yesss. he was excellent.


i see the lack of intelligence in the moment but like he said "he couldn't help himself" which given what just had happened i find understandable. cuz it was much more than he was used to (or us as an audience). so i don't see it as out of character but rather it makes him a little more human, as it adds a bit of chaos (people aren't generally 100% predictable either). though in terms of the dramatic line it was (i thought) pretty predictable that this would happen somehow.


large parts of it made me ill, like the lashes and the mandingo fights and the dogs (so did pulp fiction btw, with all that heroin business and brains in the car and shit), but while in pulp fiction it eventually becomes self-evident that it's all stage blood (ketchup), here after all that cringing and gnashing of teeth the sweet taste of retribution more than made up for it.

isn't drama supposed to fuck with our emotions? it was quite the rollercoaster, and the sucka gets honest applause from me.

last 30 minutes were boring.

The Crow


What like with most Tarantino flicks?

Eh. Your explanation is generous. I'll give you that.

I was thinking, "The white guy can't end up 'rescuing' the black guy. He'll have to die."

Is that what you mean?

Still, I hated that part.

Great idea: let's have a prequel, dealing solely with Schultz.

ps- I thought the use of the word "cracker" was very over the line, in bad taste, and very offensive.

pss- Sorry. I don't care about spoilers, so I forget that others do.

SPOILER>>>>>

no, it's not about "race", cuz it would have been easy to set up a situation where django saved the dentist, but rather, it's a common trope, since the ancient gods, that one has to die for others to live (christianity stole that), and since django had to save his wife and it's an american movie neither could die-- hence it had to be the doctor cuz he was next in line. in a french movie on the other hand they would all have died in a heroic but futile attempt before achieving victory/freedom (sisyphus!)


s'allright! yeah i was like "how come these bitches are so good elsewhere but here they act like turtleheads". in retrospect, it's a bit of an arbitrary plot device, but at the time i got over it quickly. what i mean is, kill schultz to satisfy the need for human sacrifices, but kill him better.


oh man, that would be awesome


didn't catch that, but wouldn't have cared-- i just heard "nigger" said 9,999 times


^^^SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

-Hey, if you're figuring Tarantino was thinking more about ancient tragedy than race, then I again admire your generosity. Actually, based on your analysis, I realized this trope crops up a lot in . . . Westerns. It was an "aha" moment for me.

-Totally joking about "cracker."

-However awesome a Schultz movie would be (and in my head right now, it's the best movie ever made) we'll have to wait. He's currently working on Kill Bill Part 3.

well he actually throws you a hint-- schultz refers to the story of siegfried and brunhilde and while that's not 100% ancient it's wagner based on norse myth.


borges used to say (before he was dead and before he lost his sight completely) that the western was the last form of the epic


ha!


ugh... KILL kill bill... :/

"The 'D' is silent hillbilly."

High Plains Drifter

A kill bill prequel is the only way I can see a third volume not being terrible.

And in my mind, right now, it's as far from terrible as any other thought in my head.

I think tarantino lost his magic when he became an insider about 5-7 years ago. I liked the more underground and gritty without being gratuitous or contrived, its almost like Tarantino flicks have become cliches of themselves :X

Your Highness. Mixed feelings.

An insider? 5-7 years ago being roughly the era of "Grindhouse?"

I think he was one his way to industry insiderdom when he swept Cannes. And I think he has been a massive influence on screenplay writers since Reservoir Dogs. But I guess the Kill Bill era is probably what you're referring to; when everybody in the country was shooting was over the film, from Tweens to critics with an appreciation for the absurd.

Personally, I think Inglorious Basterds was his real Hollywood breakthrough. I'm not sure why, as it's his least accessible film by far, but that was his first film to attain blockbuster status AND unanimous critical acclaim. And I think somethong of the "old" Tarantino did shine trough in that film. It had the complexity of Pulp Fiction, and a screenplay that, in my kinda humble opinion, outshines even Reservoir Dogs.

Now I believe he's managed to carve out a niche in the mainstream, and I think Django Unchained is proof of that. I've only seen it once, but to me it was an epic that maintained a good deal of the grit and grime of pulp fiction. The flashback scenes (which should have been given more length and screen time) were great examples of this.

Now that he's had his fun with war-epics (or pre-war in Django's case), I'd like to see him re-explore heist films and Scorscesian crime dramas. And yes, a revisitation to the world of Kill Bill would have a lot if potential. As long as it bore no similarities to the style of the first two films at all. He should go for a character piece, and give insight into the more human (read: less superhuman) dimensions of the individual characters.

Shit I've gotta go to work.

Here is my thing with Django, and Tarantino

Inglorious Basterds worked BECAUSE they sidestepped completely the horrors of Buchenwald, and Auschwitz and all the other death camps. They were mentioned in passing, but not shown, because that reality, that utter cold truth of how evil humans can be to humans, would have made everything in Inglorious basterds glare in an ugly way as the farce it was (and a good farce, but a farce nonetheless, a superflous tiffle compared to the real dramas and horrors of WWII)

because Tarantino was clever enough to focus on just the wish-fulfilment aspect of his story, IB worked and I love it.

Django however, showed, or tried to show, the various brutalities of the african slavery situation. By spending so much time giving the audience lengthy scenes of torture and violence and extreme inhumanity, (the "mandingo" scene particularly was terrible and pointless, and actually, if you do your research, false, as the concept of slaves fighting to the death for the master's pleasure is really a made-up situation. The plantation records do not show this happening. A strong male slave was an extremely valuable possession, horrible as it may be to think about.)

Because they decided to show this horror, it created a jarring disconnect for me a a viewer. I could no longer care what happened in the film. It felt like just a white guy's cartoon version of what a blaxploitation movie was back in the day, with none of the personal connection that made us cheer for the Nazi killers in IB.

I guess I found the attempted combination of humor at the cartoony stupid KKK ("I can't see out of this mask!"), and the showing of visceral, brutal violence in a ham-fisted attempt to "respect" the slave's experience to be phony.

Didn't that happen with Pulp Fiction? The critics and public loved it and he could pretty much do what he wanted in Hollywood after that. He's been allowed to make movies like IG because of the success of Pulp Fiction. I'm not sure he'd have been given the same freedom had he made (or tried to make) IG first.

Juist watched,



The Proposition

oh that nick cave movie i saw it some years ago it was pretty good. the idea of setting up an orderly house in the middle of such desolation made for beautiful images.

re: tarantulino. i *hated* kill bill. hated hated hated. both 1 and 2. ugh! utter wankery crap. so i stopped watching him for a while. thanks to (d)jango i'm going to check out the previous stuff i missed, namely grindhouse and inglorious basterds (though i'm gonna watch the original inglorious bastards first).

@cheeto - "mandingo fighting" is really another piece of tarantula's movie pastiche. he was a video store clerk, so his movies are made up of other movies. see here the source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandingo_(film)

oh, busy morning, i gotta fuck off, meh!

I worked in a movie theater when PULP FICTION came out. It was entertaining to watch the crowd exit the theater. Most were smiling widely, as if they'd just had a massive orgasm. Men, women, black, white, young, old. But at nearly every screening, there were also walk outs. One woman--I swear--wanted her money back because John Travolta died in the middle, but came back at the end.

No other movie generated that sort of response, because no other movie was quite like it. Because I could watch it for free, I must have seen it on the big screen a dozen or so times until it was burned into my memory. Every other movie suddenly seemed a little old-fashioned and square. It was, no exaggeration, a revolution.

Everything he's made since then has been a disappointment, but of course it would be.

Your Highness was HORRIBLE!

Your Highness has a 26% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Movie 43 has a 4%.

So, Your Highness is over six times as good. Still, I want to see what a 4% movie looks like.

Sort of. Pulp Fiction was like Tarantino's "Creep" but not quite his OK Computer. People noticed, people enjoyed it, his name was big, but it didn't translate into mainstream popularity. Pulp Fiction, for all its popularity, is truly a cult film. It was also quite literally the only movie I owned for several years, on a beat up VHS copy, and I adored it!

I agree, Inglorious Bastards was his "it-girl" moment.The quaint, indy, DIY feel of his 1990s work is totally lost on every post-Kill Bill flick. Kill Bill is the transition. Parts of it retain that grit, the rest are boringly pretending to be like any other hollywood "system" movie. Then comes Grindhouse and Inglorious Bastards which are full-fledged cliches of earlier Tarantino flicks. There can never be another Pulp Fiction or Jackie Brown or even Four Rooms or Dust Till Dawn.. I think that if he doesn't go in a radical different direction, he will begin to sound like those crassly commercial veteran band revivals which only point out just how great those bands were 40 years ago, and just how unique that particular time was, and how it can't be recreated with out being contrived like a Bush album.

I just checked the box office profits for both and I'm amazed that IG took nearly three times what Pulp Fiction made. So I take it all back. Without seeing the figures I'd always assumed IG was a bit of a flop. Shows how much I know.

that is exactly right.

it was the huge megaexplosion of the "big indie". it was definitely the zenith of the indie film movement and a kind of watershed. bruce willis was in it. travolta made a comeback. samuel l. jackson became huge. the weinsteins made a fuckton. sundance was never the same after that. before pulp fiction, indies had proven they could be commercially successful (sex lies and videotape), but after that, the commerce took over and stuff started going to shit-- suddenly *every* fucking big studio had an indie division.

if we're going to compare with albums, reservoir dogs was bleach, pulp fiction was nevermind, and the shit that came after was... fucking nickelback.

inglorious basterds came after 15 years of consistent gentrification of indie film. it's not even an indie movie in any way-- it's a major fucking hollywood blockbuster-- in fact, kill bill was that already, they even made a benihana commercial based on it for fucks sakes. it was just like a summer blockbuster. no surprise there.

true that it's hard for tarantino to revolutionize film twice (few artists do that-- maybe picasso or matisse did the equivalent in their lifetimes) but while kill bill made me wanna vomit, (d)jango made me happy i watched.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to !@#$%! again.

Haha, straight to Nickelback then, no Bush transition phase? ;)

agreed completely !@#$%!, while I think that for Tarantino specifically Pulp Fiction is again his "Creep" and not yet exactly his OK Computer, I would definitely say that for indie film exposure in general and shifting the overall culture of big movies, Pulp Fiction is like the Nirvana of flicks. It elevated the entire indie film genre.

While I don't think Tarantino himself can do it twice, there are other greats who have pulled it off. James Cameron has done it twice. Stanley Kubrick has done it maybe a few more times than that. Scorcesse is always mixing things up on a monumental stage. Spielberg did it both in the 80s and then post-Shindlers' List. Coen brothers have tried, but I think like Tarantino they only really pulled off one revolution and both their mutual careers have just been an extension of that initial burst. Tim Burton definitely did it twice, first with is artsy/indie flicks and then with is stop-animation revolution. Love me some Tim Burton. We can sort of count John Singleton, who used to make really original and gritty films about authentic South Central Los Angeles, and later sparked off all the Fast&Furious bullshit blockbusters trends.. I would say on an indie level, the Hughes Brothers also had two revolutions, they introduced even grittier, MORE authentic versions of John Singleton films with Menace II Society and Dead Presidents (these are seriously groundbreaking movies) and then switched it up with From Hell and Book of Eli, however I don't think either of their revolutions ever translated into mainstream success.

lolol you gave me a red rep for quoting william blake! thanks for that! it cracks me up when i see it.

anyway it "elevated" but also destroyed it-- you ever been to sundance? i went once and-- holy shit, it's like hollywood boulevard on ice.

Yeah, quotes or not I didn't like the sentiments, but its nothing personal rare as red reps from me may be.. at least you got a good laugh from it :)

I agree with destroyed post-elevated, indie no longer exists either in music or cinema. DIY has completely replaced indie due to the accessibility of technology and internet media distribution. But in the microcosmic analysis of 1992-2005, I'd say there was a nice run of great, quality, authentic independent films thriving just like in the early-to-mid-1990s there were really great bands getting coverage and support. Now? The "system" has swallowed up all the talent and opportunity, much as systems always do, but surely there will be a new wave inevitably to come our way. In the meantime, much like how indie-musical innovations make there way into even the shittiest pop music, I think that most "Hollywood blockbusters" now are a bit better made and more enjoyable having taken some indie influences than they were in the 1970s and 1980s were it was hit or miss, sometimes epic, sometimes utter shit.

You may be right. However, it seems to me that Tarantino suffered a bit more than people are choosing to admit after the release of Jackie Brown.

Yes, Pulp Fiction was his breakthrough, but he was still very much an outsider in Hollywood. PF getting an Oscar Nod was kind of a shocker, because at the time, the Beat Picture category was still pretty closed off to independent films (except for the token "disturbing to the point of being unwatchable" films like Wild at Heart, 9 1/2 Weeks, etc. which helped the academy feel in touch with the gen x crowd, I guess). Pulp Fiction was a serious contender, and that was unexpected.

So he had this incredible buzz going after Reservpir Dogs, and he followed it up with an even better film that was like the fucking Nevermind of movies. Then, with everyone watching, he released a very solid film that, despite standing the test of time very well, kind of left the world in a collective "WTF" state, and failed to break down any barriers, or revolutionize film-making or blah blah blah....

I remember watching the film and thinking that it was a damn fine genre ode to noir and blaxploitation, but that its irony was too subtle, and its charm too easy to miss. Audiences were expecting him to make another game changer. What did they get? A love story with two forgettable lead characters and none of the bravado of PF. For a while there, some thought he was a flash in the pan.

How do you top Pulp Fiction? I don't even think Tarantino understood why it was successful! When he realized that people want style SO much more than substance, he responded with a hyperstylized throwback epic, defined by its homage to genre (pretty much EVERY genre) and its record breaking amount of gratuitous violence. What happened? "Tarantino's Back!!"

So I really think he's had to pay his dues twice over. He won over movie goers with Kill Bill. Then, he had to win over the critics and the film school douchebags again, and he did so in a huge way with Inglorious Basterds.

NOW he can do what he wants, and make Hollywood his bitch. Django was up for all kinds of awards, despite some mixed reviews and a fair amount of criticism.

Basically, I guess all I mean is, what about the years between PF and Kill Bill, when he was "executive producing" mediocre horror films, and generally acting like a bit of a ninny and a hermit? Pulp Fiction made movies better. Without it, I don't think Fargo would have turned the Cohen brothers into the most respected filmmakers in the world. It made it possible for little films to become massive hits, but it made things easier for the rest of the world. For him, shit- it probably made things pretty goddamn tough.
For the record, I think Kill Bill is brilliant. It's like some kind of social experiment, and for being a marriage of the Oscar Epic and the senseless bloodbath that puts asses in the seats, I think it's a tremendous film, and a hilarious concept, with some surprisingly powerful moments and two or three unforgettable performances.

RE: Django's excessive violence- I honestly havent thought much about it. Now that I think about it, I did have a hard time with the "Mandingo" scene, the dogs (do I need to be any more specific?), and the "pit" scene, short as it was.
Great movie, but I would have enjoyed seeing Jamie Foxx do a little bit mkre acting. His delivery was excellent, but I didn't see much personality in Django. Maybe this was intentional. Especially given the film's other main performances.

Something about his performance reminded me of Vincent Vega. That's fucked, right? Surely no one else felt that way. (?)

I don't think the mainstream audience "got" 4/5 of Pulp Fiction, as even LESS of Jackie Brown but both flicks were in the same vein. Both were to subtle and coy most Americans who lack enough flavor and whit to "get it"

I think what Tarantino did over the past years which killed it was he made "it" less subtle and too obvious as others have pointed out. For example, we never found out what the fuck was in Marsellas' fucking brief-case, something which most Americans either were probably pissed off about or even really didn't notice ;)

It feels like it had such potential, but then you actually watch it and you go "wtf happened with this idea". Too many WTF moments that mostly didn't work.

I take your point but still think Tarantino's power in Hollywood is more directly attributable to the success he had with Pulp Fiction. That was what gave him the green light to indulge himself with stuff like Kill Bill and the whole Grindhouse thing - neither of which I liked, I have to admit. I'm not a big fan of Inglorious Bastards, either, but I can't argue with its success. I just don't see that it's changed his status much within Hollywood. He'll always be an outsider to some degree simply because he'll never make the kinds of film that Hollywood largely associates itself with. They accomodate him, though, because his movies usually make a profit, but that's always been the case, from Reservoir Dogs onwards. Even Death Proof was a commercial success. Hollywood doesn't endorse directors so much as invest in them and if nothing else Tarantino is always a solid investment.

Since you looked up the box office, demonrail, you'd know better than I, but I thought PULP made well over 100 million. I think it was made for around 30. Anyone who more than triples an investment gets a big fat green light.

It is all thanks to danny DeVito who financed and produced Pulp Fiction. Thank Mario for Danny DeVito

Yeah, PF made about $200m worldwide on an $8m budget whereas IG made about $300m on a $70m budget. So PF is still the more profitable of the two. Either way, no studio will turn down figures like that.

You could say the same about Scorcese too to be honest.

I disagree, Scorcese had several distinct eras all which were successful on their own merits.

I meant he's pretty much a total outsider who somehow manages to make what he wants and how he wants.

And none of his best films were HUGE hits were they?

And to odd my tuppence about Tarantino-I've enjoyed all of his films to a certain degree (although I've still not seen Django) but at the back of my mind I'll always see him as a hack. He's manage to get a career out of doing "homages" as he like to call them when they really aren't. Every film is shockingly ripping something off without a shred of originality and it pisses me off.

I've got friends who think he's God yet when I try to show the lsit of films he's copied they brush it off.

In that context, I see what ya mean, and in this analogy I'd say with obvious parallels that Taxi Driver was his Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas was Scorcese's Kill Bill and Gangs of New York was Inglorious Bastards, and Shutter Island/The Departed was Django..

Just watched this pretty harrowing documentary on Vice about this new street drug in Greece called sisa, it's a derivative of crystal meth. Journalism at its finest.

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/vice-news/...he-poor-part-1

watched this last night with my wife. I enjoyed it. It was silly but quite biting and funny. I am a huge Galifianakis fan. he likes to make people I hate uncomfortable I give it a 7/10.

stupid meth. don't people just smoke crack anymore? shit is destroying the fucking world one life at a time :(