Baz Luhrmann - Genius or Pretentious Hack?

Baz Luhrmann for H&M.

Has he had a little work done?

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Strictly Ballroom is a classic. He’s very talented.

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Loved Strictly Ballroom (still do) and enjoyed Romeo + Juliet, but the hyperediting of Moulin Rouge gave me a blinding rage headache.

Luhrmann and son?

The Elvis biopic has been approved to start production again soon by the Queensland Government, Australia.

I hope Hanks doesn't bring down Covid again!

"Strictly Ballroom" is lovely. That's it.

Peaked at Strictly. Moulin Rouge was ok. Shit since.

His wife has four Oscars for art design and costumes, all for his movies. He has one nomination. Ouuch.

Extremely talented but very hit or miss. Cocaine issues, apparently. For me personally, MOULIN ROUGUE was a unique cinema-going experience in that while I hated the first 20 minutes or so and almost left (so loud and busy!) it settled into its own groove and I loved it by the end (tears and all). That's never happened to me before or since. The scope of the production and lavish execution were jaw-dropping but I understand how people might find the style intolerable.

Gurlfriend is going to Nicole's old dermie....lay off the fillers!

Hello Wayne Newton?

I agree with R12. For the first 20 minutes of Moulin Rouge, I thought, "What the fuck is this?" It tried my patience. But when Satine makes her entrance by descending from the ceiling, I sat up and was engaged the rest of the way through to the end. Tears and all!

I have since seen it many times. Saw the stage show on Broadway -- it is just okay by comparison.

Romeo + Juliet was good. The Great Gatsby was a disappointment -- too derivative of Luhrmann's earlier works.

Moulin Rouge is a delightful visual confection. Baz seems to be stuck on the bohemian star crossed lovers trope- almost every movie of his is a different version of it.

I think he looks great.

I'm among the few who loved Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby" and I write this as someone who agrees with those who say TGG is not filmable.

That's contradictory. I know.

I can't explain it, but I "got", tuned into, Luhrmann's vision of East and West Egg and his depiction and audio (yes, including Jay Z's rap contribution) of the atmosphere of the 1920s that Fitzgerald brings to the page in TGG.

For the life of me, however, it's inexplicable to me, beyond "what was he thinking?" that Lurhmann so massively miscast Daisy Buchanon.

Carey Mulligan was absent the beauty and perverse, subtle, villainous charisma that an actress must bring to the role of Daisy Buchanon. It's just that simple.

I forgot to add, I'd love to know who else auditioned for Luhrmann for the role of Daisy Buchanon.

SB and R+J are great, MR is meh. I lost interest after that.

He's the Wal-Mart version of Ken Russell.

Damn looks like he uses the same plastic surgeon as Jocelyn Wildenstein in R7.

I actually met him and he was very nice. Really open and kind and encouraging. With really lovely people working with him.

So Kenny Rogers left his face to Luhrmann ? It doesn’t quite fit.

GATSBY threatened to sink under its own Art Deco splendor, and Carey Mulligan was a cipher as Daisy, but everything else worked for me. I liked Carey in AN EDUCATION better, her Daisy was bland and passionless. But Baz has a strong visual style folks either seem to love or hate.

[quote] For the first 20 minutes of Moulin Rouge, I thought, "What the fuck is this?" It tried my patience. But when Satine makes her entrance by descending from the ceiling, I sat up and was engaged the rest of the way through to the end. Tears and all!

That describes my reaction to Romeo+Juliet. Those first fifteen minutes or so are dire, with everyone screaming their dialogue? Ugh! But then the movie settles down and fromR+J’s meeting through the death of Mercutio, it’s just about perfect. I hope Baz can get over his attachment to slapstick someday.

I loved Strictly Ballroom, but that's the only one of his I've liked. Everything else has a look of "look how whimsical I'm being!" to it, which is irritating.

I used to dance when I was a teen, and Strictly Ballroom does a great job of portraying what that world is really like.

i've never cared for his films.

I liked that Chanel No. 5 commercial he did with Nicki Kidman.

Like so many 'successful' directors (Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino, Ron Howard, Steven Spielberg...) I've never had the desire to see any of their movies twice. Once was enough.

Whereas Hitchcock, David Lynch, Todd Solondz, Todd Haynes, Brian De Palma, Martin Scorcese... I re-watch their movies about once a year.

I like Woody Allen the first time. But the only one I've seen over and over is "Interiors".

[quote] I'm among the few who loved Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby"

Luhrmann's version was more superficial than Griffin's version

He's nothing but glitter and elephant shit.

I really liked The Get Down on Netflix.

He's talented, but his talent is style. I can't think of him as a genius; he just has a trademark in-your-face gaudy musical-expressionist-by-way-of-Mardi-Gras vibe. He clearly belongs to the MTV generation and thinks natively in the language of flashy, spectacle-based music videos with tons of jarring cuts to keep your attention (and/or to exhaust you, depending on your tolerance level for music videos).

The new fake Elvis Presley is inadequate. Hanks is embarrassing.

[Italic]Australia[/italic] was better than I expected it to be, though. I’ve seen it three times already and I am no fan of Kidman or Jackman.

R36 What was the best thing about it? The colors? The plot? The reference to Judy Garland?

Loved the sets, the humor, the tender relationship between Nicole Kidman and the beautiful little aboriginal boy and acknowledgement of the awful things that were done to the indigenous population. Catherine Martin does great set design as well.

[R38] You enjoyed the acknowledgement of the "awful things" done to the aboriginal people? That's a novel basis for enjoying a film.

[quote] beautiful little aboriginal boy

This character "Nullah" had an Aboriginal mother and a white father.

Not enjoy maybe but I appreciated the fact that it was in the film. For r39.

Baz is looking very fetching tonight at the Australian AACTA awards.

He has a youthful bloom about him.

His Chanel ad with Nicole.

To me, Strictly Ballroom is the only decent film he's ever done.

Gatsby is in my top 20 movies and I liked his Chanel ad. Moulan Rouge is too campy and silly for me, Australia was flat-out boring and I can take or leave Romeo+Juliet. Never seen strictly ballroom. I think he has talent.

Just a Ken Russell impersonator.

What’s going on with the cheekbones?

Hack.

Every time.

Because it's what he is.

Unfortunately DiCaprio was too old, weathered-looking, stodgy and wooden by the time Great Gatsby was filmed. His attempts at conveying Gatsby's enigmatic charm came across as creepy and painfully forced. I think Catch Me If You Can-era DiCaprio would have worked in the role – he'd already started phoning it in, but still had his good looks and youthful charm - but the jowly, red-faced, phlegmatic 2011 version? No, just no.

R19, apparently Blake Lively did.

I think Leo was charming enough to play Gatsby in 2011. I haven't read the book in ages but I think Gatsby needed time to build his new identity and establish himself as a wealthy man. It wouldn't make a lot of sense to have a 25 year old play him. Now 2021 Leo playing Gatsby? Forget it. Now he's too jowly and red-faced etc.

OP why such extremes you drama queen you. Baz is good, not great, but better than most. Moulin Rouge was quite interesting.

Baz' face and Rebels ginormous growing teeth!

R49 DiCaprio looked beautiful in the sweater throwing scene.

His facelift was TREMENDOUS!

Moulin Rouge (art, music) should have been up my alley, but I could not get past the first few minutes.

Carey Mulligan as Daisy (Gatsby) was bad casting. I saw her in "Drive" (Ryan Gosling) and she was not compelling at all.

He has genuine talent for direction, but he's not very smart. His skills are for creating visual razzle-dazzle, not for building a strong or compelling storyline.

I always suspected Luhrmann had a secret crush on/obsession with DiCaprio masquerading as an intense yet platonic director-muse-relationship (he's gay, right?).

R56, I felt the same re: Moulin Rouge. Personally, I hated it, but was watching thinking: "What's happening? I should be LOVING this!"

As I said before, Strictly Ballroom is a good film. I used to dance when I was a teen and it's a really funny look into the Australian ballroom dancing scene, which really does have that aesthetic, exaggerated a bit for the film of course, but still, it's not that far off. And there are some very funny scenes in it too.

"Pam Short's broken both her legs, and I wanna dance with you."

He better not mess up this Elvis biopic. Older White Southerners see Elvis as this kind of god. I don't know why Luhrmann didn't cast an actual person from Mississippi. Southern accent is very hard for a non-Southerner to do.