The Great Gatsby
It’s not looking very good for the latest film version of The Great Gatsby judging by the reviews. I had my concerns from the very start when Baz Luhrmann was chosen as director. Baz is s musical specialist not someone with much experience directing dramas. I’m just not a fan of musicals.
“Luhrmann’s 3-D visual flourishes feel superfluous: Occasionally, words pop out across the screen as Nick feverishly writes Gatsby’s tale … None of it contributes to a sense of immersion.”
“Luhrmann’s direction of his actors cudgels every instinct of naturalness out of them and pushes everyone, even as instinctively genuine an actress as Mulligan, toward overblown characterizations and stilted line reading.”
“She’s down-to-earth pretty (a tad mousy) rather than unattainably glamorous. She does well in Daisy’s most challenging scene, in which she has to oscillate between the desires of two impossible men, the monomaniacal Gatsby and the overentitled Buchanan. But it’s possible to forget she’s in the movie.”
Baz Luhrmann’s version of The Great Gatsby is almost here. I have been anticipating seeing this one for two years.
Of the four or five trailer versions for The Great Gatsby this is the best one as it provides some insight in what droves the protagonist. He’s a man with a past he wants to bury. Mad Men’s Don Draper is a similar character. As someone once said, “Reality is something you rise above.” Both men achieve this to varying degrees.
Here’s the trailer:
So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a 17 year old would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end. – F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
One of these days I plan to do a Top 10 Billionaire Movie List but all I have time for today is a quick heads-up that the long-awaited 5th version of The Great Gatsby comes out in early May. This is the one with Leo DiCaprio in the lead role and, going by the trailers, he may just pull the part off successfully. Although I do have a few quibbles with some of the other casting choices, Tobey McGuire was an excellent pick for Nick Carraway the narrator and my favorite character in the story.
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