If you’re not snapping your fingers as you read this review, you’re not a West Side Story fan.
It has been 50 years since West Side Story hit theaters and this Bluray honors that legacy. There’s a slew of bonus material here for anyone who wants to know what it was like to make West Side Story.
On this 3-disc Bluray set the new documentary A Place For Us: West Side Story’s Legacy is a 30-minute video talking about the play and film’s coming of age, and how it has impacted our culture. The other feature is from 2003 called West Side Memories. It’s almost an hour in length and does focus heavily on the film itself. Obviously the original vision of West Side Story morphed as it went from the pre-visualization stage to the actual production so there is a storyboard to film comparison montage feature to see the differences.
For everyone out there that wants more information about the songs and dances Disc 1 contains the breakdowns. There’s song specific commentary by Stephen Sondheim. There’s Music Machine which allows you to watch just the musical sequences of the film. Pow! The Dances of West Side Story is a 3 hour combination of the film and visual interviews talking about the film’s dance sequences. Now that’s partially because the interviews are played on top of the full-length movie. You can play the interviews separately from the movie. If you do that the feature becomes only 19 minutes.
This Bluray is a must buy for any fan of musicals. There’s tons of information to learn from it if you don’t know the history of the movie.
