Quentin Tarantino - Django Unchained

[cruising for burgers]

the only time i've seen him reference his foot fetish in a movie overtly was the opening shots to Death Proof.

You're forgetting the ten minutes of Uma wiggling her big toe in Kill Bill.

you're forgetting every QT's movie....

 

 

maybe not in reservoir dogs i don't recall...

[Guest zaphod]

wasn't he raised by a black guy?

[cruising for burgers]

ahhhh, so maybe that's it!

[lumpenprol]

was he? After re-watching Reservoir Dogs the other day, I was surprised at the use of "nigger" in the film. It was used surprisingly frequently in a really derogatory way by all the white characters in that film. Kind of odd in hindsight (though I guess you could argue possibly accurate to the way racist criminals talk? Dunno. Seemed like they might be speaking for the director, a little bit.). Didn't notice this over-use of nigger in any of his later films (though I haven't seen Django yet, which I know uses the term...OVER 100 TIMES lol)

[goDel]

Did I hear QT saying that Deathproof was his worst movie to date? And that he intends to keep it that way.

 

Haha Apparently he can be an arrogant bastard and self critical at the same time.

[awepittance]

it's a toss up for me between Deathproof and Kill Bill (as his worst film)

[lumpenprol]

Kill Bill is so dang bad. Both of them. Yeah, the standoff at the end of the second one is okay (apart from the silly finishing move), but the other combined what - 3 hours? - are a complete waste of space.

[goDel]

Best bit in Kill Bill, imo, is the Superman monologue. Brilliant observations in that monologue!

[awepittance]

i actually thought Kill Bill would have made a very entertaining single film , cut out all the masked ninja sword fight japan shit in part 1, cut out the superman monologue /exploding heart punch (refilm better ending). Basically if they kept almost the whole movie in america all those scenes i was pretty ok with. The only other scene i liked that didn't take place in the states was the flashback training montage of her learning how to punch through wood. I just cringe in disbelief especially in part 1 where they build up that young asian assassin character for so long (who wasn't even present in the revenge killing of uma thurman) with an anime and then she serves absolutely no purpose in the story. This seems to be a trend in recent QT movies, 'cool' characters that have way too much screen time and are absolutely pointless (like the radio host DJ or stuntwoman in Deathproof )

[goDel]

I do agree to a large part actually. QT movies can be a disjointed collage of 'cool' scenes from time to time. As if QT is just trying to show off his latest scrapbook doodlings which somehow can be made to apear somewhat related in some kind of overall story. With respect to the superman monologue, in my case that was a good thing, although I can understand where you come from when you say it doesn't need to be in the big picture.

 

But similar though, what would you leave out of Pulp Fiction? Do we actually need the foot massage dialogue? This might not be a particularly good example, but the point I'm trying to make is that because his movies are dialogue driven (instead of events), and in the real world it actually makes sense to have all kinds of unrelated discussions even though event might just go in one direction (for example, what do people talk about on a funeral - and if you'd make a film about one), would it be bad to keep the unrelated conversations in the film? not necessarily, i think.

 

Dunno, I'm a bit ambiguous on this one. I can thoroughly enjoy the superman monologue, even though it could be cut out the movie like you say.

[awepittance]

Pulp fiction was never my favorite, there are some oddly unnecessary dialog bits in there. the whole part where SAm Jackson explains what a 'pilot' is to vincent vega is still to this day probably one of the most cringe worthy lines of dialog he's ever written.
I think Reservoir Dogs and Jackie Brown are very much in a different league compared to the rest of his stuff personally.

i'm generally ok with conversations totally unrelated to the plot of a movie, but not when i can sense the writers hand so overtly. For instance i really liked the scene in Django where Waltz's character refuses to shake hands, but only isolated as a scene. It was a neat idea that i'm sure QT came up with to use in a future movie, but fitting it in this movie with this story it didn't make very much sense. The dialog is actually imo the least of his problems, it's his characterization and the way he does character arcs that seems extremely haphazard and almost secondary. I was on board with Django until all of the sudden Waltz becomes the underlying to Djangos' extremely out of character move to being the perfect undercover 'slaver'.

[lumpenprol]

I think Pulp Fiction is miles away his best film, and pretty much a masterpiece of modern American cinema. I remember liking it in theaters, and I remember it had huge hype surrounding it, but re-watching it about six months ago I felt it hasn't aged at all, really. A great balance of characterization, dialogue, humor, intensity - and always flipping the script and keeping the viewer on his toes. Can't really think of that many modern American films that reach the same level, maybe "There Will be Blood"? (totally apples to oranges).

 

Edit: as far as his second best film I'd probably say it was True Romance, even though he didn't direct. Best Tarantino film Tarantino never made. It's more a B movie though, not something you can hold alongside Citizen Kane or something (which I think you could do with Pulp Fiction, in fact - no hyperbole).

[Guest chunky]

When Uma Thurman and a black lady are in the kitchen and Uma's mouth opens then I cringe at every word of that scene.

[Mr.Sensi]

was he? After re-watching Reservoir Dogs the other day, I was surprised at the use of "nigger" in the film. It was used surprisingly frequently in a really derogatory way by all the white characters in that film. Kind of odd in hindsight (though I guess you could argue possibly accurate to the way racist criminals talk? Dunno. Seemed like they might be speaking for the director, a little bit.). Didn't notice this over-use of nigger in any of his later films (though I haven't seen Django yet, which I know uses the term...OVER 100 TIMES lol)

 

I wouldn't necessarily call the characters racist, but, from what I've seen, it's pretty damn accurate to how a lot of those men speak.

[Candiru]

I understand a lot of the criticisms, but remember while so many directors today are aping their heroes like Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman, Billy Wilder, Frank Capra, etc. and consciously aiming for something highbrow, Tarantino is doing the exact opposite. He's mining old throwaway entertaiment, giving it a modern update and kick in the pants and in a lot of ways it can come off as more sincere and not joyless like a lot of the Oscar bait out there. You'd really cut the fight with the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill? Come on. A popcorn flick CAN have a pulse. And the thing is, sometimes they aren't just popcorn flicks. I was thinking about Django a lot for a week after I saw it. When was the last time you saw characters like Doc Schultz and Stephen in a throwaway blockbuster?

[Silent Member]

<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote'data-author="Smettingham Rutherford IV" data-cid="1931315" data-time="1358193596"><p><br />

[youtubehd]JGQaJcwAtpU[/youtubehd]<br /><br />

<br /><br />

i love when he gets angry about this crap.</p></blockquote><br />

What a stupid cow.

Edit: wtf does she say at the end? She thinks adults who go see it should be burnt?

[SR4]

I understand a lot of the criticisms, but remember while so many directors today are aping their heroes like Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman, Billy Wilder, Frank Capra, etc. and consciously aiming for something highbrow, Tarantino is doing the exact opposite. He's mining old throwaway entertaiment, giving it a modern update and kick in the pants and in a lot of ways it can come off as more sincere and not joyless like a lot of the Oscar bait out there. You'd really cut the fight with the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill? Come on. A popcorn flick CAN have a pulse. And the thing is, sometimes they aren't just popcorn flicks. I was thinking about Django a lot for a week after I saw it. When was the last time you saw characters like Doc Schultz and Stephen in a throwaway blockbuster?

And Im fine with that. What gets me is people aping his aping of older material as deserving of the top echelons of filmmaking, and those who detract don't "get it".

 

He's updating exploitation movies. That's entertaining, and its novel, but those two characteristics do not in of themselves make a "great" filmmaker, unless you consider people like Roger Corman or Ed Wood to be great filmmakers.

 

Again, QT's milieu or artistic legacy suffers from what I would call the "hipster effect", when "hipster" starts out as something that embraces counterculture or previously rejected forms of culture pushed outside of the mainstream, and embraces it as their own. But gradually over time the "hipster" label expands to absolutely everything because mainstream media gradually realizes the commercial viability of the counterculture effect. Before you know it, the counterculture is one of the predominant forms of cultural norms and everyone is now in some shape or form defined by the "hipster" label.

 

So then the culture starts repeating itself in this odd feedback loop where you reach this absolutely mindboggling levels of post-post-post-post-metairony to the point where audiences embrace absolutely everything and anything without fully realizing why they like it, only that they "should" like it for some increasingly hard to pinpoint reason. That's why Gaga wearing a meat suit and going to the award shows in weird 1970's Frank Lloyd Wright archi-bubbles is cutting edge, why Tim and Eric are breaking the boundaries of comedy regardless of their skit's content, why kanye West and his crew wearing 80s fashion and weird haircuts are "with it", why nerds (or at least the idea of being nerdy) have suddenly become more popular than jocks. WHy The Room has become something even larger tahn cult classics ever hoped to be.

 

It's already been done, and it wasn't really that good the first time (or at least that's what we thought at the time), but that's why we "like it". We like it because its ironic. So if we start embracing and liking irony as the cultural norm, true-to-life honesty becomes harder and harder to draw out. And it blurs what subjective judgement of artistic endeavors actually "means"- are we liking it or ironically liking it? etc. etc.

 

Pulp Fiction was a masterpiece not because it was a throwback or homage to older films and directors, but because it was so flawlessly done, and the throwbacks worked within the context of the material. From the writing, to the transitions, to the difficult-yet-somehow-works-brilliantly timeline jumps in the narrative, to the individual characterization, to the acting, to the settings, and on and on and on. Now Im not a fan of Reservoir Dogs, but I can at least acknowledging why this would be seen as such an amazing movie, based on how little the budget was, relying on tight spaces and cohesive dialogue rather than effects, blood splatters and explosions. Jackie Brown the same way.

 

Now comes Kill Bill. Crazy violence, shit goin on everywhere in the camera, quick action cuts, interspersed with "classic" Tarantino dialogue. Ahhh yes, this is the Tarantino I remember and love. But after repeated viewings the dialogue doesn't seem to click if the spontaneity with the rest of the movie. More and more storylines seem unnecessary. Some of the action I daresay even seems superfluous. This is when I am immediately met with, "Tarantino filmed it that way as a throwback to (insert odd kung-fusploitation films)." Ok, fine.

 

But were those movies really good? Or were they just curiosities? Maybe QT does right by the originals, but does that by its own virtue make his new amalgamation "good"? This is what I have difficulty with. Inglorious Basterds was a box office hit, and I honestly thought that was the best thing he's made since Pulp Fiction. But even then there were slipups-the biggest one being the completely unnecessary and horrible inclusion of his director-pal Eli Roth, and the increased usage of old Ennio Morricone soundtrack material followed by a krautrock track or something from the 1970s. What does this specifically display to the viewing audiences of a WWII-exploitation movie? Is it ironic? Is it playing to emotions? Is it just an honest homage?

 

Ive lost my train of though and Ive already typed to much, but my point is, if someone says the latest QT film is "entertaining", that's fine, I tend to agree with that (save for 9/10ths of Deathproof). But a masterpiece, or a great piece of cinema? This is where I must investigate further.

[Squee]

There's some interesting trivia about Django in this podcast...

 

[SR4]

i also wanted to say, after rewatching Django, even though I sorta hate the movie, Samuel L. Jackson deserves an award.

[cruising for burgers]

i also wanted to say, after rewatching Django, even though I sorta hate the movie, Samuel L. Jackson deserves an award.

i felt that while watching pulp fiction right after watching django, the age factor just hit me and i felt an enormous compassion for the dude!

[takeshi]

<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote'data-author="goDel" data-cid="1931615" data-time="1358237189"><p>

But similar though, what would you leave out of Pulp Fiction?

</p></blockquote>

 

The cab scene with Bruce Willis and maybe some of "dead nigger storage". The cab scene just slows the film down and gives QT a reason to show another woman's feet (shoeless cab driver). While I tried to intellectualize QT's use of "nigger " in the later scene (his character is married to a black woman and maybe it's commentary on people that think they have a pass) but it mostly just comes across as a white guy giggling at the overuse of a "naughty" word. Also, Zaphod is right his main father figure was a black guy. So, I think he thinks it's cool.

 

Strangely enough I found the use of the word in Django funnier. That film uses it in a way that gets into the many contexts the word has.

[goDel]

i also wanted to say, after rewatching Django, even though I sorta hate the movie, Samuel L. Jackson deserves an award.

i felt that while watching pulp fiction right after watching django, the age factor just hit me and i felt an enormous compassion for the dude!

I've got a question though. Is Samual L. Jackson actually being used as a reference to the Oompa Loompas? He looks like a brown Oompa Loompa!

[Guest zaphod]

I understand a lot of the criticisms, but remember while so many directors today are aping their heroes like Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman, Billy Wilder, Frank Capra, etc. and consciously aiming for something highbrow, Tarantino is doing the exact opposite. He's mining old throwaway entertaiment, giving it a modern update and kick in the pants and in a lot of ways it can come off as more sincere and not joyless like a lot of the Oscar bait out there. You'd really cut the fight with the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill? Come on. A popcorn flick CAN have a pulse. And the thing is, sometimes they aren't just popcorn flicks. I was thinking about Django a lot for a week after I saw it. When was the last time you saw characters like Doc Schultz and Stephen in a throwaway blockbuster?

And Im fine with that. What gets me is people aping his aping of older material as deserving of the top echelons of filmmaking, and those who detract don't "get it".

 

He's updating exploitation movies. That's entertaining, and its novel, but those two characteristics do not in of themselves make a "great" filmmaker, unless you consider people like Roger Corman or Ed Wood to be great filmmakers.

 

Again, QT's milieu or artistic legacy suffers from what I would call the "hipster effect", when "hipster" starts out as something that embraces counterculture or previously rejected forms of culture pushed outside of the mainstream, and embraces it as their own. But gradually over time the "hipster" label expands to absolutely everything because mainstream media gradually realizes the commercial viability of the counterculture effect. Before you know it, the counterculture is one of the predominant forms of cultural norms and everyone is now in some shape or form defined by the "hipster" label.

 

So then the culture starts repeating itself in this odd feedback loop where you reach this absolutely mindboggling levels of post-post-post-post-metairony to the point where audiences embrace absolutely everything and anything without fully realizing why they like it, only that they "should" like it for some increasingly hard to pinpoint reason. That's why Gaga wearing a meat suit and going to the award shows in weird 1970's Frank Lloyd Wright archi-bubbles is cutting edge, why Tim and Eric are breaking the boundaries of comedy regardless of their skit's content, why kanye West and his crew wearing 80s fashion and weird haircuts are "with it", why nerds (or at least the idea of being nerdy) have suddenly become more popular than jocks. WHy The Room has become something even larger tahn cult classics ever hoped to be.

 

It's already been done, and it wasn't really that good the first time (or at least that's what we thought at the time), but that's why we "like it". We like it because its ironic. So if we start embracing and liking irony as the cultural norm, true-to-life honesty becomes harder and harder to draw out. And it blurs what subjective judgement of artistic endeavors actually "means"- are we liking it or ironically liking it? etc. etc.

 

Pulp Fiction was a masterpiece not because it was a throwback or homage to older films and directors, but because it was so flawlessly done, and the throwbacks worked within the context of the material. From the writing, to the transitions, to the difficult-yet-somehow-works-brilliantly timeline jumps in the narrative, to the individual characterization, to the acting, to the settings, and on and on and on. Now Im not a fan of Reservoir Dogs, but I can at least acknowledging why this would be seen as such an amazing movie, based on how little the budget was, relying on tight spaces and cohesive dialogue rather than effects, blood splatters and explosions. Jackie Brown the same way.

 

Now comes Kill Bill. Crazy violence, shit goin on everywhere in the camera, quick action cuts, interspersed with "classic" Tarantino dialogue. Ahhh yes, this is the Tarantino I remember and love. But after repeated viewings the dialogue doesn't seem to click if the spontaneity with the rest of the movie. More and more storylines seem unnecessary. Some of the action I daresay even seems superfluous. This is when I am immediately met with, "Tarantino filmed it that way as a throwback to (insert odd kung-fusploitation films)." Ok, fine.

 

But were those movies really good? Or were they just curiosities? Maybe QT does right by the originals, but does that by its own virtue make his new amalgamation "good"? This is what I have difficulty with. Inglorious Basterds was a box office hit, and I honestly thought that was the best thing he's made since Pulp Fiction. But even then there were slipups-the biggest one being the completely unnecessary and horrible inclusion of his director-pal Eli Roth, and the increased usage of old Ennio Morricone soundtrack material followed by a krautrock track or something from the 1970s. What does this specifically display to the viewing audiences of a WWII-exploitation movie? Is it ironic? Is it playing to emotions? Is it just an honest homage?

 

Ive lost my train of though and Ive already typed to much, but my point is, if someone says the latest QT film is "entertaining", that's fine, I tend to agree with that (save for 9/10ths of Deathproof). But a masterpiece, or a great piece of cinema? This is where I must investigate further.

 

how do the throwbacks in django not work in the context of the material? given, it's probably his most self indulgent work behind kill bill, but i found it to be his most emotionally engaging and, for lack of a better word, effortless film. i mean, you want to start an argument about exploitation movies being bad movies, and "the hipster effect", whatever the fuck that means, it's a slippery slope where we start saying john carpenter was making shit films or that alien is just a schlock genre movie. it's such a matter of personal opinion. i don't really get the crusade you're going on here where you assume that qt is somehow influencing other filmmakers or "ruining" movies with his own very particular brand of nostalgia. there aren't any other directors like him and his influence seems to have waned since the glut of pulp fiction rip offs in the mid to late 90's. i think django is great cinema, as i define cinema. is it a work of art? i don't know.

 

also, off topic, this quote system fucking blows. i can't tell where your post ends and mine begins.

[awepittance]

to me he could throw in as many throwbacks and homages as he wants to, that's not the problem with his most recent films. It's that they don't cohere as engaging stories enough. Even though in most respects Django was a well-made and highly entertaining movie, i didn't feel it was emotionally engaging because the characters weren't very believable. For the entire movie we're supposed to care he's rescuing his wife, but i don't even know who his wife is. All we're shown is a flashback scene of her being whipped, which as far as i'm concerned was the most emotional scene of the whole film. by the time we get to the rescue scenario the characterization of Django is hardly believable. QT explains this as the teacher and student 'switching roles' halfway through, neat idea but extremely poor and weak execution of this character dynamic. I found Django very frustrating as far as it being 'emotional' was concerned because it had all the ingredients there to make it truly emotionally engaging, but it just wasn't really at all.

edit: i'll mention the handshake scene again because it was a good scene, but why would Waltz put Django and his wife in more danger simply because he all of the sudden became so principled that he couldn't give someone a half-hearted handshake? Was his anger towards the treatment of slaves just all of the sudden so strong that he lost his rationality? This is the same man who shot a farmer in front of his son to make bounty money off of. IF we're supposed to believe that over the course of the Winter season he became much more of an empathetic human being it seemed very forced and not written very well.

[Guest zaphod]

i can't argue with that, those are valid points. kerry washington's character was badly written, but it didn't take away from my enjoyment of the film. i do think django is better than inglourious basterds, as a whole, although the opening scene of basterds was a master class on building tension...all of which is lost in the next scene when brad pitt single handedly ruins the movie. i don't think django contains that sort of tonal inconsistency. jackie brown and pulp fiction are still his best films and there's a pretty distinct point (kill bill) where tarantino stopped trying to engage the general audience with "real" stories and fully embraced his own fetish for niche and exploitative cinema. kill bill was terrible, but i think he's come a long way.

 

as far as sr4, i think you're projecting the common criticisms of hipsters onto tarantino's films and forming a causal chain that simply isn't there.