Jeremy Wein attended Sunday’s SAG screening of Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story, and has tweeted that Rita Moreno, who plays “Valentina,” the widow of “Doc”, the elderly drugstore owner played by Ned Glass in the ’61 version, is “the heart of the whole thing.”

Dan Gaertner conveys a similar report:

World of Reel ‘s Jordan Ruimy passes this along:

Good for Moreno, but this seems a bit curious. A supporting character with a big emotional scene in the latter half overwhelms the contributions of the leads (Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez)?

Similar reaction to 1961 version: “Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno and George Chakiris were good enough, but Ned Glass knocked it out of the park.”

I’m trying not to sound all performance-arty about the sad, sudden passing of former movie critic and film festival get-around guy James Rocchi, who was 53. Felled by a heart attack. He wasn’t a “friend” but I certainly liked and admired him during the Rocchi peak years (late aughts to mid teens), and he seemed to enjoy or at least tolerate my routine for the most part. (He often addressed me as “Doctor Wells.”). I’m running around Manhattan as we speak but I’m very, very sorry for James’ loss, and ours. He was a total gentleman, and he always dressed impeccably.

I’ve been watching Lindsay Anderson’s This Sporting Life (‘63) off and on for 20+ years, or since the dawn of the DVD/Bluray era. Easily my all-time favorite “throwing up in the kitchen sink” drama, and certainly one of Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts’ greatest roles.

Denys Coop’s black-and-white cinematography is heavenly, and yet I’ve never gotten hold of an HD-streaming or Bluray version.

The kitchen sink genre was otherwise known as England’s “free cinema” movement. Most know this, but perhaps not all.

Before the Sundance Film Festival woked itself to death, it was the indie pathfinder and trailblazer — the greatest-ever springboard for American indie cinema. And in my 24 diligent years of covering that January celebration (’95 to ’18), one of the most exciting Sundance premieres was Karyn Kusama‘s Girlfight on 1.22.00.

A great boxing flick, a first-rate relationship drama and the film that launched Michelle Rodriguez, it won the festival’s Grand Jury Prize and the Best Directing Award in dramatic competition. Produced for $1 million, Girlfight‘s distrib rights were bought by Screen Gems for $3 million.

I saw a proud and tough feminist film, and one that could really connect with Latinas and women of color along with indie film fans.

Girlfight opened eight months later (9.29.00) and promptly flopped. Latinas and women of color stayed away in droves. After a five-week run it had tallied a total domestic haul of $1,565,852 plus a lousy $100,176 overseas. I’ve never understood why this happened. I’ll bet that a fair percentage of HE readers never even saw it.

Few Broadway musicals have melted my heart like Stephen Sondheim‘s Sunday in the Park with George. It opened in ’84 with Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters in the lead roles, and was revived in ’17 with Jake Gyllenhaal. I managed to miss both.

I’ve watched the DVD a couple of times (hence my enthusiasm), but both it and the streaming version have been removed from Amazon. It’s never even been transferred to HD.

This Act Two song — “Putting It Together” — is especially sharp and elegant and so wise. Excerpt: “Having just a vision’s no solution/everything depends on execution!”

I’m so glad to have absorbed the often miraculous Sondheim groove, starting with Company. Everyone, all of us, all there.

Ringo Starr has composed a portion of a tune that will become “Octopus’s Garden.” Not much of one — “that’s all I’ve got,” he says. And George Harrison, sensing that his bandmate may not be able to climb out of the hole on his own steam, generously lends a hand. Which is what a good soul (or good samaritan, if you will) does for a friend. Harrison, in short, was a real human being.

Harrison quote: “‘Octopus’s Garden is only the second song Ringo has ever written, mind you, and it’s lovely [and] so peaceful. it’s so peaceful. I suppose Ringo is writing cosmic songs these days without even realizing it.”

Omicron is the new variant, allegedly more infectious than the Delta. No definitive word about how dangerous or fatal it may be. These variants are going to keep coming until the entire world is vaccinated. The first known case was detected in Botswana about two weeks ago. I’m sure it’s already here in the U.S., and I don’t give a shit. Well, I do but I’m triple vaxxed, dammit, and I’m really, really sick of this crap. Said it many times, saying it once again — damn our domestic antivax bumblefucks. Damn them all to hell.

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Whatever may be good or not so good about Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story (the word on the street is “don’t expect too much”)…let’s let that go for the time being. I haven’t watched Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ 1961 original since the Bluray came out…what, eight or nine years ago? I’ve always felt that the Wise-Robbins was too middle-class, too prettified, too brightly lighted, at times even antiseptic feeling. But there’s one unassailable portion, and that’s the first ten or twelve minutes — that magnificent overture, those sky-high helicopter shots of Manhattan, the Jets vs. Sharks street ballet.