At the end of "West Side Story," when Tony is shot in the back, there's no blood and no bullet hole! There are several places where we should have seen blood. Maria's hands should have been covered in blood right after the shooting. When the guys picked up Tony to carry him away, he was facing up, so there should have been blood coming out of the wound. Lastly, the very end of the movie shows a streetlight shining on the empty schoolyard, and there's no stain on the ground. I know older movies don't often show blood & gore, but there was blood on the knives during the rumble when Bernardo was killed.

I just watched the 2021 version of
West Side Story by Steven Spielberg, it was pretty good

Both the 1961 original and the 2021 remake are currently available to stream on HBO Max.

Another remake that no one wanted or asked for.

The fact that it bombed shows that.

Another remake that no one wanted or asked for.

Says you. I, for one, welcome a decent version of this musical. As do a LOT of other people. It may have "bombed" at the box office (I mean, the pandemic and the fact that Spiderman opened a week later might have contributed) but it has received wide critical and fan approval.

I am not a fan of the original movie for many reasons, and while this one still takes a few liberties that grate me a little, it's a much better product.

Agree with Rodney. Tim's usual, tired dismissiveness is misguided. This is not a remake of an earlier movie but a second interpretation of a great Broadway musical. Musicals get restaged and revived all the time, and the thought that films shouldn't be allowed to do the same is silly.

I haven't seen it yet because of the pandemic (and please don't tell me where it's streaming as if the whole world lives in North America). I had plans to take my class to see it but reneged out of safety concerns.

I like the '61 movie though, other than the brown-face. The resequencing of Gee, Officer Krupke outright improves things, and it's a pity they block other productions from following that patten.

The resequencing of Gee, Officer Krupke outright improves things, and it's a pity they block other productions from following that patten.
Whereas I think that's one of the biggest mistakes in the film versions. Sondheim himself recanted his earlier position on this (he was the one that convinced Robert Wise to swap the songs around) and now says "the older I get the more I think I should have kept my mouth shut".
Essentially "Krupke", in the show, is a response to the tragedy in the way teenagers know best- inappropriate humour. It also serves, theatrically, as a lighter piece in the middle of a very bleak act. I'm not sure it works where it does in the films.

Nothing says "you were right" more than when Tim goes silent....

You just couldn't leave it alone, could you, Rodney.

For your information, I have not changed my position one iota. I offered an opinion, you and Kevin disagreed, with said opinion. I respected that, and moved on.

And I would have left things at that, if you had not decided to take that unnecessary swing at me. Ever heard of quitting while you're ahead?

Nobody said you had to change your opinion on the film (not that you watched it to gain the opinion but that’s another debate for another time) but rather the sweeping generalisation that it was a film “nobody asked for”.
Clearly people did. And even though it “bombed” at the box office there were still people that went to see it and will undoubtedly stream it/ buy it for home (I didn’t see it in the cinema but have watched it now).
If Jeff had said something like that about a movie or show you liked you would have called him on it like I did to you.

But to clarify what you will almost certainly bring up if I didn’t other to mention it here:
- Nobody here hates you
- Nobody here wants you gone
- No I won’t go to Phil (why I would is a mystery to me but you seem to think that the only method of fixing a debate is to run to daddy)

At this point I’ll leave it as I’ve had my say.

Actually, Rodney, I wasn't going to bring any of that up, as it has no relevance to this discussion.

Anyway, I think that part of the problem was that Spielberg just didn't read the room right. What I mean is that his formative years were in the 50's and 60's, when the musical genre was in full swing. He didn't realize that tastes had changed.

Today, musicals thrive on Broadway, and other such live theatre. Granted they took a hit, because of COVID, but seem to be coming back.

However, as far as feature films go, it's hit and miss, usually miss. Moulon Rouge is the exception, not the rule. The days of The Sound Of Music will not be coming back.

Actually, Rodney, I wasn't going to bring any of that up, as it has no relevance to this discussion.
It hasn't stopped you before....

The days of The Sound Of Music will not be coming back.
Thank goodness for that! In regards to movie musicals, I believe that done well they capture the spirit of the original show and evoke joy in the movie audience. You are right in that they are very hit and miss (mind you, do you count movies like "Frozen" as a musical because they are always popular, as are the soundtracks). I think WSS works purely because it is the right message at the right time. I was glad he didn't choose to update it to modern day New York (perhaps with Whites and Muslims). Whether it works financially is a long-term thing the studio will keep its eye on. These days, I imagine that streaming services and physical media more than make up for slow box office.

I was glad he didn't choose to update it to modern day New York (perhaps with Whites and Muslims).

If he had done that, there would be hardly any dialogue, let alone singing. All the characters would be too busy texting each other.

Teaching WSS again and just remembered something I don't like about the '61 film: the removal of Anita's counterpoint in 'A Boy Like That'. She and Maria were having an argument in which both sides were talking and neither was listening, until Anita shuts up and listens later. The two conflicting melodies showed this perfectly in music.

Finally watched this. In fact, I showed it in my class with the caveat that we'd be watching a film I hadn't personally vetted. Consequently, it was broken up over two weeks though I'm usually loathe to watch a movie (for the first time) in multiple sittings.

It didn't ••••. (The s-word, there.)

And that's as high as I'm going with it.

One issue was that the dialogue was completely changed while the lyrics were completely untouched (using either the original Broadway version or the 1961 movie version). Now if you remake a movie, naturally you change the dialogue to a great extent. I expect that. The problem is that I spent the whole movie alternating between focusing my attention to all-new words and resting in the comfort of well-known (if still great) ones. I could never just kick back and enjoy the film. Every time a song started, and every time a song ended, I had to transition between these two states.

I also felt the changes in the settings of the individual scenes were distracting and sometimes contrived. Wait. We're in a police station? Why are we in a police station? Then 'Gee, Officer Krupke' starts and now I know why. (And, even in the alternate reality of a musical, the whole locking the Jets up inside the police station while the cops ran out was beyond contrived.) On top of it all, the song didn't particularly benefit from the new setting.

Why is there so much ado about Riff buying a gun? Wait, why am I hearing the intro to 'Cool' so early? Oh, that's why. So they can recast it as a Tony song. That itself was a very distracting change, one motivated more to put a stamp on it than because it was necessary.

So then we're in the salt shed for the rumble. Wait. Why a the salt shed? And that's the problem. It never paid off. I kept trying to figure out lyrics were going to tie in with the salt and none of them did. What a bizarre, meaningless replanting.

And Tony and Maria even travel out of the West Side for the story.

(Back to Krupke, and Rodney's past comment about its placement in the original movie, which I never addressed. I didn't know about Sondheim's opinion on the switch...although I suspect I'd heard it before but it didn't take hold in my brain. I mostly only know the movie version and various audio recordings. I did see a staged version once but that was before I'd even seen the movie. So I wanted to see it in the restored order to judge with Sondheim's objection in mind, and this film still put it earlier, and then the recasting of 'Cool' made it impossible to judge the sequencing issue.)

The cast was a decent mix of actors-who-can-sing and singers-who-can-act. I may modify this if I watch it again, but Anita was probably the best and Tony the weakest. Anybody's, to no one's surprise, was given a modern gleam, less tomboy and more genderqueer, though not outright called such of course.

And then there's the change of Doc to Valentina.

Look. Rita Moreno is special. Where I come from, we didn't run around the playground imitating Daleks. We imitated her 'Hey you guys!' from The Electric Company. I love her in the original movie, and I love her on the One Day at a Time remake. I know that one day this may sadly change, but no matter where I've been in my life, she's never seemed too far away.

And I'm not going to say anything bad about her in this movie. She played the role as well as any other in her career, and giving her 'Somewhere' made perfect sense, even better than making it yet-another-duet for the lovebirds.

But she--not Moreno herself, mind--was perhaps the biggest problems with the movie.

Call it a remake if you will. (I do not. It's a second attempt of filming a Broadway musical.) But Spielberg could have, and should have, created something completely new. In geeky terms, this should have been a completely different universe than the '61 film. But it wasn't. They wrote her into the fabric of the film specifically to link it to the original movie. The existence of Valentina was like some sci-fi leakage from a parallel universe, a constant, a character whose very existence prevented this film's universe from ever existing in its own reality.

But she's a big star. She was in the original movie and she's willing to be in ours! And then they f-ing auto-tune her??? It's bad enough they hired all these other singers and auto-tuned them, but Rita Moreno?

Was very glad to see the counterpoint reinstated in 'A Boy like That,' the song that, as mentioned above, was completely ruined in the original film.

The original film's admonishing of the Jets by Doc, though, is still the bigger emotional punch. Again, I watched this one in multiple sittings, but the pacing seemed less climactic.

I would like to watch it again at home to hear it in proper surround sound. Although it's not too uncommon a thing in movie musicals, the orchestra was much too low in the mix compared to the singers. That could be a result of the downmixing into the uni's stereo speakers though. A subsequent reviewing may change my mind about the movie as a whole, and I'll be open to that. I won't, after all, have to adjust my expectations the way I did this time. Who knows? Could be.

In regards to Rita Moreno, what happened here is not unique. Sometimes remakes will feature actors from the original film, albeit in different roles, of course.

The 1991 remake of Cape Fear, for example. It had cameos from both Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck, who were in the original film.

Kind of a wink to those that saw the original version.

And I'm tired of movies winking at me. The excessive in-jokes in Rise of the Planet of the Apes constantly took me out of the movie and back into my theatre seat.

Never seen that movie.