A Quick Update from Your Not-So-Constant Writer: Waiting for the Post to Arrive.....

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© 2021 Harry N. Abrams/Abrams Books & 20th Century Studios 

 Hi there, Dear Reader. It’s Friday, February 4, 2022, and here in Lithia, Florida, it is a nice winter afternoon, Florida style. After a few days of near-freezing temperatures, we’re now in a warming trend. Outside, the temperature is 85˚F (29˚C) under partly sunny skies. With humidity at 57% and the wind blowing from the south-southwest, the heat index is 86˚F. Winter it may be, meteorologically and astronomically speaking, but it certainly feels like summer here.

Well, as I sit here I’m keeping an eye on my Amazon account and the progress of my latest order.

Yesterday I bought a copy of Laurent Bouzerau’s West Side Story: The Making of the Steven Spielberg Film. Published last November by Harry N. Abrams, a New York-based publishing company that specializes in books about art and entertainment, this is a 256-page, fully-illustrated behind the scenes account of how (and why) Steven Spielberg directed a second film adaptation of the iconic Broadway musical drama from 1957, West Side Story.

Although I bought West Side Story: The Making of the Steven Spielberg Film because (a) I am a Spielberg aficionado and (b) West Side Story is one of my favorite musicals, I also ordered it to make up for the fact that West Side Story (2021) is due for its home media release (on March 15) but is not yet available for pre-orders.

As I wrote earlier today in my WordPress blog, A Certain Point of View, Too:

I wanted to see West Side Story in a theater when it came out. Unfortunately, a combination of unfortunate events, including the continuing COVID-19 pandemic and lack of interest on the part of my two contemporaries about seeing West Side Story with me, prevented me from doing so. And since I sometimes lack patience when it comes to online shopping and whatnot, I was irritated when I saw that The Walt Disney Company has not greenlit the pre-order option for this title’s 4K UHD/Blu-ray or DVD releases.

Luckily for me, Amazon offers this book for $20.14 (the retail price is $40.00), and because these prices are not always forever ones, I decided to get West Side Story: The Making of the Steven Spielberg Film, even though – based on my experience with Bouzerau’s similar book about the first four Indiana Jones films – I am sure that the same material will appear – albeit in a different format – in the behind the scenes featurettes in the home media release of Spielberg’s West Side Story.



According to both the U.S. Postal Service and Amazon, my copy of West Side Story: The Making of the Steven Spielberg Film is supposed to arrive by 9 PM. It shipped out from Opa Locka, Florida (which is in my home county of Miami-Dade) last night and arrived at an Amazon facility in Ft. Myers – which is less than 110 miles to the south of Lithia – between 2 and 3 this morning. It was then shipped out of the Ft. Myers Amazon center at 3:55 AM.

There have been no further updates since the 3:55 AM scan, but I still see a delivery window of “by 9 PM today” on my Amazon orders page.

Here are the book’s specs if you are interested in them:

 Publication Date: November 16, 2021

 Imprint: Abrams Books

 Trim Size: 9 3⁄16 x 11 7⁄8

 ISBN: 9781419750632

 Page Count: 256

 Illustrations: 250 color photographs and illustrations

 Rights: World English

If the book gets here tonight, I’ll be over the moon. If not, it will get here tomorrow.

We’ll soon see how this goes.

 

 

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