West Side Story (2021)
Dec. 28th, 2021 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lovingbothIt's good. Some of the changes work well - having Rita Moreno as Doc's widow, plus having her sing Somewhere, for example - and some of them don't - the book's been seriously padded to no good effect.
Looking at the casting, Ansel Elgort as Tony was cast for his voice rather than his acting ability - and just what would have happened to a pretty boy like him in a New York state prison, even if he could fight? He's noticeably very clean shaven throughout, even while hiding or in bed the morning after the night before. There were scenes with him in where I was looking at the background details rather than him, and it's clearly not him climbing the balcony. In contrast, Rachel Zegler as Maria is great.
The same obviously applies to the music and lyrics. For the other departments, the choreography is good, the cinematography is mixed - the colour grading is too deliberate and got in my way - and the direction is mixed. A bit too often it's 'Look! I can move the camera around!!' but when it works well - the staging of the ensemble Tonight comes to mind - it works very well.
I also like the un-subtitled Spanish, even if I don't believe that one critical line would have been delivered in English in a scene where most of the rest is in Spanish.
Speaking of not believing: what American, never mind New Yorker, is going to talk about "the tallest building the in world" in 1957, rather than "the Empire State [Building]"??
Tonight's (!) audience here is apparently representative of the relatively few who've seen it: there was one person under 40ish in the room...
Looking at the casting, Ansel Elgort as Tony was cast for his voice rather than his acting ability - and just what would have happened to a pretty boy like him in a New York state prison, even if he could fight? He's noticeably very clean shaven throughout, even while hiding or in bed the morning after the night before. There were scenes with him in where I was looking at the background details rather than him, and it's clearly not him climbing the balcony. In contrast, Rachel Zegler as Maria is great.
The same obviously applies to the music and lyrics. For the other departments, the choreography is good, the cinematography is mixed - the colour grading is too deliberate and got in my way - and the direction is mixed. A bit too often it's 'Look! I can move the camera around!!' but when it works well - the staging of the ensemble Tonight comes to mind - it works very well.
I also like the un-subtitled Spanish, even if I don't believe that one critical line would have been delivered in English in a scene where most of the rest is in Spanish.
Speaking of not believing: what American, never mind New Yorker, is going to talk about "the tallest building the in world" in 1957, rather than "the Empire State [Building]"??
Tonight's (!) audience here is apparently representative of the relatively few who've seen it: there was one person under 40ish in the room...