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WHERE TIME STOPS AND THE
MAGIC NEVER ENDS...
When artist Sonny Malone tears up his latest drawing in frustration, the Venice Beach wind carries the scraps to a mural of nine Greek Muses. And somehow (it’s best to let your rational mind go for this one – this, after all, is the stuff of disco camp and the Electric Light Orchestra), the Muses come to life. The nine ladies scamper off in different directions, but our Kira knows where she’s needed most. She bumps into Sonny on the boardwalk, kisses him, and then glides away. While he searches for his mystery girl, Sonny befriends clarinet-puffing Danny McGuire (dancing legend Gene Kelly). |
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Kira and Sonny do meet again,
and she persuades him and moneybags Danny (on whom she performed her muse
duties forty years earlier) to open a state-of-the-art roller disco. As
the grand disco “Xanadu” is built, romance ensues between the Muse and
the Artist, even though the only thing Kira divulges about herself is that
she lives with her sisters “on the second floor.”
Alas, creatures of the heavens can’t love mere mortals, and Kira is transported back up to her depressing heaven home (where there is no roller skating and no |
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ELO) and her angry
father Zeus. But Sonny bravely goes after her, and pleads that she be
allowed to come back for just one night.
Sure enough, Kira is back to grace Xanadu’s opening night. To Sonny’s beguilement, she dances and sings in one of the wildest multiple personality dance/skate floorshows the 70’s have ever seen. And then the fun continues with a bizarre ‘battle of the bands’ type number, in which a swanky Glenn Miller-type big band goes up against metal rock group The Tubes. |
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It’s sheer cacophony at first, but then the disparate sounds
begin to merge into one big eclectic crescendo…and if you thought there
was no thematic substance in this roller skate romp, shame on you. Xanadu,
quite simply, wants us to see all the good that comes out of tolerance and
open-mindedness. Like Grease, the soundtrack to Xanadu was just as important as the film itself. Songs included Newton-John’s hit “Magic,” the slow and wistful “Suddenly,” and the rousing title tune by ELO. In the roller-skate craze of the late 70’s and early 80’s, believe us, if you played any of these ditties during a sixth grader’s Friday night, roller-skate birthday party, memories jogged back to Kira coming out of that Venice Beach wall and imparting her magic…let’s just say that we all wanted to have a little Kira in our lives. Xanadu was released on DVD in February 2002 as a collector's edition set. It contained the CD soundtrack, trailer and photo gallery. |
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TRIVIA
The old building that became Xanadu was the Pan Pacific Auditorium on Western Avenue near CBS' Television City in Hollywood, California. It was built in 1935 and burned down shortly after Xanadu was filmed. The set of the Xanadu club cost $1,000,000 to build. |
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XANADU. Performed by ELO and Olivia Newton-John. Written by Jeff Lynne.A
place where nobody dared to go - from various online resources |
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