West Side Story (2021) (Movie)
‘CODA’ Triumphs at the Oscars, but Onstage Slap Takes Center Stage
Notably, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was not mentioned during the opening to the lighthearted show, which featured a D.J., a second standup routine from Schumer, and a sketch from Hall that found a shirtless Chalamet and other male stars onstage. Three sports stars — Tony Hawk, Kelly Slater and Shaun White — arrived to […]
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Streaming Took Over Hollywood. Will It Take Best Picture, Too?
The pandemic accelerated the disruption. Traditional studios like Paramount, Universal, Sony, Warner Bros. and Disney rerouted dozens of theatrical films to streaming services or released them simultaneously in theaters and online. For the second year in a row, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, citing the coronavirus threat, allowed films to skip a […]
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Here’s How Each Best-Picture Nominee Could Win an Oscar
But significant year-end support from critics’ groups helped “Drive My Car” crash the Oscar race, where it claimed nominations for picture, director, adapted screenplay and international feature. Hollywood doesn’t know Hamaguchi as well as it got to know the “Parasite” auteur Bong Joon Ho during that film’s prepandemic Oscar season, so multiple wins may be […]
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Quiet Awards Season Has Hollywood Uneasy
The Academy Awards were created in 1929 to promote Hollywood’s achievements to the outside world. At its pinnacle, the telecast drew 55 million viewers. That number has been dropping for years, and last year it hit an all-time low — 10.4 million viewers for a show without a host, no musical numbers and a little-seen […]
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The Oscars Want Crowd-Pleasers, but Where Are the Crowds?
After last year’s Oscar ceremony honored a group of small, challenging movies and tanked in the ratings, you can bet that this year, the academy is eager to nominate films that audiences can get excited about. Indeed, this year’s crop of awards movies includes several old-fashioned crowd-pleasers to choose from. There’s just one problem: The […]
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Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’ Opens to Tepid Box Office Receipts
Steven Spielberg’s rave-reviewed remake of “West Side Story” arrived to an estimated $10.5 million in North American ticket sales, a feeble result — even by pandemic standards — that added to alarm in Hollywood about the theatrical viability of films that are not visual effects-driven fantasy spectacles or new chapters in ongoing franchises. But there […]
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‘West Side Story’ Review: In Love and War, 1957 Might Be Tonight
The Jets and the Sharks, a white teenage gang and their Puerto Rican antagonists, aren’t mirror images of each other. Ostensibly contending for control over a few battered blocks in the West 60s, they collide like taxis speeding toward each other on a one-way street. The Sharks are children of an upwardly striving, migrant working […]
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Best Movies of 2021
Also … “Annette” (Leos Carax), “The Disciple” (Chaitanya Tamhane), “Flee” (Jonas Poher Rasmussen), “The Green Knight” (David Lowery), “The Hand of God” (Paolo Sorrentino), “King Richard” (Reinaldo Marcus Green), “Mogul Mowgli” (Bassam Tariq), “Parallel Mothers” (Pedro Almodóvar), “Passing” (Rebecca Hall), “El Planeta” (Amalia Ulman), “The Souvenir Part II” (Joanna Hogg), “Spencer” (Pablo Larraín), “The Tragedy […]
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