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I can't remember what, if anything, Fitzgerald had to say about the characters' natures, but most literary critics seem to view them both as heterosexuals.

You got a big surprise coming to you! GO CHECK IT OUT!!!!!

If this does well I think we'll eventually see Tender is the Night 3-D. Hot dog.

Niale wrote:

I can't remember what, if anything, Fitzgerald had to say about the characters' natures, but most literary critics seem to view them both as heterosexuals.

You got a big surprise coming to you! GO CHECK IT OUT!!!!!

Now, that is funny!! What's almost as funny is, I've seen that movie! I kept thinking, "This looks kinda familiar..." then, as soon as I heard, "It's going to be a surprise to Sheila Graham!!!", I knew I had seen it... must be 30 years ago! A good, crazy movie that I can't remember much else about, except Elliot Gould walking through the hallway of the college during the opening credits. I do seem to recall it not quite living up to the promise of its early scenes, but I'd like to see it again, just to be sure.

Re: Nick's homosexuality, I haven't read the book in a few years, but I know there's a scene in an elevator (with Nick and another man...doing stuff...and a third person feeling uncomfortable and giving them dirty looks) that fits as an example of the claim.

There is indeed a weird elliptical chapter ending that at the very least suggests an untoward drunken encounter between Nick and a stuffed shirt. I wouldn't go so far as to call it evidence that Nick is a homosexual (he is very frank about his attraction to the surface-level charms, sexual and otherwise, of Jordan), but rather possessing decadent/indulgent tendencies which explain his ability to get wrapped up in the world of his chosen Egg. That said, the incident is at the very least fair game for homosexual readings

New trailer for Gatsby

God this looks horrible.

ianungstad wrote:New trailer for Gatsby

God this looks horrible.

Sounds pretty horrible, too. Not only the music, but who can listen to Leo and Tobey's squeaky, adolescent voices for two-plus hours? They're both pushing 40, and still going through puberty!

See, I think Leo is pretty great. In fact, the presence of both him and Carey Mulligan almost have me thinking that I want to see this movie, even though I'm pretty sure that I actually don't.

I like Mulligan generally, but she's completely miscast as Daisy. This can't be anything but a trainwreck.

rs98762001 wrote:I like Mulligan generally, but she's completely miscast as Daisy. This can't be anything but a trainwreck.

I could care less about this movie, but I'm suprised to read this. Isn't her whole thing playing these fragile, infantile, and possibly damaged waifs? I'm pretty sure her and Mia Farrow are cut from the same cloth. And it's been a while since I read the book, but that's pretty much how I remember that character.

I think she lacks a certain bland beauty needed for the role. They'd have been much better off casting some generic blonde from a CW show. Isla Fisher as Myrtle, though my mind would never have gone to her first, is the only casting decision that makes any sense

If this film's producers were in any way attempting to capture the feel of the novel or its characters, they started out with the wrong director.

My partner hates The Great Gatsby (irrationally, as do most people who were forced to read it in high school), but he said he might go see this (without me, naturally). I replied that this movie looks perfect for people who hate The Great Gatsby (which appears to include Baz Luhrmann).

I never thought about it but Baz Luhrman and Michael Bay are very similar. In a perfect world Michael Bay would have made this and Baz Luhrman Transformers.

Matt wrote:My partner hates The Great Gatsby (irrationally, as do most people who were forced to read it in high school), but he said he might go see this (without me, naturally). I replied that this movie looks perfect for people who hate The Great Gatsby (which appears to include Baz Luhrmann).

This reminds me of how I was introduced to the book. My grandfather got it for my birthday one year and introduced it as this insanely antisemitic work that is better than anything else I'll read that year.

Matt wrote: I replied that this movie looks perfect for people who hate The Great Gatsby (which appears to include Baz Luhrmann).

The late John Ciardi once said that "lite" beer was the perfect beverage for those who were unable to distinguish between tasteless and distasteful for in fact lite beer was both. I think it likely he'd say the same thing about Luhrmann's Gatsby.

I'm actually very much looking forward to this film, and I say that as someone who considers Gatsby one of his favorite novels.

Though, I suppose it's worth admitting (and risking the scorn of many on this board) that I find Moulin Rouge! to be an exceedingly excellent film and find Lurhmann endlessly fascinating as a director--if inconsistent and often ludicrous.

It's clear that this won't in any way be an adaptation faithful to the novel's tone (an exceedingly difficult tone to capture on film, to be sure). I would have loved to see an Antonioni adaptation of this novel. Such affluent/decadent milieus were obviously a favorite subject of his, and I feel like he might have captured the erotically charged ennui/yearning so palpable in the novel, while still obviously making it his own (certainly, Antonioni's visual style is more esoteric than Fitzgerald's prose in Gatsby).

But this utterly counter-intuitive pairing is just so counter-intuitive that for me it loops back around and begins to make demented sense. Luhrmann's gawdy opulence and lack of taste might be just the sort of framework you can drape this narrative over to get a startlingly dynamic and new permutation. It won't be Fitzgerald's Gatsby, but it certainly seems as if it could be something noteworthy.

And if not, it will certainly be a trainwreck of the highest order. Which will still make it worth seeing. I'll be there either way.

Just heard someone at work refer to this film as "a remake of some Robert Redford movie."

It's horrible. I was actually excited about it from the trailer and thought the hideous digi-shit gaudiness would fit the story's world wonderfully and it would have if any of the images were composed and left on the screen long enough to absorb, but instead there's no mise-en-scene just a buncha stuff crammed into the frame for a split second before it cuts to a bunch more stuff, and when that bunchastuff happens to the include high school theater acting of what appear to be college kids at a theme party, all the dialogue and business (and again the cuts) all play out like a two hour riff on the flower shop scene from The Room ("Ididntseeyouthr""hidoggie"). There's no precision in order for it to work thematically as the increased speed of the modernization trying to be depicted. So with the visual and temporal conceits as worthless and sloppy as they are, there's no equivalency with the book's strength - its writing, its sentences, its flow - and all that's left are the dull plot mechanics that made it the worst shit I read in high school (before re-reading it a year ago for its craft and being converted to an admirer) and its tedium of being about impressionable people who are fascinated by people and are impressed by them being impressive, basically the absolute worst in humanity.

swo17 wrote:Just heard someone at work refer to this film as "a remake of some Robert Redford movie."

Allegedly, a Hollywood studio executive thought that Cyrano de Bergerac was a French costume remake of Roxanne.

Ha, one time in high school when I was browsing the video return rack at my library, I found The Seven Samurai and said something complimentary about it to a friend. This one elderly man next to us chimed in that he liked it too, but he let it slip that he believed it was a remake of The Magnificent Seven. I said, "Oh, I think you mean The Magnificent Seven was the remake..." and on a dime, he got real cranky and said, "NO, that was the ORIGINAL!"

Notice to domino: apparently the soundtrack to this film includes a new version of Love Is A Drug, which is currently inspiring all sorts of "Sucker Punch got there first!" feelings in me (at least in the extended version)! Has Baz been pre-Lurhmanned?

colinr0380 wrote:note to domino: apparently the soundtrack to this film includes a new version of Love Is A Drug, which is currently inspiring all sorts of "Sucker Punch got there first!" feelings in me! Has Baz been out-Lurhmanned?

What sort of works here is that Bryan Ferry just recently released an album of his songs rearranged as 20s-era jazz orchestra instrumentals (authentic down to the tinny recording fidelity). "Love Is The Drug" is one of them, but he apparently agreed to add a lead vocal for the version on the GATSBY soundtrack. At least it sounds appropriate for the period unlike the other song choices.

Luhrmann isn't exactly known for using "deep cuts" on his soundtracks.