What’s Next for Baz Luhrmann? Possibly Some More Shakespeare

With The Great Gatsby retreating into his rearview mirror, Baz Luhrmann is moving on with work. But that doesn’t mean a new movie.

For now, the director is taking a breather from the big screen to tackle other “creative things,” he told us, sitting in the The Fitzgerald Suite at The Plaza in New York City. That includes a stage adaption of his 1992 award-winning film, Strictly Ballroom.

Now with five feature films to his name, Luhrmann said he’s considering hanging up his hat: “I have to decide whether I’m not retiring.” But it sounded almost half-hearted, explaining in the very next breath that he’s already eying source material to take him back to the director’s chair.

“I do have few books and a few writers and a few extraordinary pieces that I am currently pursuing,” Luhrmann said. “Whether I’ll ever actually find the energy to do them, I don’t know, because I can barely stand up after this one.”

Could it be more Shakespeare? (It’s been rumored he wants to do Hamlet). He hints yes.

Watch the interview with Luhrmann, above. Relive the glittering Great Gatsby on Blu-ray (in 3D, too!), in stores now.

7 Movies That Didn’t Learn Their Own Lesson

Occasionally, films come with a message, a certain lesson they wish to give. That message can be all kinds of things, and not all necessarily draped around conventional ideas of being morality or something else halfway positive. No, film is a complex medium, and you can portray all sorts of ideologies and messages onscreen. Hell, that’s part of the medium’s power, and why it’s been sought out by any propaganda arm worth its salt.

What I’m trying to get at is this -films are open-ended by nature, and can give you all sorts of life advice. For example, Forrest Gump taught you not to under-estimate anyone, Titanic taught us that love never dies and From Dusk Til Dawn taught us that you probably shouldn’t attend strangely active Mexican strip joints in the middle of nowhere. Everything’s got a point, regardless of how trivial that point might be.

Yet occasionally some films don’t abide by this, and instead fall over their own feet in attempting moralising. It might be due to thematic confusion, it could be to do with an attempt to have their cake and eat it, and occasionally, it might just be the product of ill-thought-out silliness, but once in a blue moon, a film comes along that’s so at odds with its own message, you can’t help but sit back and admire the ensuing thematic catastrophe.

Please understand, I’m not talking about those films that shoot themselves in the foot on purpose – if that were the case, this list would be a hell of a lot longer. No, I’m talking about that special club of films, those films who seem contradictory in spirit and just confuse the audience with their message. It’s to these films that this article – replete with SPOILER WARNINGS – is dedicated.

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