Django Unchained - New Quentin Tarantino Western

I was distracted for a couple of minutes trying to remember if I knew what he looked like. Tarantino's fault for not knowing that I didn't know that.
 
Iv found myself watching the Samuel L Jackson parts a few times, I think he's brilliant in this film. The firsts scene when they arrive at Kandi Land is just hilarious.

''Yeah yeah hello my ass, who this ****** up on that naaaag'' :lol:
 
Iv found myself watching the Samuel L Jackson parts a few times, I think he's brilliant in this film. The firsts scene when they arrive at Kandi Land is just hilarious.

''Yeah yeah hello my ass, who this ****** up on that naaaag'' :lol:

Or the
The black Hercules, more like niggerles
comment. Had me in stitches :lol:

His role is one of the funniest I've seen in a long time.
 
Awesome movie. Being Australian I found the Aussie bit at the end :lol::lol:
Would definitely see it again, thought it was a big step up from Inglorious Basterds, which for whatever reason I didn't really enjoy. Christoph Waltz and Jamie Foxx were such a good combo.
 
...Alexandre Dumas was black?

He was actually Don King

Alexandre-Dumas-9280765-1-402.jpg
 
Just saw this tonight. Brilliant film and the quality of acting was superb. All the main characters put in excellent performances. A lot of the credit for that has to go to the writing. Could've shaved about 10 minutes worth of slow mos and been a little better for it though.
 
I watched it tonight and it's definitely movie of the year for me. Tarantino is a magician, and hopefully Christopher Waltz will win the Oscar again.
 
Saw it yesterday, was fantastic, and shockingly straightforward for Tarantino. Anyway, one thing from the audience has really stuck with me and I was wondering if anyone else had the same experience:

When Django unceremoniously shot Candie's sister dead there was a really loud howl of shock and outrage from a load of people in the theatre. Plenty of laughs too, obviously, but I found it fascinating in what it suggested about people's morality.

Did anyone else experience a similar response?
 
I thought it was a funny moment, just the way he tells the slave lady to say goodbye to her then BOOM!

Also when he shoots Walton Goggins dick off, that was funny

I thought it was brilliant. Waltz was exceptional again and I'd say it's Jackson's best ever performance. The music was excellent (as usual) with 'His Name is King' standing out for me.
 
I read the screenplay the other day (it's here for anyone who wants to do the same) and interestingly, the "two shootouts" that some, myself included, feel could've been cut down, aren't in it.

There's no shootout after ..

Shultz kills Candie, Django is immediately captured, strung up and sent to Le Quint - without having killed anyone, which makes more sense to me, as letting him "go" after he'd shot about 50 people and fecked up the house sat a little odd with me - and thus the final return feels like the true, big ending, rather than the 2nd, tacked on one.

Would be interesting to know why he changed it.

The other thing I did this week was watch Reservoir Dogs & Pulp Fiction again. Fiction I've seen a lot but I hadn't seen Dogs for years. They're both really fantastic works, that sort of make his recent successes with IB and this seem like lazy cartoons. Which sounds weird because I think both are great, but they're no where near as good as those two. Dogs in particular is nothing like the "violence is soooo coool" aesthetic he picked up with Kill Bill. It feels like a proper, real, movie with actual stakes, and is much better for it.

I knew this, tbf, and would've put them both above Django anyway, but I'd forgotten how good Dogs was in particular. The "ear" scene is masterfully filmed.

The opening & the bar scene in IB, and the KKK and (possilby) the Sherif scene in this are the only things that feel like they live up to those works IMO, but in those every other scene is something like that.

Pulp
Dogs
IB
Django
Jackie Brown

Would be my top 5 I think. Though I'd possibly replace Jackie Brown with Kill Bill 1 - I'd have to watch both again, as I'm going on quite old assumptions - and I'd replace both with True Romance if we were including scripts. Dusk Till Dawn & Natural Born Killers would probably both be above the Kill Bills & Deathproof too.
 
Have you rewatched Dusk til Dawn and Natural Born Killers recently? The latter is very overrated in my opinion, nowhere near most of Tarantino's work, and as for Dusk til Dawn, the first half of it is really good, well done, but the second is basically the Kill Bill crazy 88 scene not done as well. You've either got a very low opinion of the Kill Bills and Deathproof, or your memory needs to be refreshed! I know both the films you've talked about have a cult status and they're really good fun to watch, but they're not incredible films by any standards...

Don't necessarily agree with your ranking of Tarantino's films either, but it doesn't really matter after all. Actually thinking about it I don't know if I could rank them, his earlier stuff feels like it's been made by another director than the one he is now (since Kill Bill vol. 2 basically).
 
Agree with the top 4 there and I'd just leave it at that - I don't see any of his other movies deserving to be mentioned in the same breath. I was a little let down by Django but it's a level above the rest (inc. True Romance). I'd have the first two out on their own, Inglorious Basterds on the next rung down and then Django on that third level quite a bit above the rest.
 
Pulp and Dogs are miles ahead of anything else he's done. Django is far too long and ultimately peters out, IB simply falls apart before the end.
 
Have you rewatched Dusk til Dawn and Natural Born Killers recently? The latter is very overrated in my opinion, nowhere near most of Tarantino's work, and as for Dusk til Dawn, the first half of it is really good, well done, but the second is basically the Kill Bill crazy 88 scene not done as well. You've either got a very low opinion of the Kill Bills and Deathproof, or your memory needs to be refreshed! I know both the films you've talked about have a cult status and they're really good fun to watch, but they're not incredible films by any standards...

No, not for a while, like I said, I'd need to re-watch Kill Bill 1 & Jackie Brown again too, as my opinion of JB seems to be much higher than a lot of heads in here.

My impression of Dusk til Dawn is similar to yours, but I admired the switch up at the end more, because it was something that felt very new and daring (much like Pulp & Dogs did, whereas IB & Django are essentially the same film, and both quite a lot like Kill Bill)

Tbf to Natural Born Killers, it was re-written a lot by Stone. Tarantino doesn't really 'claim' it as his. And I haven't seen it for 5 years or so.
 
No, not for a while, like I said, I'd need to re-watch Kill Bill 1 & Jackie Brown again too, as my opinion of JB seems to be much higher than a lot of heads in here.

My impression of Dusk til Dawn is similar to yours, but I admired the switch up at the end more, because it was something that felt very new and daring (much like Pulp & Dogs did, whereas IB & Django are essentially the same film, and both quite a lot like Kill Bill)

Tbf to Natural Born Killers, it was re-written a lot by Stone. Tarantino doesn't really 'claim' it as his. And I haven't seen it for 5 years or so.

Yeah the big switch Dusk til Dawn probably didn't have the same strong effect on me as I only saw recently for the first time, didn't seem that 'daring'. The way it's done is a big surprise, and it's a really fun movie to watch, but the fact I saw it for the first time having heard so much about it beforehand, and being too aware of its cult status, probably played a part in my appreciation of it.

Natural Born Killers, which I saw last year I think, I was a bit disappointed by actually. It's good, but there's a lot in there that annoyed me.
 
I had the considerable good luck of seeing From Dusk til Dawn on tv when I was about 13 and having absolutely no idea what it was about. It's still not a particularly good film, but it's one hell of a moment when it happens.
 
The opening scene in the convenience store is great. And it's pretty much the only film he's actually in where his slightly sinister rapey weirdo persona works.
 
And, as far as I recall, the only time we can be absolutely certain he didn't cast himself just so he could say nigger a lot.
 
The opening scene in the convenience store is great. And it's pretty much the only film he's actually in where his slightly sinister rapey weirdo persona works.

I agree with that, he worked quite well in that film and I could totally believe he was an unstable rapey nutjob. Haven't seen it in quite a few years though, so my memory might be making him a bit better than he was.
Clooney was very good in it too.

I saw the film when it came out and I really enjoyed it, The transition from serious movie to batshit crazy B horror was a breath of fresh air at the time. The film gained extra points due to Salma Hayek being hotter than a volcano too!
 
Entertaining film, but got a little tired of the hearing the word 'nigger' every two minutes.
 
And, as far as I recall, the only time we can be absolutely certain he didn't cast himself just so he could say nigger a lot.

:lol:

Tbf, the way he says "gracias" in his Desperado cameo cracks me up. But I'm not sure whether it's just cos it's so bad.

 
Tarantino's hinted that all of his films are in the same universe and I think he actually confirmed that Kill Bill is a movie within the movie-verse. Apparently the Bear Jew's grandson went on to become a director or something. It's a very long, drawn out in-joke for himself, but that might be why his later films are more exaggerated.
 
Do we think that Kill Bill Vol 1 is rated down because the second volume? Whilst not being a great film, its a great piece of film-making IMO. I think it holds its own in terms of watchability with all of his films apart from Dogs and Pulp.
 
Tarantino's hinted that all of his films are in the same universe and I think he actually confirmed that Kill Bill is a movie within the movie-verse. Apparently the Bear Jew's grandson went on to become a director or something. It's a very long, drawn out in-joke for himself, but that might be why his later films are more exaggerated.

Madsen & Travolta are brothers (pretty much everyone knows this one)

The Bear Jew is the father of the film producer in True Romance.

Alabama from True Romance is mentioned as the former accomplice of Mr White in Reservoir Dogs.

Scagnetti, the main cop in Natural Born Killers, is the parole officer Mr Blonde mentions he has to report to in Reservoir Dogs (his first name is different in the two films, but that's because Stone re-wrote it, it's supposed to be the same guy)

Michael Parks appears in Dusk Till Dawn, Kill Bill and Death Proof playing the same Sheriff Character.

In Django
tarantino-django-koons-character.jpg
Then there's also the theory that Kill Bill is Fox Force Five - The Movie, starring Mia Wallace.

These are the ones I know of. There are mostly likely loads more. He's easily enough of a geek.
 
Entertaining film, but got a little tired of the hearing the word 'nigger' every two minutes.
Since it's not a realistic historical drama I think substituting 'black' would have made no difference to the film and been less offensive. Certainly in the script stage directions (see Mockney's post) 'house servant's costume' would have sufficed.
 
Yeah, he has an odd and very obvious obsession with the word nigger, that he completely gets away with because his films are so stylish and portray strong black characters. If any other white writer director used it as much as he does, they'd be absolutely slaughtered for it.

I agree with the switching it up personally. It wouldn't have been hard, nor would it have detracted from anything, and all writers know it's 101 to vary the amount of repetition in their writing anyway. It was very much deliberate. Because he loves writing, saying and hearing the word, like a child with a naughty fascination.
 
Funny thing about him getting stick for using it so much this time around is that it's the first film he's made where's been entirely justified. Hell, I joked to a friend afterwards that it was a great adaptation of Huck Finn.

Although, as Pete says, it's rammed with anachronisms and is routinely absurd, but then on the other hand it's also pretty much the only major film I can think of that's actually showed just how entirely brutal and evil slavery was, something a great many Americans seem keen to downplay.* He's a mad bag of contradictions, our Quentin.

*I loved that the moral compass of the film was an otherwise entirely casual contract killer. Brilliant way of showing the utter moral bankruptcy of the Antebellum South.
 
Roots, Amistad & Glory are all big films that dealt with slavery far more realistically, and Goodbye Uncle Tom from the 70s showed slaves being treated even more despicably (and Tarantino would've definitely seen that, and been influenced byt it) It's just the most cool film about slavery for the younger, less interested in historical biopic generation.
 
Amistad and Glory are both (much like Lincoln) far too much about great white men and far too, hmm, not quite sure how to put it. 'Worthy', perhaps. Plus neither were really all that successful. Django is both farce and a fairy tale, but it also manages to show every aspect of the moral depravity of American slavery, and it's showing it to absolutely shed loads of people.

I also like the suggestion that Tarantino deliberately made this film as a companion piece to Inglorious Basterds. If so, it's a pretty pointed 'feck you' to the popular American understanding of their history.