The Great Gatsby

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like, idk, i know its a stupid book, but when i first read house of leaves and the narrator mentions that the interior wall-to-wall measurement was 5 inches more than what the exterior wall-to-wall measurement was, man, such a chilling moment! and how would u even transpose that into film

I only watch choose your own adventure movies

in 3d

i sometimes wonder what nabokov would make of the total demystification of chess via supercomputers =(

oh man i haven't read house of leaves but the only reason i keep almost reading it is i think that revelation is SO CREEPY

in this particular case something that is often mentioned, including upthread, is that gatsby is a peculiar book cuz it looks like a 200-page soap opera about pretty rich people that you'll just be able to slap right up there, but so much of the work is being done by prose and strange tricks of structure and careful distancing that unless you are really clever in a way more than one filmmaker has rather spectacularly not been you are going to end up with a 2-hour soap opera about pretty rich people nobody likes. nb i have not seen this. but that's one legitimate reason to compare: if one version is way different and way less interesting and you suspect it has something to do with the media themselves.

haha oh xp

― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Monday, May 20, 2013 6:41 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah i think the other reason i like this is that, the ~greatest american novel ever written~ can be reduced to a p facile love story, and that interpretation isn't even wrong! it's def one of the armatures of the novel, and obv FSG only builds it up maybe to chop off bits of scaffolding here and there, make it unstable, but it's undeniably there, and its a totally valid frame for baz to hang his own tapestries from

ok i just sort of beat that metaphor up... maybe even collapsed it

good shit

books also allow for the reader's own interaction, allowing their mind's-eye to carry the story along. the difficulty, and delicacy of adapting a text is replacing the many individual visualizations of a story that in part now becames the reader's *own creation*, with a singular visualization that now tells you another way to see. that's a hard call with a text like Gatsby that has existed in people's minds for decades. Especially since Fitzgerald does do so much with the inner voices of his character.

oh man i haven't read house of leaves but the only reason i keep almost reading it is i think that revelation is SO CREEPY

― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Monday, May 20, 2013 6:50 PM (47 seconds ago) Bookmark

there are some really good parts! could have been a much better book via stronger editing, it's sort of classic first-novel-itis, overstuffed, danielewski could/should have spun off at least half the content of the book into separate works. but the first couple of chapters or so are really well done i think

would watch a Baz adaptation of "Bernice Bobs Her Hair."

historical films should never be viewed in relation to the events on which they're based,

sorry to return to this example but i've been meaning to watch marie antoinette and i can't help but think that knowing the intricacies of the french revolution probably wouldn't be too useful in appreeshing the film

oh man i haven't read house of leaves but the only reason i keep almost reading it is i think that revelation is SO CREEPY

i read 'the 50 year sword' on a plane last week and can recommend it p highly, it also takes the 20 mins to finish. its a better use of time than 'house of leaves' i think but has some of the same pleasures

hungry4ass did you like baz lurhman's 'the great gatsby'?

Fitz's got a bunch of stories more suitable. You want pink champagne and lost love? He could've adapted "The Bridal Party."

but the end was complete garbage

― Lamp, Monday, May 20, 2013 1:00 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

haha i know i said i didn't mind but this is probably closer to how i feel about the end of the movie 24 hours later, it def felt like baz didnt know how to end the film. but i really lol'd when SPOILER tobey puts the final pages of his manuscript into his tasteful attache w/ the brass triangle clip, and has a moment of hesitation - can't quite close this book just yet, then he takes out his finely weighted & balanced pen, and writes 'THE GREAT' over the typed 'GATSBY'

of all my unfinished high school movie projects i definitely most wish "rags martin-jones and the pr-nce of w-les" had been finished, if only to make all those girls' parents feel a little better about how much prom dresses cost

lawd xp

historical films should never be viewed in relation to the events on which they're based,

sorry to return to this example but i've been meaning to watch marie antoinette and i can't help but think that knowing the intricacies of the french revolution probably wouldn't be too useful in appreeshing the film

― 乒乓, Monday, May 20, 2013 11:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's the word "never" I'm flagging up, I basically agree w/u

which is why I said "sometimes" it's useful

hungry4ass did you like baz lurhman's 'the great gatsby'?

― Lamp, Monday, May 20, 2013 6:56 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

aint seen it

he takes old-time footage from back then and turns it into 3D, theres a lot of planes that fly overhead and then all of a sudden ur zooming in from 10000 feet to ground level in 3 seconds like in that old trailer they'd show in front of IMAX science films at the franklin institute, it's really inexplicable

― 乒乓, Monday, May 20, 2013 1:01 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he literally asks WEGA or w/e studio effects house to recreate NYC for him, and long island, so he can have shots of just zooming along the water through mist

― 乒乓, Monday, May 20, 2013 1:02 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

i really cant get over how wild + inappropriate yet appropriate baz's camera is in this film, it's really quite inexplicable. supper's ready, all the doors to the sunroom open at once, white cloth billows sunlight leaps in. the camera moves through the door, you're zooming across the sound now, to new york! through mist, to wall street! who is the audience suppose to be? what kind of wild god is she. is this how third person omniscient should be told on the screen. the book was first person! what is going on.

probably because the last few movies i've seen have all been very 'stately, plump buck mulligan came from the stairhead' in their camerawork that i felt so disoriented and wracked by all this

after australia and moulin rouge i'd have to be tricked by a trail of ice cold beers into entering a theater showing a new baz luhrmann film

lol

last 2 posts are ✓

uh, xp

baz luhrmann's ulysses

h4a otm. I didnt mind Moulin Rouge but Australia idk wtf that even was

i know this isn't what luhrmann's australia is but i would def watch an enormous batshit terrifying all-stops-pulled movie about the colonization of australia

i really cant get over how wild + inappropriate yet appropriate baz's camera is in this film, it's really quite inexplicable.

haha i was arguing with a friend that everything i could see him doing was perfectly explicable, the way the camera moves, the use of 3D, the arrangement of the actors in space, its all kinda on-the-nose at all times. although i did like how they were constantly recording themselves on film during the various amazing party montages, its 2013

yeah for sure, the party was pure busby berkeley, also made me feel really anxious because at real parties someone invariably knocks the punch bowl into the pool

at real parties now someone invariably passes a bowl

i think that happens too

there's room for zefirelli, branagh, and baaaaz, not just for shakespeare, but for eveeeeerrrrrryyyyythhiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnngggggg~~~~~~!!!!!

is how i break it down to an extent

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

John Harbison's The Great Gatsby, 1999

the last few movies i've seen have all been very 'stately, plump buck mulligan came from the stairhead' in their camerawork

i find this claim suspect

Also http://northernballet.com/index.php?q=the-great-gatsby

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2013/3/6/1362572480464/Great-Gatsby---Northern-B-009.jpg

pretty regretful that I never got to see Gatz, hope they revive it at some point. I'd make a trip for it.

乒乓's lush descriptions of this though have removed any need I might have had to actually see this movie

feel like I will be able to navigate thru both literary & cinematic discourse with only the book and this thread under my belt

http://i.imgur.com/rxmKw8N.jpg

^^ i approve of this adaptation, better than the original

The new Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?

Pride and Psyduck

for whom bellsprout tolls

http://i.imgur.com/eH73hnX.png

I keep thinking about this film? I actually really like Carey Mulligan's performance - I think it's super successful at suggesting a different & more feminist reading of the story.

I wonder what this movie would be like if you just removed Toby Macguire competely.

This trailer is so so good - love this kinda nonchronological buildup style

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqxmhJU4nk4

just saw this, the first 20-30 minutes are ultrabad, like "hmmm maybe i could sneak into the next theater and watch the internship" level bad. it does sort of come together after that, decaprio is really quite good, and tobey mcguire alternates between being prtty decent whan actually acting with humans, but awful when doing voiceovers, like crazy awful. other than the party scenes, the apartment party in particular, and the car scenes, luhrmann is oddly subdued a lot of the time, and there are other bright moments as well (the floral arrangements in the daisy/nick/gatsby tea scene is a pretty howlingly funny moment actually). most of the female leads are better than expected, although carey mulligan is pretty flat. tom is very well cast and works really well in the part. its def flawed, but much better than i expected while still somehow not being great in any way. music is mostly (with a couple notable exceptions) buried and unobtrusive thank god. weird organ player dude annoyed the shit out of me. no leguizamo.

so yeah theres my review

weird organ player dude annoyed the shit out of me. no leguizamo.

plz say this is supposed to be read in the manner of the problematic "no homo" idiom

haha

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