West Side Story... is forever.

by Nathaniel R

Rita Moreno, still sensational at 88 years young.It occurred to us last week while looking at photos from Steven Spielberg's 2020 remake of West Side Story that a huge swath of the original cast members from the 1961 Best Picture winner are still with us today. It's not just the legendary trailblazer Rita Moreno though she's the liveliest of the bunch despite being the oldest at a spritely 88. 

So after the jump all the surviving cast members!

We honor their contributions to an indelible piece of film history even though there are a great many of them that didn't say in movies thereafter. Anyway, thiis is us doing our small part to suggest and hope that they get a bit of attention when the new iteration of the greatest musical ever written arrives. Invite them to the December premiere at least, Spielberg, won'tcha?

Here they are...

Character names in white = the actor is still with us today

THE JETS

Click to read more ...

Toshiro Mifune @ 100: Yojimbo

Team Experience is celebrating the Centennial of Japan's great movie star Toshiro Mifune for the next couple of nights. Here's Eric Blume...

When the Akira Kurosawa film Yojimbo was released in 1961, he and Toshiro Mifune already had collaborated on over a dozen films, and this collaboration is widely considered one of their greatest.  It essentially birthed the character of The Man With No Name, was remade three years later by Hollywood as A Fistful of Dollars with Clint Eastwood, and has had an enduring influence on films for almost sixty years...

Click to read more ...

Desperately Seeking Link

THR Insightful piece about experimentation of studios and Hollywood's post-coronavirus future
Vulture "are the celebrities okay?" a funny piece about the bizarre social media of stars during quarantine
Awards Daily Contagion (2011) reframed
Boy Culture a huge celebration of Madonna's "Vogue" as it turns 30

More after the jump including showbiz obituaries, Marvel's What If?, and the cinema of 1962...

Click to read more ...

Podcast: Quarantined with "Emma" and "Cactus Flower"

with Nathaniel R and Murtada Elfadl

Everyone's a shut-in so we'll be watching the same movies at home.

Index (33 minutes)
00:01 Updates on health and the NYC self-quarantine 
04:20 Cactus Flower (1969) is a delight, though crazy sexist. We both fell hard for Ingrid Bergman and enjoyed Goldie Hawn's Oscar winning debut, too. It's streaming on Criterion Channel. We also talk briefly about our reader's choice series thus far and what's next.
17:38 The latest adaptation of Emma starring Anya Taylor-Joy. Murtada really loves Bill Nighy and Nathaniel loves the look but we both think it's not as strong as the 1996 Gwyneth Paltrow version. 
26:30 Bonus randomness - two perfect leading lady star vehicles: Rita Hayworth in Gilda and Cher in Moonstruck.
31:00 Wrap-up

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Cactus Flower, Emma, Quarantine

Today in Showbiz History: Julie Andrews in "My Fair Lady"

by Nathaniel R

We've discussed the Oscar wars of My Fair Lady and Mary Poppins (1964) before but have you ever wondered how history would have been different if Julie Andrews had scored the movie role in My Fair Lady after playing it on Broadway? Would there have been a different Mary Poppins? Would they have waited and wouldboth films hav won Best Picture in separate years? Would Julie Andrews never have won an Oscar at all (since so many saw her very atypical Oscar win and Audrey's own lack of a nomination as a way to shame My Fair Lady, the movie, for not hiring her?! The ripple possibilities are endless...

Click to read more ...