Free Republic

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back to 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…” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby Odd, isn’t it? I mean, just last Saturday,  JDOlson posted the above quote from The Great Gatsby in the comments on “Who, Really, Won the Cold War?” and next thing you know, Big Guy shows up for Easter Services wearing his Gatsby suit (the 2013 Dicaprio version). He must...

Today we saw The Great Gatsby. It’s an excellent adaptation of the classic Fitzgerald novel. The Great Gatsby is about striving, dreaming, and trying to restore what was. Jay Gatsby is a man who has remade himself from a penniless war veteran into a millionaire, all in pursuit of his lost love, Daisy, who is now married to Tom Buchanan. Tom is old money. The green light at the Buchanans’ residence across the harbor represents the dream that is just out of reach for Gatsby. At one point, he’s talking to his friend Nick, the narrator (and most likely Fitzgerald’s...

Another decade, another Gatsby. The actors change but the message put forward in the adaptations of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 book stays the same. The 1920s were as ephemeral as a Champagne bubble. A fake stock market, an illicit liquor business and other falsehoods made Jay Gatsby and others like him into correspondingly false millionaires. The pleasure of the rich, “careless people,” as a character calls them, came at a cost to the rest, especially the middle class, the small people, mere ants in black tie to be trampled by giants like Gatsby at their parties. The inaccuracy here starts...

Money flowed, jazz music rang out, and fashionable young women in 1920s London, Paris and New York set aside behaviour previously deemed 'appropriate' in favour of high spirits, short skirts, hedonism and social liberation. These giddy, creative, enthusiastic women of the Roaring Twenties' were named 'flappers' because of their effervescent personalities. They were writers, actresses, painters, society heiresses, and they were a new breed of women typified by newly bobbed hair, thick make-up and predilections for smoking, drinking, dancing the Charleston... and then some. As Baz Luhrmann's new cinematic remake of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby prepares...

The 2013 summer movie slate will feature the standard popcorn bait, from the third installment of "Iron Man" to a "Superman" reboot and a new "Star Trek" adventure. Now, "The Great Gatsby" is joining that blockbuster-heavy crowd. Director Baz Luhrmann's update on the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel is being moved from December 2012 to Summer 2013. Why? Warner Bros. insists the switch means the film's potential audience will be best served by a summer crowd. The LA Times says its sources pin the blame on the film's 3D effects. They just aren't ready for their close up yet.