MOVIE REVIEW: West Side Story - 50th Anniversary Edition (Blu-ray)

Adapted loosely from Romeo and Juliet, Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story tells the tale of star-crossed lovers Tony (Richard Beymer) and Maria (Natalie Wood) in the middle of a turf war between two teenage street gangs on the west side of New York City in the 1950s. The Jets are a group of white teens led by Riff (Russ Tamblyn), while the Sharks are a Puerto Rican gang led by Bernardo (George Chakiris). When the conflict between the two gangs comes to a head, the police intervene, and Lt. Schrank (Simon Oakland) and Officer Krupke (William Bramley) mandate that the two gangs have to reconcile, or else there will be a price to pay. The Jets, however, decide that it might be better to challenge the Sharks to an all-out rumble for full control of the territory, and Riff asks his best friend (and Jets co-founder) Tony to deliver the challenge to the Jets at the school dance. But it's there that Tony sees Maria - Bernardo's sister - and both are immediately smitten with each other. Thus begins their turbulent relationship, with the Jets and Sharks gearing up for war, and their romance caught in the middle.

As it's based on Romeo and Juliet, you can get a sense of where things are headed, and let's just say that it's definitely a heart wrenching tragedy. Directed by Robert Wise and choreographed and co-directed by Broadway icon Jerome Robbins, West Side Story is a masterful celebration of story told through dance and music. The songs, featuring lyrics co-written by Stephen Sondheim with Leonard Bernstein, are each memorable and now considered classics. It's a long film, running a little over 2.5 hours, but the performances from the actors as well as the creative filmmaking style never get boring. In 1961, it was not conventional to shoot musical numbers with such depth and artistry, and it truly did set the bar high for subsequent movie musicals. West Side Story would go on to win ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor and Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Editing and more - and it's all evident when you watch the film.

The new HD restoration of West Side Story looks phenomenal. From the opening aerials of New York City to the stylized rooftop sets to the heart wrenching finale, it's a gorgeous looking film. The deep color saturation is incredibly vibrant, the detail is crisp and sharp, and there is a delightfully slight bit of grain throughout the image reminding us that this was a film. There are occasional moments of moire pattern shimmer and some of the optical shorts feel a little fuzzy but that's just the nature of the medium. There has apparently been some concern regarding the visual fade-out from the overture into the main titles, and reportedly Fox will be offering a disc exchange program. Don't let that dissuade you from watching this on a big screen, though!

Audio for West Side Story is presented in a DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track, repurposed from the four-track masters (and not the recently restored six track masters), and as such is not an exact replication of the original 1961 presentation. But that being said, Leonard Bernstein's music sounds phenomenal, dialogue is clean but slightly compressed (again, a product of the time) and while this isn't a reference quality track to show off your home theater, West Side Story sounds just great. Also included is an English 4.0 Dolby Digital track, a Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital track, a French 5.1 DTS track, and a German 5.1 DTS track.

Billed as the 50th Anniversary Edition, on the first Blu-ray disc, we have a few film-specific extras. "Song Specific Commentary by Stephen Sondheim" (HD, 19.5-min) is a brief but highly informative glimpse into the development of the songs, and Sondheim's candor and discussion about things that he likes and dislikes about the songs, as well as where he changed things from stage to screen, makes this a quick commentary well worth listening to. It's a shame it's so brief, though, since I'm sure there is a lot more behind the songs that would be worth having him discuss at length. "Pow! The Dances of West Side Story" (HD, 19-min) is a great deconstruction of the various dance sequences in the film, featuring interviews with people directly involved with the production as well as current experts on dance, film and music. It's available viewed within the film, or individually. "Music Machine" (HD, 85-min) lets you watch all the musical numbers in the film either individually, or in-a-row. >[?On the second disc, we get a wealth of extras, some old and some new. "A Place for Us: The Legacy of West Side Story" (HD, 29.5-min) is a new featurette that looks back at the amazing worldwide influence that the play and film have had on society and pop culture over the past sixty years. "West Side Memories" (SD 16x9, 56-min) is a holdover from the 2003 DVD Special Edition release, and is a rather in-depth and candid look at the making of the film. Interviews with living cast and crew members are mixed in with archival interviews and behind-the-scenes photos and footage to create a compelling and fascinating exploration of the challenges (and serious problems) encountered when making the film. "Storyboard to Film Comparison Montage" (HD, 5-minutes) is exactly what you would expect, a montage of shots from the film compared to their storyboards, set to music. Finally, four "Trailers" (HD, 12-min) are included, rounding out the extras on West Side Story.

As a groundbreaking film musical, West Side Story is a must-see for all fans of cinema and theater. That is has been given a great presentation on Blu-ray, combined with some solid extras, should make it a no-brainer and must-own for everyone.

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TV: Newswire: Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash faces a third accusation of underage sex, in continuation of world's worst bedtime story

Continuing the bedtime story that's currently putting America down for its long, walking slumber through a numb and joyless world, a third man has now stepped forward to accuse former Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash of engaging in sexual activity with him when he was a minor—thus adding to a growing number of allegations that someone could probably make a mirthful video about featuring Sesame Street's the Count, if only they could rouse themselves from their existential mire. A 29-year-old going only by "John Doe" now says that Clash—as he allegedly did with his second accuser, Cecil Singleton—picked him up on a gay chat line when he was just 16, inviting him to his apartment on multiple occasions, and plied him with alcohol and "groomed him" for a relationship similar to the one also alleged by (then recanted, then alleged again) by Clash's first accuser, Sheldon Stephens.

This anonymous man also said that, over time, he figured out who Clash was after spying "Elmo dolls, an Emmy award, and photographs of Elmo with movie stars" around Clash's living area—uncomfortable imagery he planned to paint more vividly for you with a book he says he first began writing in 2009. Pages from that still-in-progress book are due to be read aloud at a press conference today announcing the lawsuit. So everyone gather around and put on your listening ears, instead of jabbing pencils in there.  

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American Horror Story, “The Origins of Monstrosity”

Obviously, not every episode of American Horror Story can be one of the two episodes making up the “I Am Anne Frank” saga. If that were the case, strange antennae would begin sprouting from television sets across the country, and Ryan Murphy would gain the ability to enter all of our brains and control them, like the Riddler in Batman Forever. Soon, you’d be dancing away to a Ke$ha cover performed by 5,000 perky teenagers, and in the back of your head, the one place Murphy couldn’t see, you’d say, “Oh, hey, I knew I shouldn’t have watched that American Horror Story thing!” Then you’d smile and clap and do some jazz hands, as your master commandeth!

No, what’s disappointing is that “The Origins Of Monstrosity” is a dull and listless episode. It’s easily the most boring episode this season, and it spends lots of time offering origin stories for characters who either already had them or didn’t particularly need them. Is it necessary to know that Bloody Face became the way he is because he lacked a mother’s love, then came upon the absolute perfect corpse in medical school? I’m not sure it is! There’s a possibility that if this flashback had been artfully threaded throughout the episode it would have worked, but instead, the episode just stops dead in its tracks for a while so that Thredson can explain to us why he’s crazy, like the good Bond villain he is. The twist that he wants Lana to be his mommy—and that she was eventually willing to go along with it to keep her life—wasn’t bad, but there was a lot of tough going to get there, and it wasn’t worth stopping the story’s momentum. This is a show that thrives on momentum, and once it starts turning into the psychologist’s explanation from Psycho, I start looking for other stuff to do.

Perhaps improbably, Bloody Face’s origin story wasn’t the only one explored here. We also got a good deal of time with Dr. Arden, learning just why he’s creating his mutant population—he thinks that if he can do so, America will have a natural leg up when the Soviets start nuking us—and why the church seems to tolerate it. We got confirmation all over again that he really was the Nazi war criminal “Anne” accused him of being. It was a big episode for Arden knowledge, but most of it was answering questions I didn’t realize were questions or handling stuff the audience already knew. If there’s one thing this show should know by now, it’s that James Cromwell cannot survive on overripe monologues alone. He needs some horrendously silly back-and-forth with the other characters to really sink his teeth into. We didn’t get much of that here, and I’ll count that as a missed opportunity.

The episode also offered backstories for Sister Mary Eunice, as we learned that she was incredibly ashamed when she went to a pool party and was tricked into swimming nude, which prompted her to become a nun or whatever, but now that she’s possessed by the devil, she doesn’t care as much as she once did. Blah. We also hung out with a little girl who’s apparently eeeeeeevil, because somebody on the writing staff saw The Bad Seed and realized a murderous child hasn’t been incorporated into the show just yet. As it turns out, she most likely murdered her friend, Joanie (the demon seems pretty clear on this point), and now she’s confined to Briarcliff, where I’m sure she’ll be doing spooky things to come. Honestly, evil kid might be a bridge too far for me, in terms of the show piling an endless array of horror tropes on top of each other. I’m fine with aliens and mutants, thanks.

Here’s the problem: Talking about American Horror Story at its best usually involves the show having several crazy developments that are hard to take seriously, but that are pure joy to take on the camp level they’re intended. I mean, sure, we could sit here and parse out just what it means that Sister Jude has a new job in Pittsburgh, thanks to the church, but we all know Jessica Lange isn’t going down until she’s exorcised at least one demon and cooked at least one delicious Bundt cake. Or we could talk about Kit’s too-brief call to Thredson, or Lana’s decision to play the role of his mother, or whatever you want. But not a single one of these things really feels like the sort of bizarre majesty that this show had been conjuring on a weekly basis before this point. There’s always a bit of an “Emperor’s New Clothes” phenomenon to American Horror Story, where the show removes its robe with each episode, only to reveal that it’s either wearing nothing or 100 strategically placed weasels, hanging from its skin by their little razor-sharp teeth. Tonight was too sane, logical, and safe. It definitely skewed toward the former side of that continuum.

Look: Part of this might just be that the show is coming off an incredible high, and it was never going to match that. I get that. I do. It needed to ramp things down just a bit so it could build them back up again. But “Monstrosity” was so mundane and easy that it almost became predictable. And that’s dangerous for this show. The horror mash-up that makes up the show’s central device can be fun when deployed artfully, but this episode more or less just kept tossing straight-up rip-offs at us, shrugging at every turn. “Here’s an evil kid! And here’s the ‘dark’ explanation for Arden’s secrets! Enjoy! Or not!” the show seems to be saying. If this episode had arrived in a few weeks, it would have been disappointing; arriving immediately after the highpoint of the entire series, it mostly just made me roll my eyes. Plus, the episode killed off Mark Margolis! What were they thinking? (And if he’s somehow alive next week, I’m going to call serious bullshit.)

Asylum would really like to delve into the depths of the human psyche, and in some cases, it’s done so surprisingly well. But in this episode, it mostly just punts the ball down the field. Making Bloody Face’s issues all stem from mother issues was far too easy, and it reduced a potentially fascinating villain to a collection of psychological tics. At its best this season, American Horror Story has entertained, enthralled, and unnerved me. “Origins Of Monstrosity” didn’t do any of those things, so it returns me to a place where I doubted this show had it in it to become genuinely good. Here’s hoping “Monstrosity” is just a weird, pre-Thanksgiving lull.

Grade: C for Clean cut skin

Stray observations:

We returned to the present day again to discover that Bloody Face—who’s remarkably spry for an old dude—had strung up lots and lots of his victims. It took the police a while, but they soon figured out that Jenna Dewan-Tatum had been hauled back to Bloody Face’s lair. Here’s a more important question: Why should we care about any of this? (And was that the dulcet voice of Dylan McDermott I heard on the other end of the phone? Or am I hallucinating things again? He does sound remarkably like Zachary Quinto.)Kit. Poor, stupid Kit. Thinking you can somehow sweet talk Thredson into letting you out. No, it’s going to take you much more than that. You’re in prison now, friend!Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! I’d hoped to do something special again, like with last year’s “Rubber Man” review, but then this was just thoroughly disappointing in every way. Maybe next week! Or the Christmas episode! Oooh, yeah. The Christmas episode!

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