Film Review 4

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a 2013 3D romantic drama film. An adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel of the same name, the film was co-written and directed by Baz Luhrmann, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher and Jason Clarke. It follows the life and times of millionaire Jay Gatsby and his neighbor Nick, who recounts his encounter with Gatsby at the height of the Roaring Twenties. The film was released on May 10, 2013.

Cast:

Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby

Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway

Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan

Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan

Isla Fisher as Myrtle Wilson

Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan Baker

Adelaide Clemens as Catherine

Jason Clarke as George Wilson

Amitabh Bachchan as Meyer Wolfsheim

Max Cullen as Owl Eyes

Brendan Maclean as Klipspringer

Jack Thompson as Nick Carraway's Doctor, Walter Perkins

Gemma Ward as Languid Girl

Callan McAuliffe as Young Jay Gatsby

Gus Murray as Teddy Barton

Stephen James King as Nelson

The Plot:

     Nick Carraway, a Yale University graduate and World War I veteran, is a depressed and disillusioned alcoholic staying in a sanatorium for treatment of his alcoholism. He talks about a man named Gatsby, describing him as the most hopeful man he had ever met. When he struggles to articulate his thoughts, his doctor suggests writing it down, since writing is what brings him solace.
     In the summer of 1922, Nick moves from the U.S. Midwest to New York, where he takes a job as a bond salesman. He rents a small house on Long Island in the (fictional) village of West Egg, next door to the lavish mansion of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious business magnate who holds extravagant parties. Nick drives across the bay to East Egg for dinner at the home of his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, a college acquaintance of Nick's. They introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, an attractive, cynical young golfer with whom Daisy wishes to couple Nick.
     When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of ashes, however, they discover that Gatsby’s car has struck and killed Myrtle, Tom’s lover. They rush back to Long Island, where Nick learns from Gatsby that Daisy, wanting to calm her nerves, had been driving the car at the time of the accident. However, Gatsby intends to take the blame. Despite the events that occurred at the Plaza, Gatsby is convinced that Daisy will call him the next day. That night, he reveals to Nick that he was born penniless, and his real name is James Gatz. In the morning, Nick leaves for work while Gatsby decides to go for a swim before his pool is drained for the season. He asks for the telephone to be brought down to the pool, still waiting for Daisy to call. The night before, Tom tells Myrtle’s husband, George, that Gatsby was the driver of the car. George jumps to the conclusion that Gatsby had also been Myrtle's lover, and he retrieves a gun. Back at the mansion, Gatsby hears the phone ring, and believes it to be Daisy. As he is climbing out of the pool while looking hopefully across the bay at Daisy's mansion, he is abruptly shot and killed by George, who immediately turns the gun on himself. It is revealed that it is Nick on the phone, and he hears the two gunshots.
     When Nick calls the Buchanans to invite Daisy to Gatsby's funeral, he learns that she, Tom, and their daughter are leaving New York. Only the press, whom Nick chases out, attend the funeral. The media accuse Gatsby of being both the murderer and lover of Myrtle, leaving Nick as the only one who knows the truth. Evidently disillusioned with his fascination for the East Coast, he soon moves back to the Midwest to escape the disgust he feels for the people surrounding Gatsby's life, as well as the moral decay and emptiness of the wealthy of the East Coast. Back in the sanatorium, Nick finishes his memoir and titles it, "The Great Gatsby."

Having watched this film, i'm deeply impressed by such a masterpiece. It is a sincere, heartfelt, touching, and genuine. Of couse, i didn't have any doubts about DiCaprio's talent and theatrical gift, but i couldn't expect such an effect.
I'd like to advise everybody to visit this real film-boom in the near future.


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The article named "Ivan Hewett's Classic 50 No 23: Mozart: Grazioso from Piano Trio in E major" was published on 23, May in 2013 by Ivan Hewett.

The article

The latest in Ivan Hewett's 50-part series on short works by the world's greatest composers. To play the tracks embedded in this article you will need to register with Spotify at spotify.com

The journalist continues his research work in the sphere of classical music.

He stresses that there’s an inherent ambiguity in the word “classical.” It can mean classical music in general, and it can mean music of the classical era, which is the surprisingly short period between about 1770 and 1820 (pop music now has a longer history than “classical music”, using this definition). The confusion points to the fact that the music of that golden half-century is the centre of classical music as a whole. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven – these are the composers who completed the tonal universe that Bach and Handel and all the other great forebears had created. They added drama to spacious architectural grandeur.

This little piece by Mozart exemplifies that union, but so quietly you could miss the drama under the polished surface. He wrote it at a fantastically busy period of his life. Only four days after finishing it, in June 1788, he completed his 39th Symphony, and within another six weeks he’d completed 40 and 41 as well.

In between, he wrote three works for violin, cello and piano aimed at the amateur market, of which this is one. The publishers weren’t impressed with his aim, saying they were unapproachable and difficult.

But Mozart loved them, especially the E major one that contains this movement. He sent it as a thank you to his friend and fellow Freemason Michael Puchberg, whom he was always touching for a loan.

I agree that classical music is rather important for our modern teens and society on the whole. And the example of Mozart is not the sole. I'm sure that such great surnames as Mozart, Shestokovich, Bah, Verdi, etc should be within hearing.

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The article named "BBC Symphony Orchestra, Barbican" was published on 26, May in 2013 by Ivan Hewett.

The article

The journalist says that The BBC Symphony Orchestra performed a moving concert at the Barbican, London.

The author emphasizes that this concert had something perfect at its core, book-ended with things that were interesting and moving, sometimes even overwhelming, but problematic.

The first of those problematic things was Wolfgang Rihm’s Nahe fern 1, a 10-minute orchestral Adagio which evoked the Romantic fascination with twilight (thus the title, which refers to the way a dim light makes nearby things seem distant). It arose out of sighing figures in the deep bass, broken up with silences. These heaved themselves up into the light, but it was never more than a dim light, in which sad drooping horn figures evoking Brahms or possibly Mahler drifted across the scene.

For Ivan Hewett a natural question arises "Was this a real musical experience, or merely a second-hand one?" It was hard to be sure, with music that shrouded itself so determinedly in dimness. One needs a bright light to distinguish true from fake. By contrast Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony, which ended the concert, was almost painfully bright. It painted the heroic but doomed 1905 Russian Revolution, in a long arch that rose from frozen-dawn stillness to deafening martial clamour.

This journalist maintains that the impact of Shostakovich’s symphonies is always magnified by our knowledge of the political and personal torment behind them. And I can't but agree with this assertion.

This lends them weight, but also shields them from criticism. Reverence in the face of unimaginable suffering gets in the way of spontaneous response. But last night I found myself rebelling at the sheer brute insistence of the music, which all the BBC SO’s fervency and conductor Ingo Metzmacher’s shrewd pacing couldn’t disguise.

 

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The article "Win Eurovision 2013 The Album" concerns EUROVISION SONG CONTEST 2013 and main news. It was published on 24,  May in 2013.

The article

 

 



Sweden has become one of the world's biggest exporters of music. This important industry recognises its debt to the ground-breaking achievements of ABBA, who turned their 1974 Eurovision Song Contest win into a springboard for an international career of unparalleled success and longevity.

Almost four decades after that first Swedish victory, Loreen, the winner of last year's contest in Azerbaijan, scored a truly massive pan-European hit with 'Euphoria' (No.1 in 13 countries and 29 gold and platinum sales certifications). Thirty-nine countries are hoping to repeat this success in MalmГ in front of a TV audience in excess of 100 million viewers. "We Are One" is the banner under which the 2013 contest is taking place, but a listen to the 39 songs on the official album release reveals that the element that unites the contestants is their spirit of diversity.

Newly discovered stunning vocal talents take their place beside internationally established stars. The
Eurovision Song Contest sets no restrictions on language or style, which makes this collection of songs unique ' 39 brand new compositions with only one common denominator ' they have all been chosen to represent their country with the mandate of hitting the chord of European taste and carrying off Europe's most coveted musical crown.

As for me, I watched this programme from the very beginning to the very end. I am fond of the winner-song, and the winner-performance on the whole. But at the same time, i think the strongest and most impressive show was of the Russian singer Dina.

I know - I'm a patriot.

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The article named "Laura Marling, Once I Was An Eagle" was published on 23, May in 2013 by Neil McCormick.   The article

According to the journalist Neil McCormick Laura Marling's poetic elegance reaches places others don't even get close to. It's a masterpiece.

Having read the author's opinion about Laura Marling as the singer, i can say with the confidence that she is very talented, hard-working and infused.

The author emphasizes that there is something rare and special about Laura Marling. Watching her development since her precocious debut at 17, I feel witness to the unfolding of an all-time great. She has a poetic elegance and fluid, roots musicality that scales the Olympian heights of great Seventies singer-songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison but Marling has a uniqueness that makes comparison gauche, a coolly cerebral quality that maintains tension between her poised singing and playing and the deep, dark depths of her fierce and sensual songs. Once I Was An Eagle touches places other records don’t even get close to.

The author stresses that she has the pale demeanour and gentle tones of a folky English rose but is fiercer than that implies. There is something predatory about her, a kind of exultance in female strength.

On the album cover, Marling stretches upwards, apparently naked, echoing Where Can I Go?, on which she sings “like a woman with her clothes on / You take them off and she’s a bird”. But it is not necessarily a bird of peace. On the title track, she casts herself as eagle, and her hapless lover as dove. She plays with concepts of Ovidian transformation but in her interior world, Marling is both beast and master hunter.

 

 

As for me, i like reading the articles that reveal a personal opinion of the journalists about the singer’s career. And if I know the work of the journalist, I listen to his opinion and his point of view as a professional.

 



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The article "The Great Gatsby: behind the scenes" was published on the 29th of April in 2013 by Marion Hume.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/starsandstories/10014845/The-Great-Gatsby-behind-the-scenes.html

This article id devoted to the new production "The Great Gatsby". Tiffany jewellery, a Jay-Z soundtrack and Jazz Age decadence in 3D... Baz Luhrmann turns up the voltage on The Great Gatsby.

The author notes that "The Great Gatsby" is a slender book. Yet you can be certain of a sweeping epic of a film in May. In F Scott Fitzgerald’s introspective novel, every utterance is weighed. This is not how things work in the world of Baz Luhrmann. You don’t even get through the question, 'When did you first read the…’ before the 50-year-old director who brought us Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet and Australia is in full flow.

As for the film itself, "The Great Gatsby" follows a young Midwesterner, Nick Carraway (played by Tobey Maguire), as he arrives in Manhattan in the wild spring of 1922, at a time when the bond market is rocketing, boot­leggers are thriving and morals are loosening.
He rents a house in Long Island, next to the mansion of a mysterious new-money millionaire, Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), and across the water from the old-moneyed – and unfaithful – Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton), married to Carraway’s cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan). He quickly gets caught up in a world of arrogant privilege and bears witness to its tragic consequences.

Marion Hume mentions all the characters of the film, their play; the film's scence and the author's message.

The author concludes: The Great Gatsby is out on May 16. Tiffany’s Ziegfeld Collection celebrates the company’s collaboration with Warner Bros and Bazmark Films on The Great Gatsby.

With the help of this article, i'd like to watch "The Great Gatsby". The author of the article has been able to interest me.


 

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The article "100 years of Bollywood: A beginner's guide" was published on the 3d May in 2013 by Alice Vincent (Entertainment writer).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/bollywood/10033530/100-years-of-Bollywood-A-beginners-guide.html

The author writes about the Bollywood film, its peculiarities and roots.

 Alice Vincent reminds that hundred years ago today, the first silent feature film was released in India: Raja Harischandra, created by Dadasahed Phalke. The film told the legend of King Harischandra, and Phalke was rightly dubbed the Father of Indian Cinema: his was the first in an ever-growing line of Bollywood films.

She mentions that a century later, and Bollywood is still a thriving industry – in 2012, nine films made more than 1 billion rupees (£12 million) each at the box office. But while its influence creeps into Western film, there are still a lot of Bollywood rookies in the UK. With the centenary, there’s no better time to get involved. Here’s a few expert tips on where to start.

The basics
The author asserts that Bollywood is also known as Hindi cinema (rather than the portmanteau of Hollywood and Bombay), and its just one aspect of the much larger Indian Cinema industry. The language spoken is Hindi, although some newer films are in ‘Hinglish’, a mixture between Hindi and English. Classic Bollywood films can be lengthy – up to four hours – feature around 10 song-and-dance scenes and have an interval for audiences to take a break. However, modern Bollywood films have a smaller musical element – although the first to be completely without songs was Kanoon, a 1961 court drama.

The taboos
Speaking about the taboos, the author emphasizes that traditionally, the Indian censor board cut portrayals of sex, nudity, social unrest and violence from Bollywood films. The first film seriously to portray a gay relationship was Dunno Y Na Jaane Kyon, released in 2010, and on screen kisses still land a film with an adult rating. Director Baldev Raj Chopra was one of the first to break Bollywood’s taboos of divorce and prostitution, as well as portraying rape for the first time in 1980 film Insaaf-ka-Tarazu.

Besides, this article allows us to read more about classical, parallel and modern Bollywood films.

Frankly speaking, i've never heard about such a phenomenon as a Bollywood film. That's why this particular article is very useful for me and for my mental outlook. This article urges me on watching this kind of films.