Why did things go so terribly wrong with Tarantino?

one-dimensional characterizations HOW SO?

no plot UM, YES THERE IS, IT'S ABOUT THE BRIDE GETTING REVENGE, PRETTY OBVIOUS IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT

actually this is true of all fincher's films!!

i ages ago had an idea to do a piece about RESERVOIR DOGS and SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC as MORE SIMILAR THAN YOU THINK

but it has run into the sand = merely turned into a lonely post on a message board

xpost

-- kate/thank you friendly cloud (kat...), March 9th, 2005.

i love his movies but i have to agree with you there.

Kill Bill is QT's only 'epic' film - on that basis you might expect the others to get accused of having no plot before it. but they all have tangents and intricacies within a simple premise - he juggles well.

I think he ran out of idea after "Pulp Fiction", myself.

haha does this emotional response actually EXIST dog latin!? (oh no! my false memory of this experience trumps the actual real repeat experience! oh NO!!)

i kinda hope it does

You have opened a MASSIVE box of contention here.

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i doubt it, actually

It'd be okay if he came up with some original ideas instead of these homages to obscure films that he obviously hopes will give him some kind of hip street cred or something.

i can't see why 'original ideas' is automatically better than magazinesque homage.

Not quite the same. Godard said something about the human condition other than "look at all the movies I've seen".

xpost

i can't see why 'original ideas' is automatically better than magazinesque homage

Because the former is the goal of art and the latter is pointless.

i don't agree at all really - surely 'original ideas' are the critic's goal more than the artist's. homage is crucial to both practices.

Homage is for the critics, originality is for the artist.

xxpost

I keeny await momus' contribution to this thread ;)

i could be totally wrong about this as i haven't seen kill bill.

and yet somehow it did, extraordinary!

It was without charm.

i found all the scenes between Beatrix and Bill quite charming - his devilish charisma, her quiet awe mixed with occasional sass, wry suspicion, and the slightest hint of FEAR - all conveyed very well, good chemistry backed with some dialogue exchanges as good as any from his other films

i found it remarkable in it's playfulness, tho often cringingly trite ("you know for minute there...i did..." - yet somehow it's not really a problem), happily surrendering to cliche (often his own, often from myriad other genres and algorithms) at times, eschewing it vehemently at others - mostly it is cute, often hilarious stuff (how can you not love the audacity and whim of The Bride telling the young kid to stop hanging with the yakuza and go home to his mother?)

Even at the end as she kills Bill, he's made to utter some preposterous expository line about how the karate master must have taught her the special manoeuvre that kills him.

i DID have a bit of a problem with this i must admit, but more for the nature of the situation not the dialogue (it being such a bizarre situation, sticking to simple lines one could understand easily was perhaps the best option)

(and that karate master was such an utterly lame cliché of a character.)

no less entertaining for it, but i'd say 'extreme' rather than 'lame'

The movie was so boring. Every scene went on for twice the length it should have, it had zero sense of pace. The tangents it went off in led nowhere, they were just stitched in there for no good reason except that he'd filmed them. If there's any director in need of a good editor, by Christ it's Tarantino.

purely objective flailing. the tangents/flashbacks i liked as punctuation - the anime sequence (unoriginal instyle, not that this is a criticism, but original in deployment) for example - but this was more about fucking around with genre and order as with all his other work.

my only vague criticism: it wasn't Dadaist enough (at all?)

it's hardly QT's fault no one else has picked this ball up and run w.it

Similarly, films don't necessarily need a strong plot if the focus is elsewhere. But if it's essentially a plot-driven film... There were one or two good scenes - I liked the one when Uma's fighting some girl-assassin and the girl-assassin's kid comes home. There's some tension in the juxtaposition of the revenge killing and the domestic scene. But such interesting tensions were very few and far between.

Hm, I thought the dialogue in RDogs & PulpF were awful, awful. Which is why I've always prefered JBwn and why KBill vol.1 worked. (vol 2 was tedious for other reasons however).

KB is a well-executed comicbook movie, but BIG DEAL. One can no longer imagine him doing something as 'original' as Pulp Fiction, but merely cataloguing film references and fetishes.

I remember mid-'90s interviews where he said he'd eventually make his "Eric Rohmer film"; any bets?

True, but we're all film scholars now thanks to DVDs and all-region players and therefore we can afford to be cruel. (I have no idea how much I am kidding or not.)

Beatrix and Pei Mei first fight and subsequent training sequences

Beatrix sees her daughter for the first time

Buck

the flight into Japan

also please name characters more awesome than Pei Mei in any movie ever made kthanxbye

(cf also "i heart the 80s" and "top 100 cartoons")

haha, try watching it at Glastonbury at midnight ON YOUR OWN surrounded by people stoned out of their minds calling out for 'Dave'

Pointing out the clichedness of a film that is paying homage to forms rather strictly based on stereotypes seems kind of like accusing Superman of being stupid because, really, people can't fly.

Actually I don't think Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction were just wholesale takes from graphic novels, they were juxtaposing different bits of popular culture rather than dumbly copying them.

xpost

Classic or dud: assuming that Quentin Tarantino intends to remake the world in his image, just because everyone else thought that for three years in the nineties.

What are the different bits of popular culture being cleverly juxtaposed in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction?

And that of course is not at all a subjective thing. You're right, I hate Kill Bill now.

xpost

i disagree with this btw - it's more 'plot and dialogue are to be played around with to see if epic, classic stories still matter today or can matter and be engaged with in alternate ways whilst i implore the audience to re-assess the valuation of/order of valuing aesthetics, concept, meaning, context, juxtaposure and other mcluhanist argle-bargle whilst having a biiiiig wank because well, why not?' for me

must go and do some work now, thanks for the conversation.

I don't think he's 'gone terribly wrong' is what I'm bumblingly trying to say.

Alright so the bible references, McDonald's conversation, extreme violence are not in some way analogous to the yellow fighting outfit, the spaghetti western philosophy sessions from Buck, the Spice Girlsy ninja team, etc?

Would it possibly be more accurate to say that the methodology of Tarantino has not changed but you prefer the pastiche/references in the previous films to the things being referenced in the current films?

xpost her feet also feature prominently in PF and in fact he also has lengthy shots of Darryl Hannah's feet and Lucy Liu's feet in KB. WTF?! And that whole foot massage conversation in PF...fucking weird, seriously.

Kill Bill 1 and 2 were good just not... just maybe not what I hoped for from the T Man but HELL they are still BRILLIANT films. Especially Kill Bill 2.

And Tarantino doing a Friday the 13th sequel well why not? He's never disguised his love for horror or exploitation films. It makes perfect sense to me.

I love Tarantino and think he's a genius.

But my beef with KB is probably more in just basic filmmaking than the way he references pop culture. Too many longueurs, dull dialogue etc, basic stuff.

oh wait it was me, just now

Tarantino making a better comic book movie that all of the movies made from real comic books in the last 5 years = the quintessence of damning with faint praise. (Anyone over 18 "into comics" = Simpsons Guy to me.)

>can Dr. Morbius or whoever note what other film sequences those scenes reference and argue why they're better or not?<

If I am capable of logging the refs of a guy who thinks TV musical stings from "Mannix" are worth hommaging, please kill me.

>a big derivative wank to Tarantino's favorite martial arts movies<

Or to chix who fight to the death.

and why the fuck would you want to? it strikes me as a ridiculous complaint

I really love Quentin for doing that.

I was the right age when Reservoir Dogs happened. I was already huge on cult cinema - tracking down Fulci and Argento and the Baby Cart movies and (the then unknown) John Woo and Tsui Hark - but Tarantino turned many of us on to new filmmakers and stars.

I think Kill Bill lacked his great dialogue, but it also paid homage to Hong Kong martial arts, and Japanese samurai films, and it did so well. How many people, after Kill Bill, went and re-discovered Sonny Chiba or Shogun Assassin?

It did its job, Tarantino makes being a movie geek cool. I like that about him.

Hellboy has a devil put aside for you

how would/could you change a character like Pei Mei though? and is Pei Mei the most extreme version of this cliche yet in terms of both violence and humour (bearing in mind Pei Mei is actually meant to be taken just as (un)seriously as the equivalents from FoTWL and other movies of that era generally) - again, QT judges very well imo when and when not to stay faithful to what he's homaging, or indeed parodying

And I wasn't criticising Kill Bill for being a martial arts homage, I was condemning it for being slavish and boring in its homage. I can certainly imagine a martial arts homage I might enjoy. I liked Crouching Tiger for instance.

No, crap. If the hommmage has no life of its own, it's a waste of time. Esp a fucking 4-hour martial-arts wank.

It's this kind of ever-lowering culty expectations that leads possibly intelligent fanboys to assert "Tarantino is a genius," which should earn them the cure of a yearlong diet of combat-free pre-1960 world cinema.

"I was a movie buff dork as a kid, prodigious really, having seen more movies before I graduated from high school than most people will ever see in their lifetimes, okay? Didn't go to college for any fancy learning and get all boozhy and dialectical and 'sophisticated,' okay, just kept watching more and more movies, working at video stores, talking about movies, until I'd seen all the great ones so many times I realized all Good is is nerve and then that freed me up to stop watching Shane and Citizen Kane double features every Saturday night and Fellini matinees on Sundays and celebrate instead the inner geek that had produced all this expertise by realizing there's nothing wrong with Hong Kong. Okay? So liberating was this I started writing screenplays and lo and behold True Romance and whatever else get bought and I'm making Reservoir Dogs. I'm the same oc maniac I was at 12 just with the freedom to do whatever I want. What you call lame I call who cares."

yeh because every single film made before 1960 outside the US was utterly brilliant of course (or is this your point?)

No Sven, it's because the greatest of those films are obviously undervalued by QT celebrants, or they wouldn't have such aesthetic tunnelvision.

Volume 3: So Very Tired Of Opinions Presented As Facts

by the same 'logic' you might say movie scholars overlook Kill Bill because they are big fat rockists, blinded by the 'facts'

of course i own both of these on DVD but NOTHING ELSE from the Far East or any other homages to Asian movie genres. i also seldom read fiction, play video games or eat my greens. You may feel better about yourselves noooowwww.

and yet his first two movies are telling most movie geeks that they're not very cool. go figure.

Yeah, check the thread title, a "fact" is what we're discussing, right? Jesus.

Most of QT's "irony" is utterly lost on mallplex audiences. To what degree does this render it irrelevant?

One of my favorite'90s films -- far superior to any QT film save PF --is Mars Attacks!, since it uses '50s/60s pop tropes for burlesque and misanthropy.

i think tarintinos movies are about creation or recreation of family, and lost family--hes a little boy looking for his mother, i saw that in the band of brothers that marked resivor dogs, in the plot seekling a narative--in the hunny bunny/tim roth; in the dancing at jack rabbit slims; even in (esp. in ) how the boxer treats his girl--that scen, in the motel, with blueberry pancakes, the eroticism, the sadness and loss, is a complete and absolute refuting that tarintion doesnt care for women and doesnt care for anything but violence--it proves he is capable of honest intimacy.

jackie brown is an amazing movie, its hard and soft at the same time, it has some of the most haunting visuals, the writing is quick and surfs b/w shallow and deep. it has pam grier--and it was insane that she didnt get an oscar, because pam grier was hurt, wounded, but also looking for love, looking for a completion of family.

kill bill then, kill bill i had trouble w. i thot it was a fuck you movie, i was isolated because i didnt think of it as anymore then a formal excercise in genre, a oilipu (sp) game for explotation hacks--but then, she is looking for her father, she is murdered at her wedding, the whole movie then becomes about how women act in the world of men--and they are as tough, as brutal, as feeling and unfeeling--as real and as unreal as men. it is a grand femminist movie, and it is one of the few movies that i saw that explained the horror of rape, woman in the board room, woman as widows and orphans.(she may be called the bride, but she is a widow--and she makes people orphans and she makes people widows) (people as widows and orphans). it is also a fucking amazing movie formally, gorgeous, complicated, fracturede and seeking its own wholeness. (and its lack of wholenes,, the possiblity of sequels that do not happen...)

also, ling--who was a racist caricture in television and hollywood blockbusters, makes an accurate and emotionally raw performance, he sees things in actors that other directors have given up on. (travolata, forestor, ling, carradine)

its frustrating, b/c i find alot of these things in his source material have the complications, formal innovation and emotional sucker punching that tarintino has--but these films wont ever be in the london review of books.

This isn't really a ringing endorsement, you know.

in conclusion: USE OTHER WORDS PLEASE.

x-x-x-post

I know. I don't like Crouching Tiger.

LOVE Jack in MA! "Ya give up pork?!"

I don't think watching Crouching Tiger and/ or Kill Bill and enjoying it, without any background interest in Hong Kong or Japanese action cinema, is bad at all. It gives fuel to the fire of the die hards who scream, "Waaaah, but don't you know that Iron Monkey is better than Crouching Tiger" (note: it isn't - they're both fantastic) or, "Waaaah, I was watching Sonny Chiba in 'The Streetfighter' long before Kill Bill" (BFD)... Crouching Tiger, personally, blew me away and I think it is an utter masterwork. This comes from someone who eats up Hong Kong cinema with a passion, writes about - and has written about it - professionally and is currently considering a book on the subject.

(xpost: Mars Attacks! IS funny but I have no desire to watch it again.)

a) Comic books can go places and do things that books and films rarely can, in terms of energy and pacing and imagery.

b) On one hand I find the KB = comic book movie idea plausible because I think it does a great job of capturing the kind of kinetic energy and episodic pacing that comic books excel at. One the other hand, I don't honestly thing it was influenced by any specific comic books, and if someone CAN prove me wrong then I would love to read those books.

Big Fish is the worst film of the thread thus far. It'd be OK on mute, I guess (cept for the Crudup-Finney contemporary stuff).

Note: The Encyclopedia was written back in 1984 so it's allowed a few factual errors - it's an amazing and highly collectible guide.

PS. His dialogue was never good. He's like the Bendis of the movie world.

>how many goddamn films has Spielberg made?
>>he's made zero films but a lot of movies

Hipster snobbery at its finest.

AI, Amistad, Pvt Ryan, The Terminal > Kill Bill

I'm sure Spielberg has daydreams that are more cinematic than Quentin's last opus.

haha x-post (mark i am halfway thru your great book!!)

ew no. okay, I haven't seen the Terminal or Amistad and I couldn't sit all the way thru Pvt Ryan but still...

One comparison: the next Spielberg film in production has a script by Tony Kushner;

Tarantino has been outed as a functional subliterate (former associate's book).

Even Minority Report was better than Kill Bill, and that's with a disastrous final reel.

The patchwork of styles is far closer to something like L'Age d'Or than it is to Tarantino's first two films. Kill Bill begins with the mother of one absent child murdering the mother of an all-too-inappropriately present child, and then proceeds to catalogue the fucked-up things that families (in particular parents and children) can do to one another. I'm still not at all convinced that Tarantino hadn't planned the two volume structure all along, each film is so consistent in mood and so different to its twin.

The symbolic father/daughter relationship between Bill and Bride is pushed to the point where the possibility of this relationship being real is hinted at, just as Bride/Elle are the mirror of dysfunctional siblings Bill/Budd. Bride's growing awareness that she may be dragging B.B. into one of the cycles of violence/abuse that touch every character in the films gives Vol. 2 the downbeat sourness/melancholy opposed to Vol. 1's kinetic adrenalin buzz. Revenge moves from the heroic to the corrupting (just like between Godfathers I and II).

The emotional scope of Kill Bill is enormous compared to RD or PF. And Tarantino does this with beautiful cinematic bravado - words and situations can be as functional or as stylised as he wants because this is not intended to appeal to a score-keeping or interpretative sensibility. Which isn't to say the films only work viscerally, far from it, just to say they're most removed from the "nerd"-ishness of the earlier films, even if they draw from similar sources.

It's a cliche, but this is Pure Freakin' Cinema and after almost losing interest in him, I'm now as excited as hell to see what Quentin does next.

P.S. Spielberg is incapable of any of this shit because his soul is made of plastic.

RD is just stupid unwatchable shit. PF has moments. JB is good but overrated, it hasnt aged THAT well. KB is my favorite but only volume 1, which has a dreamlike weirdness and one thing after another pace that volume 2 lets down to focus on, i dunno, "themes" or whatever. it's ok tho.

Hahahaha this the funniest thing I've ever read.

QT draws comparison to Bunuel, and you ppl shit on the Spielbergs and Jerry Lewises.

His subliteracy is relevant because it's a possible indicator of why Spielberg is more humane, more engaging, more political, more than the sum of fetishizing the surfaces of pulp.

obv these are stupid criticisms from any objective standpoint. I think, though, that what bothers me ultimately is that even the most interesting parts of his films (to me): the attempts at redemption, the family angles written about above, getting old in jackie brown, all of that feels just a bit borrowed, and it's not so much the fact that tarantino doesn't have a right to these themes because they have nothing to do with him, just the movies he has watched (that's a dumb criticism too), but the fact that he doesn't seem to invest them with any sort of potentially embarassing personal committment.

it's like watching a very young child sing a very adult and emotional song and doing it perfectly, but still feeling that something is missing. I can't connect to anything.

x-post: i don't think they are shallow at all! i guess i was saying they are in fact superficially deep. ok i said i wasn't good at explaining this... (note i do leave KB out of this, it's both the most shallow and the least susceptible my criticism above. go figure.)

i love ferlin's reading of KB tho to be honest i got bored and fast-forwarded KB1 and haven't bothered w.KB2

I'm sorry that you don't realize that Spielberg is a hack.

you mean like in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom"? Spielberg is a fucking hack thru and thru - something made only that much *more* objectionable by his weighing down his films down with super-obvious, hamfisted politics ("its a war movie, but it also TEACHES YOU A LESSON MAAAAAN!")

(ps I also totally hated Schindler's List)

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There ARE more shallow filmmakers than QT -- PT (Barnum) Anderson and Gaspar Noe leap to mind -- but his trend ain't lookin' good.

>More political is a fair cop but are you putting us on with the rest of it? And isn't that kind of all in the eye of the beholder?<

Doesn't the second question pre-empt the first? I'm not putting on. I find Spielberg's search for lost father theme, to name ONE, far more affecting than any emotion in QT's oeuvre. If you dismiss Spielberg --particularly great older films like E.T. and Empire of the Sun -- I'd say you have no respect for the classical Hollywood directorial style.

>spielberg's bullshitmeter began to fall to pieces the moment he stopped being a "mere virtuoso technician"<

That was as far back as Close Encounters, so I guess you think his first two films are the best.

x-post

Have you seen Sugarland Express, Shakey?

there are good bits in lots of his other films

I haven't seen Sugarland Express, there are a handful of Spielberg things I think are fantastic (Jaws, Raiders, Empire of the Sun, maybe some of the others I haven't seen in a long time like Close Encounters...)

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hahahaha! "Get me Steven Spielberg or his Mexican non-Union equivalent!" comedy gold.

And I have seen both KB's back to back. They are definitely best viewed in succession.

Well like I said I originally felt the same way, but I've come around to believing that they work well in the fashion they were released.

i'd like tarantino to try a kind of social realist film or art film or something. what if he had grown up watching bergman and de sica instead!?!

(WRT spoiler: It fits in with the entire "the Bride's revenge goes pear-shaped and is very possibly completely hollow and unsatisfying" angle being worked at the beginning of Vol 2; that's the first point in the movie where events don't dance to the tune of The Bride's mad piper of destruction and throws a blanket of doubt onto a previously inevitable and predictable outcome.)

j blount needs a time-out.

xpost x10000000

That Spielberg started to suck when he met Kate Capshaw!

Because, during that part of the film, Bud > The Bride and Elle > Bud (lethally so), so there's a very real sense that Elle could take The Bride out permanently in a way that O-Ren and Vernita couldn't; also The Bride is cheated from exacting her full revenge by Elle which throws into question whether her motivation is going to stay up through the end of the movie and the final confrontation with Bill (which I think is part of the reason why the majority of that confrontation was spoken rather than physical; in addition to the utter shock of seing her daughter, The Bride's definition of "revenge" has had to shift somewhat as a direct result of her journey towards Bill. Plus there's the plot symmetry of showing the two "successful" revenge attempts int he first half, making The Bride into an unstoppable elemental force, followed by two "unsuccessful" revenge attempts (at least, unsuccessful by the original remit laid down at the beginning of Vol. 1) bringing her back to humanity.

and THANK YOU Alex for pointing out the Spielberg-Crapshaw connection, cuz that's the triple-truth ruth, right there.

YMMV, I guess. If you like to be sledgehammered over the head with heartfelt emotion tears.

xxxxxpost Empire of the Sun seems like it'd fit in with Nu-Spielberg in terms of complaints but it doesn't, maybe because films that center on little kids seem like they SHOULD have that kind of thing going on, because that's how a little kid would see things, black and white up and down.

-- mark s (mar...) (webmail), March 9th, 2005 9:52 PM. (mark s) (link)

interesting, the object of scorn in one of his more famous essays was not de sica but rossellini! particulary "germany, year zero" iirc. bunuel assailed the strategy of 'naturalizing' melodramatic devices by placing them in a 'realist' context (i don't think these are the exact terms he used, he was bunuel after all). i like rossellini, but just the same i think he was unusually spot-on and unusually prescient in a period where the melodramatic materials of the 'neorealist' films were appreciated by very few as such.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxpost

i think mark's take of spielberg is perhaps too schematic. yes undoubtedly something was lost through spielberg's 'serious art' aspirations, but was nothing gained? were there not elements of such highmindedness present nearly from the beginning? i'm not comfortable with the idea that, in this scheme, 'jaws' is necessarily purer (therefore better) than 'close encounters.' each film is really a different case, and while it's tempting to oppose, say, 'duel' and 'schindler's list' as the twin poles of spielberg's art, i think a lot of the sensations produced by the films in-between are sadly lost.

xxpost

ally: i sort of agree maybe. at least i think spielberg's directness was waaaaay to the advantage of 'a.i. artificial intelligence.' few other directors would have had the courage (??) to film that last 30 minutes.

Aslo, Kate Capshaw sucks but really who else could have done that role (besides Sharon Stone)?

I have unreasoning lURve for Temple.

i probably care less about tarantino, strangely, as i do about spielberg. maybe because tarantino's films, even on repeated viewings, have abjectly failed to stir my emotions.

(except the fucking young indy bullshit in last crusade)

The part where dude pulls out that heart is pretty dark and unsettling, Ned! (Not quite as unsettling as the face-melting in Raiders but still...)

See, that's the thing. Watching both on DVD when I got the set, the face-melt part still creeps out, the heart-pullout part = meh. (Also, music's far worse, the sets REALLY stink...it's just nowhere near as atmospheric or creepy a film as when, say, the Ark is first revealed in Raiders.)

xpost

'temple of toom' has WAY too much aggressive backlighting. you can practically see the seams in the sets.

xxpost

"indiana jones defends his recent research to the tenure committee"

ryan you do see that stuff in raiders!! very crowded office hours and potential sexual harassment suits

He also has a really nice bungalow.

yeah i do prefer their singlemindedness though

empire is such a weird amalgam of spielbergo and ballard—could two minds be less alike?—that it kind of sits off in its own territory

Toom toom toom, let's go back to my room.

totally!! an allusion that somehow works perfectly when transposed to features

Slocki that was in Last Crusade!

anyway, I thought it was Morbius who brought up Spielberg, and while it was me who brought up Temple of Doom, I never meant to imply that one could not enjoy both Temple and Pulp Fiction - don't be silly! I only brought up Temple as prime evidence of Spielberg "fetishizing his pulp references" or whatever it was Morby said originally...

i wish last crusade was better.

Spielbergo and PK Dick being the obvious answer.

disagree: see the freaky gov't agents scene in ET for example

i can't remember if you only see his bungalow in last crusade though.

No, you very much see it in Raiders. There's a short scene that I really like that shows Denholm Elliott's character coming over to let Indy know the gov't has okayed things. They talk briefly both about Marian and the Ark, Indy says something at the end about 'you know what a careful guy I am,' throws a gun in his suitcase, scene cuts to the plane...

xposts

Surely we on ILX should be able to find a soft spot in our hearts for Empire, what with it starring* a star ILXer?

* not in fact starring, but a named role

xpost

tracer's post was strangely erotic.

OH MY GOD I AM IMAGINING UMA THURMAN AND KAREN ALLEN MAKING OUT

Although I guess the hot schoolgirl with the eyelids was in Raiders, right?

Read above -- as Dan notes, there are similar scenes in both films. (The redux nature of Last Crusade in general irritated me then and now.)

eh, I see your pt, but that's such a short sequence... and there is a LOT more to Dick than just "fear of the police/govt" paranoia.

I never saw Minority Report, I just couldn't bring myself to bear it, there were so many things wrong about it just on the surface (Tom Cruise as a PKD protagonist = wtf?!?)

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Tarantino doing Bond is a great fantasy. It fits with the current Roger-Moore-was-actually-a-great-Bond sentiment.

as you can see i watched "last crusade" 0.56 times

Nutty. I only watched it once back in 1982, and even then I was bored or something with the middle part and geeked out in the lobby on Phoenix or Galaga or something.

Er, are you sure you aren't misremembering the beginning of Raiders?

(this idea is almost as scary to me as bunuel makes empire of the sun)

Raiders of the Lost Ark was always my favorite Spielberg film, because of the more haunting qualities that hinted at, well, God being displeased with his gold box being fucked with. I'm not talking about the Nazi meltdown, just some other touches here and there throughout the film. Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Jaws would round out my top three, based on Spielberg's considerable skill at making these fanciful adventures seem grounded in reality and dealt with by real people. His casting in those two films was perfect.

Saving Private Ryan is a weak film because the story is not at all compelling, it doesn't really say much about war either pro or con, and fuck those bookends. Perhaps unfairly, it sucks even more when held up next to the remarkable Band of Brothers. I prefer The Longest Day, actually. Maybe for that funny shot of Robert Mitchum jogging across the beach right at the German machine guns, that were apparently firing gummi bears at the American troops.

Axiom 2: See axiom 1.

(note i prefer this version of yr name)

-- s1ocki (slytus...), March 9th, 2005.

See Axioms 1 and 2.

Fear the sermons, my son...

(sorry, had to)

MR. DNA :'(

I thought she didn't actually figure it out until the coffin scene. So when she uses it at the end it's the first time she's ever used it on someone.

it's probably safe to say that EVERY movie about a professor would be improved if that professor was in fact Indiana Jones. Wonder Boys, for instance.

this thread acutally makes me quite upset...people assume that any formal reading is a surface reading--i dont think thats fair.

i also think that people keep viewing pulp as somehow not worthy, not impt enough for critical attention, so a movie that works from pulp is equally shallow.

i think that tarintino is brilliant--firstly as a formalist, which means people notice that b4 the emotional complexity, depth and pervisrty (sp)...

and i have no idea why people decide to play him against speilberg (who is not a formalist by any stretch of the imagiantion--which is why AI failed.)

"You feel that sting, big boy, huh? That's pride FUCKIN' with you! You gotta fight through that shit!"

the cowboy scene in Mulholland Drive is an homage

i also think that people keep viewing pulp as somehow not worthy, not impt enough for critical attention, so a movie that works from pulp is equally shallow.

who said this? ok i didn't read the whole thread but i was very surprised if that was anything like consensus

Also, upon watching the Raiders DVD for the first time, it struck me that Lucas really DID owe much of his career to the talents of Ben Burtt. the sound design of the Raiders flick is one of its best aspects: Indy's .357 booming like a huge-ass cannon, the breathing effect when they finally crack open the vault holding the Ark, the God-spirit-lightning of the ending with the Nazi gear frying, the meaty punch of indy getting slugged in the stomach, the distant howl of Indy getting smacked inna chin with a mirror

also, i think Raiders began the habit of Harrison Ford getting the total shite kicked out of him onscreen for the next 20 years, even with them changing the ending to Clear & Present Danger so he could get his ass whupped in person instead of just gunning folks down from a chopper.

Trey Parker even used it in "Team America."

I like the cheap shots of bringing up Spielberg's failures while "4 Rooms" goes unmentioned.

This site is awesome...Lord of the Rings! Kill Bill (aaaaand, the thread comes full circle)! Screaming!

One of 'em.

Aside from PF his major contribution to film is that Top Gun-as-gay-porn monologue (which many sodomites I know had formulated independently, but still).

Most cogent criticism, I believe from the Village Voice circa '94, by an anonymous female moviegoer of color: "He just wants a black man to fuck him up the ass."

actually i like your theory a lot dan, and later today i will comment on it further!

oh come ON - now who's being "adolescent"... that's not a criticism, it's a pithy insult.

Well, there's the internal story explanation (ie, what you said) and the external story explanation (ie, what I said). I'm all-meta, all the time.

i was pointing out all the peopl who talked about surfaces, and him as a shallow film maker and also morby "fetishizing his pulp influences"--i think thats the whole, pulp is not worthy enough as something else.

tarintino watches movies like the rest of now do--in the theater and rep cinema some times but on cable and dvd as well--so you can watchg godard and lifetime movies of the week and find something worthwhile (i saw in the last week kill bill vol 2, their eyes were watching god, pillow talk, and wicker park)

No, it's an entry point to the issue of why he's the only widely-distributed white American filmmaker who gets to load his scripts with 'n*gger' (in laugh lines, as spoken by himself onscreen in PF)and seldom be queried on it. But I don't feel like reading another 400 posts on that.

That's NOT the only reason though.

No i haven't read the thread, but this is ILM, I shall dispense my opinion on high, unsolicited.

uh, this is a joke, right? if so, apart from the bad "entry point" pun, this is so wrong it isn't even close to funny.

agee on griffith
(familar?)

and maybe people should just ONCE consider the communists before they think about honoring Elia Kazan.

This is for real.

That said, it's also our expectations that he'll do something more substantial. But I think he's quite happy playing mashup with other people's styles.

The Kill Bill 1 & 2 split I think worked perfectly - the first one ended with an action/adrenaline climax, where the second ended with an emotional climax.

I'm still amazed that Uma didn't get any kinda industry nod for her Teh Bride/Beatrix performance. The BURIED ALIVE scene, the OH MY GOD I'M AIMING A GUN AT MY DAUGHTER I THOUGHT WAS DEAD scene, her talk with Bill at the chapel, etc. = um, honestly, she was sooooo emotionally invested/enveloped in Beatrix than, um, Kate whatserface talking fast with a Hepburn accent.

If we are going to be asking "Why did things go so terribly wrong with [creative film-maker]", I don't think Tarantino is a fair fill-in-the-blank yet. He's only four films in! The more appropriate name to put in there by all accounts would be TIM BURTON (from Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands to BIG FISH yo, ugh).

On the Spielberg tip, after watching AI like sixteen times, I can see the meat & bones of what would've been a monster of a KUBRICK film peaking out from underneath the cotton-candy-and-popcorn blanket that Spielberg threw over it. I will say though that I hate hate HATE Haley Joel Osment, but he was WICKED GOOD in that role. It's a shame how it turned out. The only thing I could see Spielberg really doing well now is teaming up with Pixar, and at least 90% of that is because Pixar can do no wrong at this point.

I will too, now, every time I close my eyes, and for this, I thank thee!

i liked Burton's PotA in some ways, but not enough to bother defending it. not seen Big Fish. still looking forward to CATCF tho, if only just for Depp.

xpost, see, I really liked Big Fish and Mars Attacks (and even PotA gasp!), but I would still say that, along the way, he lost something...I'm just not sure WHAT

He also cast Tom Cruise in a movie before he did, too.

Besides the two Golden Globe nominations, you mean?

and something about a chain link fence

also: of COURSE tarantino is a more subtle filmmaker than spielberg!

x-post

haha - my wife and I were talking about the film afterward and when she asked me what my favorite scene was that was the one I cited.

Hahaha

xpost haha I've never once thought of Indy as Jewish!

xpost

going wrong till now but i have a good feeling for this:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361748/ -
Inglorious Bastards:

Quentin Tarantino started writing this movie before Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) but could not decide on a good ending and decide to put it on hold to do Kill Bill with Uma Thurman, a project he had been mentally preparing since Pulp Fiction (1994).

When Quentin Tarantino wrote the screenplay, he wanted to have Mickey Rourke in the film to get Rourke back in the business again. But then Robert Rodriguez used him for Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) and Sin City (2005) and Tarantino scrapped the idea.

Quentin Tarantino has said that he intends for this to be as much a war film as a spaghetti western, and has said he would also consider titling the movie "Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France".
(imdb)

LAME BUT TRUE OBSERVATION: jackie brown has weathered way better than pulp fiction

-- mark s (mark s), Wednesday, March 9, 2005 6:50 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Link

this was a tbomb

jackie brown is great

jackie brown is great. it's probably the only tarantino movie I'd watch again now if I ran across it on cable or something.

woah, scary re-read. don't remember loving KB quite THAT much...

"Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France" sounds awesome.

war flick and tarantino sounds awesome, and back to the days of less pulp and more fiction.maybe.

more reservoir, less dogs

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076584/

???

it's the original, but i was reading trantino wrote onle a loose adaptation of it

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061578/

???

Of those rooting for Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" on Oscar night, the Torgan family might be cheering the loudest.

As the proprietors of the New Beverly Cinema, the Torgans operate one of Los Angeles' last havens for classic movies. And, as of recently, Tarantino is their landlord.

The New Beverly has been the Torgan family business since 1978. But if not for the intervention of the director with the encyclopedic knowledge of film, it would be just another chain franchise.

"It was going to be turned into a Super Cuts," Tarantino said. "I'd been coming to the New Beverly ever since I was old enough to drive there from the South Bay -- since about 1982. So, I couldn't let that happen."

Built in 1929 as a first-run moviehouse, the Torgan family moved into the property and turned it into a 200-seat venue for classic, independent and foreign films. One glance at a recent New Beverly schedule leaves no doubt about what attracted Tarantino to the place -- John Wayne's "True Grit" one night, Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist" later that week. The "New Bev" hosts animation events, celebrity-programmed fests and a bimonthly, exploitation-fueled Grindhouse.

The theater on Beverly a block west of La Brea hit hard times in the mid-2000s as the DVD market chewed into ticket sales. Sherman Torgan, the family patriarch and the operator of the theater, was facing serious financial troubles.

"Since I'm a print collector and I screen movies at my home, I heard from other collectors and projectionists that Sherman might have to close down," Tarantino recalled. The director got in touch and asked Torgan how much money he needed a month to keep up the theater.

"The answer was about $5,000," Tarantino said. "So, I just started paying him that per month. I considered it a contribution to cinema."

Then Torgan passed away unexpectedly in 2007, leaving his family and friends of the New Beverly in mourning -- and the future of the theater in doubt.

"Within a week of my father's death, the landlord had a buyer bidding for the theater space," said Michael Torgan, Sherman's son. "Fortunately, I found a copy of our original lease, and it said that the family had the right of first refusal if we could find another buyer."

Desperate to prevent the loss of the family business, the Torgans began considering all options.

"My father had just died, so it wasn't a good time for our family," Michael recalled. "Now, we thought we might lose the theater. My mother reached out to Quentin and explained to him that we were in trouble."

Tarantino decided to buy the space outright.

"I always considered the New Beverly my charity -- an investment I never wanted back," he said. "I already had a good relationship with the family and the theater, so it was a natural step."
The purchase, though, was not a smooth process. According to Torgan, the original landlord and prospective buyer moved to block Tarantino's bid. The sides haggled for months, but eventually a deal paved the way for a buyout. (A nondisclosure agreement prevents the Torgans or Tarantino from revealing the purchase price or the identity of the former landlord.)

Tarantino is now the owner, but he allows Michael and his family to run the theater's daily operations -- with his occasional input.

"Quentin couldn't be a better landlord," Torgan said. "He's involved with suggesting movies when he likes, but he lets us do most of the booking."

Tarantino recently organized an Angela Mao kung fu night featuring "Return of the Tiger" and "Stoner" as well as an "all blood" night with "Blood Spattered Bride" and "Asylum of Blood."

"I can make programming suggestions when I want to," Tarantino said. "It is cool to have a theater that I can use to show what I like."

Tarantino held his "Inglourious Basterds" DVD screening event at the New Beverly. And he will welcome guest programmer Jason Reitman, a pal from this year's awards circuit, to the theater Friday for six days of Reitman's favorites.

Since taking over the property, Tarantino has made it possible for the New Beverly to undergo some badly needed renovations such as new light fixtures and seats and a digital projection system. But he doesn't want the place to change too much. The 35mm projector is still the preferred screening method, popcorn and sodas remain cheap -- and the Torgans are still in charge, with an Oscar-winning angel over their shoulder.

"As long as I'm alive, and as long as I'm rich, the New Beverly will be there, showing double features in 35mm," Tarantino said.

that is great.

not a fan but this is very cool of him

i remember reading a while back about some dvds, old obscure films that qt had overseen the release of - does anyone know what these were?

iirc miramax was putting out a line of og 70s grindhouse films. not sure if it actually happened.

not sure it got much beyond this dvd release of jack hill's great SWITCHBLADE SISTERS - includes a pretty entertaining commentary by jack and quentin

http://www.tarantino.info/wiki/index.php/Switchblade_Sisters

looks like there were quite a few - thanks.

http://www.tarantino.info/wiki/index.php/Category:Rolling_Thunder_Pictures

much thx to dude for buying the new bev btw

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2010/02/cinema-tarantino-quentin-saves-the-art-house.html

yeah, dude is an american hero just for saving the new beverly. seriously in the top 10 reasons for me to move back to LA.

lol

may 14

* Pulp Fiction (1994)
Midnight (11:59 p.m.) - all seats $7

he's already tilted the programming toward schlock/horror a bit but he's not overdoing it *yet*

oops didn't see the writeup upthread either. pasadena alone had lost two great revival houses in the last 10 yrs but i didn't know new bev was the last full time one

Courtney Love's Jew Loan Officer (Shakey Mo Collier) wrote this on thread Tarantino Poll on board I Love Everything on Feb 10, 2009

True Romance doesn't belong on this poll for the same reason Natural Born Killers, From Dusk Til Dawn, Mr. Destiny Turns On the Radio, and whatever else don't belong on it

Shakey Mo Collier wrote this on thread Now is the time where you come anticipate GRINDHOUSE with me on board I Love Everything on Apr 12, 2007

I like Tarantino (as a director - stay off the screen please Mr. Destiny Turns On the Radio), I'm more of a Rodriguez hater.
Shakey Mo Collier wrote this on thread Why did things go so terribly wrong with Tarantino? on board I Love Everything on Mar 10, 2005

Morby Tarantino's most notable failures are not his directorial ones (I've never seen Four Rooms) - and that stuff seems to be sorta inconsequential when discussing his film work. I mean are we gonna run down "Mr. Destiny Turns On the Radio" (or whatever it was called?) what's the point? No one cares or vouches for Tarantino's acting or scripting skills - tho I do love Natural Born Killers - its the actual movies he's directed we're interested in...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f3/Mr_destiny.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1b/Destiny_Turns_on_the_Radio.jpg

It's cool. I can see how you got confused.

is that the one where he did the Top Gun porn monologue?

weird club girl ducklips on QT there

xp: I remember nothing about either of those movies!

He reminds me a little of French Stewart there.

Tarantino's main problem is that his movies faithfully reflect his talents as a moviemaker. The best directors know how to collaborate with dozens of people whose talents complement or exceed their own, while they provide guidance and a unifying vision to that ensemble. Tarantino thinks the best possible Tarantino movie is one that has the largest possible dose of Tarantino in it.

his main problem in "going wrong" is similar to George Lucas's: his "great" stuff was not great.

Maybe that has some connection to their talents as moviemakers?

Hack

tarantino owns

...if you have a particular passion for feet. But I suppose that goes without saying.

as a stylist, he's a regular Glenn Greenwald

I left Pulp Fiction w/the same feeling in my gut as one has after drunkenly scarfing a Big Mac

Kill Bills were OK mit out sound

He's unrelentingly derivative and not synthetically imaginative enough to make me ever care

as a stylist, he's a regular Glenn Greenwald

― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Thursday, February 9, 2012 4:17 PM (7 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^Ha! Yes.

the greatest filmmaker of his generation, i think we can at least agree on that much.

Of his generation where?

A lot of his movies are fun, but whenever his characters start going into a lengthy signature Tarantino monologue/dialogue all I hear is a muted trombone.

For dudes who hate derivative stuff, you sure do enjoy having the same conversation over and over again.

bang

that's the sound of a truth bomb

thread is now an action thread imo

Better wipe that blood off and wield my katana. Who the fuck stylist chose yellow for my track suit, tho?

Bruce Lee's.

See?

Tarantino is at his best when he's being derivative.

Jim Belushit sure likes to be in movies about destiny, I guess.

my favorite tarantino clip of all time might just be this one him talking about blaxploitation and the crips pic.twitter.com/ogpOa9pwzr

— robert franco (@responsiblerob) March 25, 2019

i finally get it now. he's a coked out 10-year-old.

Is this the 'Once Upon A Time In Hollywood' thread?

No. Quentin Tarantino's Manson murders movie