Rita Moreno to return to movie musicals - for real this time!

by Nathaniel R

You may recall that we were briefly very excited about Rita Moreno's return to her home genre, the movie musical. News broke but then was quickly retracted that she had landed a wonderful part in the film version of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tony-winning debut In the Heights which ran on Broadway from 2008 through 2011. Now, the news is for real but with a different film. She'll play "Valentina" in Steven Spielberg's remake of West Side Story. That's the "Doc" role, in a bit of racial and gender-flipped casting...

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Rita Moreno to return to movie musicals?

by Nathaniel R

Rita Moreno in her Emmy worthy performance in "One Day at a Time"

Rita Moreno, the beloved octogenarian, EGOT and Triple Crown of Acting winner, and Latina pioneer, is back in a big way. She's doing some of her best work ever on One Day at a Time (the lack of an Emmy nod is just shameful) but we have very good news about a future movie role. She's been cast in the movie adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights (2020). This will be her first movie musical role in over 50 years! 

For those who don't know Moreno's career before West Side Story (1961), it wasn't her first musical...

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Showbiz History: Bergman's Persona, Roseanne's Debut, Einsenstein's Trip

5 random things that happened on this day, October 18th, in history

1867 The USA take possession of Alaska (formerly owned by Russia). Happy Alaska Day if we have any readers there. Enjoy your holiday.

1961 West Side Story has its world premiere in New York City. It will go on to become a blockbuster at the box office and win 10 Oscars including Best Picture. We recently did a deep dive right here that you should read if you missed. It's currently being remade (sigh) by Steven Spielberg.

← 1966 Persona premieres in Sweden. Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece (well, one of them) will hit US theaters in March the following year. Strangely, given its reputation now and Bergman's position in world cinema then, it was not one of his Oscar successes...

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Ansel Elgort...is a Jet 'til his last dying day.

by Nathaniel R

The first casting announcement has hit for Steven Spielberg's remake of West Side Story: Ansel Elgort will play doomed romantic Tony, a sensitive white boy who falls for Puerto Rican Maria in the mean streets of NYC. Tony can't quite extricate himself from his friendships with local gang The Jets in order to live happily ever after. 

Elgort has definitely proved that he can move onscreen (Baby Driver was basically a musical without songs) and he sings, too. In fact he has already tried to start up a dual career as a singer and this might not be his only upcoming musical role as there was also talk of him headlining a Hans Christian Anderson bio earlier this year. But the West Side Story news will probably rankle a lot of people, if not me, because any remake of my favorite is suspect to begin with -- more after the jump...

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West Side Story, Pt 3: Tonight Won't Be Just Any Night

Occassionally Team Experience passes a movie around amongst the team for a retrospective. This month's installment is West Side Story (1961), one of the most popular films of all time and winner of 10 Oscars.

Part One - by Lynn Lee
Part Two -by Eric Blume

Part 3 by Nathaniel R

Growing up I watched West Side Story as often as I could. It was surely my most formative film though as a kid I didn't really know the hows and whys of movies, only how they made me feel. Some movies were good for laughing, others for crying, and a lot of them just to get caught up in adventures and stories. West Side Story was, no, IS, all the things a movie could be in one massive tuneful package. I devoured it every chance I got as a kid. 

When Eric left us in Part Two Maria and Tony had just symbolically wed, lit by heavenly golden light, as they finished singing "One Hand, One Heart". A soft, reverent hush fell over the scene as the lovers kissed and the music faded. Then an abrupt cut to:

01:34:59  This impossibly bold red sky. It's a hard image with a blaring aggressive music cue signalling a major shift within the movie.  From here on out: tragedy. The juxtaposition of the wedding with this image, remains to this day, one of the most violent cuts I've ever seen in a movie. Red is the only choice for it. The camera then swoops down to street level as the Jets begin to sing "Tonight"...

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