{"id":26396,"date":"2022-12-26T16:39:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-27T00:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=26396"},"modified":"2022-12-26T16:44:12","modified_gmt":"2022-12-27T00:44:12","slug":"%f0%9f%8e%a5-elvis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2022\/12\/26\/%f0%9f%8e%a5-elvis\/","title":{"rendered":"&#x1f3a5; Elvis"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:1374,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/letterboxd.com\\\/djwudi\\\/film\\\/elvis-2022&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20230103005954\\\/https:\\\/\\\/letterboxd.com\\\/djwudi\\\/film\\\/elvis-2022\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-02 12:56:03&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-05 00:00:36&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-05 00:00:36&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/letterboxd.com\/djwudi\/film\/elvis-2022\/\">Elvis (2022): &#x2b50;&#xfe0f;&#x2b50;&#xfe0f;&#x2b50;&#xfe0f;<\/a>: On the one hand, it&#8217;s my least favorite of Baz Lurhmann&#8217;s projects. On the other hand &#8212; I still liked it; even a &#8220;least favorite&#8221; Baz Luhrmann is still pretty good.<\/p>\n<p>Pros: As always, the music and the visuals. Within the first five seconds, it&#8217;s obvious that this is a Baz Lurhmann film, and it doesn&#8217;t let up. I&#8217;ll definitely be looking up the soundtrack; as can be expected from one of Baz&#8217;s films, there are some really neat blends of Elvis&#8217;s songs with contemporary sounds.<\/p>\n<p>(Admittedly, much of the above could be a con rather than a pro, if Baz&#8217;s style doesn&#8217;t work as well for you as it does for me.)<\/p>\n<p>Con: I&#8217;m not entirely convinced it really had to be nearly three hours long. As much as I like Baz, that&#8217;s a <em>lot<\/em> of Baz to sit through. While it&#8217;s not quite his longest \u2014 Australia gets that prize by six minutes \u2014 it is his longest music-focused film. I definitely think he works better when constrained to about two hours or less&#8230;or has the space to really make a longer format work, as he did with the TV series The Get Down.<\/p>\n<p>As I continue to think about this, I wonder if part of why this one didn&#8217;t rank as high for me is that part of what I love about Baz&#8217;s work is how incredibly good he is at using music as a palette, and taking all sorts of different artists, genres, and styles, blending them, mashing them up, and creating something new.<\/p>\n<p>Where here, because it was all focused on a singular artist, there wasn&#8217;t as much of that. While I enjoy Elvis, the tracks that stood out to me the most and that I&#8217;m most interested in finding on the soundtrack were those that combined his music with the blues and country influences and with modern pop beats and rhythms.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe \u2014\u00a0for me, at least \u2014 focusing on a single artist actually worked against the film, because it didn&#8217;t allow Baz to do some of what he does best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My least favorite of Baz Lurhmann&#8217;s projects\u2026but even a &#8216;least favorite&#8217; Baz Luhrmann is still pretty good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2037],"tags":[4234],"class_list":["post-26396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tv-and-films","tag-elvis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}