I've watched the old version recently, and I'm not sold on this from the trailer, which suggests that idea is to heighten the sentimentality. Notice how the only song we get to hear is "Tonight."
I'm going to read some reviews of the trailer, but let me leave you with this "SNL" parody from 1996, featuring the beloved and recently departed comedy star, Norm Macdonald:
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Good grief. They're trying to hide the fact that it's a musical. Hollywood marketing can be so absurd.
Spielberg can make anything look great, but her accent is bordering on parody/racist.
At least it's not an all-gay cast, or everyone is black...
The SNL bit looks like a precursor to 'Schmigadoon.'
We watched 2 episodes...not sure if we'll watch others.
This trailer is actually an improvement. The voices in the first one were unpardonably thing, a crime really if you're familiar with how well the cast is really capable of singing. Going to be interesting to see if this version does well at the box office.
That said, I recently saw Michael Jackson's Beat It video for the first time in years and I secretly hope that some how it influences the staging of the gang dance scenes in this movie in the same way that the original West Side Story influenced it. :)
When I was 13 I thought that movie was sooo great, then in a couple years it was pure cringe which SNL acknowledged what, 30+ years later? lol
I never could watch Hair, either. The movie was full of posturing actor-dancer-hippies with oh so Perfect Hair and Beads, and I had to turn it off. No connection to real life.
Broadway & Hollywood are the last to know when it comes to cool stuff.
I laughed, I cried, I yearned for old SNLs.
Remakes and do-overs rarely are as good as the original but the classic WSS is a real gem. The singers and staging and cast is perfect. And my heart aches for what woke-drunk Hollywood will do with it. The horror!
It sure seams like they re-wrote a lot of the dialog to focus on how racist the whites people are. Maybe I'm perceiving that incorrectly, as they also show how the Puerto Rican's are also acting racist in a way but to a lesser extent. Maybe the writing was enhanced to show the division. We shall see. I'm not sold either and it's one of my absolute favorite musicals, and I just think you should not mess with the source material because it is absolute perfection.
I've watched the old version recently, and I'm not sold on this from the trailer, which suggests that idea is to heighten the sentimentality. Notice how the only song we get to hear is "Tonight."
Plus, in the new, woke version it's "Defund Officer Krupke!"
It looks like a sublingual political advertisement for AOC. These libs will stop at nothing. They are pure evil.
Hey, daddy-o. I just about flipped my lid because I dig it the most.
I hate WSS, singing dancing gang members. SNL highlights the absurdity. I admire the dancing in the original, too bad the book is so dumb. why doesn't SS remake South pacific? There's one old chesnut that needs an update.
Why, oh why try to set this in the present day (based on the costumes shown in the trailer) and call it "West Side Story". are there really such gangs whose members have families living in the west side of Manhattan? Wouldn't officer Krupke be defunded by now? What gangs use anything less deadly than 9mm automatics?
Setting it in the fifties one could at least comment on how things have changed. And is Spielberg still alive?
Looking fwd to Steven's remake of "Lawrence of Arabia."
Westside Story has the most unbelievable scene in movie history. At one point Tony stands in the middle of Puerto Rican New York and yells Maria at the top of his lungs.....and only one woman comes to her window.
Some comedian once made a joke about the fact that a guy runs around yelling 'Maria' in Spanish Harlem and only one girl answers : )
Btw, this poster is brilliant...
I saw WSS on Broadway in 1958, before it had a chance to age.
The movie is certainly going to be "cinematic" -- a word that gets thrown around a lot by actors in talking about movies that usually aren't. The actress who plays the new Maria is half-Polish and half-Columbian, so maybe the Sharks and the Jets did get together in the end.
I wonder how they're going to handle the content, though. The old film was preaching tolerance and love. Today, it's more explicitly Whites who are singled out for condemnation. You can see a condemnation of White resentment in the preview, when one character complains about everything changing and about the new (Black, Puerto Rican) people he doesn't like. I suspect there will be more of that in the movie.
Also, is this really what we need? Maybe the answer to people hating each other isn't preaching, but showing them working together. Or maybe we need some common goal to work towards or challenge to overcome and should just ignore the mass media altogether.
***
The SNL clip was funny. Still there's an "SNL clip" look to the thing that makes one think, "this is going to be awful" and expect the worst, especially after seeing the very skillfully made Spielberg clip.
Norm McDonald excelled in playing the rational/cynical guy who always saw through the BS. I'll miss the guy.
I'm sure it will be fine, but there's no reason for it to exist, except that a famous director wanted to re-make a classic (cf. Peter Jackson's "King Kong").
The SNL skit sums up my feelings about West Side Story. I haven't been able to make it through the movie as an adult. (I think we watched it in school once when I was a kid, so making it through the movie was enforced. "Does this mean that the adults wish the kids who fight all the time would dance around instead?")
"It looks like a sublingual political advertisement for AOC."
It looks more subdermal to me.
I don't like musicals- never have, but I can't see the rationale for remaking this one, but maybe Spielberg won't fuck it up.
Oh my. Looks like Spielberg's latest "creation" is going to leave a bigger crater than "In the Heights".
Being only five when the film when it first came out, I didn't see WSS in the theater. However I was subjected to it many times in school telling how much I should appreciate the music, the depiction of NYC and the interaction of different cultures. Needless to say the teachers failed in their mission. I actually enjoyed older musicals from the '30s thru early '50s but never liked the ones from the late '50s onward. Always seemed the likes of WSS, Camelot, Sound of Music were always trying to hard.
I'm looking forward to it!!
Also "Cry Macho" this weekend with 91-year old Clint.
I'm also looking forward to the "Top Gun" sequel.
OK, that was funny.
OK, that was funny. The SNL I mean.
Spielberg's straight schmaltz won't work. West Side Story should remain true to Lenny's (barely) closeted gay Broadway 60s middle brow vision. As Mel Brooks realized in "Springtime", part of the magic is the way those musicals dance on the edge of their own Camp.
Why not re-shoot Jaws as a musical? I mean, the main character already has his own leitmotif. That's a project Spielberg could really sink his teeth into.
Norm was funnier than Jerry. There. I've said it.
Steve Spielberg! Amazing that he's getting another chance. It's been all downhill since Duel.. Who's he know?
rcocean said...
why doesn't SS remake South pacific? There's one old chesnut that needs an update.
State Fair! remake State Fair!!
Just how long ago was it that “The Simpsons” did “Planet of the Apes” - the musical?
I find it odd no one mentions that this also stars a young Robert Downey Jr.
I suppose that the reason for the remake is to film it in color and widescreen. Yeah, there is no reason.
What we really need is another fucking remake of A Star Is Born.
What we really need is another fucking remake of A Star Is Born.
"why doesn't SS remake South Pacific?"
Because of the imortal line of the queen: "Too many laws make people unhappy!"
Speaking of musicals, my wife and I were in Terlingua, TX in March of this year, having visited Big Bend National Park before running a race in nearby Fort Davis, TX a few days later. We stopped at a little cafe in Terlingua after exiting the park. When we walked in, I saw this striking looking guy sitting at a table and chatting with with another couple. He and I smiled and nodded at each other, him noticing that I was noticing him. There were probably two other people in the place other than these three, my wife and I, and a couple of employees. I kept thinking he was some Texas music guy because I had in my mind Jerry Jeff Walker's Viva Terlingua album. That album was actually recorded in Luckenbach, TX and started the whole Luckenbach thing but that's what I had in mind was that he was a famous musician. Nope. Treat Williams who was in the movie Hair and then lots of other things. I finally figured it out while I was sitting there and pulled him up on my phone to verify it. We eavesdropped, which wasn't hard to do, and found that he was visiting this couple who actually were in the music business. He flew his own aircraft in to some local airport. I left him alone. I don't like to bother celebrities and I knew he knew I recognized him and that seemed to make him a little happy which was enough for me.
I love that parody. It was very Norm Macdonald. Norm was my age. Treat Williams is 8 years older and still a handsome devil.
Camelot is another one that would run into political problems.
It's true! It's true! The crown has made it clear
The climate must be perfect all the year...
A law was made a distant moon ago here:
July and August cannot be too hot
And there's a legal limit to the snow here
In Cam - e - lot
I can imagine the response: "Are they mocking us?"
"... I can't see the rationale for remaking this one..."
I assume it's the greatness of the music... plus the chance to "correct" the problem of Natalie Wood.
We can't remake My Fair Lady because the idea that a street girl would have to work at it and learn to raise her condition in life, or that anybody might be judged by their speech, is abhorrent.
They might find a way to turn Eliza Doolittle in to AOC though, kind of like the movie version of The Three Penny Opera turned the hugely successful play in Germany into a commie screed. Well, the movie is still pretty good, but they tried! I still recommend it if you have the Criterion streaming service and don't mind subtitles. The songs are beautiful, even in German.
Looks like Rita Moreno is in the new version too.
Remember Rita Moreno apologizing for In the Heights? Linn-Manual Miranda was accused of some supposed insensitive comment?
I heard John Podhoritz tell a story about how Moreno was a defending Spielberg and Miranda because this new WSS was ready to play. Seems there's a lot of money as well as reputations at stake.
And I Feel Pretty won't be in this new version.
They're remaking it because it was a great play. A great American play. But it was done in the 60s and no young people are going to dig up an old movie from the 60s to watch.
This new version will give this play legs for a new generation.
The Broadway show was staged in 1957, and set then. The film was made in 1961 and set then. The current film was made in 2019 and set in the late fifties, so it has become a period piece. Current take on six decades ago America.
The biggest film musical remake I can think of is Show Boat, but there going from b+w to color.
SS wants to remake it W/S so as to make it more about racism and race. Or maybe he loves the ol' Jewish Storekeeper and wants to cast his friend Richard Dreyfus.
West Side Story has some wonderful moments, and the music is amazing. But the dialogue is unbearable, and while a few of the dance scenes are gems (like America), many are laugh riots (like Cool, and the fight scenes).
"Sperm to worm."
West Side Story has not aged well but hte 1957 Original Broadway Cast recording is still superb. In Spielberg's hands it will be a smorgasbord of nonsense. The story is supposed to be set in the late Summer of 1957 in the Hell's Kitchen section of Manhattan and that is what it should always be, it does not need to be updated. The 1961 film I saw again a couple of years ago and it gets more painful every time I see it. Richard Beymer as Tony? Both Beymer and Natalie Wood had to be dubbed in the songs they sang.
Norm is one of those people who had to die to become "beloved."
The last I heard, Norm was "blackballed," not "beloved."
I finally had time to watch the trailer and...
I assume it's the greatness of the music...
If so, it seems to be very light on music. The original movie was mostly a screen adaptation of the stage production. I've seen both the movie and various stage performances many times. But this trailer looked more like revisiting the 50's with a few music numbers. If that's the case, what's the point? West Side Story was always just a modernized musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Now Spielberg wants to make a less modern, non-musical adaptation of West Side Story? It seems like just another Hollywood cash grab on an existing IP.
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