A gorgeous movie. No wonder it won Oscars for art direction and costume design. I'm sure if they have a DVD with the "making of," it must be fascinating. Between the costumes and all the airplanes, there truly is a lot of great stuff to watch.
I totally believed Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn (Best Supporting Actress, but the way). I even accepted DiCaprio as Hughes for the most part. Only rarely did I think of DiCaprio, the actor. (Come to think of it, I was really impressed with him in Catch Me if You Can--maybe I need to give him more credit...) I have to confess that both B and I were dismayed that we didn't notice that was Gwen Stefani playing Jean Harlow early in the movie. (We must not be as hip as we think we are...)
While The Aviator was enjoyable, I didn't find it to be quite as meaty as I'd hoped--especially given the running time of 2 hours, 50 minutes. Overall, it seemed like too much information without very much detail or expansion. NPR's Bob Mondello put this much better than I can when he said: "The film doesn't really plumb character as cleverly as it illustrates incidents in Hughes's life." But, like Mondello, I nonetheless enjoyed the movie, and I would now be interested in learning something more about Mr. Hughes. Apparently, there a just piles of biographies--and as many faces of Hughes--to choose from: Hughes the conspirator, Hughes the pilot, Hughes the playboy, Hughes the crazy man...
One of the reasons we wanted to see this at all is that both B and I have visited the real Hercules/Spruce Goose at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon. It is simply colossal and terribly interesting. (I'm sure a 2-hour film could be made from that aspect of Hughes's life alone.)
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3 comments:
But how good were those Kleenex boxes on di Caprio's feet?
They were niiice. He can so pull off the box shoe look.
I have THREE pair of k-box shoes myself. They are SO much cheaper than any of that Breakfast at Tiffany's stuff.
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