Musings & Thoughts for Wednesday, February 9, 2022, or: Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’ Gets Seven Oscar Nominations, But We Still Can’t Pre-Order the Blu-ray

Hello, there, Dear Reader. It’s early afternoon in Lithia, Florida, on Wednesday, February 9, 2022. It is a cool, sunny day in the Tampa Bay area. Presently, the temperature is 62˚F (16˚C) under sunny skies. With humidity at 58% and the wind blowing from the north-northeast at 9 MPH (14 KM/H), the feels-like temperature is 60˚F (16˚C). The forecast for today calls for sunny skies and a high of 68˚F (20˚C). Tonight, skies will be clear. The low will be 44˚F (6˚C).

As you probably know, Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story (2021) earned seven Academy Award nominations earlier this week. Not as many as the Robert Wise-Jerome Robbins West Side Story from 1961; that one was nominated for 11 Oscars (including Best Picture, Best Original Musical, Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Director, and Best Costume Design) and won 10. But for a remake, seven nominations from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is an impressive achievement.

In case you missed the announcement early yesterday morning, here are the nominations:

• Best Picture
• Best Supporting Actress
• Best Director
• Best Cinematography
• Best Production Design
• Best Costume Design
• Best Sound

If the clips that I have seen on YouTube and the illustrations in West Side Story: The Making of the Steven Spielberg Film are any harbingers of Oscar glory, I think that Spielberg’s West Side Story will take home at least some of the technical awards – Best Production Design and Best Costume Design are my guesses – although I am rooting for Spielberg to win either Best Director or Best Picture. (I still have not seen the movie, so at this point, I’m just going by what I’ve heard in the soundtrack album – which I own – plus my own bias[1] in Spielberg’s favor.)

Speaking of West Side Story….

No, Dear Reader, I do not know when the home media version of West Side Story will be cleared for pre-orders by 20th Century Studios or its corporate parent, The Walt Disney Company. Over on Blu-ray.com, I have the “Notify me when this title is on pre-order” option checked off, and I look every day on the site for news about pre-orders and future releases of other films. I thought that since yesterday was a Tuesday, the day of the week when studios “drop” new titles or at least send press releases to vendors and industry-related sites, maybe the House of Mouse would say, “Hey, folks, if you want to pre-order West Side Story, you can do so on X day.”

Nope. It didn’t happen.

The movie is still slated for release on 4K UHD/Blu-ray/Digital on Tuesday, March 15, so the pre-order date can’t be too far away from now. Still, I hate the uncertainty.

Well, I’ve tarried here long enough, and I honestly do not have any major news to report. So, on that note, Dear Reader, I’ll take my leave of you. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.

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[1] This weekend, in fact, the Caregiver gave me a special issue of Life magazine that commemorates Steven Spielberg’s 75^th birthday and his prodigious career as “America’s storyteller.” In it there’s a page with every Spielberg film  – via poster – that has been released theatrically. With the exception of 1964’s Firelight – a movie he made when he was a teenager in Phoenix, AZ – I own (or will own) Blu-ray releases every movie Spielberg has directed. That includes The Color Purple, Hook, and The Terminal, plus, of course, West Side Story.