Welcome to a brave new world where literary classics become blockbuster 3D movies.
The dust jumps off the screen next summer in Quentin Tarrantino’s epic 3D road trip adventure, The Grapes of Wrath: Djoad Family Unchained.
Martin Scorsese returns to motion-capture animation to bring The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson to IMAX 3D theaters in a Fantasia-style collage of trippy vignettes. “Because I Could Not Stop For Death” is slated to be the film’s horrific 36-minute opening sequence.
And Harper Lee’s beloved To Kill A Mockingbird comes alive in a whole new way in the talented hands of Chicago director Rob Marhsall. Hey, Boo! is a Neil Patrick Harris-starring musical focusing on the events of the novel from Mr. Radley’s perspective.
But for now, we’ve got Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby to more than satisfy our lust for three-dimensional literature. Set in a lush, surreal New York City circa 1922, the F. Scott Fitzgerald tome unfolds like a carnival viewed through a kaleidoscope. Filled with wonderful, eye-popping visuals and lavish set pieces, it’s everything you’d expect the director of Moulin Rouge! to do with, well, just about anything.
It’s Leonardo DiCaprio, however, who steals the show with a more commanding on-screen presence as the titular Gatsby than we’ve seen from the actor in a while. Utterly charming, spell-bindingly handsome and the perfect embodiment of debonair, DiCaprio’s casting is superb.
Of course, the wild party scenes provide the biggest wow factors, whimsically portraying the era of jazz-fueled romps made more exciting thanks to ever-loosening morals and bootleg liquor. It’s no wonder narrator Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) resides in a sanitarium with a diagnosis of “Morbidly Alcoholic.”
Totally relatable.
The Great Gatsby
Opens today in theaters everywhere
www.thegreatgatsbymovie.com
