Hacker Cinema
West Side Story
2021 · Film · 156 min
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Two youngsters from rival New York City gangs fall in love, but tensions between their respective friends build toward tragedy.
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8 comments on Hacker News
Right, so by that rule, someone could stage a theater production or movie of the exact text of one of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes books, but could not make anything similar to the characters and relationships of Holmes and Watson. Forever.
And exactly how similar must the new production be? Can there be any deviation from the exact words written by Doyle? It seems your rule would certainly ban the excellent BBC production of Sherlock [0]
What about Shakespeare? It seems this would ban the entire writing and production of West Side Story (of course a 1950's riff on Romeo and Juilet) [1,2].
That sounds like a permanent extension of copyright, with a limited media exception.
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018ttws
[1] https://www.westsidestory.com/
[2] https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/west-side-story-2021-film-romeo-and-juliet/
Compare these pictures to the "West Side Story" movies - both the original 1961 version, contemporary with these photos, and the 2021 version, where they tried hard to reconstruct this look, especially the cars and clothes but also the shops on the street.
Sort of like the anniversary edition of ET where Spielberg replaced the guns with walkie talkies, and other digital edits. Ironically he was criticized for too much smoking in the West Side Story remake. And sometimes a film I want is nowhere to be found, even a mainstream, older hit. I keep a few boxes of DVDs to make sure I can show them to the people stuck in the Matrix in the future!
The new West Side Story is incredible. It's what a 100-million dollar musical looks like. Every frame is planned out, the actors are vulnerable, the songs are touching and super fun. The dance numbers are exuberant, some of the best ever produced by Hollywood. The film brings together the very best of American artists: Tony Kushner for the screenplay, Gustavo Dudamel conducts, the NY & LA philharmonics for recording, Justin Peck for choreo.
There's no way it can be argued to be a bad movie. I have no idea why audiences didn't go to see the movie. But I had a ball bawling my eyes out for two hours at the iMax.
> The Oscars are essentially a self-congratulatory award which often were at odds with the public.
Not to state the obvious, but Oscars over the years have degraded into “who can wine and dine the voters the most”. There was a time (more than a decade ago) when almost all “Best Pucture” nominees were really entertaining and fun to watch. You look at the more recent lineups and almost all of them are a drag to watch. I’m not sure what else did anyone expect with West Side Story? It’s a movie adaptation of a Broadway show that has been adapted countless times. Anyone who has any interest in this genre has probably seen the story multiple times. What value add did the film have?
It's funny that the column implied that West Side Story's failure was a surprise. It was a remake of a classic movie that never should have been made. You can't compare this to the ground Spielberg movies of the 70's through the 90's.
> The article laments that things aren't right in the world when Steven Spielberg can't draw a theater crowd. Well, Steven Spielberg is an old, wealthy man now, and he is making movies for himself, not for the kind of audience that made Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park massive successes.
I sort of agree. I've enjoyed many of Spielberg's movies, but I have no interest in watching a fictionalized Spielberg biopic. West Side Story was meh, I tried watching it on Disney+, and gave up after 30 minutes or so. The music was dull and old-fashioned.
But the most obvious counter-argument to this is Schindler's List, a black-and-white Spielberg movie about the Holocaust (granted it has some 'feel-good' elements, but still). That movie made nearly $100M in the domestic box office in 1993. It's hard to imagine box office success for that kind of movie today.
It was up against the biopic of the Williams sisters' father "King Richard", Japanese film "Drive My Car", Stephen Spielberg's remake of "West Side Story", and gay western "The Power of the Dog".
Perhaps the last was the second time such a film has been snubbed by the Academy, after "Brokeback Mountain" was infamously passed over by "Crash" in 2005.