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Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story (2021)


mrbellamy

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I watch the Oscars every year!

 

I mean, I'm not going to be sitting there with rapt attention and total focus, I'll be on my phone and stuff, but it's the closest thing is film fans have to a Superbowl

 

I've seen most of the big nominees this year too which is nice and helps make it more enjoyable to watch

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Having watched a preview stream of In the Heights yesterday, which was bloody marvellous, it’ll be interesting to see how West Side Story compares. Appreciate they aren’t 100% comparable but given that they are both set in New York amongst the Latino community and feature contemporary musical styles (for their respective periods), there’s enough there. I have to admit that I never massively loved West Side Story to be honest. The film in particular always felt kinda long, especially during the second half. But I’ll be interested to see what Spielberg does with it but it’ll have to do a lot to beat the excitement and energy of In the Heights.  

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7 hours ago, Jay said:

I watch the Oscars every year!

 

I mean, I'm not going to be sitting there with rapt attention and total focus, I'll be on my phone and stuff, but it's the closest thing is film fans have to a Superbowl

 

I've seen most of the big nominees this year too which is nice and helps make it more enjoyable to watch

I've been watching them every year as well, but in 2019 at the latest, the Academy has noticably shown us how little relevance and expertise they have. In fact, it seems like it's becoming less and less each year. Last year was a fest of boredom with Parasite being the Academy's pretense of why they still are of any interest for international cinema. Simply the fact, that Tenet isn't nominated for any major categories is proof of how retarded the people in the jury and how antiquated their criteria for identifying a good movie are.

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10 hours ago, Brundlefly said:

I've been watching them every year as well, but in 2019 at the latest, the Academy has noticably shown us how little relevance and expertise they have. In fact, it seems like it's becoming less and less each year. Last year was a fest of boredom with Parasite being the Academy's pretense of why they still are of any interest for international cinema. Simply the fact, that Tenet isn't nominated for any major categories is proof of how retarded the people in the jury and how antiquated their criteria for identifying a good movie are.

 

Last year's ceremony was indeed a bore. But I will be watching tomorrow nonetheless, in the spirit of tradition and having a day to just indulge in celebrating movies.

 

And Tenet not being nominated in most categories is one of the rarer instances of how sensible the jury and their criteria are for identifying good movies, if anything. 

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10 minutes ago, KK said:

And Tenet not being nominated in most categories is one of the rarer instances of how sensible the jury and their criteria are for identifying good movies, if anything. 

Why sensible? On the surface, Tenet is one of those movies they usually just don't nominate. I can safely say that no closer look at this future classic was taken in order to decide that it is in fact not qualified for best picture. The Academy is just prejudiced as fuck. Most of the best picture nominees are the sign of a growing pathological affection for realism in movies, whereas a plane crashing into an airport automaticly has to be cinematic rubbish.

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Tenet is symbolic for trying to save the theaters in difficult times, but I doubt the movie itself touched the heart of the jury.

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All the Best Picture nominees this year were better than Tenet (even the dull-as-dishwater Sorkin flick). This is no classic.

 

And Nolan's films have gotten plenty of recognition by the Academy and he'll land his Oscar win eventually. Let's not paint him as some victim. He's the current king of Hollywood...not some undiscovered genius.

 

10 minutes ago, Brundlefly said:

 On the surface, Tenet is one of those movies they usually just don't nominate. I can safely say that no closer look at this future classic was taken in order to decide that it is in fact not qualified for best picture. 

 

Ever since they expanded the Best Picture list to 10-ish films, a big budget tentpole  picture like Tenet gets nominated every year. This year being the only exception, because no major blockbusters were really released. And Tenet was shite.

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6 hours ago, Edmilson said:

Tenet was quite bad, and I generally like Nolan movies. He should've instead make a sequel for Inception.

I'm pretty sure I won't like TENET because I never like Nolan's ' mind-twister puzzle films'.

INCEPTION

INTERSTELLAR

PRESTIGE

MEMENTO

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11 hours ago, crumbs said:

Tenet was one of the biggest pieces of shit I've had the misfortune of watching. What a miserable, miserable experience.

 

Two hours of sitting there saying, "huh?" and "what did they say?" while watching a bunch of actors mumble their way through incomprehensible dialogue and atrocious accents, drowned out by excruciatingly loud music and sound effects.

Maybe Tenet is a movie from the future and Nolan will invert its reels and send them to his younger self. That would also explain, why it seems so out of this time and leave people behind. As I said, it's gonna be a classic by the time it is being produced.

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On 4/24/2021 at 8:45 AM, Jay said:

I watch the Oscars every year!

 

I mean, I'm not going to be sitting there with rapt attention and total focus, I'll be on my phone and stuff, but it's the closest thing is film fans have to a Superbowl

 

I've seen most of the big nominees this year too which is nice and helps make it more enjoyable to watch

 

 

I find myself paying less attention each year. Dunno if it's just me getting older and focusing on other things, but I have no plans to watch this year. And I don't believe I've watched an Oscar telecast in the past 3 years.

 

Have no idea who is even nominated, or what worthy films are even out there. I've only seen one new film since 2019. 

 

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Most of the best movies of the year weren't nominated anyway, but from the ones that were, News of the World, Greyhound, Soul, and Sound of Metal are well worth seeing

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3 minutes ago, Ollie said:

Have no idea who is even nominated, or what worthy films are even out there. I've only seen one new film since 2019. 

 

You should see Parasite, last year's Best Picture winner. It's an excellent film.

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34 minutes ago, Jay said:

Secondly, why aren't any actors credited?  That has got to be a response to the Ansel Elgort controversy no?

 

That was my first thought too. Probably trying to get more people to watch the trailer who may not realize right away that he's in this, even though it's pretty easy to figure that out. Once the trailer is out though it will be silly to try and pretend that he's not in it.

 

Unless they have somehow reshot his role and are trying to keep secret who the new lead is, but I highly doubt that.

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The poster dropping on the internet today has nothing to do with hyping up the trailer drop tonight, this is going to be the poster hung up in cinemas and stuff too

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3 minutes ago, Jay said:

The poster dropping on the internet today has nothing to do with hyping up the trailer drop tonight, this is going to be the poster hung up in cinemas and stuff too

 

While that is true, the fact that it's released before the trailer drops makes me think it was purposefully removed to try and pretend a little longer. The poster itself isn't meant to hype the trailer, but is part of the hype that leads up to the trailer is what I meant.

 

That being said, I bet they will continue to try and promote him as little as possible, which is kind of hard to do when he's the male lead in the film. I don't expect to see him in any press tours for sure. 

 

I do wonder if they would have actually reshot the film, if it weren't for COVID-19. Probably not, considering again, he's the lead and that would basically mean reshooting nearly the entire thing.

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The first producer listed (Rita Moreno) played Anita in the '61 film {and plays Valentina in this film}

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53 minutes ago, Jay said:

The first credit is for their music being in this film, the second is a continuation of crediting that starts with Robbins credit for the original play

 

Here's a bigger version because I couldn't read the one you posted

 

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A lot of things about this poster are dumb

 

Why isn't David Newman credited at all?  Sure, he's just adapting Bernstein's music, but Kushner gets a screenplay credit

 

Secondly, why aren't any actors credited?  That has got to be a response to the Ansel Elgort controversy no?

 

And does it really have to credit 4 executive producers and 3 regular producers yet not Kamiński, Kahn, or Newman?

What the hell Disney

That makes sense (and what me and my other half concluded on further thought) but I bet I won’t be the only person who thinks it looks like a mistake or, if it’s explained to them, thinks it’s a bat shit crazy way to do the credits especially since no other film version of a stage show has credits like that. Good call on David Newman bring omitted although that surprises me less.

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But if the second credits for Bernstein and Sondheim are for the "stage play" (i.e. the stage musical?), what are the first credits for? The film? Wasn't Bernstein barely involved with that?

 

Quoting Wikipedia:

Quote

Leonard Bernstein was displeased with the orchestration for the movie, which was the work of Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, who had orchestrated the original Broadway production. That show had been orchestrated for roughly 30 musicians; for the movie, United Artists allowed them triple that, including six saxophone parts, eight trumpets, five pianos and five xylophones.[37] Bernstein found it "overbearing and lacking in texture and subtlety."[3]

 

If the first credits are indeed for the film version and Ramin and Kostal are not credited, that's at least consistent with Newman not getting a credit either, isn't it?

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So if I am reading the credits right - they are in 3 blocks

 

1. Producers & Executive Producers

 

2. 1 major technical credit - Choreography - so they list the original stage choreographer and the 2021 chorographer.

 

3. Then comes the adapted from credit which has 4 pieces - it is adapted from the stage play so who wrote the play, who wrote the music, who wrote lyrics and who directed the stage play.

 

4. The comes the actual credits for 2021 movie - so they are crediting the lyricist of the 2021 film, the composer of the 2021 film, the writer and the director.

 

This should tell us that the score perhaps is so completely untouched that they decided to just credit Music by Bernstein and did not bother to credit Newman.

 

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18 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

But if the second credits for Bernstein and Sondheim are for the "stage play" (i.e. the stage musical?), what are the first credits for? The film? Wasn't Bernstein barely involved with that?

 

Quoting Wikipedia:

 

If the first credits are indeed for the film version and Ramin and Kostal are not credited, that's at least consistent with Newman not getting a credit either, isn't it?

 

For this film, not the old film

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18 hours ago, Jay said:

For this film, not the old film

 

I find it really confusing. Especially since I didn't see the comma in "Based on the stage play, book by" at first and couldn't make sense of it, and also thought the first Bernstein & Sondheim credits in line 4 were grouped with "Play conceived…" for Robbins, so their credits in the fifth line must be for this film or the original film.

 

It's still not clear to me, but assuming that there is no "new" credit for *this* film because the music isn't much changed from the Wise version, I guess my point still stands: If Bernstein gets full credit for that, despite barely being involved, by the same logic he'd get credit for the new version, without mentioning Newman.

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