Posted on 01/25/2018 4:51:01 PM PST by Captain Peter Blood
There’s a place for Steven Spielberg, and apparently it’s on New York’s Upper West Side in the 1950s. A casting call has gone out for a remake of “West Side Story,” written by Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner, author of Spielberg’s terrific “Lincoln” screenplay and, of course, “Angels in America.”
It’s a pro-forma casting call because, in the end, the new “West Side Story” is going to need stars. Big names. And because of the setting and the time we are in, it’s going to need actual Puerto Ricans or Latinos for the parts of characters like Maria, Anita, and Bernardo. There will be no fudging this in 2018. The casting call says in capital letters: MUST BE ABLE TO SPEAK SPANISH.
(Excerpt) Read more at showbiz411.com ...
You’re darn tootin’!
Lou: You alright there, Margie?
Marge Gunderson: Oh, I just think I’m gonna barf...
Marge Gunderson: Well, that passed. Now I’m hungry again.
What’s next? Gone With the Wind? Casablanca? Citizen Kane? Hitchcock movies?
They’ve remade some Hitchcock movies.
I just re-watched North by Northwest last night. Man, that was some tight story telling.
Haha. Yea, the husband and his stamp thingy was a crackup. But she was so nice to him about it. What a cool wife.
Info on the lead roles:
“The casting call notes that all four of the lead actors must be able to speak Spanish. A production date has not been set.”
Sorry I see some similarity but not enough for me to call it a remake. It does tell some of the same story but with large deviations.
For example I don’t view “The Flintstones” as a remake of the “The Honeymooners” though it is the same comedic vehicle.
> > > How bout the Chinese guy with the accent.
“So, uh, you married old Norm son-of-a-Gunderson?”
Yeah that’s a great movie. One of my favorites.
Never watched GENTLE BEN ( and I bet I can name many T.V. shows that YOU never watched, let alone heard of, but which I faithfully watched )and not everyone, even at the height of when everyone went to the movies at least twice a week, not everyone saw all of the same movies either.
Okay...you got med with STAR TREK, but how on earth would I know WHO that was, under all of that makeup? LOL
And besides which, by that time, my love of ST had gone by the wayside and my watching it was a hit and miss thing. I LOVED the original and even then ( though I have caught up on the ones I missed back then ), I didn't not go out, so as not to miss it.
OTOH...you really have to admit that movies, for the most part, aren't even as good as the worst movies of yesteryear.
I’m just messing with you. Clint Howard is an obscure actor. But he WAS on the Andy Griffith show. He was the little guy in the cowboy outfit who kept offering a bite of his peanut butter sandwich.
The Vice Principal ran up to save me.
He asked them why they were beating me up.
They told him.
He beat me up, too.
I guess the finger snapping really makes some people angry.
The cartoon, THE FLINTSTONES was indeed a take of THE HONEYMOONERS! And you may disagree; however, THE HONEYMOONIES, the fan club for THE HONEYMOONERS, claims it as such, as did Hanna-Barberra, when it first came out.
THE HONEYMOONERS was also a knock-off of LAUREL & HARDY! Don't take my word for it...it's what THE SONS OF THE DESERT, the L&H society for those who appreciate "the boys" and their films, say. And you can always also check the books by McCabe, THE LU&H expert" had to say about it, as well.
Soooooooooooo....just how much of an "expert" ARE you? :-)
But yes, you can have your own opinions...just don't imagine that they are necessarily the correct/accepted ones.
“Why not an All-Muslim cast?”
Sharia! I once beat a girl with Sharia!
Sharia! Say it loud and there’s bombs exploding. Say it soft, and there’s AK’s reloading.
OK, I give up
Okay, that’s it. I’m gonna watch Fargo again tonight.
Mayberry ran for many years; not everyone watched every single show from that series. And depending upon your age and mine, not to mention where we were living during that time period, is the reason why you remember one thing that I was totally unaware of.
Some places in this nation, still only got 2 or 3 channels, even in the '60s.
OTOH, in NYC, in 1949, we got SIX different channels, with a 7th added not all that many years later.
And then there were the local channels, which if you lived in one place, even through the 1990s, you wouldn't know about, let alone see, if you lived outside of that area.
And today...different PBS channels have lots of different programing from other ones.
Some remakes can be successful if they're presented in a different format. Musicals seem like a good vehicle. OLIVER! was better than the novel OLIVER TWIST (I'm not a Dickens fan).
Other examples: I enjoyed HIGH SOCIETY, which was based on PHILADELPHIA STORY. Equally charming was SILK STOCKINGS, which was based on NINOTCHKA. Of course, the talent was different then. No one these days can compare with Grace Kelly or Cyd Charisse.
The problem with Spielberg, period -- not only is he flaming liberal, but like many Baby Boomers he can't leave the 1960s. He seems stunted, both emotionally and politically. (Which is why I don't want to see THE POST.)
He probably thinks WEST SIDE STORY with its liberal message is still relevant today. It is not. That movie was actually quite naïve. (I loved the dancing & music, but not the story.)
It’s official: I couldn’t possibly care less.
It was. It was Leonard Bernstein’s interpretation of Romeo and Juliet. The movie was fantastic.
So true - It was his best work and the height of 20th c. music. I admire ‘Evita’ and ‘Phantom,’ and of course anything by John Williams as music of my own time, but ‘West Side Story’ has the most difficult music still accessible to an audience. Unlistenable works may have some academic value, but I’d be hard pressed to call them music.
I performed as a student in a staging of Bernstein’s ‘Mass’ that was only somewhat successful, but not entirely because of the music itself. We had for our use not the local college theatre, but a wonderful, large Mid-Century Modern church for rehearsals and performances. The evenings went well enough for a non-professional group. However, the altar end of the church was extremely well-lit while the pews were dark, so it was very much as if it had been performed in a theatre. The matinee was performed in the late afternoon, when the sun flooded the space with warmth; the wood gleamed with a heavenly richness, while the stained glass sparkled with joy. An audience can detach itself from the stage in a theatre setting; in this glorious church, the sight of a priest collapsing in a crisis of faith and desecrating the Communion was deeply disturbing even to the Protestants attending.
I had to apologize to my mother for weeks afterward.
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