West Side Story
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Ok, so the sets are slicker. So what? West Side Story was groundbreaking just like Hamilton is. I still don't see what he brings to it that's new. Perhaps just a desire to make a buck.
It kind of reminds me of the fancy-schmancy Chicago dog you posted this morning.
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@mik said in West Side Story:
Ok, so the sets are slicker. So what? West Side Story was groundbreaking just like Hamilton is. I still don't see what he brings to it that's new. Perhaps just a desire to make a buck.
It kind of reminds me of the fancy-schmancy Chicago dog you posted this morning.
Aren’t there some classics that should be re-done every generation because the themes are still relevant? I mean today’s kids are not likely to know about nor view old versions?
Just thinking outloud.
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@loki said in West Side Story:
Aren’t there some classics that should be re-done every generation
And @mik said:
No
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@george-k said in West Side Story:
@loki said in West Side Story:
Aren’t there some classics that should be re-done every generation
And @mik said:
No
No issue with redoing them on stage, where they belong. But not movies.
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I like Ansel Elgort.
And I think it's super cool that Rita Moreno is in it. But I guess, Spielberg couldn't make the movie without her.
The only movie version of a musical I've ever liked was Hamilton. There's always something missing when stage productions are filmed.
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I saw the London stage show of Les Miz on video and then saw the movie. I liked them both. The movie was well done, I thought, in that it retained a lot of the look of a stage play. They could have ruined it by moving away from that. I'm glad they didn't.
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I assume Steven Spielberg’s $100 million remake of West Side Story isn’t being advertised quite as heavily in your neighborhood, but on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where I live, you can scarcely take a breath without being hit with advertising for the movie. 20th Century Studios/Disney treated this as an event movie, it had the weekend all to itself, it had considerable critical acclaim/hype and some of the target demographic (the theater community, extending out to everyone who ever performed in the show in high school) was intensely interested.
Unfortunately, the movie also suffers from having no stars (sorry, Ansel Elgort, but you make Timothée Chalamet look like Marlon Brando) and it’s based on a property that may be beloved by people over 50 but is, I suspect, totally unknown to those under 40. People over 50 don’t go to the movies. The single comment I most often hear from people when I tell them I’m a film critic is, “Oh, I haven’t been to the movies in years.” TV is where it’s at these days. West Side Story is on track to gross $10.2 million in North America on its opening weekend — less than the $11.5 million earned by In the Heights in June, even though In the Heights is a little-known property and it debuted on HBO Max the same day. Certainly, the public sense that the pandemic was over in June provided a boost and the reverse is true six months later.
West Side Story is, despite the terrific songs and attempts to update it, still an extremely dated property — corny, maudlin, contrived, phony. I saw it in a huge theater full of enthusiastic fans, and even there reaction was muted. It just isn’t that great. Word of mouth is not going to help this movie earn out.
It’s not really fair to call the movie a flop yet, though; its target audience of women over 25 is, famously, distracted by holiday-season activities, which is why movies like this tend to be released on Christmas Day rather than in early December. People have to see something Christmas Day and Christmas week (if they’re not too scared to go back to the movies), so it should keep drawing interest through the new year. However, it can’t expect much of a boost in January from the Golden Globes, which are not being broadcast by NBC this year due to a scandal, and it also won’t get much of a boost from the Oscar nominations because, as I’ve been writing for several years, the Oscars no longer matter to the average person. The Academy Awards went woke and have, culturally, gone broke. When you’re an awards-granting body and you stop giving out statuettes based solely on merit, people notice. Then they stop paying attention. The Oscars are actually even more corrupted by political correctness than the Golden Globes are by being lavished with goodies.
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My daughter is seeing it tonight. On imax.
To call it a dated property is to deny the show’s groundbreaking legacy and style. If this movie serves to open a couple more generations’ eyes to it it will be successful. You might as well call La Boheme dated.
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@mik said in West Side Story:
My daughter is seeing it tonight. On imax.
I'll be interested to hear her thoughts. She has a different eye than the rest of us, to be sure.
You might as well call La Boheme dated
I saw another column about the movie is a cheesy throwback. Yeah, great tunes, but the story and the setting? C'mon, man!
Now, that's not to say I agree with that, at all. I just find it fascinating how one of the masterpieces of American musical theater is getting sort of panned, almost 70 years after its debut.
What next, Oklahoma?
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@klaus said in West Side Story:
The main thing I appreciate about West Side Story is that "Maria" is my go to memory aid for what a tritone sounds like.
Yep… Was even taught that in ear training in college…
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