The Wolf of Wall Street: Performance, Transaction, and the Big Sell

Martin Scorsese loves to watch Leonardo DiCaprio. I guess we’ve known that for some time, but it never quite hit me as it did during The Wolf of Wall Street. We can argue all day over whether this is an attempt to remake Goodfellas or whatever (it isn’t), but there’s one thing that’s pretty clear to me: This is as much one of Scorsese’s concert docs (Shine a Light, The Last Waltz, etc.) as it is one of his narrative epics. Jordan Belfort, the real-life “Wolf of Wall Street,” didn’t just become famous for his crooked financial practices; he was also renowned for his revival-like, inspirational speeches full of blustery bullshit to his workers. He sells stocks with messianic fervor; then he sells selling stocks with messianic fervor. It’s a perfect subject on which to hitch an extended DiCaprio concert. Half the movie is just him performing in front of people, and much of the rest of it is people reacting to him. There are even a couple of scenes one could call dance numbers.

(Spoiler alert for the rest of the review, to the extent that there can be spoilers for this movie...)

Titanic: The Chaos Dark and Rude

I saw Titanic so many times in the theater when it first came out that I was practically made an honorary thirteen-year-old girl. (I know I’ve made that joke before, but it’s a good one, so whatever.) I think I caught it nine or ten times during its theatrical run. This wasn’t easy, because, for all the film’s acclaim and success, in my circles (and by “circles,” I mean basically, “my then-girlfriend’s friends”), it wasn’t regarded very highly. In fact, I seem to recall a couple of lengthy dinners where I was mocked mercilessly for my love of the film.

I never quite managed to explain why I loved Titanic so much. I mean, sure, it’s big, it’s beautiful, it’s tragic, I cried, etc. But when I tried to make an actual case for the movie, more often than not I found myself explaining why I didn’t hate it, or at least didn’t hate certain things about it. For example, the dialogue between Jack and Rose never bothered me, simply because I accepted them as kids. (If Rose is 101 years old during the present-day scenes, and if the present day is indeed 1997, then she’d have been 16 years old in 1912.) The big, blustery emotions of the film didn’t bother me either; despite all his proficiency with technology and special effects, Cameron has always had a way with melodrama that marks him as an old-fashioned director at heart. Dana Stevens is right when she notes that, having originated during a suicide attempt, “far from being a moony-eyed gazefest out of a Nicolas Sparks novel, Rose and Jack’s love is presented as a matter of life and death from the start.”

No, to get at why I love Titanic so much, I may need to flash back a little further.

Let the Mystery Be? On Leo, Alan Turing, and The Mind-Matter Thing

“We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life will remain completely unanswered.”

Just a quick, personal note (which I’d meant to post before) about this whole business with Leonardo DiCaprio supposedly playing Alan Turing in a forthcoming biopic called The Imitation Game. Could be an interesting project. Or it could not. (How’s that for wishy-washy?) The potential involvement of Ron Howard suggests that he may be desperate for more Oscar glory a la A Beautiful Mind; or maybe he’s just doing penance for the insane liberties A Beautiful Mind took with its depiction of John Nash’s personal life – because no way in hell are these guys gonna be able to whitewash Turing’s.

This is Probably Not the Last Piece I'll Write About 'Inception'

Yes, I need to talk about Inception again. The Blu-Ray/DVD hits shelves this week and I’ve got a piece up at Vulture about some new “revelations” (not really) offered by the film’s home video iteration. And I wrote a lot about it earlier in the summer, when it came out, too. An earlier Vulture piece, "The Hidden Inception Within Inception," in which I offer my take on what might be the real twist at the end of the film, might be one of the most widely read things I’ve ever written. (I also wrote about when to take a bathroom break during the film. Oh, and this piece about how many times each character “dies” in the movie.)

It's Gonna Be Hard for Me to Keep My Mouth Shut About This Great Gatsby Adaptation

I’m finding it hard to not chime in on this whole Gatsby thing. As you’ve no doubt heard by now, Baz Luhrmann is planning a Great Gatsby adaptation with Leonard DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby and (probably) Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan. And I guess Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway, though I’m sure it’ll all change before cameras start rolling late next year or whenever the hell they finally do, if they do. Others have chimed in about how Gatsby adaptations never work properly -- everybody has their own reason why. I am about to share with you mine, but before I do that, I guess I should stick up a bit for the one party in this entire affair who always gets beaten up in these stories: Jack Clayton’s 1974 adaptation of The Great Gatsby, starring Robert Redford as Gatsby, Mia Farrow as Daisy, and Sam Waterston as Nick, scripted by Francis Ford Coppola and produced by Robert Evans, utilizing the full faith and credit of Paramount Pictures at its dizzying 1970s height. (The original Daisy was going to be Evans’s wife Ali MacGraw, who had recently become a huge star thanks to Love Story; then she made a getaway [har har] with Steve McQueen and, naturally, lost the part.)