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The Great Gatsby (2013)

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  • The Great Gatsby (2013)

    Baz Luhrmann strikes again in the summer of 2013 with his adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby, with Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway and Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan. This is great casting, and although I'm sure Luhrmann will take a few liberties with the presentation of this novel, I'm extremely eager to see what he does with it. His Romeo + Juliet is excellent for all its bizarre interpretations, and it pains me to learn today that the release date has been pushed from December of this year to summer of next.

    The trailer is stylized as heck and looks pretty dang good to me.

    I'll probably reread the novel before it opens. To be honest, I've never cared much for Gatsby and think it is overpraised. It has been my contention for years that among English majors, there are The Great Gatsby people and there are The Grapes of Wrath people, and I have always been among the latter. But I'm willing to give the novel another chance, especially since I think this movie could be brilliant.
    But I'm disturbed! I'm depressed! I'm inadequate! I GOT IT ALL! (George Costanza)
    GrouchyTeacher.com

  • #2
    Re: The Great Gatsby (2013)

    I’ve never heard of this Gatsby vs Grapes thing, but if that’s the choice, then I guess I’m a Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite novels (though I liked The Grapes of Wrath as well). However, I hated the first movie version (with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow). After seeing that, I concluded this novel is unfilmable (for a very different reason than the upcoming Cloud Atlas project). So I’m looking forward to this new Gatsby movie, if for nothing else than I am curious if they can produce something worthy of the book.

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    • #3
      Re: The Great Gatsby (2013)

      Cool. You were an English major? Can I ask you this, then? If you were forced to choose one novel as the greatest American novel, what would it be?
      But I'm disturbed! I'm depressed! I'm inadequate! I GOT IT ALL! (George Costanza)
      GrouchyTeacher.com

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      • #4
        Re: The Great Gatsby (2013)

        http://www.huffenglish.com/gatsby/slang.html

        Yeah, see. He's the bee's knees,the cat's pajamas.

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        • #5
          Re: The Great Gatsby (2013)

          Originally posted by scrivener View Post
          Can I ask you this, then? If you were forced to choose one novel as the greatest American novel, what would it be?
          That’s a tough question. There are so many ways to interpret “greatest American novel.” I will tell you my three favorite American novels: The Sun Also Rises, The Sound and the Fury, and The Great Gatsby. But if you put a gun to my head and say choose, I’ll do a cop-out and pick a fourth: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. While it’s not one of my favorites, I do recognize its significance in American literature.

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          • #6
            Re: The Great Gatsby (2013)

            The Great Gatsby (2013)
            Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan. Directed by Baz Luhrmann.

            I have said for about twenty years that among English majors, there are The Grapes of Wrath people and there are The Great Gatsby people, and one’s preference says a lot about what one values in literature, and it might say something about personalities too. Gatsby has always been a mystery to me, but previews for this latest film adaptation by Baz Lurhmann were so interesting, I was hyped from the beginning. I’m not sure what I was thinking.

            Given only one sentence to explain the film, I would say that the things I like about the novel I also like about the film, and the things I dislike about the novel, of which there are more, I also dislike about the film.

            But let us pause for a moment to acknowledge the film’s biggest asset, which is nearly perfect casting. Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway is really the key for this film, as so much of what makes the novel work is Carraway’s narrative voice reciting F. Scott Fitzgerald’s beautiful prose. Maguire as the trusted observer is great. Leonardo DiCaprio is probably nobody’s idea of Gatsby, but he’s an excellent actor and it didn’t take long for me to forget what I pictured Gatsby to look and sound like. DiCaprio from now on will by my Gatsby. Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan is a truly inspired choice; when I first heard that DiCaprio was going to be Gatsby, I said, “Hm. Interesting!” A few seconds later, I heard that Maguire was going to be Carraway, and I said, “That could work.” And then I heard that Daisy would be played by Mulligan and I said, “Oh my gosh, that’s perfect.” And she is perfect immediately, from her first scene. You could see how Gatsby could create himself for a woman like this. I wanted to do it too, just for her.

            Everyone else is fine. Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan isn’t quite as beefy as I imagined, but he’s fine, and in fact I found him easier to sympathize with in this film version of Daisy’s husband. I’ve been on a little bit of an Isla Fisher kick lately, and while not as curvy or fleshy as my imagined Myrtle Wilson, she’s also fine. And I know this is going to sound stupid, but I kind of pictured Jordan Baker as a dark-skinned woman, possibly black, but an Australian actress named Elizabeth Dibicki plays her and she is long and lean and pale, lovely to look at and probably a much more fitting choice that I would have picked.

            If I have spent too much time discussing the casting, it’s because casting is the movie’s strength, and when you think about a film whose story is as familiar as The Great Gatsby, you’re not doing much more than evaluating the actors’ portrayals and the director’s interpretation. But of course that’s not true if you haven’t read the novel. So for those who haven’t, I will say that Gatsby is a big story about a bigger-than-life personality as seen through the eyes of someone who may be deluded. It’s an intriguing story with a great setup, but like its source material, it gets tiresome and it takes too long to get where it’s going. There is something ambitious about the story and about a film that tries to present it, but the film’s many strengths are still inadequate for propping either of them up. In this respect, the film is a rather faithful adaptation.

            6/10 (IMDb rating)
            61/100 (Criticker rating)
            But I'm disturbed! I'm depressed! I'm inadequate! I GOT IT ALL! (George Costanza)
            GrouchyTeacher.com

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            • #7
              Re: The Great Gatsby (2013)

              Originally posted by scrivener View Post
              Cool. You were an English major? Can I ask you this, then? If you were forced to choose one novel as the greatest American novel, what would it be?
              Wow, we are swamped with English majors! (Though I only went as far as a B.A., then switched to cultural anthropology for my M.A.) It's a great degree to fall back on. I wrote for Boeing, the military, VeriFone, the State of Hawaii and UH Research programs. It was fun, and I learned a lot.

              I'll get back to you on that novel.... Frankly, I think nothing surpasses Shakespeare. S. Clemens is very human and insightful in all his works, but I like a bit more complexity in my reading.

              Frankly I was not that impressed by TGG, but I was so much younger then, I'm younger than that now.
              Be Yourself. Everyone Else Is Taken!
              ~ ~
              Kaʻonohiʻulaʻokahōkūmiomioʻehiku
              Spreading the virus of ALOHA.
              Oh Chu. If only you could have seen what I've seen, with your eyes.

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