Baz Luhrmann's ELVIS

We can’t go on together…


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Christian

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I couldn't give two hoots about Elvis but this looks like it's got enough Baz high octane pizazz to get me interested. The bit where the women go nuts looks fabulous :disco:. Tom Hanks doing some Acting looks less amazing.

I do hope it features him keeling over on the Graceland dunny.
 
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I was just thinking the other day that Bohemian Rhapsody had been so successful, Rocketman also happened, so I wonder when they’d give Elvis a go.

I can’t say I’ve had the temptation to watch either of those, but Baz Luhrman certainly makes me curious
 
Rocketman is excellent! Really funny and it's got a quirky spin on things (it's basically done as a musical). Elton wisely let them get on with it and seemed quite happy to be hands off with it. Taron Egerton :horny: is much better than Rami Malek and his fake teeth.

Bohemian Rhapsody is much more conventional and features lots of terrible wigs and CGI but it's quite moving in its own way, more for Freddie's story than the way it's told.
 
soundtrack by Madonna Makeup by Madonna promo by Madonna, catering by Mercy James for that one. Can't wait.

I loved Rocket Man and Boh-rap both in different ways. Never a massive fan of Elvis but I'll be interested to watch this too
 
I have zero interest in this and the trailer does nothing for me.
 
Bad reviews and 2 hours and 40 minutes run time, I think I’ll be skipping this.
 
What I'd love here is a revival of the drag king pop pursuit started by Annie, Cher and Sharleen. I'd love a whole video-album project of them all doing it.

But yes, I'm interested in Laz doing this.
 
I think telling it from the perspective of Tom Parker was a bad idea. It starts out really well, gets dull in the middle and ends better on an emotional note. Austin Butler is really great - despite him looking nothing like Elvis in the promo shots, there are loads of scenes where I swore they were using CGI of the real Elvis, but it was just very good angles and lighting.

I prefer the biopics that focus on a short period of someone’s life because otherwise fitting 22 years worth of stuff in a film almost always have pacing issues.
 
Isn’t there another Elvis film/series coming shortly where he’s recruited as a spy superhero or something?
 
Upping my rating because I enjoyed it more the second time.

Some woman in my screening today was crying and WAILING when he died :wownic:
 
Did she not know?

I’m sure I’ve told this story before but I’ll never forget it. For my sins I went to see This Is It, the MJ tour movie thing, because my friend was a big fan and I was intrigued.

Anyway they showed an elaborate Smooth Criminal VT for the stage show, ending with him smashing out of a glass window in a tall building and plunging offscreen.

A kid about 6 in the row ahead turned quietly to his parent and said “is that how he he died? :(
 
I thought this was fun. I have no interest in Elvis at all, but it was a pacy romp through this life, especially the early parts. It didn't feel almost 3 hours long.
 
Well fuck me, I'd have guessed it was an hour shorter than that! It really did rattle along.

I enjoyed this a lot, but the decision to tell it through Colonel Tom's eyes was such a mistake.I still feel like I don't know that much about Elvis, and every time Tom Hanks was on screen with his shit prosthetics and weird performance I just thought 'WHY??'. He reminded me of Mike Myers doing a baddie character in an Austin Powers film? He'd absolutely fit right in next to Dr Evil, Goldmember and Fat Bastard.

Austin Butler was great and felt bang on to me, so it was a shame he sometimes felt like a guest in his own film. And though the rest was all very Baz (overedited, faintly ludicrous) I'm always a fan of that.
 
I loved it, despite not really wanting to see it and only really going because my friend wanted to. I agree that it didn't feel its length at all.

I found the section around the '68 Comeback Special particularly compelling, probably because that's my favourite performance of his, as I imagine it is for many people.

The friend I went with had some gripes about things she stated that weren't true or never proven, but taken as it was I think it's massively enjoyable.
 
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Thought it was really good once you get used to all the fast editing and shouting. I am not an Elvis fan and didn’t know much about his life so it was interesting. Poor bastard.
 
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I really enjoyed this a lot - a whole lot more than I thought I would.

Baz is always right up my street and that kinetic style really worked well here. Only once did the pacing flag (when he fled Graceland and ended up on a night out watching Little Richard) but mostly it whipped along at a fair old clip.

The music sequences were incredible, notably the first "pelvis" scene, the "Christmas" special and the comeback show sequence and it really conveyed how he was a conduit for all these different influences that coalesced in his performances. I didn't get the sense he was any great intellect and everything was done on instinct, so having the Colonel as the foil worked well.

Austin Butler was a complete unknown to me, and he was sensational. Didn't mind Tom Hanks either, though I can see it would have been a bit shocking if you were expecting his usual schtick.

It's great to have seen it do relatively well at the box office when it could easily have bombed :D

More like this please!
 
I liked this a lot more than I expected. Some of the footage is faithfully recreated which is a plus.

It was far longer than it needed to be though.
 
Hated this. It starts with promise but it has no interest in Elvis or giving him any sort of inferiority or personality, he’s simply presented as a puppet to Tom Hanks who’s channeling Danny Devito playing the Penguin.

The relationship with his wife is reduced to 2 scenes one of them getting together and the other her leaving him.

Also a movie about how he was used by the colonel ends with a voiceover from the colonel saying he died because of the love of the audience?

At least the Whitney Biopic tried to give her a life and personality this is the most surface take with the focus on the spectacle over the person.
 
I can only echo everybody else's main critique of this - there was ENTIRELY too much Tom Hanks. It also felt like it was on fast-forward the way it jumped around so much and I agree with @Phoenix that it felt like a very shallow insight into Elvis himself.

On the plus side, as you'd expect from Baz Luhrman it looked great, and Austin Butler really did elevate it.
 
I saw it last summer and loved it. It's all Baz all the time, and that's what I wanted to see.
 

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