West Side Story (Special Edition Collector's Set)

Set Contains: West Side Story, considered by many the greatest movie musical ever, is beautifully packaged in its collector's edition set. The film itself has a new transfer and 5.1 sound mix (though the picture and 5.1 sound of the original DVD release were also excellent), and adds 90 seconds of intermission music, which is an instrumental version of "I Feel Pretty" before the film resumes with that song. The opening menu allows viewers to select whether they want to hear the intermission music (it's not separately tracked). The second disc offers numerous features, such as storyboards, international advertising, and, of chief interest, a 56-minute 2003 documentary that interviews key contributors such as director-coproducer Robert Wise, playwright Arthur Laurents, and lyricist Stephen Sondheim (who says that even when the show was on stage he wanted "Gee, Officer Krupke" and "Cool" switched to the order they appear in the film). Most interesting are the discussions about the extensive dubbing. It's common knowledge that Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer were dubbed (you can hear her original "I Feel Pretty," which is adequate, and her part in the "Tonight" quintet, which is not), but Russ Tamblyn says that associate producer Saul Chaplin insisted on dubbing everyone, and Rita Moreno expresses her dissatisfaction with the character of her dubbed voice.