There are two things running around my mind this week: 1) Ryan Gosling can punch you right in the face and drag you across the floor by the jaw whilst maintaining his cool and looking adorable, and 2) Baz Luhrmann could either deliver this year’s most glorious cinematic feast or the most weirdly anachronistic misfire with his Fitzgerald razzmatazz adap The Great Gatsby. Two hot new trailers have glided online, and I’m still deciding which one I’m most excited about.
The former sees Gosling fighting his way through Bankok underground in Nicholas Winding Refn’s second collaboration with Baby Goose after the pulsating neo-noir Drive, dramatically titled Only God Forgives, which sounds like a revenge mood-piece in continuation of Drive‘s aesthetics. Neon lights, violence in slow motion and an appropriately well-chosen soundtrack. And it has Kristin Scott Thomas as a hot blonde MILF fatale. It’s expected to bow in Cannes Film Festival this May.
The latter is a visual orgy courtesy of the Prince of Razzle-Dazzle, Mr Baz Luhrmann, throwing all caution to the wind, as well as slamming Robert Redford and Mia Farrow’s admittedly droning and lifeless 1974 version, and promises to give us a Gatsby worth its dime and sparkle. And it looks so fucking gorgeous I could feel my eyes slowly popping out of its sockets while watching the trailer. The sound cues seem to be absurd on paper – a collaboration of Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Lana del Rey, Florence and the Machine, Sia, The xx replacing jazz era greats – but it seems to work pretty well. Let’s not forget this is from the man who gave Shakespeare his groove back onscreen. I am most looking forward to see this unfold in all its sumptuous glory in the Palais des Festivals when it opens the 66th Cannes Film Festival this 15 May.
