When it was announced that Baz Luhrmann would direct a splashy new adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Great Gatsby, movie critics, the Internet, the world, collectively cringed. No, wait, they screamed in excitement. Actually, they gagged at the thought of it. Or did I remember them creating a countdown calendar to the release date?

There are few directors who elicit such polarizing reactions from moviegoers. A starkly divided chorus of groans on one side and coos on the other follow the mere mention of Luhrmann or his previous films: Strictly Ballroom (1992), Romeo + Juliet (1996), Moulin Rouge! (2001), and Australia (2008). The warring factions are on the front lines of their most epic clash now that Luhrmann’s über-stylized, utterly Luhrmann-esque take on the treasured American classic is hitting the big screen in all its bombastic 3-D glory: The Great Gatsby is coming.

Thug Kitchen isn’t a place for wimpy cooks or for carnivores. It’s a place for readers to find some healthy vegan cooking recipes and a hilarious dose of f-bombs. Since the Tumblr started in August 2012, it has garnered more than 126,000 likes on their Facebook page, won Saveur magazine’s best new food blog award last month, and even got some love from Gwyneth Paltrow on The Rachael Ray Show. It’s gotten so popular that a Thug Kitchen cookbook is now in the works.

Not too shabby for a relatively new blog in an arena that not only offers recipes on dishes like Roasted Chickpea and Broccoli Burritos or Tucson Tempeh Pasta, but also dispenses advice on healthy living in general. In Thug Kitchen’s posts, the authors tell readers to “drink some goddamn water” and give tips on feeding frozen peas to dogs to make their coats “shiny as fuck.”

The Daily Beast has been reporting on every move being made by ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, and The CW as they unveiled their 2013–14 primetime schedules. 51 scripted series were ordered by the broadcast networks for next season, including 29 new dramas and 22 comedies. Of those, 31 shows will launch in the fall and 20 will be held for midseason berths.

I am exhausted. Moments ago, the credits rolled for Baz Luhrmann’s $127 million 3-D film adaptation of The Great Gatsby, starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role. As I stood there, outside of the Ziegfeld Theatre in Midtown Manhattan, pondering Luhrmann’s operatic blunder—and my pounding headache—I thought of all the feeble attempts at translating F. Scott Fitzgerald’s celebrated 1925 novel to the screen. All have failed at grasping its themes, ironies, and allusions. What they do not know is that, amid these monolithic skyscrapers and thump-thump-rah-rah revelry, it’s an exercise in futility.

Fitzgerald’s novel is, after all, a cautionary tale about the decline of the American empire, drowning itself in a sea of excess. The empire, of course, didn’t fall. So over the years, the saga of James Gatz has been appropriated by the victors into a celebration of the very excess it abhorred. A similar thing happened to Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street, which is now a favorite among budding Masters of the Universe. The Australian filmmaker Luhrmann, best known for the boisterous Bohemian musical Moulin Rouge!, revels in the glitz and glamour of the Roaring ’20s, completely losing sight of the story’s central message.

Over the last few decades, the mockumentary format has become almost totally synonymous with Christopher Guest, the writer/director (and often actor) best known for films such as This Is Spinal Tap, Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, A Mighty Wind, and For Your Consideration. Each film—to varying success—mined the documentary format for laughs, setting up its eccentric characters as the butts of the joke ... or the only ones in on it.

It’s no surprise, then, that Guest would eventually seek to bring his brand of comedy to television, which has had significant success with the format: numerous comedies, from Modern Family to The Office and Parks and Recreation, have embraced the single-camera mockumentary format, allowing for characters to engage in “talking heads” segments in which they speak directly to the audience via an unseen film crew. It’s through this technique that characters are able to comment on what the viewer has just seen or will see, an act that creates an instantaneous and perpetual sense of intimacy. That rapport, in essence, sets up the audience as an additional, unseen character in the room, removing the narrative distance between the action and the viewer at home.