MYST #5: The Great Gatsby

Not since The Dark Knight Rises had I been so excited to see a movie in theaters as I was to see The Great Gatsby.  The Great Gatsby is my second favorite school book I've read (I liked Fahrenheit 451 a little more), and thought Leonardo Dicaprio would make an amazing Gatsby.  However leaving the theatre I felt a little cheated, that they were so close to making a great movie from a great book, but Baz Luhrmann, the director, made some choices that I personally didn't like as much.  That said, it was an entertaining movie that had its strengths as well.

What I disliked about The Great Gatsby was how "HD" it looked.  The movie was shot so clear it looked fake.  When at George and Myrtle house/town, the people of the town were trying to be portrayed as "dirty", but they didn't look dirty at all, more like clean people put on shirts with mud on it.     Another complaint of mine was that Luhrmann tried to make it too hip.  The music featured Jay-Z, Beyonce and many more well-known modern musicians.  While it was terrible, I feel Luhrmann missed a great opportunity to include the awesome sounding Jazz of the 1920's, which would have been a better fit.  I don't remember if I just remembered the book wrong, but I also thought the main character Nick Carraway (Toby Maguire) was a little more awkward then he was in the movie, freely joking and overall comfortable with the Buchanan's the first time he goes over to their house.

On the other hand, I really thought the acting was good overall.  A tad bit overdone at times, I thought Leanardo gave a good performance overall.  Toby Maguire exceeded my expectations as Nick, and Carey Mulligan hit Daisy Buchanan as I remembered her spot on.  Tom, played by Joel Edgerton and Myrtle played by Isla Fisher had good performances as well. Despite my complaints I was entertained throughout maybe because I just enjoy the plot of The Great Gatsby, but I was certainly never bored. Overall I give this movie a 8.0/10, but I still feel most people especially less picky moviegoers will enjoy this movie.

1975 Movie: Let's Take a Trip

In Let's Take a Trip, we meet a Californian band in 1969, fronted with some money to play at Woodstock. This band decides to split the money spending half of it on the trip out to New York, and the other half on drugs planning to use and maybe sell at Woodstock.  Unbeknownst to the rest of the band, the talented, but hated lead singer (Warren Beatty) plans on ditching the band to start his own drug ring with lady manager (Faye Dunaway).  Along the way to New York, the band finds itself in situations with heavy social commentary: racial inequality, anti-government/Vietnam War protests etc.  When the mangager is found dead in New York, the band, now led by the drummer (Jack Nicholson) begins to find clues of the manager and lead singers plot.

I don't know if this is a specific genre, but Lets Take a Trip is definitely a road-adventure movie, similar to Easy Rider, as they travel across America.  As the 70's tended to combine genres, we included many aspects of film noir into our movie.  You can see the manager as a femme fatale, and the drummer as a version of the morally ambiguous main character as you question he desire to find the managers killer, or just looking for the missing drugs.

We choose United Artist as our studio since they have worked with our director, Milos Forman, on other movies.  Another reason why we choose United Artist is Let's Take a Trip is definitely an out there movie even for the time, and United Artist was notorious for releasing X-rated movies at this time.  We thought with that track record they would be willing to risk a risque movie such as this one.

As mentioned early we choose Milos Forman because he has worked with United Artists before. He had also previously worked with Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, so their previous relationship would be good for our movie.  We picked Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty because they had really good on screen chemistry, and these big name actors will bring in otherwise skeptical fans.

We decided on a R-rated ranking for our film.  This is certainly not a children's movie with the heavy use of drugs and strong language expected to go with it.  We decided not to go overboard with the sexual nature of the counter culture so this movie could stay R and not X rated since we believe more people would be willing to watch a movie a little less graphic.

I would change some of our bigger name stars to lesser known people, for the reason being that it drastically reduce the budget when this movie could be hit or miss since a lot of the riskier movies were unpopular at the time.