And in spite of that, the movie looks horrible. I’m actually shocked to learn that it’s not a Baz Luhrman production, with how crass its Luhrmanizations are and how intentionally they emulate his work.
What saddens me is that it’ll be a huge success due to Boomers’ indiscriminate lust for anything Beatle.
There’s no accounting for taste, I suppose.
Because I’m not a Boomer, I hate the Beatles, and I think it looks cool.
I’m there.
Maybe not, because I think it’s in limited release until Friday, but tickets in NYC were selling like hotcakes, so I’m guessing some other Dopers were interested too…
I’m not into musicals, movie or otherwise, but I saw “Across the Universe” - a musical made up of 20-some odd Beatles songs and a story connecting them, directed by Julie Taymor - over the weekend and was evry moved. It’s a nostalgia piece, I guess, but it’s one with some remarkably vivid imagery and some of the stagings of the songs are tremendous. What they did with “Let It Be” was incredibly moving. The title song, which I was never a fan of before, was pretty brilliant. “Strawberry Fields” and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” were really something to watch! “Come Together” (with Joe Cocker - why didn’t I recognize him?) was good just because it was “Come Together” with Joe Cocker.
Eddie Izzard’s take on “Mr. Kite” was very funny. Maybe it was a little out of place, but the movie needed a little deflating and it’s a throwaway song anyhow, so it was put to good use.
Joe Anderson (Max) was the standout among the cast, to me. I liked everybody pretty well, but Jim Sturgess’ singing voice was a bit thin. I wondered a few times if they could have just changed the key of some of his songs to give him an easier time. Maybe that’s how he sings. The story may not have been anything special, and it overreached at times - but so help me, I really liked this thing, and I’ll grab the DVD when it’s out.
D’oh - I just started a thread on the movie with a very different take. I liked it, and I liked it a lot. (I’m 25, not a Boomer.) Hopefully the mods will just shift my post into this thread. In my defense, though, I actually saw the movie.
I don’t like Luhrman and I don’t really know what VCO3 means about that part, but oh well. Do you think Baz Luhrman invented movie musicals or something?
I appreciate the Beatles for their contributions to popular music and culture, although I can’t get excited about them the way I did when I was a teenager.
However, I love a good musical, and I think Julie Taymor is an inspired, brilliant filmmaker. See Titus if you don’t believe me. I’ll be at Across the Universe on Friday for sure!
I saw the trailer, and I thought, “Oh, great. More masturbatory Boomer crap.”
Then I saw, “Directed by Julie Taymor,” and I thought, “And now I have to go and watch it.”
Yeah… I got that vibe from the title and poster, too. I didn’t find out about the Beatles musical element until late in the game. The visuals take precedent over the story a lot of the time, which I thought was a good thing, and even if some of the sequences are wanky, a lot of the images are great.
Saw it.
A lot of extraneous crap that need not be in there, the music doesn’t really push the story along but I did like it (but I don’t really like the Beatles…). There are also some pretty great visual sequences. It was a good idea and there is a decent story in there somewhere, but it really could have done with a rewrite.
Just my opinion.
I really loved Joe Cocker’s version of Come Together.
I’ve merged two threads on the same movie, keeping the title of the one that was started first (and had the most responses). This may cause a brief hiccough in the space-time continuum, and makes some of the posts read a little funny because of what came before that didn’t used to come before, if you follow me.
I love The Beatles. I love TITUS. I’m gonna try to see this.
But I LOVE the thread title!
I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Beatles fan. I’ll go just for the music, but I heard the whole production is beautiful.
Same here. The commercials made it look like Moulin Rouge, which I watched about ten minutes of and just could not stand. But I’ll see it anyway because of the Beatles songs.
Baz Luhrman was the director of Moulin Rouge, which was also advertised in a manner that made it look like one big acid trip with a handful of popular song covers thrown in. I saw it, and ruined other people’s movie experiences of it by laughing out loud at the end. I’m thinking VC03 has seen the same previews as I have, and notes the similarities in the “singing other’s songs” bit and the “bizarro musical moments” strung throughout. From the previews, it really does look like a thematic rehashing of the techniques used in Moulin Rouge, which was pretty abysmal.
I really don’t know what to think about this movie, but it is a bit off-putting that there’s more and more crap aimed at baby boomers for the sake of barely skimming on baby boomer experiences and trying to turn it into one dramatic, glurgy homage to having been born during a certain set of decades. I’m not a Beatles fan for the most part and the fact that the plot lines revolve around several Beatles songs does not make it any more attractive to me. Right now, it’s appearing as a bizarre musical wherein the plot is “Stereotypical man from the UK with bad teeth comes to America, falls in love with an American girl whose brother goes off to Vietnam, and no one ends up happy in the end.” With that kind of marketing, I might as well go watch something that’s productively depressing. The thing is, I have a soft spot in my heart for Julie Taymor because of her work with Titus, which might eventually lead me to rent Across the Universe out of morbid curiosity.
I’m a Boomer, and I thought the same (“Gee, is it time for Beatlemania again” :rolleyes: ). And when I saw Taymor’s name, I thought the same as you. I loved Frida, and I’ll watch this solely on the merit of that.
OTOH, I liked Moulin Rouge, so I may not be the most impartial critic here.
No, not really.
I saw the film on Sunday and I thought it was great! I loved how they incorporated the music into the film. I was a big fan of “Moulin Rouge” but this film is not like that one. Just because they are both movie musicals doesn’t mean they are identical.
Heh, I had almost exactly the same take as Miller. I was prepared to write the whole thing off until the magic words “Julie Taymor” came on the screen. Excruciating trailer. I’m glad to hear that it’s pretty misleading. One of my reactions was “is this supposed to be a '60’s movie, because most of it has a very modern look to me.”
I’m not a huge Beatles fan, but I like a lot of the music well enough that it will not be terribly distracting.
I heard a few months ago that Taymor didn’t have final cut and that the studio chopped a 1/2 hour out of the film. Any word on what version is being released?
Give me a little credit. 
I know who he is and I saw Moulin Rouge, although I didn’t like it very much. I didn’t see previews for either movie, so if that’s the comparison I can’t speak to it.
Like I was saying, Baz Luhrman didn’t invent movie musicals or jukebox musicals.
The movie actually does present a pretty balanced view of time period, which I liked.
According to Wikipedia, Taymor’s version was released.
[Pondering the thread title and doing the math]
Does that mean that “two of us” “come together”?