Gatsby for the Hip-Hop Generation

It seems that Baz Luhrman's update of The Great Gatsby defied most box expectations and drew a large audience to its opening weekend, despite what had been generally bad reviews. But, of course Baz and Warner Bros. had covered their bases by giving the show plenty of advance publicity and product tie-ins, insuring that there would be enough curious moviegoers to take in one of America's great romance stories.

A.O. Scott was one of the few critics to give Baz a relatively favorable review. Baz is known for dazzle, and he uses three dimensional effects and hip-hop music to create a rip-roaring good time during America's most opulent and decadent era, much like he did with Paris in Moulin Rouge. Nuance was never Baz's thing, made abundantly clear in his Australian epic, which used just about every scene to bludgeon you over the head.

This is why few critics liked Baz's 3-D Gatsby, preferring Jack Clayton's much more nuanced 1974 version starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. This is the fifth adaptation of the novel. The first was a silent film that came out a year after the novel had been published. There was also a 1949 version with Alan Ladd and Shelly Winters. A very forgettable attempt was made in 2000. I suppose each generation needs its own version, and in its own odd way, Baz's Gatsby fits with the times.

Take your pick!

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Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Dispatches from Vilnius

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