A Few Words About A few words about...™ West Side Story -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Tino]

I only registered to ask the specific question about the digital download of WSS really. I'm not a home theatre enthusuast, so I won't be here for anything else.

Oh well. If you are a film fan of any kind, this is the place to be. If not.....cheers.

 

[haineshisway]

It's the way he says things, not what he says.

More accurately I think you mean it's the way I type things. None of my comments were meant as curt, rude or anything like it and I'm sorry you read that into it. This thread has been going on for years and at this point in time everything that need be said about the overture to WSS has been said many times. So, when two posts show up with video that is not correct, someone would have inevitably posted exactly what I did - I just got there first. I do understand tone is impossible to read, but I really don't see aggression and rudeness as regards you or your posts. Maybe I'll start using these again

 

[lark144]

To me that is the most exciting part of the whole movie and they screwed it up. How did they even do it? Why? What was the reason? Baffling.

Yes. I'll never forget the first time I saw WEST SIDE STORY at the Rivoli. When I got there, the curtain was up with all the lights on. and as the Overture started, the silhouette of Manhattan skyscrapers appeared on the screen. As the skyline changed from one color to another, a bank of lights would dim in one section of the theater after another, until finally when the title appeared and the skyline turned into a helicopter shot approaching the West Side of Manhattan, the entire theater went dark. For me, it was kind of a revelation. And the whole film just followed from there.

 

[Raul Marquez]

Yes. I'll never forget the first time I saw WEST SIDE STORY at the Rivoli. When I got there, the curtain was up with all the lights on. and as the Overture started, the silhouette of Manhattan skyscrapers appeared on the screen. As the skyline changed from one color to another, a bank of lights would dim in one section of the theater after another, until finally when the title appeared and the skyline turned into a helicopter shot approaching the West Side of Manhattan, the entire theater went dark. For me, it was kind of a revelation. And the whole film just followed from there.

I kind of recall seeing the overture projected over the curtains of a wide Cinerama type curved screen with the curtains slowly opening and the lights slowly dimming as well as the Overture progressed .... But I could be wrong.... It's a memory from when I was around 9 years of age or so. For some reason that opening and the one from 2001 which I also saw on that screen always stuck on my mind.

 

[Robert Harris]

Yes. I'll never forget the first time I saw WEST SIDE STORY at the Rivoli. When I got there, the curtain was up with all the lights on. and as the Overture started, the silhouette of Manhattan skyscrapers appeared on the screen. As the skyline changed from one color to another, a bank of lights would dim in one section of the theater after another, until finally when the title appeared and the skyline turned into a helicopter shot approaching the West Side of Manhattan, the entire theater went dark. For me, it was kind of a revelation. And the whole film just followed from there.

And that was showmanship!

 

[Cinéaste]

And that was showmanship!

 

[Raul Marquez]

And that was showmanship!

Based on that "Presentation" sheet I guess my childhood memory wasn't that far off

 

[Charles Smith]

As well as I can recall it, at the theater where I first saw it (opening night after the road show engagements), it was pretty much as per the written instructions. I don't remember the lights being gradually dimmed, but I was sitting up pretty close and could have missed that detail. I was so stunned by the music and the mysterious patterns and colors on the screen that if a bomb had gone off in the theater behind me, it would have escaped my notice.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

How amazing it must have been to see it that way for the first time! My first experience was from the old two cassette VHS release, pan and scan, shown 40 minutes at a time in middle school music class - and even with those less than ideal viewing conditions it was an incredible movie.

 

[davidmatychuk]

I wonder how far we might be from some enterprising (billionaire) movie nut building a true movie palace, with all the current information and materials available to movie nuts these days, with a mind to presenting nothing but movies like "West Side Story" (and "Lawrence Of Arabia" and "My Fair Lady", etc.) in the very best environment with the very best presentation possible, opening-night/roadshow style? Wouldn't such a theatre be a destination for movie nuts all over the world? Wouldn't it make a fantastic Las Vegas casino installation? I'd plan vacations around it.

 

[haineshisway]

And that was showmanship!

And there you have it in black-and-white The mambo color is supposed to be RED, and it dissolves into BLUE - dissolves and no green frames.

 

[Cinéaste]

And there you have it in black-and-white The mambo color is supposed to be RED, and it dissolves into BLUE - dissolves and no green frames.

I wish everyone here could have seen it the other weekend at the Museum of the Moving Image. It was part of the latest in their series "See it Big". The theme for August was "70mm". MOMI has a fantastic theatre, and what really blew me away was the sound. Amaaaaazing!!! The directional dialouge and effects were fantastic and the music sounded incredible and dramatic. I have a membership there and went to both screenings. Had to see it again the next afternoon after I was blown away by it the previous evening. I had seen this on the Big Screen before, at the Norris Cinema Theatre on the USC campus when I was studying film history, theory and criticism there, but I don't recall it sounding this good! If anyone here is unfamiliar, check out http://www.movingimage.us It's well worth a visit. Especially if you can catch a screening in their large theatre. If you live in New York, a membership is an amazing deal and well worth it. A bargain really. You need the Film Lover membership or higher to have all regular screenings included. And it's only $75.00 at that level. A steal! It will more than pay for itself.

 

[Dave Moritz]

Until this mess is corrected I will also not be purchasing this movie! Doesn't matter if they turn around and offer a 1080p/4K combo if it is not done right I will not be spending my money on it. Thank you for the review Robert.

 

[Cineman]

I wonder how far we might be from some enterprising (billionaire) movie nut building a true movie palace, with all the current information and materials available to movie nuts these days, with a mind to presenting nothing but movies like "West Side Story" (and "Lawrence Of Arabia" and "My Fair Lady", etc.) in the very best environment with the very best presentation possible, opening-night/roadshow style? Wouldn't such a theatre be a destination for movie nuts all over the world? Wouldn't it make a fantastic Las Vegas casino installation? I'd plan vacations around it.

There are some enterprising billionaire movie nuts out there, or at least a handful of filmmakers who together are worth billions, who could very well rent out at least one screen/theater in one big multiplex in two or three of the major metropolitan areas of the country, every week, to screen classic roadshow movies in modern state of the art sound and pic conditions. A group of filmmakers who claim and often go to great expense and effort to promote the idea of viewing those classics as originally intended.


I'm talking about people like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, et al. But that is a concept that either never occurred to them or for whatever reason cannot be put together on a regular basis. I'm sure they could afford to rent out one of the screens at a decent multiplex in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and, yes, Las Vegas even if it were for just one Monday night per month, to present the movies you mention, perhaps a Hitchcock, Welles or Wilder double bill every now and then, exactly as intended by the movie greats who inspired them into the business and on whose shoulders those modern filmmakers stood to earn their billions.


Granted, it isn't one theater dedicated to it as you described, and modern movie multiplexes aren't much for curtains these days. Yes, it would mean one night of that week Transformers 6 could only be shown on 10 of the 15 multiplex screens instead of 11 to make room for Lawrence of Arabia. But I think it would pay dividends for the future of great scripts, fine direction, complex characters and the rest of it if the same crowd that came to see Transformers 6 had at least a passing opportunity to stop into Cinema #15 every now and then to satisfy their curiosity about what it must have been like to see truly great movies with wit, charm, humor, complex characters, musical substance, real suspense, and thrills on the big screen.


Maybe audience exposure to it in the same venue would cause some of those qualities to bleed into Transformers 7...or 8, or 9.

 

[FoxyMulder]

There are some enterprising billionaire movie nuts out there, or at least a handful of filmmakers who together are worth billions, who could very well rent out at least one screen/theater in one big multiplex in two or three of the major metropolitan areas of the country, every week, to screen classic roadshow movies in modern state of the art sound and pic conditions. A group of filmmakers who claim and often go to great expense and effort to promote the idea of viewing those classics as originally intended.


I'm talking about people like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, et al.

Billionaires are like Scrooge on Xmas Eve, they don't like spending their own money on such things.

 

[Cinéaste]

Granted, it isn't one theater dedicated to it as you described, and modern movie multiplexes aren't much for curtains these days. Yes, it would mean one night of that week Transformers 6 could only be shown on 10 of the 15 multiplex screens instead of 11 to make room for Lawrence of Arabia.

MOMI has curtains (real cool ones), and they present all Roadshow films with overture, intermission, entr'acte, and exit music. They showed Lawrence of Arabia the same weekend as West Side Story.

It's really like the Cinémathèque Française of the U.S.

 

[Dr Griffin]

I wonder how far we might be from some enterprising (billionaire) movie nut building a true movie palace, with all the current information and materials available to movie nuts these days, with a mind to presenting nothing but movies like "West Side Story" (and "Lawrence Of Arabia" and "My Fair Lady", etc.) in the very best environment with the very best presentation possible, opening-night/roadshow style? Wouldn't such a theatre be a destination for movie nuts all over the world? Wouldn't it make a fantastic Las Vegas casino installation? I'd plan vacations around it.

It wouldn't take quite that much. The HTF membership should just pool our money and build, or renovate, our own. Plenty of crumbling old movie houses crying out for atttention. Plenty of talent among the membership to get it going - film handlers, projectionists, sound engineers, studio insiders... and imagine the arguments.

 

[Paul Rossen]

I wish everyone here could have seen it the other weekend at the Museum of the Moving Image. It was part of the latest in their series "See it Big". The theme for August was "70mm". MOMI has a fantastic theatre, and what really blew me away was the sound. Amaaaaazing!!! The directional dialouge and effects were fantastic and the music sounded incredible and dramatic. I have a membership there and went to both screenings. Had to see it again the next afternoon after I was blown away by it the previous evening. I had seen this on the Big Screen before, at the Norris Cinema Theatre on the USC campus when I was studying film history, theory and criticism there, but I don't recall it sounding this good! If anyone here is unfamiliar, check out http://www.movingimage.us It's well worth a visit. Especially if you can catch a screening in their large theatre. If you live in New York, a membership is an amazing deal and well worth it. A bargain really. You need the Film Lover membership or higher to have all regular screenings included. And it's only $75.00 at that level. A steal! It will more than pay for itself.

Sounds like a great experience. I have yet to visit the 'new museum' and theater and gather the screen is of sufficient size to do 70mm properly.

 

[Garysb]

I wish everyone here could have seen it the other weekend at the Museum of the Moving Image. It was part of the latest in their series "See it Big". The theme for August was "70mm". MOMI has a fantastic theatre, and what really blew me away was the sound. Amaaaaazing!!! The directional dialouge and effects were fantastic and the music sounded incredible and dramatic. I have a membership there and went to both screenings. Had to see it again the next afternoon after I was blown away by it the previous evening. I had seen this on the Big Screen before, at the Norris Cinema Theatre on the USC campus when I was studying film history, theory and criticism there, but I don't recall it sounding this good! If anyone here is unfamiliar, check out http://www.movingimage.us It's well worth a visit. Especially if you can catch a screening in their large theatre. If you live in New York, a membership is an amazing deal and well worth it. A bargain really. You need the Film Lover membership or higher to have all regular screenings included. And it's only $75.00 at that level. A steal! It will more than pay for itself.

The version of Mad World that they showed during this series included the intermission with the police calls per the description on their website.


http://www.movingimage.us/visit/calendar/2015/08/15/detail/its-a-mad-mad-mad-mad-world

 

[Robert Harris]

The version of Mad World that they showed during this series included the intermission with the police calls per the description on their website.

http://www.movingimage.us/visit/calendar/2015/08/15/detail/its-a-mad-mad-mad-mad-world

It's an odd print that was created. My feeling is it should not have been, with radio calls.

I had asked that they not use them. I'm told they run several times during the intermission, which if true, is wrong.