This Sunday’s (12\/19) “West Side Story<\/em>\u00a0New Plaza Talk Back<\/a>“<\/strong>\u00a0will focus on the 1961 Robert Wise-Jerome Robbins version \u2014\u00a0including a live appearance by Richard Barrios, author of ‘West Side Story: The Jets, the Sharks and the Making of a Classic<\/a>“<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and I imagine some of our viewers will also weigh in on the new remake.<\/p>\n I haven’t yet seen it, but I’m concerned about how its opening weekend box office was widely interpreted in the press and on social media. As my old friend and astute industry analyst Tom Brueggemann wrote in Indiewire<\/em>:<\/p>\n “In legal circles, there’s a saying that big cases make for bad law, meaning that misinterpretations of high-profile situations can lead to the wrong\u00a0conclusions.\u00a0That may apply to early reactions\u00a0to the opening grosses of Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story<\/em>.<\/p>\n The opening weekend $10.5 million gross was considered at the low end of studio expectations \u2014\u00a0 In the Heights<\/em>\u00a0performed slightly better in its debut last June \u2014\u00a0but as Brueggemann notes, “this is a time when nuance is essential. It could be the difference between a film being killed off that still has a chance to emerge from its box-office dead zone” \u2014\u00a0just before adults typically start going to theatres, on Dec 25, when it can take advantage of strong reviews and word of mouth to start building a bigger audience.<\/p>\n We all know how our world has involved into an instant-reaction, snap-judgement\u00a0arena where seemingly everything \u2014\u00a0movies, politicians, athletes\u00a0\u2014\u00a0are judged for posterity in a single weekend, primary or season.<\/p>\n Here’s hoping this is one film that can dance past that syndrome, that ‘there’s a place” for it in this all-important, closely-scrutinized 2021 holiday movie season.<\/p>\n Gary Palmucci,\u00a0Film Curator We’re continuing our current lineup of Virtual Cinema through the holidays, including several titles that figure in various awards season conversations: Hive, Luzzu,\u00a0and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. This Sunday’s (12\/19) “West Side Story\u00a0New Plaza Talk Back”\u00a0will focus on the 1961 Robert Wise-Jerome Robbins version \u2014\u00a0including a live appearance by Richard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-garys-corner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newplazacinema.org\/test_area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newplazacinema.org\/test_area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newplazacinema.org\/test_area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newplazacinema.org\/test_area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newplazacinema.org\/test_area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6795"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/newplazacinema.org\/test_area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6908,"href":"https:\/\/newplazacinema.org\/test_area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6795\/revisions\/6908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newplazacinema.org\/test_area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newplazacinema.org\/test_area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newplazacinema.org\/test_area\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/newplazacinema.org\/test_area\/staff_materials\/tickets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/West-Side-Story-Talk-Back-1-1024x342-1.png\")
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\nNew Plaza Cinema<\/em><\/strong>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column_inner][\/et_pb_row_inner][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_sidebar orientation=”right” _builder_version=”4.4.7″ global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_sidebar][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"