Goodbye to Betty White!

Betty White would have turned 100 on 17^th January but she died last Friday. Her award-winning career spanned seven decades and she created some of the most memorable characters in the history of television.

I´m sure many people will remember her as Annie in the 2009 romantic comedy The Proposal. This film starred Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds but Betty White was a real scene- stealer in this successful comedy thanks to her role of Annie, the grandmother of Andrew Paxton, played by Ryan Reynolds.  

This photo was taken in 1954. Some of us only got to know her in the last decades of her career but Betty White began her radio career in the 1940s and broke into television in 1949 on a TV talk show in Hollywood. The 2014 edition of the “Guinness World Records” certified her career as the longest ever for a female entertainer.

If you are keen on learning more about Betty White´s career, I encourage you to read this article from the digital version of The New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/31/arts/television/betty-white-dead.html

I´ve recently read an interview in which Rita Moreno, who is 90 years old, explained that she would have refused to have a small cameo in the new remake of West Side Story. She claimed the right to play a proper role and not just a small cameo who reminded audiences of her role as Anita in the 1961film. Fortunately, Steven Spielberg´s idea was far from that and he wrote a new character for her in this 2021 version of the film. The article stressed the need to counteract the harmful effects of ageism and both Rita Wilson and Betty White are excellent examples of women who have contributed to disregard it.

 

It´s time for a new remake at Christmas!

                                              

There is clearly a cyclic sense related to this time of the year: the end of the year with the Christmas festivities and the beginning of a new year full of New Year´s resolutions. In the same way as we look back and we think of the year that has gone by, film-directors also look back and find inspiration for new stories which are sometimes remakes of well-known stories; that´s the case with West Side Story, the new version of the1961classic film by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. Steven Spielberg is the director of this remake. Apparently Spielberg had been meaning to direct this film for a very long time and here is the outcome of such an ambition. I could tell you many things that are interesting about this new version – such as some changes in the plot – so  I´d like to share this link of an article that I´ve read which is really encouraging.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/dec/02/west-side-story-review-steven-spielberg

I´m very fond of West Side Story – the 1961 film – and I have seen the musical performed on stage. (By the way the original film was based on the 1957 Broadway musical of the same name). I could be told that the remake is even better than the original version in some respects but Leonard Bernstein´s music will always be the same: America, Somewhere, María, Tonight, I Feel Pretty …  those songs were perfect at the time and they will remain so regardless of who sings them now or then.

So I encourage you to watch West Side Story, the new version or the old one or both of them so that you can compare the two films. There are good reasons to watch both films: the old one is a classic which won 10 Oscar awards and Steven Spielberg – one of best film-directors in the history of cinema – is bound to have made a wonderful film.

I hope you are having a Merry Christmas and I wish you a happy and healthy New Year!

( If you wish to learn a bit about Steven Spielberg´s themes in his cinema, have a look at the post that I wrote on 24^th December 2015 “Spielberg´s recommendation for Christmas”).

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