CAN'T REPEAT THE PAST? OF COURSE YOU CAN!

OH MY GOD. Just about wet myself when I saw this new trailer for The Great Gatsby, featuring a new choon from Beyonce and Andre 3000 covering Amy Winehouse's Back to Black.

I mean, can you even take in how amazing that is? Wait till you see/hear it...

I mean...  I just... I can't...

*dies*

Gatsby is a BIG deal. It's a big deal anyway, but it's a big deal to me cos it's MAYBE my favourite book... MAYBE, definitely ONE OF my favourites. Re-reading it now reminds me of all the best bits of University - of being snuggled up in one of the grotty old armchairs in Starbucks on Byres Rd, totally lost in the world of West Egg, pining for Gatsby's redemption and Daisy's green light, welling up and the simplicity and beauty of the language, of chatting to my pals without shame about the BIG FEELS it conjures up, like regret, entrapment, fate, loss, ... Of losing countless hours in that bloody Starbucks when I should have been at lectures, just because I couldn't tear myself away.

In short, I'm into it.

I'm also into this NEW TRAILER! It gives more of the story away though I think, compared to the last two, which is a shame but whatever. How good does that Beyonce/Andre 3000 Back to Black cover sound? I know, right?! Insane! IN FACT, the whole soundtrack looks pretty banging...

• 100$ Bill – JAY Z 
• Back To Black – Beyoncé x André 3000 
• Bang Bang - will.i.am 
• A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got) – Fergie + Q Tip + GoonRock 
• Young And Beautiful – Lana Del Rey 
• Love Is The Drug - Bryan Ferry with The Bryan Ferry Orchestra 
• Over The Love - Florence + The Machine 
• Where The Wind Blows – Coco O. of Quadron 
• Crazy in Love – Emeli Sandé and The Bryan Ferry Orchestra 
• Together – The xx 
• Hearts A Mess - Gotye 
• Love Is Blindness – Jack White 
• Into the Past – Nero 
• Kill and Run - Sia

Oh MAAAAN. Yes to Sia, Jack Black, Flo, XX, Jigga and LDR.

Also recently released are the new posters which are ALSO TOTALLY EPIC. Could this post BE more exciting, Gatsby fans? Enjoy.

*dead*



NO, I SAID WHAT KIND OF BIRD...ARE YOU?

BEFORE I GO FREAKIN' NUTS , let me just explain that my Portugal blog containing at least 20 perfectly-resized and edited pics, and several paras of flowery description and colourful banter, which by the way took me OVER AN HOUR to write, HAS DISAPPEARED FROM BLOGGER with no explanation!

I can't actually face going through it all and re-writing it again at the moment, so that post will just have to be delayed until this overwhelming, totally-justified feeling of INTENSE RAGE subsides.

In an effort to quell my extreme frustration, I'm instead posting this - my old faithful backup post (of which I normally have a few kicking about) which happens to feature the trailers to three films I'm absolutely DYING TO SEE.

So, yes, a little random, but run with it.

Moonrise Kingdom



The reasons to expect great things from this are numerous: Wes Anderson directs, Roman Coppola co-writes, pastel 60s colour palette, pre-pubescent love and heartbreak, TILDA SWINTON, swoon-worthy aesthetics, nuanced comedy, Bill Murray, dreamy soundtrack, TILDA SWINTON... Gahd, I can feel my earlier rage ebbing away already - surely the sign of an awesome film?


Prometheus



I don't know how you could watch that and NOT be wetting yourself with excitement! Ohhh, I do love me an epic sci-fi romp and who better to provide it than the man who gave us both Alien and Blade Runner - the former of which was actually on last night and is STILL as shockingly powerful as ever. Reviews of this are mixed so far, but, in the words of Cheryl Cole, this looks to be RIGHT OOP MA STREET. Plus, yi know, Fassbender...


The Great Gatsby



Ah, now we come to my most anticipated film, POSSIBLY ever. If ever anyone asks me to name my favourite book, Gatsby is never far from my lips. As a former English Literature student, this is perhaps more than a bit of a cliche since we all studied it at some point, and it's over-exposure in schools and universities can mean that it's subtle themes and famous quotes now sometimes feel unfairly trite and obvious. But regardless of its notoriety it is still one of the most wonderfully written books that exists - to read it is to delight and marvel in the power and beauty of language. FOR REALZ. BAH I could write an essay here, BUT I WON'T I promise!

Anyhoo, when I heard last year that Baz Luhrmann was directing a remake of the pretty poor Mia Farrow/Robert Redford original, I was SCARED! Him off of Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet (both of which I love by the way, but I'm a slave to a love story and gaudy aesthetics) would surely ruin my beloved Gatsby and trample all over its subtleties, quiet tension and inner monologuing... right? Because that's where the beauty of Gatsby lies - in the things unsaid. In Nick's poignant observations of Jay and Daisy, in the rich description of complex emotions, the unhurried sensitivities of language and the hints at a shared pain which lie dormant in all of us...Regret. Entrapment. Inevitability. Loss. How could him that gave us a singing Ewan McGregor be able to express all that?

Well of course, he can't. The film is NOT the book, merely a representation. It'll never capture all the things I love about the book and it's frankly absurd to expect it to. But believe me, it's so hard to remind myself of that! Anyway, so far the trailer actually looks pretty promising. I'm warming to the casting of Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay and ESPECIALLY love Carey Mulligan as Daisy since she is a fantastic actress and looks very much how I always imagined Daisy to look, so yay for me! That being said, I DETEST the use of No Church in the Wild in the first half depicting the Roaring Twenties. THAT'S HARD TO ADMIT because, come on now, it's a tune and a half! Seriously, the whole Watch the Throne album is amazeballs but this track in particular is up there as one of the best on it. But for me it just doesn't work. I know the yoof might need something current to relate to since this is, after all, a period film, but the visuals are contemporary enough, surely? I don't know, it's an issue for me. Jack White's cover of Love is Blindness works well enough since it somewhat matches the drama thematically, but, I don't know... It might still go a bit wrong mightn't it? We'll see. Roll on Christmas anyway!



What films are you guys excited for this year? Any I've missed out?

BOATS AGAINST THE CURRENT

There seems to have been so much Fitzgerald chat about recently, what with the revelation of The Great Gatsby casting being revealed. To mark the 70 years since his death, Penguin Classics are reissuing six of Fitzgerald's titles - including Gatsby! - in special-edition hardback with covers designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith:









Penguin Classics - the F Scott Fitzgerald Collection


Um HELLO Christmas present?

.............................................................

"And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further... And one fine morning -

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past..."

.............................................................

Oh, wait, didn't you get the memo? I'm a HUGE GEEK and this is the kinda shiz that makes me MAD excited!

I was recently at a lecture by Jon Snow at Edinburgh University (nerd alert) entitled A Changing Media in a Changing World, where he made lots of interesting points about all the exciting advances in the media BUT shockingly (or perhaps not so much) he gave print newspapers a shelf-life of 25 more years MAX. I get that, I guess. That kind of news is so fleeting and insubstantial, it's out of date as soon as it's printed. People don't care about the physicality of news any more.

That said, he did say that no matter how plugged into the matrix we all become, books will never die out because people will always want to own something permanent, something that's fixed and never changes. You want to own the words themselves, they become your possessions, your thoughts. Yours. You own them metaphorically AND physically.

You can dress Gatsby up however you like, but I will ALWAYS choose reading the book - holding it in my hands, folding down the corners, tucking it into my bag just to keep me company - over downloading it online. Just doesn't feel the same, yi' know?

HOWL

While perusing my friend Carlin's blog, I discovered this trailer:



EEEEK! Now, if I'm honest, I don't much care for the Beats... On The Road is frankly, for me, too long and rambling and over-hyped. CONTROVERSIAL I know but there it is.

Howl by Allen Ginsberg however is an altogether different story...

Affecting, beautiful, crude, violent, tender - a work of pure literary genius that gives something different and special each time it's read. *SIGH*

However, what with another of my American favourites - The Great Gatsby - being made into a film too (Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay and Carey Mulligan as Daisy - SWOON!) I can't help but feel nervous these might not translate to the big screen. Especially Gatsby. It's so atmospheric, touching and haunting, I fail to see how a film can live up to its awesomeness.

Anyway, Howl should hopefully be a safe bet I reckon, since it's not an adaptation of the poem (thank God - the mind literally boggles!) but rather an exploration of the obscenity trial Ginsberg faced after its publication. Plus, James Franco. Nuff said.

What do we all think?

Also, if you haven't read Howl or Gatsby, you absolutely MUST. Your life depends on it.