If you loved "Moulin Rouge," as I did, you may find the new trailer thrilling:
I was literally thrilled. And I'm very skeptical of all movies. I resist going to the movies. I see one comment over at YouTube whining about this not being in 3D. 3D is a curse. I've vowed never again to see a movie shot in 3D unless it's in a 3D theater. I saw that most recent "Planet of the Apes" movie, which was shot as a 3D movie, in a non-3D theater, and it was full of dumb shots — objects placed in the extreme foreground, actors framed in a way that you could tell was for an effect that you weren't able to see. I'd love to see "Life of Pi," but I put off going, because it's such an ordeal to engage with a 3D experience, and now it's only around here in non-3D, and I can't go, because of my vow. I'm delighted that Luhrmann didn't mess up the visuals to pander to the 3D dweebs.
Here, you can read "The Great Gatsby" on line, in a nice format. This is one of my favorite books. What I like is that each sentence is good, on its own. Seriously. Test it out. "As my train emerged from the tunnel into sunlight, only the hot whistles of the National Biscuit Company broke the simmering hush at noon." Every sentence is a writer's inspiration. I'll vouch for that.
ADDED: A trailer was put out last summer using many of the same visuals and a very different audio track, and I blogged at the time: "It looks awful, with horrible acting." I'd forgotten that! Here's the old trailer:
But I did say: "But then I think it's like 'Moulin Rouge,' which can seem bad if you look at it the wrong way, and this new 'Gatsby; is in fact directed by the same person, Baz Luhrmann." There's a fine line — in some quarters — between garbage and greatness.
December 31, 2012
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As my train emerged from the tunnel into sunlight, only the hot whistles of the National Biscuit Company broke the simmering hush at noon." Every sentence is a writer's inspiration.
It screams overwritten to me.
It would probably be stupid to change train to brain.
Fitzgerald's sentence makes no sense.
If you are traveling on a speeding train 'emerging' from a tunnel, how can you hear the lunch (?) whistle at a biscuit factory?
"Simmering hush"? Ugh.
And trains do not "emerge" from tunnels. They blast, speed, rip, explode, hurtle. E.B. White and Orwell would have hated the verb "emerge." Twain, too.
Thistle for whistle improves it a little.
Life of Pi seemed to have few of the 3D-purposed shots. I can think of only 2, and they worked well without 3D. Didn't seem shoehorned.
See, you are forced to spend a lot of time with that sentence, which is just the first sentence I randomly pulled out of the text.
"blast, speed, rip, explode, hurtle"... Think about why those alternatives are pulpy. It's stuff like that that makes me afraid to open up a novel. You've got to assume Fitzgerald did everything right and for a reason. If you aren't going to give him that trust and take every word as valuable -- not overwritten, not screaming -- then you will miss out. My point is lost on you.
"Life of Pi seemed to have few of the 3D-purposed shots. I can think of only 2, and they worked well without 3D. Didn't seem shoehorned."
Really?
There needs to be a website devoted to this topic, rating each 3D movie for what 3D adds and whether the 2D experience is tainted.
"Moulin" didn't wow me and, having had to read "Gatsby" in undergrad school, it's not my dish of oolong, but, if it gets Meadhouse a date night, who am I to knock it?
PS One movie I could see that might make a lot of 3D and some good special effects is "The Ten Commandments".
YMMV
I see what the trouble was in high school now. Great Gatsby is women's literature.
North by Northwest had the definitive treatment of tunnels.
Now, one reason the train can't "blast" or "explode" from the tunnel — and by the way, oh, you men, with your cocks — is that the "only" sound was the "hot whistle." Otherwise, there was a "hush." That's all very surreal, no? Why didn't the train make any noise? It emerged, because it wasn't a screaming cock blasting through a vagina tunnel, as happens in your (presumably) E.B. White-approved works of fiction. Why was the train silent, why were the whistles hot, why was the hush simmering, why was it noon, why were the whistles biscuit whistles, and why wasn't it the biscuit, rather than the whistle, that was hot?
A trailer is not the real thing, of course, but I didn't like what I saw.
That motorcycle chase through the streets of Istanbul was way over the top. And how many times before have we seen the magical exploding fruit stand?
Jumping onto tube trains? Hanging from the underside of a skyscaper elevator to the umpteenth floor? Hand-to-hand combat under a sheet of ice?
Oh, please. Give me a break.
I feel like starting a blog devoted to individual sentences in "The Great Gatsby," chosen randomly, and continuing until all the sentences have been used up.
What do you think... is that a better project than my New Year's Resolution to link, day by day, to the Wikipedia "History of" pages for the 206 countries in the world?
The Great Gatsby is my all time favorite. No truer words have been spoken in literature than these: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
A fruit stand on the tracks would help too.
Life of Pi would make a boring 3D movie, I think.
1. Tiger lunging
2. Flying fish
Some of its beautiful nature scenes might look different in 3D, but it's hard to tell that was their purpose.
I much enjoyed it, having feared I would despise it.
Tootle visits Long Island.
I read The Great Gatsby back when I was in college. My 16-year-old daughter read it fairly recently. The trailer, which we saw at theater over the weekend, filled us both with a sense of dread. I'm not sure what the music accompanying the trailer was supposed to do, but "So Happy Together" doesn't sound all that Roaring 20s-ish to me. Setting a contemporary pop track against events set most of a century ago? Is that supposed to attract a modern, jaded audience like us?
As my daughter said, I just hope they didn't ruin the story.
Off topic: GO REDSKINS!!!
I saw LIFE OF PI in 3D, and it used 3D the least of any 3D movie I've seen. I don't think Ang Lee really was making a 3D movie conceptually, but went about his business as he would with any film. He probably was convinced to make this as a 3D film as a means to "sell" the film to an audiences who might not have otherwise been tempted to see the movie.
It was a good movie.
The Fitzgerald sentence sounds like the prose of a writer in love with the sound of his own voice, (a critique offered to a friend of mine in a writing class he took in college.)
On the other hand, this may be an distortion of its actual esthetic quality and purpose, resulting from its having been removed from its context, plucked from the surrounding sentences and paragraphs. The soundbite effect, in short. In reading this sentence in its place, it might seem perfectly natural and good and appropriate. I've never read Fitzgerald so I can't say how I would like his writing.
As to those who insist trains can only "blast, speed, rip, explode, hurtle" from tunnels: trains can do whatever the writer wishes them to do. A writer who describes a train "hurtling" from a tunnel is making a calibrated choice based on the precise esthetic effect he seeks to convey no less than a writer whose train "emerges" from the tunnel.
Without knowing anything about the sentence or the book other than this reading out of context, I can make a guess that he was really talking about the narrator's consciousness or thoughts arising from a dark place into light and noticing/reacting to specific sensory stimuli.
I may be completely wrong about that, but it certainly would be one reason a writer would have his train "emerge" rather than "blast" or "rip" from a tunnel into daylight.
" I'm not sure what the music accompanying the trailer was supposed to do, but "So Happy Together" doesn't sound all that Roaring 20s-ish to me."
See "Moulin Rouge," which did the same mismatched music thing.
I much enjoyed it, having feared I would despise it.
I wanted to enjoy "Life of Pi", and I went to see it because my wife wanted to see it, which is why I wanted to enjoy it.
The story was terrible, new-age, postmodern drivel. My wife, half-way through it, murmered, "Suggesting this movie is going to take a while for me to live down!" However, its effects were absolutely beautiful and technically miraculous.
I loved "Moulin Rouge" although it was tragic. "Great Gatsby" looks like it will be a visual festival. I certainly will see it.
As for 3D, it's a waste of time. Does anyone remember John Candy on SCTV ridiculing 3D movies, as he thrusted swords, threw vases, offered handshakes repetitiously for no reason, at the audience?
"...new-age, postmodern drivel..."
The conflation of religions was stupid, but interesting nonetheless that they spoke pointedly of God rather than spiritualism.
The allegory presented was akin to most ancient mythology, something I think even GK Chesterton would have approved (see: "The Everlasting Man").
I think I'll re-read "The Great Gatsby". I wonder if it on Kindle? I'll pop over to Amazon from here and check.
The conflation of religions was stupid, but interesting nonetheless that they spoke pointedly of God rather than spiritualism.
The book was wonderful. I have yet to see the film.
Got it. And only 3.99!
Gatsby is great and it's easy to read. You can finish it in an afternoon.
If you want to have fun parsing sentences, you need to go with Faulkner.
"Gatsby is great and it's easy to read. You can finish it in an afternoon."
Some would say if you can read a book in an afternoon, you haven't really read it.
I dunno, looks a little over the top to me. I know that's Baz Luhrmann's shtick, but when I watch something like that I get the uncomfortable feeling that modern audiences have to have MOAR MOAR MOAR because their overstimulated little brains demand it. Makes me need to watch a palate cleanser In the Bedroom afterward.
Robert, how about if you read it in an afternoon and think about it forever?
Every time they have made "Gatsby" they have failed the literature, but triumphed visually.
I imagine the bespoke clothing will be Brooks Brothers' new retro ivy look, if the jackets seem too short, I'm right. Ralph Lauren did a great job on the Redford version costuming, but the lapels were 1970's hang gliding width. Also, from the clip DiCaprio has a serious collar roll problem. I do like the occasional Leyendecker Arrow shirt adverts in the back grounds, he was the Norman Rockwell of the Roaring 20s. Lastly, "So Happy Together" WTF!
Interesting. I liked the first trailer much better. I really was excited to see the movie.
But I can see why they redid it. It will draw more people. For me, the first trailer evoked the book. The second is selling a movie, which after all is what they are doing.
Now the big question - why has release been delayed half a year?
Finally, Gatsby sentences sounds like a good project.
I have been reluctant to see Life of Pi because I read the book and I couldn't see how a movie of it would be all that interesting. My brother-in-law, however, tells me that it is a feast for the eyes. He did not see it in 3D.
Well the earlier adaptation with Redford, was dreadful, I can't see Leo doing much better, and if Mia Farrow wasn't Daisy, then Carey Mulligan can't be either,
Robert Cook suggests,
Some would say if you can read a book in an afternoon, you haven't really read it.
"Some would say" is an evasion, unless you're the Stig on Top Gear or something. What do you say?
Meanwhile, Erika says,
Robert, how about if you read it in an afternoon and think about it forever?
Exactly.
Ang Lee knocks it out of the park with his faithful adherence to Martel's transcendent novel.
A supposedly unfilmable novel brought to vivid life by brilliant technical effects and cinematography.
I consider it a must see for any lover of the novel regardless of which "D" version.
Don't miss it.
The train would emerge in a hush because it had been so loud in the tunnel. That factory whistle would have to be close by to hear on a train.
Ann mentioned a 3D theater. At Disney's Epcot there is a long running 3D movie based on "Honey I Shrunk the Kids". The theater was designed around the movie. There are air jets in the backs of the seats which blow a puff of air in your face at the appropriate time. There are vibration devices in the floor that make you feel the mice scurrying through the audience. All in all it's quite an experience.
"is that a better project than ..."
Whatever gets you the most blog hits er keeps your flock somewhat happy after their crushing political defeat!
I first read Gatsby in my twenties and it made little sense.
I couldn't get the hang of Fitzgerald's prose, which did seem overwritten, I didn't believe the characters, and I didn't trust the psychological observations.
I'm older now and I can read Gatsby with some pleasure and appreciation, but I still find it a difficult book and Fitzgerald an odd writer. (It doesn't get better with Tender is the Night.)
Yet I know people who adore Fitzgerald and Gatsby. I think much individual response is involved. I do notice that women go for Fitzgerald more than men, at least in my experience.
If the movie, like the trailer, has a screaming rock music soundtrack, I can promise you I won't be seeing it.
Gotta say the Gatsby trailer horrifies me. However true Luhrmann may be to the book -- and I'm not optimistic -- the movie is going to be about L.'s visual spectacle.
I kinda liked the 1974 Gatsby with Redford and Farrow. Somehow it misses, but at least it was aiming.
Point of comparison between the trailers. First trailer has a great shot of the eyes in the doctor whatever billboard which is a significant item in the novel. They're gone from the second trailer. Instead, the second trailer places more emphasis on scenes from WWI, things blowing up. Good for selling movies.
Not sure why Ann prefered the second trailer.
The Minnesota post-Lutheran neo-atheist NPR crowd in Minnesota considers native son Fitzgerald a local saint.
He had mixed feelings about St. Paul, however. From the final chapter of Gatsby:
“One of my most vivid memories is of coming back West from prep school and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o’clock of a December evening, with a few Chicago friends, already caught up into their own holiday gaieties, to bid them a hasty good-by. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-That’s and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: Are you going to the Ordways’? the Herseys’? the Schultzes’? and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.
When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner though the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again.
“...I see now that this has been a story of the West after all – Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we all possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.”
I find Leo DiCaprio unwatchable.
His puffy, little-boy face, his scrunched up features, his over-acting.
No, thank you.
The ONLY movie 'star' that actually looks like a movie star these days is George Clooney.
Luckily, he can act.
Plus this: Baz uses the Turtles 'Happy Together' in the sound track?
What a shiatty song.
Pass.
As a point of reference I have never been able to watch all of 'MR', either, though the opening sequence is great.
Disagree on Clooney's "acting".
Or looks.
Ann Althouse said...
Now, one reason the train can't "blast" or "explode" from the tunnel — and by the way, oh, you men, with your cocks
No, dear, they "blast" or "explode" inside the tunnel.
shiloh said...
is that a better project than ...
Whatever gets you the most blog hits er keeps your flock somewhat happy after their crushing political defeat!
Poor little asshole, can't say anything but "Nyah, nyah, I won! Ned Silver said so".
Too bad stealing doesn't count.
"Robert, how about if you read it in an afternoon and think about it forever?"
If you reread it after some years have passed, rather than just "think about it," you'll notice things you completely missed the first time, or that you saw but which were meaningless to you at the time, or whose meaning for you has changed as you have changed over time.
If you only read it once and "think about it forever" you'll forget a lot, for one thing, and what you remember will only be the details of plot and character you caught in the one reading, while you will never know if or how well or badly you may have understood its meaning.
Reading it only once and in a day is too swift and short term an encounter with (a good) book to really get more than just the surface of the characters and of the incidents of plot, (the least important aspect of a book).
I've read NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND three times: in high school, after college, and again many years after college. Each time it was as if I were reading a different book: the first time I hated it and found it merely depressing; the second time I found it rich with scornful humor; the third time I found it less simplistic than either of the two previous readings. I think it's time I read it again to see if I can really get a sense of what the book is.
I read Kafka's THE TRIAL just after college, and read the entire second half in one night. I reread it a few months ago, and although I remembered certain incidents of plot, its mood struck me entirely differently than on my first reading. Again, it seemed less foreboding and grim than at first reading, and the character "K" seemed less an innocent caught up in the insanity of bureaucracy and more an arrogant fool, complicit in his own doom, even as the bureaucracy retains its impenetrability, (even as I see better its origin in our world).
You will know a book after one reading no better than you will know a person after a brief acquaintanceship. In other words, incompletely and imperfectly, (if at all).
Now the big question - why has release been delayed half a year?
Yes, that is the big question.
And the most likely answer - the almost certain answer - is that its early test showings were going horribly, and they had to rework it significantly to get to the level of likability in the target demographic group.
I'd like to see Baz remake Gone With the Wind with an all black cast and lots of rap music.
Hate the soundtrack in both trailers - sorry, but the Flapper era of the great Gatsby does not go with modern music.
To add to the pile-on: the soundtrack blows.
If you are traveling on a speeding train 'emerging' from a tunnel
He never wrote the train was speeding.
If you are in the middle of civilization, it's doubtful the train would be moving that fast at all.
It screams overwritten to me.
Maybe everything you write is underwritten. ; )
No, dear, they "blast" or "explode" inside the tunnel.
Unless it's a Catholic train.
We discussed The Great Gatsby in the comments on some old post. I was sharing some lines I'd underlined as, I think, a teenager.
Random lines from that book could definitely make a blog. It's the sort of book that makes one want to write.
Luhrmann is definitely talented.
However, his style isn't for everyone.
I'm one of the few who probably like DiCaprio and think he's a pretty solid actor. There's not much he can do about his baby face (maybe smoke a couple packs a day?), but he picks good roles, and plays characters I am interested in. He'll probably never come close to Arnie in What's Eating Gilbert Grape — he was robbed of an Oscar for that one by Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive — and he knows to work with talented directors (Scorsese, Luhrmann, and Nolan.)
St. George said...
Fitzgerald's sentence makes no sense.
If you are traveling on a speeding train 'emerging' from a tunnel, how can you hear the lunch (?) whistle at a biscuit factory?
Fitzgerald makes complete sense. It's just that you don't know what you're talking about.
Only electric locomotives have been allowed in NYC tunnels since the very early 1900s.
I'm a Fitzgerald fan, so I'm biased, but here's how I read that sentence in context. Nick's been downtown at his job. He's been invited to lunch at the Buchanan's. Gatsby will be there, and Jordan, too. Nick knows that something is up. Both Gatsby and Daisy called to make that sure he was coming.
It's the dog days--the hottest and almost the last day of that summer. It's hot as hell.
The train emerges from the East River Tunnel into the glare and simmering heat. It's too hot to move. Only the hot factory whistles break the hush. Everyone is sweating.
The next few sentences are a filled with images of bodily secretion, vaguely sexy, certainly vulgar. Fitzgerald is setting the stage for the climax of the novel at the end of the chapter. Tom's mistress Myrtle will be described as bleeding with one breast precariously flapping, almost torn off by the force of the impact of Gatsby's car, driven by Daisy.
DiCaprio has zero range. How is he ever going to convey the longing that fills Gatsby? He won't. Another flick destroyed by obtuse casting.
You've got to assume Fitzgerald did everything right and for a reason.
Why? His prose is often way overdone, and just takes too much damn work.
My point is lost on you.
Is that an indictment of the pointer, the pointee, or the point itself?
I find that superficiality has some saving grace. True, DiCaprio may have zero range. But the cars! The costumes! The smoking and drinking! The mansions, the decadence! It's a couple of hours of indolent voyeurism!
I can hardly wait.
gerry, you can just watch Mad Men for all that.
There's a fine line--in some quarters--between garbage and greatness.
The great band Spinal Tap talked about this very phenomenon.
I think it's a perfect role for DiCaprio.
In fact, if the casting director had the book and no script, DiCaprio would have to be at the top of her list for casting Gatsby. Who else would you put there? He's perfect for it.
I never saw Moulin Rouge. I didn't like Romeo (plus) Juliet. Too many cuts, like a music video. I realize that that was intentional, but it wasn't my bag. I watched it a long time ago though. Maybe I'll get around to watching it again.
Who else would you put there?
Christian Bale
I liked Moulin Rouge, the mismatched music worked in that movie.
Christian Bale
Bale strikes me as too lean for a man of opulence, but that is a superficial reason.
Superficial reasons count in casting. Gatsby is sort of hard, sneaky, and naive at the same time. DiCaprio will portray that well.
The fact that he can't act very well is a point against him.
Chip S
But, he can act hard, sneaky and naive. Well, he can look naive and act hard and sneaky. He's getting to the point where he can't look naive, but that baby face is still there under the jowls.
DiCaprio went one-on-one with Nicholson in The Departed and held his own. That's good enough for me.
Well, it's a pointless argument since the movie's already been made.
But my reaction to the trailer is that the movie looks like it would be pretty good w/o Leo.
It's a matter of opinion, and mine's no better than anyone else's. But a question was asked, and I gave my answer.
I'll be glad to be wrong when they get around to releasing the thing.
Heh. What a stupid statement that was.
The discussion is no more pointless than it would've been during casting of the movie, since they wouldn't read Althouse for inspiration.
It's actually a good discussion if it spills over into a discussion of Gatsby, so I withdraw my comment.
I think I see Bale in the role b/c to me Gatsby's defining trait is obsession. He is not really a consumer; he's only a man of opulence b/c that's what he thinks he has to be to get Daisy.
You've got to assume Fitzgerald did everything right and for a reason.
I don't give any artists the benefit of that doubt, though there are some for whom I will suspend judgment a good deal longer than others.
It took me a while to hear his music, but Fitzgerald did win me over as a prose stylist and maybe that's all Ann is arguing for.
Still, I get a clunky feeling from his writing because the beautiful bits stick out too much.
I like the actress, I can't think of her name but she was nominated for an academy award a few years ago.
FYI
"British actress Carey Mulligan took Hollywood by storm as the sublimely exuberant Jenny in the feature film, "An Education""
I used to think that I didn't like Leonardo DiCaprio's acting, but then I saw him in A River Runs Through It, and I thought he was okay.
But in all fairness, they had him sandwiched in between two pretty middling actors so there really wasn't much to go by.
If you want to see good 3-d, go see The Hobbit in HFR.
Interesting that most of the actors in the movie, with the exception of DiCaprio as Gatsby and Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway, are either Brits or Australian. And the director is Australian.
And this the quintessential American novel.
And this the quintessential American novel.
Not while Huck Finn is still in print, but in these PC days I would have to check.
Mitchell the Bat
DiCaprio was in "A River Runs Though it"?
He had a cameo as a trout.
Very convincing.
Searching for the "Great American Novel" is a fool's errand. IMO, Gatsby is a great and quintessentially American novel. But I would say that about Huck, and Moby Dick, the Adventures of Augie March, the Rabbit novels, and lots more.
Yeah, that was Brad Pitt in River. At the time they both had a similar blond boyish charm.
It was a trip to see Tom Skerrit at the other end of his arc from the hitchhiker in Easy Rider and the mischievous Southern doctor in MASH to crotchety father in River.
Good movie.
Hardly any adult male actors left these days.
DiCaprio, Pitt and Damon are fine actors, I would argue, but they all seem to be Peter Pans who will never grow up. Damon played James Angleton in a CIA movie and looked like a boy playing pretend in his father's suit.
Chip S., Personally I think Leonardo Di Caprio is a fine choice for Gatsby. The key to making Gatsby's obsession interesting is that it is revealed a little at a time over the course is the novel. I don't think Christian Bale could get past the first reel before chewing up all the scenery. Nuance isn't always a leftwing dog whistle.
I liked Redford in the 1974 version.
Strangely enough, Fitzgerald never describes Gatsby, but Redford's looks and charm worked for a guy who reinvented himself and built a fortune, yet was romantic enough to do it for love or the fantasy of love.
Well I was a huge fan of "Moulin Rouge " but no so sure about Luhrmann and Gatsby. Its a story so tied to its era.
But I'm sure it will be a spectacular!
DiCaprio relies heavily, if not totally, in his acting on what's called the Clint Squint. Works for some roles, but not for one like Gatsby.
The Robert Redford version was too boring to watch, so the new version should be an improvement.
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