YOU DON’T NEED TO KNOW before going into West Side Story that Steven Spielberg has been itching to make a musical for pretty much his entire career. You can feel it in the film’s opening sequence, in the glee with which he follows members of the white gang, the Jets, as they emerge from beneath a pile of rubble and snap and strut their way down a bustling 1950s Upper West Side street. Spielberg punctuates their walk with offhand glimpses of everyday objects moving in rhythm—a closed lighter, a tossed coin, a blown newspaper. It’s musical, sure, but it’s also … Spielbergian, reminiscent of any number of playfully choreographed scenes from his previous pictures. You half-expect Indiana Jones to swing in and start cracking his bullwhip in time to the beat.
West Side Story does feel at times like a movie the director’s entire career has been building toward. He is, after all, our foremost master of blocking, and it’s hard to think of a better arena in which to demonstrate his powers, not just because of the grace and rigor required to stage any film musical but this one in particular, with modern dance built into its DNA. This isn’t a popular opinion, but I’ll share it anyway: In Robert Wise’s widely beloved, Oscar-soaked 1961 film, the camera had to step back to take in the jazzy, whirling grandeur of Jerome Robbins’s choreography—and the results were frustratingly theatrical. Spielberg goes in the opposite direction; he’s unafraid to plunge his camera into the swirling, leaping, kicking bodies (their movements, this time, courtesy of New York City Ballet choreographer Justin Peck). He’s unafraid, in other words, to make West Side Story a movie.
Esta historia es de la edición December 20, 2021 - January 02, 2022 de New York magazine.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición December 20, 2021 - January 02, 2022 de New York magazine.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
Can the Media Survive?
BIG TECH, Feckless Owners, CORD-CUTTERS, RESTIVE STAFF, Smaller Audiences ... and the Return of PRINT?
Status Update
Hannah Gadsby's fascinatingly untidy tour through life after fame and death.
A Matter of Perspective
A Matter of Perspective Steve McQueen's worst film is still a solid WWII drama.
Creator, Destroyer
A retrospective reveals an architect's vision, optimism, and supreme arrogance.
In Praise of Bad Readers
In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
First, he nearly dropped out of Oscar hopeful A Real Pain. Then he convinced Jesse Eisenberg to change the way he directs.
The Funniest Vampires on TV
What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
The Water-Tower Penthouse
Gigi Loizzo and Angel Molina's apartment on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx looks out on Yankee Stadium.
