Burbank, U.S.A. — From the uniquely imaginative mind of writer/producer/director Baz Luhrmann comes the new big screen adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. The filmmaker created his own distinctive visual interpretation of the classic story, bringing the period to life in a way that has never been seen before, in a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role.

‘The Great Gatsby’ follows Fitzgerald-like, would-be writer Nick Carraway as he leaves the Midwest and comes to New York City in the spring of 1922, an era of loosening morals, glittering jazz, bootleg kings, and sky-rocketing stocks. Chasing his own American Dream, Nick lands next door to a mysterious, party-giving millionaire, Jay Gatsby. It is thus that Nick is drawn into the captivating world of the super rich, their illusions, loves and deceits.

Academy Award nominee DiCaprio plays Jay Gatsby, with Tobey Maguire starring as Nick Carraway; Carey Mulligan and Joel Edgerton as Daisy and Tom Buchanan; Isla Fisher and Jason Clarke as Myrtle and George Wilson. Indian film legend Amitabh Bachchan plays the role of Meyer Wolfsheim.

‘The Great Gatsby’ opens May 2013, the film will be distributed in 3D and 2D by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company, and in select territories by Village Roadshow Pictures.

Check out the trailer below:

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“Who is this Gatsby?” This question strings together the narrative of the trailer for the up-coming F Scott Fitzgerald adaption,‘The Great Gatsby’, released earlier this week. Of course, this 2.4 minute splicing of cleverly timed scenes and artfully disjointed dialogue provides no definitive answer to the question that haunts its characters, however, it does give the audience an inkling of the sort of product that Warner Bros. will release come Christmas.

During his film career, Australian director Baz Luhrmann has varied his subject matter in both scope and substance– finding inspiration in the domestic, such as in the 1992 dark comedy ‘Strictly Ballroom’, and in the sweeping epic, typified by his 2001 musical romance ‘Moulin Rouge!’ Nonetheless, throughout his cinematic catalogue, Luhrmann has managed to maintain a strong and very idiosyncratic aesthetic. As a result, it is unsurprising that the director’s style permeates every second of his carefully crafted trailer.

In this movie, Luhrmann will retell the seminal story of Nick Carraway, a young man thrust into the whirl-wind social life of elite, disillusioned, post-war Americans who finds himself intertwined with an illicit, uncontainable romance between two extraordinary people.

The actors operate within a world which is purely Luhrmann in its incredible lushness. While the director, and Tobey Maguire’s Nick Carroway, firmly set the movie in a 1920s New York, there is such a great vivacity to Luhrmann’s touch that he elevates the action above the painstakingly reproduced costumes and architecture into a dramatic space that seems almost unreal.

This feeling of being out of time and space is exacerbated by the use of Jay Z ft. Kanye West’s ‘No Church in the Wild’ and U2′s ‘Love is Blindness’ to score the images that flicker on the screen. The pacing of the clips towards the end of the trailer, interspersed by luxurious, gold-plated credits, lead the final moments of the trailer into a fever-pitch of drama as the narrative approaches incoherency.

Baz Luhrmann has never been known for his cinematic restraint and whoever is responsible for this trailer reproduces the feel of Luhrmann’s movies to a tee.

This being said, it is important to note that Fitzgerald’s own elan comfortably shares the stage with Luhrmann’s artistic tendencies. While the presence of Bollywood Superstar Amitabh Bachchan as conspicuously Jewish lawyer Meyer Wolfsheim seems a bit of a misnomer, it is evident even in the trailer that the rest of the cast has a strong grasp on their roles.

Enormously talented indie darling Carey Mulligan fully encapsulates the essence of flighty Daisy and Leonardio DiCaprio’s Jay Gatsby oozes charm while, post-’Spiderman’ Tobey Maguire once again plays the perfect fly on the wall as Nick. Even ‘Animal Kingdom’s’ Joel Edgerton exudes a strong presence as Tom Buchanan despite his lack of screen time.

Quite apart from the on-point casting, it is clear that Luhrmann has maintained some of the most structurally important and viscerally memorable moments of the novel; the scene where Gatsby pulls out his shirts and the disquieting image of Dr T J Eckleberg are both conserved, as is Nick’s third-party narration.

Essentially, it looks like ‘The Great Gatsby’ will keep the shape of the classic novel littering bookshelves of high-school students everywhere, though this silhouette will be re-seen through the lens of one of the most vivid and stylized directors of this film epoch.

And, considering that the trailer’s YouTube viewcount had passed a million views within the first 24 hours of its release, it would seem that the world is eager to have the opportunity to gaze at the characters they’ve always known through these new, powerfully tinted glasses.

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‘The Amazing Spider-Man‘, starring Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone and directed by Marc Webb, swings into theaters July 3, 2012 and recently released another full-length trailer online. The franchise reboot offers substantial departures from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, but are these changes improvements or downgrades? Let’s take a look at the three main differences between the two.

First, we have our leading men: Andrew Garfield vs. Tobey Maguire. Tobey Maguire first donned the Spidey mask in 2002 at 27 years of age and played a relatively believable high school nerd. His portrayal of Peter Parker focused on the shy, sweeter side of the character rather than the sarcastic side, which rubbed a portion of the comic book fans the wrong way.

However, Maguire appealed to many audience members who knew Parker by name only and were not avid comic book readers, because he was soft-spoken, timid, and easy to relate to. They did not mind the lack of one-liners because Raimi’s script provided many funny moments besides Spider-Man himself.

Based on the trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man, Andrew Garfield, age 29, seems to be leaning towards the more snarky, misunderstood side of Peter Parker. We get a few pretty good one-liners from him in the trailer, indicating that his Peter Parker will be closer to the duality shown in the comic books.

Peter Parker is the penultimate mild-mannered guy akin to Clark Kent while Spider-Man is the wisecracking crime fighter. While this appears to be an improvement, it also begs the question if Garfield will be able to show Peter’s kind heart as well.

Second, we have our leading ladies: Emma Stone vs. Kirsten Dunst. Kirsten Dunst is probably the largest complaint about Raimi’s Spider-Man from comic book fans besides Spidey’s lack of one-liners. While she is a lovely actress, Dunst often failed to emit the sharp tongue and fierce independence that Mary Jane Watson has in the comic books.

She played her much softer in the first film and she wasn’t able to participate in any roles other than the love interest, the damsel in distress, and the supportive but troubled girlfriend. Furthermore, Mary Jane was not written up to standards in the widely disliked ‘Spider-Man 3’ (2007) because her complaining about Peter’s success made her seem petty and unlikable.

Emma Stone, however, is a rising star due to her work in comedies like ‘Superbad‘ (2007), ‘Zombieland‘ (2009), and ‘Easy A‘ (2010) where she is incarnates a sarcastic, tough female lead. This has also drawn criticism from Spidey fans because Stone looks like the perfect Mary Jane but director Marc Webb decided to go with the character of Gwen Stacy instead: who is less known to general public and not nearly as strong a personality as Mary Jane Watson.

Thus, casting Emma Stone is an improvement over Kirsten Dunst, but casting her as Gwen Stacy might be a bit of a miscalculation. Third, we have our villains: Willem Dafoe vs. Rhys Ifans. Willem Dafoe’s portrayal of Green Goblin is very well-known and mostly enjoyed by the fans because he showed the slow spiral of the character from a cold, slimy business man to a maniacal super villain.

He showed some hints of sympathy here and there, but for the most part, he was the hardcore bad guy who gave Spider-Man a serious run for his money.

The Amazing Spider-Man has chosen Dr. Curt Connors, aka the Lizard, for its first villain. The choice is very interesting and wise because the Lizard is generally a sympathetic character because he and Peter Parker were friends before the life-changing accident that turned him into a walking reptile.

Dafoe will be a hard act to follow, but the new trailer shows some great potential for action sequences by having the Lizard claw his way through the roofs of cars and sling poor Spidey around with his monstrous tail. However, Rhys Ifans is not as well-known as Willem Dafoe and has not worked on many action films so it will be interesting to see how he handles the role.

Time will show which Spider-Man will ring true with the general public. There are fans on both sides of the fence and some who straddle it, waiting for July to roll around and give them a definite answer. All that can be said is that these two films take different approaches to the beloved web-slinging hero and that no matter who portrays him, Spider-Man fans want a respectful adaptation and plenty of fun along the way.

Image Courtesy of  https://www.facebook.com/theamazingspiderman

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