EXCLUSIVE: West Side Story Blu-ray Featurette

Nov 11, 2011 by Brian Gallagher

We have an exclusive featurette for the high-definition debut of West Side Story, which celebrates its 50th Anniversary with a new Blu-ray and boxed set arriving November 15. Click on the video player below to watch a featurette detailing the rehearsal process for the classic musical's rumble scene.

This "brilliant" (The New Republic) film sets the ageless story of Romeo and Juliet against a backdrop of gang warfare in 1950's New York. A love affair is fated for tragedy amidst the vicious rivalry between two street gangs - the Jets and the Sharks. When Jets member Tony (Richard Beymer, The Longest Day) falls for Maria (Natalie Wood, Splendor in the Grass), the sister of the Sharks leader, it's more than these two warring gangs can handle. As mounting tensions rise, a battle to the death ensues and innocent blood is shed in a heartbreaking finale.

Featuring the famous songs "Maria," "America," "Tonight," and "I Feel Pretty," West Side Story: 50th Anniversary Edition showcases thrilling performances by Best Supporting Actress winner Rita Moreno (The King and I), Best Supporting Actor winner George Chakiris (Two and Two Make Six) and Russ Tamblyn (How the West Was Won). The Blu-ray will be available in a Limited Edition 4-Disc Boxed Set featuring 2 disc Blu-ray, newly-restored DVD, Tribute CD and collectible memorabilia, as well as a 2-disc Collector's Edition Blu-ray. Prebook is September 7.

ALL-NEW: Pow! The Dances of West Side Story - cast members, contemporary filmmakers, dancers and choreographers analyze and illuminate the film's famous dance sequences.
PrologueDance At the GymTony and Maria's Cha ChaAmericaThe RumbleMaria's Roof DanceCool
ALL-NEW: A Place for Us: West Side Story's Legacy - a look back at the iconic film and the impact it has had all over the world
Creation and InnovationA Timeless VisionSong Specific Commentary by Lyricist Stephen SondheimPrologueThe Jet SongSomething's ComingDance At the GymMariaAmericaTonightGee, Officer KrupkeI Feel PrettyOne Hand, One HeartQuintetSomewhereCoolA Boy Like That / I Have A LoveMusic Machine - allows viewers to go straight to their favorite musical numbersWest Side MemoriesStoryboard to Film Comparison MontageOriginal Theatrical TrailerOriginal Issue TrailerReissue TrailerAnimated Trailer

West Side Story was released October 18th, 1961 and stars Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno, George Chakiris, Simon Oakland, Ned Glass, William Bramley. The film is directed by Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise.

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If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front

Chris Barsanti has been a Filmcritic reviewer since 2002. So there.If you were looking for the least usual suspect to be hauled in as part of a terrorism case, then Daniel McGowan would be a good fit. An average-looking kid from Queens, the son of a cop, who worked in public-relations and environmental cause offices, McGowan was arrested in 2005 for being part of the Earth Liberation Front. A radical environmental activist group, ELF had been labeled domestic terrorists by the government and more vividly branded "eco-terrorists" by the media.  Co-directors Marshall Curry (Street Fight) and Sam Cullman come to this fascinating story via a personal route - Curry's wife was McGowan's employer when he was arrested - but handle it all in an impressively judicious manner.

Unlike the great majority of environmentally-themed documentaries, If a Tree Falls comes at its subject from a personal and criminological perspective - this is as much a law-and-order story as it is one about the fight over environmental issues. The filmmakers want to describe McGowan's journey from well-balanced kid from Queens to environmental saboteur but almost more importantly to use him as a way of putting the whole micro-movement under a microscope. The story of how a muscular anti-logging campaign devolved into sectarian turmoil that shot off radicalized cells like burning cinders is ultimately what drives the film and makes it so rewarding.

When the film begins, McGowan is virtually imprisoned in a Manhattan apartment, an ankle bracelet keeping him there until the authorities determine his fate. He walks viewers through a snapshot of his exceedingly normal upbringing (narration interjected only when necessary) before leading them into his involvement in environmental campaigns of the early-and-mid 1990s in the Pacific Northwest. The filmmakers then rope in other parties, from fellow activists who did a better job at staying out of the law's way, to prosecutors and cops who ultimately brought the ELF down. Together they graph how a number of confrontations in and around Eugene, Oregon in 1996 and 1997, which saw police indiscriminately pepper-spraying and beating down marchers, convinced a number of those protestors that stronger actions were necessary.

Not long after, a carefully calibrated campaign of arson was ignited. Ranger stations, lumber company buildings, offices of professors researching genetically modified tree strains, the targets were widely dispersed. The perpetrators, which included McGowan and a knot of other disaffected activists, left no clues behind, as one of the more genial investigators acknowledges, in the tone of the cop who appreciates occasionally having competent adversaries. Though tactically deft, the ELF's motives seem transparently ill-considered. Having abandoned the way of peaceful protest (even though one famous 1995 action detailed here impressively held off logging in Oregon's Warner Creek area for a year), the ELF members come off as less true believers than impatient adolescents, seduced by the romance of stealth guerrilla actions. Protestations that their actions were planned as being nonviolent appear naïve at best, discounting the possibility that one of their bombs (planted when they believed nobody would be around) could have gone off later than intended.

If the film has a failing, it's only in the relatively uninteresting observations of most of the ELF members themselves. It's very likely that most of them were too nervous to go into much soul-searching detail on-camera, given the weight of charges laid on them. McGowan is particularly guarded in his interviews, and unwilling to delve deeply into any of his or his compatriots' motivations. Given this lack of insight or thoughtfulness, when some complain later about being branded eco-terrorists (which could lead to multiple life sentences), it will prove difficult for even the most environmentally conscious viewer to have much sympathy with their plight. After all, those viewers were more likely to be the ones out doing the long, boring scut work that such movements require to accomplish even the most minor social change, instead of playing with bombs in the woods.

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