I’m going to use this opportunity to express my unhinged excitement for Baz Luhrman’s The Great Gatsby. With a cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire, Joel Edgerton, and recently announced Isla Fisher, Luhrman’s take on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel is shaping up to be one hell of a motion picture. Joining the fun (er, drama) is Callan McAuliffe, who recently sported a supporting role in this year’s I Am Number Four (he was also in Rob Reiner’s underappreciated film Flipped in case anyone was wondering). According to Variety, the actor will play a young Jay Gatsby (or a young DiCaprio) in the film. It’s been a while since I read the book, but I don’t recall any flashback scenes involving Jay and Daisy. What’s more, he really doesn’t resemble DiCap circa 1993, back when he was killing grasshoppers with Johnny Depp. Still, I guess with Luhrman shooting the film in 3D, anything is possible.Hit the jump for the synopsis.Click here for all our Gatsby coverage.

The exemplary novel of the Jazz Age, F. Scott Fitzgeralds’ third book, The Great Gatsby (1925), stands as the supreme achievement of his career. T. S. Eliot read it three times and saw it as the “first step” American fiction had taken since Henry James; H. L. Mencken praised “the charm and beauty of the writing,” as well as Fitzgerald’s sharp social sense; and Thomas Wolfe hailed it as Fitzgerald’s “best work” thus far. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when, The New York Times remarked, “gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession,” it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s that resonates with the power of myth. A novel of lyrical beauty yet brutal realism, of magic, romance, and mysticism, The Great Gatsby is one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature.