"Elvis" (2022) - Baz Luhrmann Film Reviews/Discussion!

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by EternalReturn, Feb 14, 2022.

  1. Cool hand luke

    Cool hand luke There you go man, keep as cool as you can

    Location:
    Massachusetts
    Great post :righton:
     
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  2. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I'm not looking for a 100% historically accurate biopic, but I would like to see a decent 2-hour movie that's entertaining, not boring, and reminds people how important Elvis was in the grand and glorious history of rock & roll. I hope the new movie will do that.

    On my long list of "Things I'd Do if I Won De Lotto," I'd definitely produce a 10-hour historically accurate documentary on Elvis' life and career, but it would all be done with the real Elvis and not an actor. We'd use tons of archival footage and we'd interview everybody alive who was there to talk about him. But that's not what Luhrmann's film is: he's doing a drama using actors based on real people. Not the same thing at all. I would point to Bohemian Rhapsody as an example of an incredibly-successful, award-winning rock biopic that was generally well-reviewed but had some pretty bad inaccuracies in parts.
     
  3. 80steen

    80steen John McClane

    Location:
    West Virginia
    Not sure if this newer trailer has been shared yet
     
  4. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    The movie is faithful to Loretta's book, but there's at least one way in which it's notably inaccurate: Loretta shaved a couple years off her age, saying she was 13 when she got married, when she was actually 15 years, 9 months on her wedding day. There's also a couple of minor chronological errors involving Patsy Cline. That doesn't change your overall point that the film is in generally as accurate as one could expect a biopic to be, and is very well-done.
     
  5. GillyT

    GillyT Forum Resident

    Location:
    Wellies, N.Z
    Beautifully said. I'm fairly certain that yours is the common experience. I doubt that there's a single one among us who was part of that original, or even second wave of Elvis fans. I discovered him after he died. Amid a sea of Led Zeppelin fanatics at school, I was definitely a fish out of water! :laugh:
     
  6. adam_777

    adam_777 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Duncan BC, Canada
    Shoulda explained to them how big of Elvis fans Zep were. They played tons of Elvis covers live and there is footage from Elvis 1972 MSG shows where you can see members of Zep in the crowd.

    But to your point yeah I suspect there arent too many from that 1954 Hayride audience still around. Times arrow stops for no one.
     
  7. Brian_Svoboda

    Brian_Svoboda Senior Member

    Location:
    Virginia
    Luhrmann gets it. The look, feel, and images all rhyme with my understanding of Elvis. In a weird way, the contemporary elements serve the truth. Like Quentin Tarantino's placement of fictional characters into "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," they summon the past in an extremely convincing way, while making clear in a certain sense that it's not supposed to be real. Maybe the whole thing will be a big disaster -- but I am looking forward to this movie.
     
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  8. RSteven

    RSteven Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brookings, Oregon
    Elvis experts throughout the world are starting to notice some of the little details that Baz has captured on film in the first two trailers. I just love the Red RCA Tie that a young Elvis wears in one of his early live performances. The tie was given to Elvis in 1955 as a gift when he signed with RCA Victor. You can observe the red tie from the 20 second mark to the one minute mark on Elvis. It has something like 30 RCA Victor labels on it in white.

     
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  9. 80steen

    80steen John McClane

    Location:
    West Virginia
    Elvis wasn't fat during the Vegas era from 1969 to the mid 70s and was only 42 when he died so getting some dude who's 45 and overweight doesn't make a lot of sense
     
  10. At the 1:22 mark where he says ‘do what I wanna do’ I expect him to follow it up with ‘which is sit down’ :D The clip is the ‘68 Special so it kinda makes sense.
     
  11. 80steen

    80steen John McClane

    Location:
    West Virginia
    Elvis' legacy really deserves this film. The Searcher documentary may have tried to help, but the reality is, these types of movies are the things the masses flock to. So much unfair revisionism has been applied to Elvis in the 21st century by people who know very little about his career. Reaction videos over the last couple of years on YouTube have been helpful, and the ones doing them will often say things like they had no idea that Elvis could sing like that, or that Elvis was such a great person. They were raised by people who either cared very little about Elvis or taught them things about him that were very far from the truth.
     
  12. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    I finally got the chance to listen to that interview, and it was at the release of the Elvis postage stamp, 17 years after Elvis died. Does anybody have any recordings of Parker early on in Elvis's career? The Inside Edition clip pointed out that he was rarely interviewed.

    That's said, I did hear touches that definitely had nothing to do with any southern American accent I've ever heard.
     
  13. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I haven't been able to track down any pre-70s audio upon doing a cursory search. But it seems unlikely to me that he would have had a prominent accent in the 50s and lost it by the 70s. Alanna Nash's book says that he worked hard to lose his accent when he first arrived in the US in 1929. And as noted, Priscilla Presley (who met him in 1960) says:
    “Tom [Parker] didn’t have an accent. That was [Tom Hanks’] personal choice. But you don’t even think it’s Tom Hanks, so he did a good job.”

    And Elvis' first cousin once removed Danny Smith (the son of Memphis Mafia member Billy Smith) has also said (on his youtube channel) that the Colonel did not have a prominent accent. Smith was born in 1963, so he at least would be able to remember how the Colonel sounded in the 70s.

    It seems clear that the prominent accent Hanks is employing is dramatic license. I'm not wild about it, but it doesn't really matter unless they make a plot point out of the fact that the Colonel concealed his origins from Elvis. Otherwise it's just a minor inaccuracy that bothers me in the same way the microphones bother you.
     
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  14. MichaelH

    MichaelH Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bakersfield
    I love Elvis and Tom Hanks and the trailer seems interesting so I'll probably end up watching it sometime.
     
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  15. Jord

    Jord Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Netherlands
    Don't know if you have seen this one yet?

     
  16. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    You're being too literal. Look at the gist of what I'm saying.
     
  17. GillyT

    GillyT Forum Resident

    Location:
    Wellies, N.Z
    You've got to hand it to him. He's very very convincing, the old devil.

    Nothing to see here...
     
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  18. 80steen

    80steen John McClane

    Location:
    West Virginia
    You didn't just say fat Elvis
     
  19. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    Okay, did some more searching. Here's a brief interview with Parker from August 1956. He has a bit of a lisp at times, but no prominent accent. Hanks' heavy accent sounds nothing like this, I'm afraid:
     
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  20. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    So what are folk looking for in this film, period authenticity?
     
  21. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    As far as trailers go way more impressed with “ Pistol” Disney’s Sex Pistols story. This looks really good!!’
     
    Last edited: May 24, 2022
  22. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    1976?
     
  23. thnkgreen

    thnkgreen Sprezzatura!

    Location:
    NC, USA
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  24. thnkgreen

    thnkgreen Sprezzatura!

    Location:
    NC, USA
    Trust me - it will be :p. But like I said before, I don't want it to be. I really don't. I have been listening to Elvis since I was a kid. I'd much prefer a theatrically released big budget multi-sequel documentary. I don't think that would be accurate either thought. The lens that Hollywood uses to tell stories of the past these days is - there's an agenda. I'll leave it there.
     
  25. R. Totale

    R. Totale The Voice of Reason

    Not me. I'm not going to learn anything about actual Elvis at this point in time. I want more Baz.
     

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