movie: the great gatsby

OKAY. i have not read the famous book.

now that's out of the way, and i can criticize.

1. bad editing and bad camerawork. it took me a full 30 minutes to adapt to the 2-cuts-per-second editing. there were several scenes where the sense of space was so twisted and confused that i almost thought it was on purpose - maybe it was, but it seemed out of place. one scene, where nick first meets gatsby, was so frustrating the way you couldn't see anything or understand which direction was which, but i suppose it was to simulate nick's confusion. aside from this possibly effective scene, the overall effect of the movie was disorienting, which i don't see how it was a plus.

2. everyone talked like a ghost on some sort of relaxant. slow and bored. and when they didn't, they sounded like they were sitting on a stage reading out of a book. which maybe fits with the idea that the narrator is writing a book, but why do they all have to sound like they're reading one, and that they're being so careful not to mispronounce any words? did people really talk so slowly in 1922?

3. list of improbable coincidences (i'm sure Gatsby scholars have written reams on these):
a) nick happens to live just a town away from his cousin Daisy. sure, maybe that was even on purpose.
b) nick happens to live next door to Gatsby, who happens to have been in the same army unit, and who happens to be in love with Daisy. this is highly improbable.
c) Gatsby/Daisy happen to run over Tom's girlfriend. this is unexplainable.

a) is actually fine, because we figure that Nick put himself there on purpose, to be closer to his cousin, though they don't really seem that close. b) is just impossible, enough so to make me entertain the idea that Nick is a false character, that he's not really there, just plugged in to tell the story. i guess Fitzgerald needed a neutral narrator, having already come up with the story. so this is a literary device that isn't actually crucial to the story. you can subtract Nick and it doesn't really matter. c), though, i can't figure out. it's so blatantly unreal. maybe.. only as a symbol. it symbolizes something. it's so contrived and unrealistic that it can't be meant to be taken literally. that then makes the whole story seem false, like a charade on top of something else that's hidden. very suspicious.

movie: C+
my idea of the book: a confused B

movie: world war z

watched world war z this weekend. at least it was free, but it took 2 hours. it wasn't good at all. a series of escape-from-zombies vignettes, each with serious logical flaws, and virtually no zombie gore. none of it made any sense, really. the conclusion was idiotic. worst zombie movie i've ever seen. the mass panic effects were okay, though without any zombie gore punctuating them, pretty empty.

WWZ: D minus.