a scorching sound that amped up the legacy of R&B and doo-wop in spirit and sonic intensity, and became the precursor of hip-hop which in fact revived funk for a new generation via sampling. While major artists topped the charts with funk hits throughout the '60 s & '70s, there were, hundreds of smaller songs, notes music journalist Oliver Wang in his liners, for whom `airplay' rarely got better than hissing out of a rusted jukebox or crackling through the static on AM radio.WHAT IT IS! celebrates this heady, groove-heavy strain of gut bucket funk that remains a major force in American music. A 4-disccompendium that would take incalculable hours to collect in dusty bins at disappearing record shops, this box is culled mostly from the treasure-filled vaults of Atlantic, Atco, and Warner Bros. Records. It's an unprecedented shadow history of funk, pulling together rare sides from well-known artists an! d definitive funk grooves from lesser-known but supremely gift! ed maste rs of the art form alike.Too many reissue compilations are content to merely slice 'n' dice familiar catalog choices in not particularly original ways. But this four-disc, 91-track trove of obscure '70s R&B and funk from Warner-distributed labels great and small argues there's still treasure to be gleaned from studio vaults--a five-hour groove-fest that's as interested in shaking booty as in opening ears. Even the genre's groundbreaking usual suspects (Wilson Pickett, the Bar-Kays, Curtis Mayfield, Earth, Wind & Fire, et al) are represented by selections that aren't immediately familiar, while Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin serves up a radically different, previously unreleased take of "Rock Steady." Still other stars contribute their sonic touches to some of the lesser-known cuts, as witnessed by the patent trippiness of Sly Stone alter-egos 6ix and Stanga on "I'm Just Like You" and "Little Sister," respectively; the stark, party-not-so-hearty contrast of the Mayfield-writte! n-and-produced "Hard Times" by Baby Huey & Baby Sisters; and the Meters' version of "Tampin'," released under the moniker of the Rhine Oaks.
Sequenced in rough chronological order, it's a savvy window into a musical evolution as well, with the rhythmic guitars, organ swells, and horn flourishes of traditional '60s R&B giving way to sinewy synths and increasingly chunky bass lines as the decade grooves on. While savvy hip-hoppers will note that many of the rarities here have already been repurposed by shrewd mixers, it's a revelation to hear them in their original form. A compelling deconstruction of an often clichéd and too-narrowly-defined genre, this is an anthology that showcases music that has influenced such contemporary artists as Tupac, the Beastie Boys, Snoop Dogg, and Kanye West, annotated by many of the original musicians who set the dance floor in motion.
--Jerry McCulleyParties are not always as fun as they look like they should be. The distinction! lies in the realm between watching people have fun and actual! ly havin g fun. Case in point:
Groove. Set in San Francisco over the course of one night, this is the story of a rave, plain and simple. Preparation includes inhabiting an empty warehouse, finding the power supply, and sending out coded invitations. The movie kicks in as the party does, when people start arriving and the DJs start spinning. There's a nice moment early on when a cop shows up asking for the owner of the building, who is then taken on a tour of "a new Internet start-up." It becomes even funnier when the cop turns out to be smarter and more compassionate than anyone would expect. Writer-director Greg Harrison does a smart thing by focusing the story on David, a novice who's never been to a rave before, which breaks the story out of what could have been the suffocatingly insular world of rave culture. Unknowingly dosed by someone (his brother?), David is adopted by Layla, an attractive but lonely East Coast transplant who has begun to regret her party lifestyle. Ot! her characters include a guy who's just proposed to his girlfriend, a college teaching assistant selling his own manufactured drugs, a nefarious lothario, a DJ who gets to meet his idol, and a gay couple having trouble finding the party. If the characters turn out to be just character types, that's OK because the movie itself floats by on its own high-octane enthusiasm.
Groove is light and frothy entertainment with a beat you can dance to.
--Andy SpletzerIf you liked ALADDIN, you'll love Disney's THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE, where outrageous comedy rules! Audiences and critics alike raved about this hilarious animated adventure. "Ebert & Roeper And The Movies" gave it "Two Thumbs Up." Faster than you can say "Boom, baby," arrogant Emperor Kuzco is turned into a llama by his devious advisor, Yzma, and her hunky henchman, Kronk, who want to rid the kingdom of this beast of burden. Now the ruler who once had it all must form an unlikely alliance with a pleasant peas! ant named Pacha. Together, Kuzco and Pacha must overcome their! differe nces as they embark on a hilarious, "groovy" adventure that will have you howling with laughter.Originally developed as an epic called
Kingdom of the Sun,
The Emperor's New Groove lost scale and most of Sting's song score (some of which can be heard on the soundtrack) on its way to the screen. The end result is the lightest Disney film in many a moon, a joyous romp akin to
Aladdin in its quotient of laughs for kids and adults. The original story centers on the spoiled teenage emperor Kuzco (David Spade), who enjoys getting the best of his Aztecan subjects. When he fires Yzma (Eartha Kitt), his evil sorceress, she seeks revenge and turns Kuzco into a llama with the help of her hunk of the month, a lunk named Kronk (Patrick Warburton). Alone in the jungle, the talking llama is befriended by Pacha (John Goodman), who has just been told to vacate his pastoral home by the human Kuzco. What's an ego to do? That's pretty much the story and the characters--simpl! e, direct, fun--a Disney film on a diet. For any fan of the acidic humor of Spade, this is essential viewing. As narrator of his tale, Kuzco uses a sarcastic tone to keep the story jumping with plenty of fun asides (he even "stops" the film at one point to make sure you know the story is about
him). Even better is character actor Warburton (Elaine's stuck-up boyfriend on
Seinfeld), who steals every scene as the dim-witted, but oh-so-likable Kronk. There's even a delicious Tom Jones number that starts the film off with a bang.
--Doug Thomas 
