So with the brand new, all-singing, all-dancing 2009 version of Fame coming to a cinema near you today, News Muse couldn’t resist the chance to debate the insidious effect of celebrity culture on the younger generation and the toll it is taking on their academic aspirations.
Nah, just kidding. Would we be that worthy? Or that boring?
After spying the movie’s teaser trailer and the fantastic soul/rap revamp of the title track, this looks like a showy, glossy, foot-thumping piece of razzamatazz with serious wow factor, especially if you’re one of those kids who wants to ‘light up the sky like a flame’ or an X-Factor groupie addicted to watching talented youngsters living their dream.
To activate the sound in the trailer: hold your cursor over the screen to reveal the control panel and click on the volume control in the bottom right-hand corner.
That said, it’s also something of a bittersweet moment for those of us who remember Alan Parker‘s much grittier 1980 original (in which the now defunct High School for the Performing Arts wasn’t so much a dream factory as a nightmare of blood, sweat, tears and desperation) or the wonderfully cheesy naffness of the 1980s TV show that followed.
Still Debbie Allen – who had a blink-sized role in the 1980 film, became a teacher in the TV show and has now graduated to Principal – is on hand to smooth the transition, and the fact that there’s not a fluorescent pink leg-warmer in sight has to be a good thing, surely.
