Great Gatsby or just a good Gatsby?

BRACE YOURSELF: the old, tired argument about books being better than their movie adaptations is about to get a real shot in the arm with the release of Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby.

Set in 1922, published in 1925, F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel is considered one of the greatest of the great American novels. Fitzgerald deliberately set out to write a book that would speak deeply of its place and time, a quintessentially American work of art — and now comes Luhrmann with his 21st century sensibility, blending hip-hop tunes into a classic of the Jazz Age, casting the ubiquitous Leonardo DiCaprio as the enigmatic Jay Gatsby, and filming it all in 3D to boot.

It’s bound to be a disaster. Isn’t it?