So there was this James Cameron movie released in 1997 (85 years after the Big Boat Went Down, as Dig says). You know–starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio? With the song that was so ubiquitous that if you hate Celine Dion, it’s probably the direct cause? And which then hauled home a raft of Oscars?
[That Maggie went to see in the theatre four times? All, I believe, in the huge Woodfield Cinemas, now a parking lot.]
You may have heard that it’s being re-released to theatres this year, with retrofitted 3D, because of some significant milestone or other.
Dana Stevens (film critic for Slate) didn’t watch it during its original release, eschewing it for its huge box office and Oscar haul as indications of “the triumph of mediocrity”, but she now recognizes it for its “triumph of popular art.”
Ebert gives it 4 stars again (despite his view that 3D is a net negative).
At the TED conference in February 2010, James Cameron stated: “Secretly, what I wanted to do was I wanted to dive to the real wreck of ‘Titanic’. And that’s why I made the movie”.
We watched it last weekend, and if you’re a Titanic buff, it is amazing how very many accurate details it includes. Many of them that very few people (like, say, people who are watching it as part of a project requiring research on various minute points) would recognize. Stuff like including tiny speaking parts portraying Guggenheim and his mistress Mme. Aubart, the Duff Gordons, the Countess of Rothes, and the Strausses, and the amazing authenticity of the layout and fittings of the ship.
Except of course for the obligatory portrayal of Mrs. J. J. Brown as a crass hick, starting with her name.
But that’s a subject for another post. . .