The Great Gatsby

we didn't watch the zeffirelli but we watched the lolmann. god high school was weird. we did heart of darkness my junior year and spent like four class periods watching apocalypse now. boomers.

when we were doing ancient greece in world history class we watched spartacus cuz our teacher thought it was about sparta.

lol

btw the WSS Doc was a ubiquitous character actor on TV when I was a kid, and I just learned he was in a buncha classic 3 Stooges shorts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Glass

i still love luhrmann's r+j, i blame nostalgia

so when will Gatsby be musicalized? inevitable, no? propose song titles.

i think danes+posthelwaite+especially leguizamo are all really good, and leo's ridiculously pretty. kinda hard to sit through for me tho. particularly remember it making a total hash out of the parents' parts. xp

postlethwaite. dunno why i thought i could get away with not googling that.

luhrmann's r+j is pretty good. insane-o production design and costuming. johnny leguizamo's a great tybalt

luhrmann's last good movie imo

so when will Gatsby be musicalized? inevitable, no? propose song titles.

"I Remember Yesterday," Donna Summer
"Barely Breaking Even," Universal Robot Band
"I'll Play the Fool," Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band
"Weekend," Phreek
"I Love New York," Metropolis
"High Steppin', Hip Dressin' Fella (You Got It Together)," Love Unlimited
"A Little Bit of Jazz," Nick Straker Band
"Love Hangover," Diana Ross
"Standing In The Rain," Don Ray
"Hit 'n' Run Lover," Carol Jiani
"Car Wash," Rose Royce
"Running Away," Roy Ayers
"You Saved My Day," Cheryl Lynn
"Goin' To A Showdown," Don Armando's 2nd Avenue Rhumba Band
"Last Dance," Donna Summer
"Was That All It Was," Jean Carn
"The Red Light," Green Velvet

High frame speed Paul Sorvino. Pretty much all I remember.

xp

it is pretty good. it's about romantic love, which is i guess where he excels. i do not think danes is that good. baby dicaprio a perfect romeo imo. leguizamo kills; i can't read the play without picturing him now.

xp luhrmann's romeo and juliet, i mean

Natalie Portman had been chosen for the role of Juliet, but after production began, it was felt that the footage looked as though DiCaprio was "molesting" her.[4] Eventually, Luhrmann agreed that the age difference between the two actors was too great. Filming was halted to find another actress for the part.

whoa

the botched fast forwarding of that scene is like a universal experience among american middle schoolers

― Treeship, Thursday, May 16, 2013 11:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

omg yes, except i think my teacher didn't even bother? olivia hussey was a stone fox

also i have much love for R+J, had the soundtrack on repeat for ages. and yeah, leguizamo totally ruled.

xp whoah indeed

it's about romantic love

the parts he left in, anyway. certainly fits him better than gatsby.

i might not be being clearheaded about claire tho cuz that dress + sudden brief expression of alarmed betrayal on "what satisfaction canst thou have tonight?"

this gatsby is great...

http://cdn.avsforum.com/6/69/80x80px-LS-69cdc448_triumph_insult_comic_dog.jpeg

i still love luhrman's r+j, the look and style of it, and that dude that played Mercutio that ended up in Lost, he was rad
and PAUL RUDD

never forget:
http://media.portable.tv/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/romeo-juliet-claire-danes-paul-rudd-gif.gif

I liked this quite a bit for the most part; the first 40 minutes or so are just giddy with light and movement - Luhrmann really excels with the champagne-popping party scenes, and the car chase is deliriously nuts. The visuals overwhelm absolutely everything - and are wonderful, if wholly artificial seeming (oh, and the 3D is kind of integral, too) - but underneath it was a more faithful adaptation than I was expecting.
DiCaprio is excellent, and Joel Edgerton and the girl who plays Jordan Baker were both really good casting. Carey Mulligan, not so much. Carraway is a cipher anyway, and Tobey Maguire doesn't bump into the furniture or anything, so he didn't ruin it. I could really have done without the sanitorium bookends, and the film loses its fizz towards the end, but otherwise it's okay. It's not the cat's pajamas or anything, but we enjoyed it.

I prefered it to Moulin Rouge, for what it's worth. It's beneath Romeo + Juliet, though.

Carraway is a cipher

strongly disagree; he's kind of an awful snob iirc

he is not a cipher!

...he is a free man!

Nick Carraway as an ancestor of Ezra Koenig

Well, I've seen the Luhrmann rendition, and my favorite screen adaptation of Gatsby remains the one in 2010's The Extra Man. (Am I the only ILXor to have seen this?)

I will say the new version, like the recent version of Anna Karenina, is hyperactive where previous renditions were static, but that's about the only thing to be said on behalf of either production.

Question: Can Tobey Maguire Grow Facial Hair?

btw this movie was completely awesome fuiud

i think that 'fidelity to the work' is... an empty concept. kind of like comic book nerds who show up at iron man 3 press conferences and complain about why iron man's suit was tinted cinnamon in the movie and not maroon, like in the books. who really cares... u dont really need to be thinking about the book at all when watching this, no tombs of idols are being desecrated. the only complaint i had was maybe baz slops on the sentiment too thick at the end, w/ the lingering shot on gatsby as he falls backwards into the pool, but ennhhh, if youre in for a dime youre in for a dollar. loved the soundtrack to this, esp as synths play while there's a jazz band on screen. it's just a movie...

i think this movie had the best photographed martinis ive ever seen, they shimmer in every scene. also the bowl-glasses (hopefully a mixologist will tell me the proper name for this vessel) look so classy~~

hard to overstate how much those last two posts lowered my estimation of you

lol

damn, balls dropped his level of appreciation for me ;-(

iirc that makes your Persona less powerful

balls with the necessary tough love

also the bowl-glasses (hopefully a mixologist will tell me the proper name for this vessel) look so classy~~

champagne coupes, easy find at most Salvation Army-type places, used today mostly for cocktails instead of champagne

Nick Carraway as an ancestor of Ezra Koenig

I love this

damn, balls dropped

nicelydone.gif

who really cares...

well, when you put it that way

i'm sorry that baz sullied the prestigious doormat of f. scott fitzgerald with his dingo boots

comparing books to movies is never a good proposition, no matter how highly you esteem either the book or the movie

champagne coupes, easy find at most Salvation Army-type places, used today mostly for cocktails instead of champagne

― Sadly, 99.99 percent of sheeple will never wake up (I DIED), Sunday, May 19, 2013 11:07 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

nice, will pick some up for the house parties i'm never gonna have

on one hand, i agree with you, because i don't think complaints about the general anachronistic flair of the production design & music cues are relevant criticism. but this version fundamentally changes the story and makes romantic love the central theme, and changes the characters in order to make it happen. it's not a "wrong" interpretation of the novel, really, but it's pretty facile and simplistic in a way that just empties the story of any relevance, imho. i don't think it's outrageous or fussy to want to see some more complexity from an adaptation.

aybe baz slops on the sentiment too thick at the end, w/ the lingering shot on gatsby as he falls backwards into the pool, but ennhhh,

WHOA! Spoiler alert!

Surprised he didn't shout he was having a Nestea Plunge.

it's not a "wrong" interpretation of the novel, really, but it's pretty facile and simplistic in a way that just empties the story of any relevance, imho. i don't think it's outrageous or fussy to want to see some more complexity from an adaptation.

― a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers (elmo argonaut), Monday, May 20, 2013 10:20 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah... i mean it's not OMG SHOCKING to anyone that a love story is one of the cores of the novel, but if you start saying stuff like 'empties the story of any relevance' again that's gonna be in comparison to the novel... it's best to just try to take this movie in on its own terms, most of us haven't read the great gatsby since high school so should be pretty easy to do

6. there's a throwaway scene of a three black people listening to "Izzo" and riding in a car as the camera pans over cases of Moet. why, Luhrmann?

my take is probably wrong but i felt like maybe this was one way that baz was trying to balance the grosser elements of the source material, i.e. you sorta need tom's diatribe against the 'colored empire' to show how bad of a guy he is + you need to show all his servants are black... so idk, showing that the wall street excess didn't just only include white ppl? cf also the heavyweight boxer

As we crossed Blackwell's Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl. I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry.

so it's lifted right from the novel but stripped of nick's nonchalant racism

ah

sorry but tbh if you adapt one of the most famous and familiar texts of all time you don't get to cry 'don't compare it to the book, it stands on its own merits!'