Escape to the Movies: The Great Gatsby

Gorrath

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jmarquiso said:
Gorrath said:
jmarquiso said:
As a kid, I wasn't required to read much from abroad. But man did we read some great American literature. And the Great Gatsby's actually kinda interestin'. However my wife is German, and had to ask me what The Great Gatsby is about. Which was tough to explain as a simple pitch, so I ended up saying "Hero worship" to sum up. Still, she was quite excited to see the lavish new Baz Luhrmann picture (and disagrees with me about both Luhrmann and Snyder - why I love her). Similarly, I'm trying to get into German lit. Don't find it as accessible.
Oh how I understand that. I was born in and grew up in Germany. German lit can be hard because of their language structure, in the sense that there is a great deal of precision to it. Learning about how the German language deals with the concept of knowledge is quite interesting for instance. Understanding lit has a lot to do with understanding the culture from which it springs, even when some of the themes are universal. It can be a dense thing to navigate and I totally understand where you're coming from.
 

TheSchaef

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Interested in this movie, champing at the bit for Ender's Game since I heard about the new greenlight on a film adaptation a year or so ago.

Glad Card held out for a child Ender and not bumping him up to teen-pretty-boy-with-romantic-interest (see also: Percy Jackson, I Am Number Four, and all the other teen hero films that came out around the same time). Doubly glad they got a genuinely good child actor in Asa Butterfield before his voice dropped. By the time we figure out how great actors like Haley Joel Osment and Freddie Highmore are, they're already doing coming-of-age films like Secondhand Lions or Finding Neverland. They got Butterfield just in the nick of time. The kid playing Bean is really good too.

Just please don't suck, Ender's Game. Please please please.
 

Safaia

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Gorfias said:
Kmadden2004 said:
SomebodyNowhere said:
I know it is unreasonable to expect a character like electro to look exactly like he does in the comics, but what kind of redesign is that.
One that's going to end up looking something like this, I'd imagine;

http://images.wikia.com/marveldatabase/images/f/f9/Maxwell_Dillon_(Earth-1610)_010.jpg
Wrong. That's Dr. Manhattan from "The Watchmen". Kidding!

But, it has been done before. Man, I'm going to miss the green and yellow outfit.
Unless there is a giant blue dick and Vietnamese abortions in this one too I'm not interested.

On topic: the English major in me wants to see this but bleh.
 

Sean951

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I want to see it if only because I can't imagine a better actor to play Gatsby than Leo. It also makes me want to re-read the book. I remember not being overly fond of it, but I could definitely see why it was a good book.
 

RJ Dalton

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jmarquiso said:
RJ Dalton said:
You also can't spoiler something that's required high school reading. Anybody who doesn't know the story of The Great Gatsby by this point has no excuse not to.
'


They grew up in Europe or another continent and/or country where the Great American Novel (one of many) wasn't required reading?
In that case, I'm still trying to decide one whether or not they've missed out on anything.
 

MB202

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I remember reading The Great Gatsby in my English class when I was younger... Not interested at all in seeing this movie, though not because I didn't like the book (though at that age, I was kind of "meh" about those kinds of books anyway).
 

bificommander

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Gorrath said:
I imagine it has to do with the expectation that if American children have to read literature from abroad, the reverse would likely be true. And since The Great Gatsby is as pervasive across American literature classes as, say, Shakespeare, that attitude is at least forgivable.
In my English class in the Netherlands we did actually watch the Great Gatsbey movie. I don't think we read the book though.

OT: So this movie is framed by the main character writing about it in a depressed state? Isn't that the exact same setup used in Moulan Rouge?
 

Ukomba

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I'm curious if many people have read what Card has said, or just read what others have said about him. In a resent article, Salon (the whole article painting him as practically Naziesk in his hate) said his "most controversial anti-gay screed" was saying homosexual relationships are different than heterosexual ones. Not really the rabid hate I was expecting.

They later go one to direct the readers to slash fan fictions of his work, the article is really classy.
 

Double A

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Bob, I don't mind it when you talk like a souless yankee, but I do mind when you constantly switch between your native accent and the everyman movie reviewer one. It's just so distracting.

Chris Batson said:
Complicated hero = Sgt. Rex "Power" Colt...
I can dig it.
Anyone else in favor of dubbing the gun's firing sound with a "pew?"
 

Pyrian

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RJ Dalton said:
Anybody who doesn't know the story of The Great Gatsby by this point has no excuse not to.
My excuse is that I've forgotten it. Indeed, I've forgotten quite a bit of school lit, as it tended to be forgettable. The ones I remember, are the ones that were spectacularly awful, like The Grapes of Wrath or The Sound and the Fury.
 

jmarquiso

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RJ Dalton said:
jmarquiso said:
RJ Dalton said:
You also can't spoiler something that's required high school reading. Anybody who doesn't know the story of The Great Gatsby by this point has no excuse not to.
'


They grew up in Europe or another continent and/or country where the Great American Novel (one of many) wasn't required reading?
In that case, I'm still trying to decide one whether or not they've missed out on anything.
Depends on the teacher. The Great Gatsby is a very interesting novel. As an aside, it sort of informs the modern trend of urban magical realism / urban fantasy genre fiction even - even when it's "grounded" in reality. But it's use of an unreliable narrator and the fantistic symbolism helps out.

So it's sort of responsible for Twilight.
 

jmarquiso

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Sean951 said:
I want to see it if only because I can't imagine a better actor to play Gatsby than Leo. It also makes me want to re-read the book. I remember not being overly fond of it, but I could definitely see why it was a good book.
I'd imagine Robert Redford would do an excellent job, but unfortunately he didn't.
 

teamcharlie

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Oh Gatsby. Another in cinema's long line of rich, interesting, handsome and eternally faithful men just waiting to move heaven and Earth to sweep some pretty but utterly useless woman off her feet and take her to a magical fairyland for reasons that seem more to relate to her being cast as the female lead than anything about her specifically.

When all was said and done, it was actually Tom Buchanan I ended up empathizing with most. Even given that he's the classic white, racist, womanizing, myopic old money douchey jock, I still got the impression that he loved Daisy as honestly as he knew how and understood her in a way Gastby would never be able to. Out of all of them, I felt like Tom was the most honest with himself about everything going on.
 

bravetoaster

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Ukomba said:
I'm curious if many people have read what Card has said, or just read what others have said about him. In a resent article, Salon (the whole article painting him as practically Naziesk in his hate) said his "most controversial anti-gay screed" was saying homosexual relationships are different than heterosexual ones. Not really the rabid hate I was expecting.

They later go one to direct the readers to slash fan fictions of his work, the article is really classy.
Are you able to endure reading Card's bigoted, ignorant, fallacious rants? Take a shot, if you like, but I tried, just now, and it was painful: http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2004-02-15-1.html

It's not that he's a universally bad writer and not that he doesn't or can't make reasonable points on other topics, but Card sure does seem to have an impressive hate-on for anyone who happens to be homosexual. If nothing else, that makes him an asshole.

(OT: my captcha just asked "which one is a country?" and when I chose "Canada" over bunny rabbit, colored pencils, chicken salad, fried rice, or a truckload of cabbages, I somehow failed. I feel like my world has been turned upside-down. Which one of those is a country, then?)
 

Hindkjaer

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I'm rather pissed that just because it's common in American Litteratur, it is considered okay to spoil it. Grantet this wasn't like "Vader-Luke" proportioned spoiler, but still. It seems a little arrogant.
 

Ukomba

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bravetoaster said:
Ukomba said:
I'm curious if many people have read what Card has said, or just read what others have said about him. In a resent article, Salon (the whole article painting him as practically Naziesk in his hate) said his "most controversial anti-gay screed" was saying homosexual relationships are different than heterosexual ones. Not really the rabid hate I was expecting.

They later go one to direct the readers to slash fan fictions of his work, the article is really classy.
Are you able to endure reading Card's bigoted, ignorant, fallacious rants? Take a shot, if you like, but I tried, just now, and it was painful: http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2004-02-15-1.html

It's not that he's a universally bad writer and not that he doesn't or can't make reasonable points on other topics, but Card sure does seem to have an impressive hate-on for anyone who happens to be homosexual. If nothing else, that makes him an asshole.

(OT: my captcha just asked "which one is a country?" and when I chose "Canada" over bunny rabbit, colored pencils, chicken salad, fried rice, or a truckload of cabbages, I somehow failed. I feel like my world has been turned upside-down. Which one of those is a country, then?)
It might be me, but I think you're reading a tone that isn't there. He seems to come off as more stridently pro-Heterosexuality than anti-homosexuality. He does seem to have a hate on for the political part of it though. He comes off as more ani-liberal than anything else.

Actually, it's a little meta. The whole article is him railing against the suppression of free speech and how anyone who is for transitional marriage is branded as evil and bigoted, and the article gets him branded evil and bigoted. Proving his point?

It's an uncomfortable subject to be sure, but I can Enjoy Terry Pratchett, and think he's one of best writers currently alive despite disagreeing with him on some very uncomfortable positions he's taken.
 

Sean951

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Hindkjaer said:
I'm rather pissed that just because it's common in American Litteratur, it is considered okay to spoil it. Grantet this wasn't like "Vader-Luke" proportioned spoiler, but still. It seems a little arrogant.
It's not just common, it's been required reading for most high schoolers going back decades with 5 previous movie versions. The statute of spoilers goes back 20-30 years, and at that point I feel it's fair game. Exceptions being when this is the first movie/TV adaption from an old book.