This & That: Working Class Brits, Great Gatsby, Whoopi Goldberg
Sunday, February 20, 2011 at 8:25AM 
Advertising Age how Twitter made us care about stupid awards shows again.
Boston Wesley Morris on Oscar snubs and the problem of comedy. It's not serious enough for gold.
Orlando Sentinel really interesting piece about Matt Damon not wanting Steven Soderbegh to retire. Damon still wants to make Liberace with Michael Douglas.
“I’ve talked at length with Steven about it. He is going away for a while, I think. He genuinely wants to paint... But I see it as a waste of this incredible depth of knowledge of filmmaking. But his thing is ‘form. I’m only interested in what I can do with form. I’ve made almost every movie I want to,’ he says. ‘And if I see another over-the-shoulder shot, I’m going to kill myself.’"
Awards Tracker I hadn't read this but Anne Hathaway credits Penélope Cruz's filmography with helping her deal with doing nudity on film. Interesting... though if only she and Jake had lent those magnificent bods to a better movie than Love and Other Drugs.
LA Times Magnolia Pictures bought Lars von Trier's Melancholia. Yay. They did a great job pushing I Am Love last year. Hopefully this will fare better than Antichrist (which IFC bought) which got a ton of press but didn't even crack half a million at the US box office.
Boston Wesley Morris again (sorry, I've become obsessed. I blame Nick.) with a terrific piece on Whoopi Goldberg's reaction to the lack of black talent in the Oscar race and her career since The Color Purple.
BBC British actress Maxine Peake claims class snobbery is at work for Brit actresses. It's something I'd never considered but maybe this will be more clear to British readers? She says
I remember feeling, at drama school, that if you were male and working class you were a bit of a poet, a working class hero. But if you were female, you were just a bit gobby and a bit brassy and common.
Finally, The Hollywood Reporter let's us know that Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby will go before the cameras in August in Sydney. Be careful what you wish for people. I am always begging Baz to work again and he chooses an adaptation of my favorite novel that I don't think should be a movie AND he casts three people that I like but that I am not really excited for in these roles AND he shoots it in 3D. Sigh.
Baz, Lars Von Trier, Oscars (10), The Great Gatsby, Whoopi Goldberg
Reader Comments (13)
michelle pfeiffer reunited with tim burton in dark shadows!
3D? it's over for me
That's a wonderful photo - the pictures of the acting winners together are always my favorites from Oscar night.
Rax -- i love those too. but the one from 2008 is so sad since it's one person short :(
Pomme - i know. Who could possibly need a period drama about rich people in Long Island to be IN 3-D?
Luis -- that Pfeiffer post is here
Contemporary queen of taking her clothes off - Julianne Moore.
Melancholia is definitely one of my three most anticipated films of the year (with We Need to Talk About Kevin and One Day). It's nice to know it has a competent distributor.
The Great Gatsby in 3D? What does he think he's doing? I'm sure the 3D audience and the literary audience have a ton of overlap...
After seeing Werner Herzog's "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" I see how one could make a good case for "The Great Gatsby" being in 3D. "Gatsby" is so much about surfaces and distance that it could actually be a neat way of tackling its contents.
However, I doubt that that's why Baz Luhrman chose to do it in 3D, and I am very sceptical of the project at large.
Apart from that: has somebody been cast for the role of Tom Buchanan yet? I am hoping for Patrick Wilson, Jon Hamm or Lee Pace.
Oy. The more I read about "The Great Gatsby", the more I'm frightened for it. It's beginning to sound like an episode of 'Glee' where all I can ask is for it not to embarrass itself. Okay... unfair knock on both projects. I love Baz and all... But seriously, a classic American tale told in 3D!?! Isn't that similar to how we mocked the future would be 20 years ago?
Carey is totally wrong for daisy.
I am a High School Lit teacher .. I also have my masters in American Lit.
The Great Gatsby is one of my favs to read and teach. You are so right ... It is impossible to film.
Chris -- i think it's Tobey Maguire?
I thought he was supposed to be Nick Carraway? Maybe I got that wrong.
Anyway, he'd be all wrong for Tom Buchanan, if that's who he's going to play.
As an American, I think I can still understand was Ms. Peake is talking about. (there never was any female equivalent of the mid-century "angry young man" protagonist, was there?) Isn't it rather similar, in some ways, to the fact that ugly, fat, nebbishy men can be movie stars and command leads roles, but women must be utterly beautiful, thin and perfect, or else they're consigned to the sidelines, or made the butt of the joke (with rare exceptions)?
chris -- i'm sorry. i was thinking of Nick. and i wasn't thiknking ;)
Janice -- probably yes.