We Have To Talk About The Doja Cat Needle Drop In Elvis
Ever since I saw the Elvis movie at the weekend, I've been listening to old Elvis Presley tunes. Turns out the highest selling recording artist of all time is quite good. It's a major spectacle, as you might expect from a Baz Luhrmann flick, and every inch worthy of The King. Austin Butler delivers under the weight of pressure a man like Presley brings too. He feels like the early front runner for Best Actor, although Oscar bait season is yet to start and my pick for this year remains Everything Everywhere All At Once's Ke Huy Quan. It focuses on visuals over storytelling at times, though tells a largely accurate story, even if it skirts around the age difference between 14 year old Priscilla and 24 year old Elvis when they first met and fell in love. There is one moment in particular I want to focus on though, and that's the Doja Cat needle drop.
There are a few magnificent moments across the movie. Butler's performance of Trouble with some of the most extreme hip thrusts known to man, wild enough to literally start a riot, comes to mind. The framing of the comeback special while Elvis belts out If I Can Dream with the iconic red ELVIS lettering behind him is another. Elvis sitting on the worn out Hollywood sign, the Golden Era now rusted and decaying as it overlooks a city that no longer loves it - it's a big Baz visual metaphor, baby! - is every bit as grand as I expect Luhrmann first imagined it as he sketched it loosely on a storyboard and smiled to himself. But it's the flavour of modern music dropped into the world that I left the theatre thinking about.
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This is nothing new for Baz Luhrmann. In his previous movie, the similarly spectacular The Great Gatsby, Jay-Z
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