{"id":86009,"date":"2021-12-19T23:11:40","date_gmt":"2021-12-20T07:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=86009"},"modified":"2021-12-19T23:11:40","modified_gmt":"2021-12-20T07:11:40","slug":"all-about-west-side-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2021\/12\/19\/all-about-west-side-story\/","title":{"rendered":"All About West Side Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Reception to the new version of <strong><em>West Side Story<\/em><\/strong> has been a mixed bag.&nbsp; Yes, it\u2019s gotten good reviews, but it brought in only $10 million its opening weekend.&nbsp; To put that into perspective, <strong><em>Spider-Man<\/em><\/strong> made $120 million its first day!&nbsp; However, <em>WSS<\/em> is beautifully shot, well-acted, and faithful to the original musical.&nbsp; You know I can\u2019t bear bad lip synching.&nbsp; I\u2019m happy to report it\u2019s not an issue here (with the exception of <strong>Ansel Elgort <\/strong>in the <em>Cloisters <\/em>scene \u2013 straight tones would never come out of a jaw moving that much).&nbsp; While one misses the work of <strong>Jerome Robbins<\/strong>, the new choreography by <strong>Justin Peck <\/strong>of the <em>New York City Ballet <\/em>is quite marvelous in its own right.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mike Faist <\/strong>is a standout as Riff (I knew he\u2019d be a star when I saw him in <strong><em>Dear Evan Hansen<\/em><\/strong>).&nbsp; However, every time the Jets walked down the street, it looked like an outtake from <strong><em>The Outsiders<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 I even referred to one character as Pony Boy!&nbsp; And if I didn\u2019t know about the controversy, I wouldn\u2019t have even noticed the alleged \u201ctransgender\u201d character.&nbsp; As always, <strong>Rita Moreno <\/strong>was a delight.&nbsp; My only caveat is that she was directed to be strangely subdued for the last 15 minutes.&nbsp; Speaking of which, has there ever been a less fiery Anita than <strong>Ariana DeBose<\/strong>?&nbsp; For me, the fatal flaw in the film is the lack of subtitles whenever characters spoke Spanish.&nbsp; I understand <strong>Spielberg<\/strong>\u2019s argument \u2013 if you subtitle the Spanish, you are marginalizing those characters.&nbsp; But I do wonder if the English will be subtitled when this film is shown in a Spanish-speaking country.&nbsp; I\u2019m also wondering if anyone has ever seen a <strong><em>Romeo and Juliet<\/em><\/strong> where they lapse into Italian.&nbsp; After all, that entire story takes place in Verona.&nbsp; Food for thought.&nbsp; Is this film worth seeing?&nbsp; Yes, if you can manage 2 hours and 45 minutes \u2013 which I think is too long for any film.&nbsp; Should you wait to see it at home?&nbsp; Actually, I really think it should be seen on a big screen.&nbsp; Is it a classic?&nbsp; The jury\u2019s out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reception to the new version of West Side Story has been a mixed bag.&nbsp; Yes, it\u2019s gotten good reviews, but it brought in only $10 million its opening weekend.&nbsp; To put that into perspective, Spider-Man made $120 million its first day!&nbsp; However, WSS is beautifully shot, well-acted, and faithful to the original musical.&nbsp; You know<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86009"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86010,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86009\/revisions\/86010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}