A Few Words About A few words about...™ Django Unchained -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Number 6]

Yes, to all of the above. I may not agree wholeheartedly, but love the good, substantial debate. You've given me something to think about.

Thanks!

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

There's an old story about QT working on Kill Bill that sums up his entire approach to filmmaking:
In the scene where she was in a coma, Uma Thurman reportedly objected to having to play the scene with her eyes open--Has anyone ever seen a coma patient with their eyes open? According to the story, Quentin responded, "But that's how they did it in 'Patrick'!"

Tarantino tells that story himself in the documentary Not Quite Hollywood (either in the doc itself or in one of the special feature interviews).

The eyes open and the spit (Patrick spits as well in that film) were both items Tarantino found "very cool" and wanted to use them in Kill Bill...and yes, Uma was not high on these ideas.

As for Richard's point about using the name Django--I believe this was done in the spirit of all the other Spaghetti westerns that used the name to boost interest in their film even though they had little to nothing to do with the Corbucci film.

One of the more hilarious aspects of the names in Django Unchained and who these characters are supposed to be was Tarantino's idea that Django and Broomhilda are meant to be great great (great?) grandparents of Richard Roundtree's John Shaft.

Basically, the whole point of Tarantino's films are they are movies about movies and so originality, reality, or history (which is something else people like to go after him for) are not important in the Tarantino universe...it's all about how these other films made him "feel" and he is just recreating those "feelings" for a new audience.

I don't think I would call what he does "plagiarism" because he fully acknowledges where he is taking things from and why he is taking them. For it to be "plagiarism" I think he would have to fail to acknowledge his source and claim the ideas as his own. Has he done this somewhere?

Mainly the biggest joke with Tarantino to me is not anything he has done or said but that they gave him an Oscar for his script for Django Unchained...that was really ridiculous.

 

[RobHam]

My wife hates Westerns and the movies of Quentin Tarantino so it was a done deal that I was never going to see this movie in the cinema on first release.

It finally came out this week on BD in the UK, so I got to watch it tonight at home.

Before launching into this, I have all of QT's movies - some I like and some make me cringe. So a passive admirer, but not a huge fan. I also have a huge collection of Westerns on DVD and BD, including a sizeable quantity of "spaghetti westerns".

To be blunt, I thought this was juvenile rubbish with very little saving graces other than the deliberate borrowings from other (better) movies. When I first saw Kill Bill 1, my first thought was that QT should make a Western as so much of it had been borrowed from Leone and Corbucci. The final result of Django Unchained (at times) owes more to Mel Brooks than it does to the genre it tries so poorly to copy.

I was disappointed when Tarantino threw away the script in the final third of Inglourios Basterds, and went all out to please comic loving teenagers of all ages with a staggering lack of respect for his own film. This time, other than a few bravura scenes, I thought it was just a very poor film.

I'll come back to Tarantino once he grows up and makes a film worthy of the talent he does seem to possess - tonight I just regret paying full price for a Blu-ray that I could have waited three months and paid half that for.

Finally , the reason for tagging it onto RAH's review - the BD does look superb

 

[Robert Harris]

My wife hates Westerns and the movies of Quentin Tarantino so it was a done deal that I was never going to see this movie in the cinema on first release.

It finally came out this week on BD in the UK, so I got to watch it tonight at home.

Before launching into this, I have all of QT's movies - some I like and some make me cringe. So a passive admirer, but not a huge fan. I also have a huge collection of Westerns on DVD and BD, including a sizeable quantity of "spaghetti westerns".

To be blunt, I thought this was juvenile rubbish with very little saving graces other than the deliberate borrowings from other (better) movies. When I first saw Kill Bill 1, my first thought was that QT should make a Western as so much of it had been borrowed from Leone and Corbucci. The final result of Django Unchained (at times) owes more to Mel Brooks than it does to the genre it tries so poorly to copy.

I was disappointed when Tarantino threw away the script in the final third of Inglourios Basterds, and went all out to please comic loving teenagers of all ages with a staggering lack of respect for his own film. This time, other than a few bravura scenes, I thought it was just a very poor film.

I'll come back to Tarantino once he grows up and makes a film worthy of the talent he does seem to possess - tonight I just regret paying full price for a Blu-ray that I could have waited three months and paid half that for.

Finally , the reason for tagging it onto RAH's review - the BD does look superb

Does it not?

And it should as a DI.

Would be interesting to see how this film plays in the Mother Country. Every mindful of the way that Cromwell played here in the Colonies.

To be serious, when I recently viewed WWII from Space, I "learned," presuming that they got it correct, that PM Churchill had crates shipped here to The Colonies c. 1942, with all of the latest and greatest discoveries from UK science, engineering, etc to aid in the coming war effort. Never knew that.

And apparently, made a huge difference.

Hail Britannia!

As an Anglophile, I found that interesting and telling. Cooperation is a very good thing.

RAH

 

[Oblivion138]

So, pretty much like "Inglorious Basterds", then after Brad Pitt's tough WWII squad pretty much disappeared after the first half hour of the movie, and he set out to make the theater-girl Jewish-revenge fantasy instead?

You mean the "theater-girl Jewish-revenge fantasy" that the film BEGINS with?

This is like arguing against the non-linear narrative of Pulp Fiction. There are several, parallel, intersecting stories in Inglourious Basterds, just as there were in Pulp Fiction.

Come on, Travis. Django is a copyrighted intellectual property. QT is exploiting the name and title for his own self-aggrandizement whether he used the content or not. Using the name and title of the Django franchise is reason enough to acknowledge it, since the franchise is still current in the home video market. It follows then that using the content of the N---er Charley films, which are also a copyrighted intellectual property, should have been acknowledged whether QT used the title or not.

I wouldn't assume that regarding Lucas.

The very existence of a Django "franchise" more or less invalidates the "copyrighted intellectual property" argument, as only ONE of the sequels is actually an OFFICIAL sequel.