Which Alexander the Great pic would you rather see?

[Satcho9]

Oliver Stone's version or Baz Lurhmans version? IMO i would rather see the Stone version. Seeing that Luhrman will turn his into some sort of homosexual song and dance epic.

Anyway, they are starting shooting on Oliver Stone's version in June. Thats about 3 or four months before the Luhrman pic. I bet one of them gets canned (hopefully the Luhrman pic) seeing that they will be using most of the same locations and what not.

[MacGuffin]

Stone has the screenwriter of "K-19: The Widowmaker" on his side; Luhrmann has Academy Award winner Ted Tally ("Silence Of The Lambs") on his. Hmmmmmm...

Seeing that Luhrman will turn his into some sort of homosexual song and dance epic.

What makes you think Stone's film won't deal with Alexander's homosexuality? I say he'd better cause it makes for a better story (see below).

Premise: Conquering 90% of the known world by the age of 25, Alexander the Great (Colin Farrell) led his armies through 22,000 miles of sieges and conquests in just eight years. Coming out of tiny Macedonia, Alexander led his armies against the mighty Persian Empire, drove west to Egypt, and finally made his way east to India. This film will concentrate on those eight years of battles, as well as his relationship with his boyhood friend and battle mate, Hephaestion. Alexander died young, of illness, at 33. Alexander's conquests paved the way for the spread of Greek culture (facilitating the spread of Christianity centuries later), and removed many of the obstacles that might have prevented the expansion of the Roman Empire. In other words, the world we know today might never have been if not for Alexander's bloody, yet unifying, conquest.

I'll go with whatever version adapts this:

How do we know Alexander was gay?

2,300 years ago men in Greece had wives, mistresses, and lovers of either gender. Alexander's father, Philip of Macedon, had male lovers and also many wives, a problem when half-brothers would fight to the death over the throne. Alexander refused to marry and beget an heir when he left Macedon to conquer the world.

Alexander loved his boyhood friend, Hephaestion. Both brilliant boys, they were tutored by Aristotle, with whom Hephaestion kept up a lifelong correspondence. Alexander and Hephaestion felt like the two heroes Achilles and Patroclus, from The Iliad, which was Alexander's favorite book.

Hephaestion started off as a regular cavalry soldier - Alexander did not play favorites - and rose through the ranks on merit and carried out the most important military and administrative assignments. Later, Alexander also fell in love with a courtier from the conquered Persian court, scandalous not because the courtier was male, but because he was Persian -- most Greeks thought that other people were barbarians. Alexander married a princess from a faraway mountain kingdom of Asia, but it's unclear if he loved her because their only child was born much later. He also married the defeated Persian king's daughter, a purely political marriage, and Hephaestion married her sister, since he and Alexander wanted their children to be cousins.

After they conquered Asia, Hephaestion died suddenly of typhus. Alexander's grief was monumental. He asked the oracles if Hephaestion was a god (back then people could become gods by achievement) and was told that Hephaestion was indeed a hero, a lesser type of god. Now Alexander, who had no doubt about his own divinity, knew that he would meet his beloved again in the Blessed Realm, where gods and heroes live. He got his first wife pregnant and died himself without waiting for the child to be born, all within eight months of Hephaestion's death, just as Achilles had followed Patroclus in the Iliad. He was 32 years old.

[Duck Sauce]

Baz Lurhman. I like his style better, and like Mac said, look who is screen writing. I for one think Oliver Stone is a tad overrated. I dont want either to be canned, I want to see both so I can compare them. Either way I look forward to both.

[Satcho9]

Thanks for the history lesson.

[Gold Trumpet]

This is a tough call for me and I really can't make a decision on who would be better but see possibilities of failure for both projects.

The thing with Stone, is that he is always going into different periods of history to really bring himself into important roles. Comparisons have been made to Kubrick but I think Stone's purpose is really not as genuine as Kubrick's because when he speaks of his movie, he speaks of the delight of imagining himself as being the great general director who gets to live this period. This approach has provided mixed results from great films like Platoon and JFK to more mediocre films like The Doors. With him, you get a sense his approach may be too narrow sometimes where Kubrick wanted to change structures to fit accordingly to what subjects and fields he filmed on in order to get the deeper interpretation.

And also, I have become less and less trustful in screenwriters today to really trying to adapt a story as well as it can be adapted or more for just hitting the most exciting points of it, like Hitchcock saying movies are just life with the boring parts taken out. I love Hitchcock but his approach and methods to filmming stories have become more out of place today and are being used in not really the best way. Hitchcock's complete simplicity in telling the story doesn't hold up as well as other great filmmakers. I think for better examples of simplicity in telling a story, one can view a great Speilberg film like Jaws which is essentially a Hitchcock film.

Well, the more important thing in the Lurhman capacity is not whether he will direct the movie well or not, I really can't give an opinion because of his movies, I've only seen Moulin Rouge. The thing with Ted Tally is weird because he wrote for a great film in Silence of the Lambs but for Red Dragon, instead of trying to make a different film and explore a different killer who has a different world of demons, he more or less tried to remake Silence in most ways that hindered the movie completely because it was worthless in retelling a story and only tried to scratch the edges of the Fienne character and put that off as good enough.

The thing is, it will all depend on the writing and who knows.

~rougerum

[©brad]

Oliver writes all of his films, save U-Turn. He usually co-writes with various writers and historians, so I am not worried about the writing. The man has won an Oscar for best screenplay! (Midnight Express) Remeber Scarface?

I think both men will make interesting films, but I am pulling for Stone, one because he is my favorite filmmaker and two because this is his area. Nixon I think is his best film, so fucking well done, so bold and innovative as is all of his films.

It's interesting that the old American auteurs from the 70s and 80s are just now tackling projects with big budgets, with Scorsese doing Gangs and The Aviator, all over $100 mill. and now Stone. This will be his biggest budget ever, previous one being Any Given Sunday at $62 million.

I read an interview a while back with Baz who commented on Oliver's project. This was back in Sept. when the Stone Alexander movie was a little shaky, and he said something to the sort of "Well I know Oliver. He's a friend and has been a huge influence on my work. The truth is that he might not even do his movie. So we will have to see."

[RegularKarate]

Stone seems to be out of juice... he's kind of overrated anyway.

Luhrman doesn't impress a hell of a lot either... while I enjoyed Mulan Rouge, I still think he's the type of director that will just overdo everything.  

My feeling is that both movies are going to be over the top stylistically. With stone, it will be him trying to stay "Oliver Stonish" by reusing his old tricks over again.  I don't have that much confidence that Luhrman would be able to tone it down enough to not let his over-styling affect the actual story.

So I'm going with Luhrman's solely based on Ted Tally.

[Duck Sauce]

Nixon bored me to death, and I hope Stone has some new tricks up his sleeve. I would rather see Baz's, but it has more potential to turn into an over the top, camera-sweeping extravaganza. So I dont know.

[sphinx]

CAMERA DOLLIES IN TO AN EXTREME CLOSE OF UP ALEXANDER'S EAR.

The tiny flakes of wax in the ear begin a choreographed dance.

ALEXANDER
Yes.

[©brad]

Why does everyone get so mad about 'camera-sweeping extravaganza'? If it helps a narrative I am all for it. As long as it is not all style no substance (The rules of attraction) it's just how a filmmaker wants to tell the story. Wouldn't you rather watch interesting and innovative camera work and editing, rather than cookie-cutter static shot/reverse shot shit which is boring? I am glad that guys like Stone and Baz are inventive and take full force and advantage of the possibilites of the medium. I think visually both men will make profound pictures.

On the Boogie Nights commentary, PTA talks about the 'show-off moments' and he says something really great, that people should be excited about making a movie. The passion behind the work is so clear in PTA, Stone, and Baz's movies.

[Duck Sauce]

Why does everyone get so mad about 'camera-sweeping extravaganza'?

You have to pick out every single thing I say and criticize it. I like camera-sweeping shit, and I liked Rules of Attraction despite the lack of substance. It was cool to look at.

[RegularKarate]

But Stone has lost his substance with his style... now it's just his lame ass signature.

[©brad]

Why does everyone get so mad about 'camera-sweeping extravaganza'?

You have to pick out every single thing I say and criticize it. I like camera-sweeping shit, and I liked Rules of Attraction despite the lack of substance. It was cool to look at.

I wasn't attacking what you said. I couldn't come up with anything better, and I liked what you wrote (camera-sweeping extravaganza). Chill out.

How has Stone lost subtance?

[bonanzataz]

CAMERA DOLLIES IN TO AN EXTREME CLOSE OF UP ALEXANDER'S EAR.

The tiny flakes of wax in the ear begin a choreographed dance.

ALEXANDER
Yes.

That's actually quite brilliant.

[Jeremy Blackman]

I would love to see Baz's, just cause he would pull a Romeo + Juliet and modernize the whole thing...