“Great Gatsby” To Open Cannes Festival
The Cannes Film Festival has an American flavor this year, with a Hollywood icon (Mr. Spielberg) heading the jury and a quintessential U.S. literary figure (Mr. Fitzgerald) opening the event: “The Great Gatsby.” Yes, organizers said Tuesday that “The Great Gatsby,” with Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role and directed by Australian Baz Luhrmann, will open this year’s festival on May 15 — in 3-D, no less. (It’s weird that the movie will be released on May 10 in the U.S., stealing some of Cannes’ worldwide media thunder.) Luhrmann stressed the film’s French connection, saying in a statement that author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote “some of the most poignant and beautiful passages†of “The Great Gatsby” at a French Riviera villa not far from Cannes. Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan also star in Luhrmann’s version of the 1925 novel. The fact that Jay-Z is scoring the film gives me the heebie-jeebies, but visually “Gatsby” could turn out to be a “Moulin Rouge” feast. What’s dubious, though, is that the film was yanked from release last year: was that decision really taken because the flick’s not very good?
