Send your movie questions to FlickChickSee Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this weeks new flicks in Movie TalkQuestion I read somewhere that the song Maniac from Flashdance was originally written for the slasher movie Maniac I find that really hard to believe but could it be true Gary FlickChick This is one of those rumors so nutty youre inclined to believe it and it appears theres a speck of truth to it but only a speck Michael Sembellos Maniac was not written for Bill Lustigs notorious Maniac 1980 which starred Joe Spinell as a New York-based serial murderer who stalks and scalps women Sembellos account of how the song came into being has his writing partner Dennis Matkosky seeing Maniac and scribbling down the presumably parodic lyrics Hes a maniac maniac thats for sureHe will kill your cat and nail him to the door Presumably the two worked it into a rough track and set it aside because Sembello claims that when he was working
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Question: I recently watched Flashdance and have to ask: Was Jennifer Beals really doing the dance at the end? If not, did she do any of the dancing in the movie?
Answer: Jennifer Beals, currently featured on Showtime's racy The L Word, was doubled extensively for Flashdance (1983), though there are sequences in which she's clearly executing basic moves: The rule of thumb with dancing in movies is that the minute you no longer see the actor's face and legs in the same shot, you should wonder whether the face and legs belong to someone else. Ditto goes for shots in which the actor's face is obscured by angle or by distance. The first question you might well ask is, if someone is making a movie that requires a lot of dancing, why not hire a dancer? And a good question it is: But the fact
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The O.C.So it's another Chrismukkah for the folks at The O.C. But apparently it's spawned a child that goes by the name Chrismukkah Bar Mitzvakkah. Ryan's the honoree of this newly formed rite of passage. I don't know about you but I always get a wee bit uncomfortable for Ryan when he has to partake in group fun like getting up in front of Newport's elite and giving a speech. And just how many times can the word "Chrismukkah" be uttered in one show? Apparently 3,743,686 times, and that's not including the 23 times it appears in this column. Flashdance's Michael Nouri is back as Summer's dad; he makes a connection of sorts with Julie Cooper and explains what happened to Summer's mom. The show may have touched a bit on this before, I don't really remember. But at least we got
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