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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We have our first 10 contenders for Best Foreign Film

by Nathaniel R

Our first 10 official contenders for Best Foreign Language Film for the Oscars have been revealed. Any of the links will take you to the foreign submission charts where you can read more. They are:

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Showbiz History: Cheers, The Wizard of Oz, Beach Rats

10 random things that happened on this day, August 25th, in showbiz history...

1885 Silent film master G.W. Pabst (Pandora's Box) born in Germany. 

1918 Today is the Centennial of composer Leonard Bernstein. We've been posting a three part West Side Story tribute that I hope you will all read and comment on! Part 3 later today, apologies for the 24 hour delay. (Oh, and check out today's Google Doodle in his honor)

←1939 The Wizard of Oz arrives in movie theaters. Though popular in its initial release, the 9th highest grossing film of its year and a Best Picture nominee, the budget was high enough that MGM recorded a loss of $1 million...

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Yes, No, Maybe So: Suspiria

What’s good? It's Salim. Yesterday, Amazon Studios graced us with the second trailer to their upcoming horror film, Suspiria, a film that performs double duty as the remake to one of the seminal horror films in cinematic history by Italian legend Dario Argento and Luca Guadagnino’s follow-up to his acclaimed Oscar contender Call Me by Your Name. To some, the attempt to remake such a perfect masterpiece as Suspiria may feel like sacrilege. To yours truly, it has been one of my most anticipated movies ever since Guadagnino was announced as the director years ago (Much less so when the poor fit of David Gordon Green was attached) and seeing the cryptic first teaser months ago felt like manna after long speculation of how the results would be (including Armie Hammer going on record after seeing it calling the movie “evil”). 

More on the Trailer After the Jump

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Eye Spy With "The Favourite"

Chris here. Oh was white text on a black background not enough to prep us for a Lanthimos costume drama? The NYFF-bound The Favourite inches closer to release and we've now been given a genius poster that takes "closer" to a whole new level of Lanthimosian wrongness. Reader, what are Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz doing to Olivia Colman's face?? We love some Lanthimos body horror humor, but do we need to brace for The Favourite to punish us with... eye stuff? Eek! Or maybe there's some more hidden hints at what the movie has in store for us?