Movie Make-out

Australia has just hit the box office with a resounding thud, not even earning half its $130 million budget back since its release — just possibly, because it wasn’t very good (although I wouldn’t know, personally). Director Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge) has even addressed this recently, defensively saying, “A lot of reviewers like Australia. And we’re making people cry; I know because they write to us. But there are those that don’t get it. A lot of the film scientists don’t get it. And it’s not just that that they don’t get it, but they hate it and they hate me, and they think I’m the black hole of cinema. They say, ‘He shouldn’t have made it, and he should die.’”

Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but I thought his Romeo + Juliet was painfully stupid, full of (to borrow a phrase) sound and fury… and a whole mess of actors — save Pete Postlethwaite — who didn’t understand the words coming out of their stupid mouths, and the precious few minutes I saw of Moulin Rouge guaranteed I would never watch the whole thing. He should retire.

But nope, he’s not. For his next trick, Baz Luhrmann is going back to dicking up other peoples’ stories, rather than his own: he told The Hollywood Reporter today that he’s lined up F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s Depression-era novel The Great Gatsby for his next project.

…Right.