My husband is a member and he's been retired for a while. Never knew there were requirements to join. I read that article and was not pleased about a few things. Not everything, but enough for me to think maybe we should have waited on buying tix. Sondheim is fully on board with it, as are the various relevant estates.
Attention @NickCarraway . Went to the Broadway revival of West Side Story. The short hand review is stay away at all costs. I noted the following: The orchestrations were different, maybe so the actors would have an easier job of singing. There were a lot of flats. Ditching the original choreography when it was so much a part of the music was a huge error, nothing synchs up The dancing was very modern and athletic, it lacked the joy of the movie. The screen projections (actually films)at the back of the stage were distracting, sometime having nothing to do with the action on stage. And, again, cameras onstage filming the action to project on the wall. Van Hove is turning into the Frank Gehry of theater. The cast was color blind, Tony and Maria were both Hispanic, and as one wag on Yelp said, how can there be conflict when they all look the same. Tight jeans, ink, and hoodies were the costumes. There was a gay couple in the Sharks, they all had I-phones which they used to film the police at various points. "Gee, Officer Krupke" was used to make a statement about police brutality. No fire escape for the fire escape scene. No star power from anybody at all, it really could have been a high school musical. The singing was filled with trills at the end of every line, very theater arts and all, but it just didn't work. The male lead could not carry "Maria" at all. The woman who played Maria gave it her best, but again, she just couldn't pull it off. Pretty much the entire second half is performed with rain and fog, which serves no purpose whatsoever. Yadda yadda yadda, it's like a huge gimmick from Van Hove who seemed to forget about the story. Every now and then (the candy store, the bridal shop) part of the wall would slide open revealing a set. But it was at the back of the stage and you need to watch the projections to see what was happening. I'm being kind here. My husband detested it and was a lot harder on it than I was.
This... this is all a joke, right? They surely didn't ruin everything from the classic musical (including the basic underlying story) with all this terrible garbage, right? You are joking, right? Right?!
Sad but true. How does something like the rumble work when everybody looks exactly the same? You can't tell the difference between the Jets and the Sharks. Complete waste of money and time. My husband opined that the hour and forty five minute run time had no intermission because they were afraid half the house would leave at intermission. Have a look at the reviews on Yelp, those folks who were not as kind as me.
Yikes . I knew about most of these changes - sounds like not one of them was successful, which isn't surprising considering how they seemed on paper. It will be interesting to see the NYT review after it hyped the production with a front-page Sunday Magazine feature and what-not.
I find that most of the time placing a work in a different place or period indulges the director's ego ('Look how artsy I am!') but rarely improves things. Some years ago Peter Sellars' production of Don Giovanni changed the locale from Seville to the South Bronx. It was abysmal. I consider Don Giovanni to be one of the towering achievements of Western civilization--it's my favorite opera-- and I couldn't finish watching it. Awful. OTOH, Patrick Stewart's Macbeth was placed in what appeared to be an Eastern Europe mental hospital in the 30's--dank and institutional, not at all regal--and they pulled it off brilliantly. https://www.amazon.com/Great-Perfor...art+macbeth&qid=1581606700&s=movies-tv&sr=1-3
Oh, this is bad. Ansel Elgort is one of the main stars of Spielberg's West Side Story, and this news story just hit yesterday... Ansel Elgort Denies Sexual Assault Accusation From 2014 Ansel Elgort Denies Sexual Assault Allegation – Deadline That could be a career-ending problem, as well as torpedoing a $100-million-dollar movie where there's no way they can recast and reshoot it.
Looks like we have another upcoming Cats... It might not have the CGI, but it is already begining to smell like old cat food.
Spielberg obviously adores the original, and has only flirted with musical/dance numbers with 1941 and the opening of Temple of Doom. I'm curious to see it.
I was forced to watch the original in highschool 3 times.. It seemed like a form of punishment still the pain of it.. After all these years.. Steven should focused in something more worth while than this. Box bomb oh yes indeed...
I will do everything I can to see it, but I feel very bad for Spielberg and Fox/Disney (who put up $100 million to make it). Spielberg spent 10 years getting the rights to this film and figuring out a way to make it for contemporary audiences, and it's got to be a nightmare when your main stair is enmeshed in massive bad publicity. I think they had high hopes for Oscar nominations and all that stuff, and now all that is thrown into question. Ya know, Ansel Elgort is so good-looking, I'm amazed he ever had to rape anybody. There's a famous story about Brad Pitt giving an interview, and the question came, "so, have you ever been turned down for a date?" He looked puzzled for a moment and said, "turned down? What do you mean?" They realized he had never had that happen before in his life.
I know, but jesus... you would think this guy would be crawling with a hundred opportunities a day. I can't imagine feeling the need to throw around power or sex or anything else if you're successful, have money, have fame, and look like that. Even worse that the girl in question was underage.
She was 17 which is the age of consent in New York State. Apparently others have posted about their experience.
If you read the whole story (particularly the girl's point of view), there are nuances that seem sleazy and unsavory. And I am shocked, shocked do you hear, that a good-looking, talented Hollywood actor with money would take advantage of a (slightly) younger woman, have a one-night stand, and then cut off all communications.
In today's P.C. society where the hashtag rules and drives public opinion, this movie is screwed any way you think of it. This type of controversy will be like daylight to vampires among the Oscar voters. You would have thought the same thing with Bill Cosby? Not to add money, power and prestige into the situation...
Steven Spielberg has an amazing track record with films so I'm not worried about his version of "West Side Story". I'm more worried about crimes of an individual affecting something that could be spectacular.
A friend of mine casually knew Bill Cosby in the 1980s (at the height of his fame), and he said he was arrogant, demanding, and obnoxious... but also very funny and talented, so he got away with it. For awhile.0 This is a studio, distribution, and promotion problem... not a Spielberg problem. Spielberg is fine... it's just that there could likely be protests that either cause the movie to be shelved or (worse) force them to reshoot it to remove the actor. Hollywood is very, very sensitive to this stuff these days.
I think Spielberg is a consummate director. His direction of War of the Worlds, for instance, is incredibly assured, and creative without calling attention to itself. That's just one example. That said, I'm only interested in about one out of every 3 movies he makes. Why fart around with E.T. (a film that gets worse every year imo) when you probably could make Godzilla, or an Alien movie in which they finally make it to earth. Or just a New York Detective movie that takes place in the early 70's