The Great Gatsby - Remake in the Works

[Stanley Doble]

Gatsby is described as a young roughneck with considerable personal charm. Yeah that's DiCaprio all right, I don't think.

 

[Son_of_Atropos]

To me, the one positive is all of these excellent posts regarding The Great Gatsby. Great stuff.

 

[Seb Lucas]

Here is the trailer for those interested.

[video=youtube_share;rARN6agiW7o]http://youtu.be/rARN6agiW7o[/video]

Looks like a series of overwrought visual cliches in search of a vodka commercial. Baz should do ads, more money, less effort.

 

[cookie]

http://www.wwd.com/eye/fashion/excl...948496/slideshow#/slideshow/article/5948496/0

 

[cookie]

Gatsby is described as a young roughneck with considerable personal charm. Yeah that's DiCaprio all right, I don't think.

Why does he get so much work?

 

[DanielJones]

I want that little lamp though.

Cheers!

Dan

 

[Edward]

Why does he get so much work?

Because, unfashionable as it is to acknowledge in these parts, he's a damn fine actor when given the chance, and he looks good in those period suits. I'd happily put money on him being a better Gatsby than ever was that risible Redford.

 

[Feraud]

I enjoy DiCaprio's work and don't understand the hate either.. [huh]

I'm as ready as everyone else to hate the film but will give it a chance. If I like it it wouldn't be the first time I've had to eat my hat..

 

[Noirblack]

It isn't really hate for DiCaprio, it is just the evaluation of his performances in his movies which is, of course, subjective. In general, I'd sum up his work by saying that you can really tell he's acting. Others would laud him with praise.

Having said that, he always looks great on the screen and that will fill up theatres and make money for the producers.

I am a bit surprised by the negative comments about Robert Redford. I haven't seen the original Gatsby for a long time so I can't recall his performance. I have always enjoyed his performances in other films like The Sting, Butch Cassisdy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men...

 

[rue]

I enjoy DiCaprio's work and don't understand the hate either.. [huh]

I'm as ready as everyone else to hate the film but will give it a chance. If I like it it wouldn't be the first time I've had to eat my hat..

I think it stems from the hatred some feel for Titanic [huh]

I think he's a great actor and I've been a fan since he was in this Baz Luhrmann movie:

[video=youtube_share;gjxHdNxvySU]http://youtu.be/gjxHdNxvySU[/video]

I don't have a problem with DiCaprio as Gatsby, but I'm very worried about Baz's interpretation of the book.

 

[Chasseur]

I think he (DiCaprio) can do very good work and he seems to be a very bankable actor for getting period pieces done. In particular I thought The Aviator, his performance and the film in general was one of the best Golden Era films made in the past 20 or so years. Sometimes his performances and the films themselves are a bit lacking, J. Edgar comes to mind I was rather dissapointed in it. I think with a different director there is much potential for him to be an excellent Gatsby.

 

[Edward]

I think he (DiCaprio) can do very good work and he seems to be a very bankable actor for getting period pieces done. In particular I thought The Aviator, and his performance and the film in general is one of the best Golden Era films made in the 20 or so years. Sometimes his performances and the films themselves are a bit, J. Edgar comes to mind I was rather dissapointed in it. I think with a different director there is much potential for him to be an excellent Gatsby.

Absolutely. My only qualm about the whole thing is Luhrman. I'm not prepared to write it off on the basis of the trailer, but "from the director of Moulin Rouge" are words that chill me to the bone.

 

[Feraud]

I don't recall if it was mentioned here but this film is going to be released in 3D? Is this a film that would benefit from the effect?

I'd probably see the film but absolutely not at 3D ticket prices. This entire 3D fad is starting to stink of price gouging.

 

[Feraud]

I don't recall if it was mentioned but this film is going to be released in 3D? Is this a film that would benefit from the effect?

I'd probably see the film but absolutely not at 3D ticket prices. This entire 3D fad is starting to stink of price gouging.

 

[MissMittens]

3d ruins movies in my opinion.....but that's just my 2¢

 

[mummyjohn]

It's interesting that you say that. I've never been a fan of the Hollywood 3D films; the only good use of 3D I remember was at the amusement parks (such as Disneyland's Honey I Shrunk the Audience show).

I've seen many of the big pics in the last few years in 3D...Alice in Wonderland, the abomination that is Avatar, to name a couple. Not only was there nothing particularly special about the presentation, there was nothing all that 3D about it. It seems that modern producers know that 3D is no longer gimmicky, it's well-recognized, and so their effects don't have to make extreme use of the 3D, they can be subtle. But that's not true. If I'm going to a 3D movie, it's because I want stuff to fly out and be extreme, that's why the effect is there! Go crazy with it!

Now, that all being said, when I first saw the Gatsby trailer (which I'm drooling over and have watched dozens of times) it had a "3D look" to it - you know what I'm talking about, how you can just "tell" that a movie was shot in 3D even though the trailer's a conventional presentation. And I think it's the first time I've ever wanted to see a 3D Hollywood movie. Gatsby - the book, that is - is one of few that is very visual, a pretty steep accomplishment for words on a page, but y'all know Fitzgerald wasn't just any old writer. As such, a movie adaptation needs to be exceedingly visual, that is to say it can't just be a camera pointed at a scene: it's got to have a burning viscerality whose scenes look better than real life ever will. And anyone who's seen the trailer can attest to the fact that has been accomplished. The reality of Luhrmann's Gatsby looks better than what's in front of me now, or ever.

This concise but very adeptly-worded article spells it out best: "This is a story that deserves to be told in all three dimensions. . .If the 3D is to really do its job, it needs to do justice to its more contemplative moments, too. Fortunately, it appears to do so. Take the scene where Gatsby impresses Daisy with his superficial opulence: truly, audiences will have never witnessed Leonardo DiCaprio flinging a selection of good-quality pastel shirts at them until they've witnessed him doing it in 3D here."

 

[MissMittens]

Interestingly, here's a nugget people are probably not aware of. Fitzgerald was a friend of the DuPont family of Delaware (of gunpowder fame). It was rumored in the late 'teens that one of the family crashed his car and buried it after killing a dog. This was before Gatsby was written....the car in Gatsby is likely to be based on the Delaware story

 

[Stanley Doble]

Interestingly, here's a nugget people are probably not aware of. Fitzgerald was a friend of the DuPont family of Delaware (of gunpowder fame). It was rumored in the late 'teens that one of the family crashed his car and buried it after killing a dog. This was before Gatsby was written....the car in Gatsby is likely to be based on the Delaware story

Fitzgerald was known for working a lot of reality into is stories. The anecdote about Gatsby warning Colonel Cody off a dangerous shore when the wind changed actually happened to a friend of his. The same man's favorite expression was "old sport". The valley of ashes, east egg and west egg were based on actual localities.

When working on Gatsby he asked a friend who had some underworld contacts to help him meet some young bootleggers. The friend obliged by inviting 5 or 6 of them to a party where he introduced them to Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was indignant, he thought the guy was kidding him. "Those aren't bootleggers, those are Rutgers men" he said.

I have never been able to figure out what he meant by that.

..............................................

Wait a minute, do you mean he buried the dog or the car?

 

[MissMittens]

Buried the car. On his estate in Wilmington, Delaware. I think he meant that the bootleggers were college educated, rather than hoodlums.

 

[Stanley Doble]

I got that. Rutgers is an Ivy League college. But why Rutgers, why not Yale or Harvard? What is distinctive about Rutgers men? Or rather, was distinctive in 1920?