Trailers, Trailers, Everywhere

Oh my God, y'all.

Not only is The Great Gatsby only like thirty-six days away, but a third and fabulous trailer was just released. This is big. Like, it's so close. I've been waiting for this baby for two and a half years.

And then there's this fabulous poster:

Earlier this week, trailers for the Pineapple Express reunion movie, This is the End, and for the indie hit, The English Teacher were also released. And e'erything's looking good.

Hopefully these movies will be able to make up for Safe Haven.

Bane of My Existence

You know what? A moment of silence, please.

On January 22 JustJared.com reported that my heart and soul an actor I hardly know anything about, Leonardo DiCaprio, is “taking a break from acting”.

I am so done.

Yes, okay? I get it. He's an actor and it's not like he's dead. He's just “a bit drained...just worn out” from doing three films in the past two years. But it's still sad for me to think about, after this next year or so, not seeing a movie of his in theaters for who-knows-how-long (of course, I did go fourteen years without seeing a movie of his in theaters and there are always the older films of his that I haven't seen yet. Maybe I can get through this) while he lounges around Cabo San Lucas on a yacht with Victoria's Secret models.

Actually, his plans are to “fly around the world doing good for the environment”. (Great. Even when he's breaking my heart, he's perfect.) He proved his environment-friendliness by telling Germany's daily Bild, to which he broke the news of his break, that, “My roof is covered with solar panels. My car is electric.” Leo has also done work to spread awareness about endangered species like tigers and whales.

Who knows when Leo will decide to jump back into acting? I mean, when he made his announcement to Bild, he said it would be a “long, long break”, which means he could be out of the game anywhere from five to ten Kardashian marriages.

Anyway, I will still be able to see him in his three new movies. There's Django Unchained (whose rated-R ass I still haven't seen yet), The Great Gatsby (three and a half months <3), and The Wolf on Wall Street (his fifth collaboration with Martin Scorsese, which just finished filming).

Okay, when I think about this a little more, everything seems fine. I mean, I've really only seen two of DiCaprio's movies in theaters, Inception and J. Edgar, and it's not like I can't watch other movies of his. Besides, our world needs more people looking out for it because we Homo Sapiens have pretty much screwed Mother Earth over.

Insert Creative Title About The Aviator Here

(Blogger's note: I'm just too tired for this.)

When I was younger, I would sometimes tell my dad goodnight in my parents’ room. If I caught him at a certain time, he would be setting his alarm clock for the next morning. He would make me wait for him as he repeated the same chant, “The alarm is on. Five forty-five. The light in on. The alarm is on. Five forty-five.” I had no idea what he was doing. My mom told me that it was just something he did, like how some people check several times to make sure they the light in a room is off. These would be categorized under the "compulsions" part of the mental disorder known as obsessive compulsive disorder.

Most of the things I got for Christmas were movies. One of them, The Aviator (2004), tells the story of Howard Hughes (portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio, hence the appeal), a famous pilot and filmmaker and sufferer of OCD.

The film followed him from his start, when he first inherited his fortune, to his kind-of lowest. Well, not really. He flies the biggest aircraft ever in Los Angeles Bay and then has a break down. So yeah. At least he made it out of the room he had locked himself in for who-knows-how long with a grody bears and super long nails.

A quick Google search tells me that several studies have shown OCD to be hereditary, which maybe explains why 67% of my father's children also have obsessive compulsive tendencies. I would say that none of these are as incapacitating as Hughes', of course, but they still surely suck. (For some reason every time I walk past the thermostat, I have to tap it. Whenever I go into my kitchen, I have to close every cabinet door; when I shut the refrigerator I have to push on it twice. When I walk down the stairs I hit my hip against the railing two or four times. I check behind me every once in a while when I sit on the couch to check for spiders and I constantly crack my jaw and pop my ears . On top of all of this, I can't do anything in multiples of threes (thank goodness we have ten kitchen cabinets, amirite?). The only ones I really know of my sister's is that, if she ever touches, let's say, my left eyebrow, she flips out and will fight me until I let her touch my right one and also freaks out if you move anything in her room.) I doubt I'll ever lock myself in a room and just watch movies whilst letting my beard grow. Probably just minus the beard.

Literarily Obsessed: The Great Gatsby

Since 1926, a year after F. Scott Fitzgerald's book, The Great Gatsby, was published, film-makers have been trying to immortalize the characters of the book into a movie. According to director and screenwriter, Baz Luhrmann, none have succeeded.

In late 2010, when I was in ninth grade, I heard that my favorite actor, Leonardo DiCaprio, would be starring in a film-adaptation of the novel, The Great Gatsby. I had heard of the book before, and my affection towards the actor made me go straight to the school's library and check it out.

A while later, after several chapter re-readings and lots of skull-scratching, I finally finished the 218 page book and loved it. Maybe it was because I always pictured DiCaprio as the title character, Jay Gatsby, but I also thought that the 1920's style writing was really interesting. I decided to read it again, and again, and a fourth, fifth, and sixth time.

Narrated by Nick Carraway, the novel follows him after he moves into a new house next to the party-throwing, mysterious millionaire Gatsby. What Nick doesn't know is that he's more connected to his neighbor than he knows, and as Gatsby's past unravels, Nick finds himself stuck in the middle of it all.

Each time I read it, I picked up something that I hadn't before. Like the first four times I read it, I thought that Gatsby was alive for a bit after Wilson had shot him (you can't be angry if I just spoiled the ending for you; this book has been out for more than eighty years). Then I realized that Gatsby died immediately from the wound and when Nick had described him as lying in the bed protesting to him, “Look here, old sport, you’ve got to get somebody for me. You’ve got to try hard. I can’t go through this alone.” it was more metaphoric than literal. Quite a difference, no?

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this book it that it doesn't really have a set genre. There's some romance, some mystery, a little violence, and a pinch of historical fiction.

Filming for Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby began on September 5, 2011 and continued into the early months of the next year.

So in the summer of 2012, when I practically had the book memorized by heart and had been counting down the days until the movie was released (on Christmas day), and I heard that The Great Gatsby's release date had been pushed back to the summer of 2013, I was completely crushed. Like, you don't understand.

Imagine being pregnant: the deal is that the baby will be born in nine months and that the burden will be lifted off your shoulders then, no matter how good or bad the birth is. But seven months in, the doctor tell you that, instead of just nine months, you'll be pregnant for an additional three months because of some “complications”. It sucks, right? And I had been looking forward to my baby for two years, almost the amount of time I've been in this hell hole they call “high school”. Can you see now why I was heart-broken?

And now I'm being made to wait another nine months to see what Baz Luhrmann has accomplished and it totally sucks ass.

I Wouldn't Call it an Obsession, Per Se, But

I have a huge bias towards Leonardo DiCaprio and his movies.

Once you've watched a lot of movies, you sort of start to grow affiliations with certain actors you feel like you can relate to. For me, while I can't say I exactly relate to him or his characters (a mentally-challenged eighteen year old boy, an con artist turned prisoner turned federal agent worker, an Irish-American living in New York in the nineteenth century, to name a few), I have such a strong admiration for this actor that I'd be lying if some of my friends hadn't called it an obsession.

Before 2010 I couldn't keep Leonardo DiCaprio straight from Matt Damon. Then again, I also confused Tom Hanks and Mel Gibson, Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller, and Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill. It wasn't until early spring in 2010, when promotion for the summer blockbuster, Inception, started, when I joined the fandom and never looked back.

Everybody knows Leonardo DiCaprio for his role in the 1997 blockbuster, Titanic. It's the movie, when the actor's mentioned, that most people think of. I, however, never really fell hard for the romance and actually remember him for some of his other roles.

What's Eating Gilbert Grape?: This movie (1993), where he plays the mentally-challenged brother of Johnny Depp, first got DiCaprio attention from critics. Centered around the title character, Gilbert (Depp) and his growing wanderlust, it's funny and sweet and sad and I love it.

Catch Me If You Can: When you put two of the greatest actors and one of the most interesting stories of our time together, you get CMIYC (2002). Based on the true story of conman, Frank Abagnale, Jr (DiCaprio), and his run from feds such as Hanratty (Tom Hanks), it's one of the first movies I can remember watching of DiCaprio's; it remains his best received film to date.

Blood Diamond: The accent. That's all I have to say.

Shutter Island: Yeah, okay, the special effects suck (especially for 2008), but this Martin Scorsese-directed film is so amazing that you have to look past that to the cryptic plot and the momentarily-shirtless DiCaprio.

Inception: This is probably one of my favorite movies. Not just because of DiCaprio (or Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who's a plus), but because Christopher Nolan's script is completely ridiculous, the effects are great, and the whole cast is just perfect. Nolan was robbed at the Oscars.

J. Edgar: When I saw this in theaters (with my dad, nonetheless, because it was rated-R and I was only fifteen), all I remember seeing when I looked up from my seat in the front row of the back section was a sea of old men and women. Besides my dad, a few other middle-aged people, and a twenty-something year old I sat next to, the average age of people in the theater was about seventy. Then again, what else would you expect from a movie about a man prominent from the 30s to the 70s? Only DiCaprio could persuade me to see a movie like this.

Leonardo DiCaprio's next project, you ask? A little movie called, The Great Gatsby.