DISASTER AHEAD - Baz Luhrmann

Having just reread The Great Gatsby the past two nights and finding it, as always, my single favorite American novel (because it is the most American novel I've ever read) I've watched with, to be charitable. great skepticism as Baz Luhrmann sets about turning Fitzgerald's masterpiece into a 3-D movie. Really? 3-D? Isn't that like having a T.S. Eliot reading with rap music playing loud in the background? Now of course Luhrmann, reacting to criticism, keeps sending mixed signals about the 3-D. maybe maybe not he says, but that aside given the films of his I've seen he looks spectacularly wrong for this project. The only piece of good news in this A.V. Club news item is that he won't give Bradley Cooper the chance to ham up the role of Tom Buchanan but I'm not sure that Ben Affleck is much better. (This is why Hwood pays me the big bucks for my takes on things.) I also have my doubts about DiCaprio. He's too smirky and arrogant to be the sensible and somewhat forlorn narrator. Anyway here's the item. UPDATE: Who'd be on the money for Nick Carraway, the narrator, is Matt Damon. Perfect.

NEWSWIRE
Ben Affleck likely joining Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby

By Sean O'Neal April 8, 2011
Ben Affleck has been concentrating on turning himself into a respected director, thereby making people forget all about his mid-’00s run of films like Gigli, Paycheck, Jersey Girl, and Surviving Christmas—which was working until we just now brought them up. So anytime he settles on to an acting role these days it’s extra noteworthy, particularly when it means he’ll be taking on the role of Tom Buchanan in Baz Luhrmann’s sure to be subtle and nuanced 3-D version The Great Gatsby. Bradley Cooper had been openly campaigning for the role of the wealthy, brutish, adulterous athlete going to seed, but it seems as though Luhrmann has been chasing Affleck all along, perhaps envisioning Tom as a more society-minded version of Affleck's asshole football player character in Dazed And Confused. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking. Anyway, now it looks as though he’ll be making some room in his crowded schedule to intimidate Leonardo DiCaprio. In 3-D. We can’t say that enough.