Posted Nov 17th 2009 4:02PM by Eric D. Snider
Filed under: Awards, Quentin Tarantino, Oscar Watch
As you've probably already heard, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is shaking things up at this year's Oscars by having 10 Best Picture nominees instead of five, and by moving the honorary awards (read: the boring part of the show) to a special ceremony of their own. That ceremony will be held in November, and-- holy crap, it was this weekend! The almost-Oscars were on Saturday!
They're called the Governors Awards, and while they won't be televised, the AMPAS
website has some photos and background info. Honorary Oscars went to actress
Lauren Bacall (pictured), cinematographer
Gordon Willis (the
Godfather trilogy,
Manhattan,
All the President's Men), and director/producer
Roger Corman (numerous
MST3K films). Astonishingly, the legendary Bacall has only received one Oscar nomination in her 65-year career, for
The Mirror Has Two Faces. Willis was nominated for
The Godfather: Part III and
Zelig. Corman, who has directed more than 50 films and produced nearly 400 (!), has never been nominated for an Oscar, probably because all of his movies are terrible. But apparently the Academy is rewarding quantity now, too. So don't give up, Uwe Boll! Just make another 300 movies!
The other award at the special ceremony was the Irving G. Thalberg Award, given to
John Calley, who produced
The Remains of the Day and
Closer and oversaw worldwide production for Warner Bros. throughout the 1970s.
The Governors Awards were also a chance for Oscar telecast producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic to drop a few hints about what the big show will be like on March 7. Mechanic said they're not going to repeat the thing the 2009 show did where a coven of five past Oscar winners introduced the acting nominees.
Continue reading Hints About 2010 Oscars Emerge: No More Five-Person Presenting
Posted Nov 9th 2009 3:45PM by Jessica Barnes
Filed under: Fandom, Quentin Tarantino, Fan Made
Most of us know our favorite movies by heart, and we can quote dialog (although
not always accurately), describe a scene down to its last detail, or even recount production history if we are particularly geek-minded about it. When movies are a big part of your life, the attention to detail can become downright obsessive, but as we all know, a movie is really just a sum of its parts. Paul Rogers, an illustrator who works at the California Art Center College has taken those separate parts and devised a clever little game of
Name that Movie on his blog, Drawger. Rogers' game takes some of our favorite flicks and breaks them down into six drawings, and covers the gamut of Hollywood classics old and new. So if you are a fan of Pictionary
and showing off your movie knowledge, this is definitely the game for you.
Now I don't want to brag, but I did manage to guess most of Rogers' selections -- although I am honest enough to admit that I didn't get a perfect score. There were a few that, frankly, I wouldn't even know where to begin. But it did remind me how those iconic images can work their way into your brain, and when all you need to see is an ink drawing of Big Kahuna soda cup and you can almost hear
Samuel L. Jackson exclaim "That is a tasty burger."
Posted Nov 2nd 2009 2:18PM by Elisabeth Rappe
Filed under: Classics, Quentin Tarantino, Home Entertainment, Western
I think the mania for
Sergio Leone is stronger than it's ever been. It's undoubtedly due to the championing of Quentin Tarantino, and films like
Sukiyaki Western Django and
The Good, the Bad and the Weird, which are driving fans to seek out where they borrowed their serapes and squints from. There also seems to simply be a hunger for good adventure stories and rugged antiheroes, and there's no better place to get sated than Leone's films. If you feel like spending two hours in the broiling sun with a man who'll shoot you as soon as look at you, then you'll love today's free flick:
For A Few Dollars More.
For A Few Dollars More might be my favorite of the
Dollars Trilogy. I love them all on their own merits, but this installment stands on its own (I hate saying it, but
Fistful is decidedly less cool after multiple viewings of
Yojimbo), and is less operatic than
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
More also tips the balance thanks to the way it adds a little to the Man with No Name. Here, he's dubbed Monco (Spanish / Italian for maimed) due to the way he keeps his right hand hidden, and he doesn't just ride quietly out of the dust. Now he has a trail in a score of bloody newspaper clippings which suggests he could afford more than one serape. Ennio Morricone fans will also appreciate the little flourish he gave to Monco's gun hand
Even if you hate Westerns, you should watch it. Leone called his films "fairy tales for adults," and that's really what they are. They feel like every genre rolled in one, and have been borrowed from 1965 onward. Fans of everything from Tarantino to
Pirates of the Caribbean will see
something they recognize here.
Watch For A Few Dollars More on SlashControl!
Posted Oct 28th 2009 2:15PM by Jenni Miller
Filed under: Fandom, DIY/Filmmaking, Quentin Tarantino
Some super-fan made a crazy audio/video remix of scenes and sounds from
Pulp Fiction that you have to check out. It's so good that it could be confused with an underground techno mash-up. The remix uses multiple split-screens with the sounds from the scenes remixed to a beat, like Jules's delicious shake, Butch's getaway, Jimmie Dimmick slapping soap into Jules's hand, Zed slapping the Gimp's head and shushing his victims, and Marsellus Wallace grunting behind a ballgag.
The detail on this is impressive, especially the remixing of the different scenes. The person's
YouTube channel is otherwise made up of music performances, so I'm very curious if there's a collaborator involved or what. There's a lot of
Pulp Fiction mashups on YouTube that pale in comparison, although
this one is pretty cool. The music mashup culture is a fascinating one; it seems more underground than the video mashups, probably because of how easy it is to share things via YouTube and perhaps how much more litigious the music industry is. Personally, I love music mashup artists like
A Plus D and think that creating new forms of art through pre-existing work, like
the source files offered by
Sita Sings the Blues creator Nina Paley, will become more acceptable as artists realize the potential of sharing their work.
Then again... everyone's got bills to pay.
Watch the Pulp Fiction Remix after the jump ...Continue reading Watch and Listen: 'Pulp Fiction' Remix
Posted Oct 19th 2009 4:45PM by Elisabeth Rappe
Filed under: Quentin Tarantino, Western, Scenes We Love
Great villains are scattered throughout the Westerns, but some of the most memorably savage come from the films of Sergio Leone. While Henry Fonda in
Once Upon a Time in the West gets a lot of props for the way he mows down the McBain family (including its youngest and most adorable moppet), it was nothing that
Lee Van Cleef hadn't already done in
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Angel Eyes seems to be dismissed as something akin to Leone fan fiction, and it's his relation (or lack of) to Van Cleef's Col. Mortimer in
A Few Dollars More that people find to be more interesting than his villainy.
But he's a great villain, mostly because he's absent for much for so much of the film. Leone gives him a ruthless introduction (a scene Quentin Tarantino mirrored perfectly with Hans Landa in
Inglourious Basterds) and promptly yanks him out of the narrative. As Tuco and Blondie torture each other for an hour, Angel Eyes is doing his own thing and it's a wonderful shock when he shows up running a Civil War prison camp. In today's cinema, no one could resist giving Angel Eyes a prequel and a spin-off relating the trail of bodies that led to that alias and that prison camp. But Leone allowed a squint to speak for itself, and told you everything you needed to know by the way men like Blondie and Tuco squirm around him. Considering that no one in this film is exactly good, and they're all a little bit ugly, it takes a lot to convince us that a man is worse than all the others. Van Cleef and Leone did that, and few villains can match his nastiness even when they've got double the screen time.
Go below the jump -- they don't call him Angel Eyes in here!
Continue reading Villains We Love: Angel Eyes
Posted Oct 1st 2009 5:32PM by Elisabeth Rappe
Filed under: RumorMonger, Fandom, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand, Quentin Tarantino, Remakes and Sequels
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The energetic
Quentin Tarantino was out and about promoting
Inglourious Basterds in Italy, and seeing as he was in the homeland of his hostess spaghetti western, he teased everyone by promising
Kill Bill 3. Again.
Bad Taste reports that while on Italian talkshow
Parla Con me, he prompted his hostess, Serena Dandini, to ask him whether there would be a continuation of the Bride's saga. When I say prompted, I mean it literally. "You didn't ask me whether there will be a third installment, a
Kill Bill Vol 3!" Dandini obliged him by asking, and Tarantino said "Yes! The Bride will fight again ... I want ten years to pass between the second one and the third one. Two reasons. I think
Uma [Thurman] and I needed a ten year break because the first one was so hard. The second one is that I love the character a lot. I just really really love her. And I think she deserves ten years of peace. ... I put her through a lot in those first two movies, and I wanted her to have a nice, peaceful life for ten years. I want her to put up her sword, and have some peace. And in ten years, something will happen to make her fight again."
Tarantino has been teasing us with a continuation for awhile now (usually themed around the daughter of Vernita Green), so it's hard to get too excited. It's also awfully hard to make predictions as to who or what would cause the Bride to fight again as she did leave most of her enemies in pieces. But we can cast our votes as to who we would like to see as the Bride's villains. Here's five of the people I'd like to see in a Tarantino flick, and I hope some of you have even cooler suggestions ...
Continue reading Tarantino Teases 'Kill Bill 3' - Here's Five People Who Should Star
Posted Sep 25th 2009 8:02PM by Jessica Barnes
Filed under: Fandom, Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Lists, Trailers and Clips
Earlier today we brought you Rotten Tomatoes' list of the 100 worst reviewed films of the decade. Now, though it might be a little premature (considering that we still have a little while to go before we hit our next decade), the good folks over at I Heart Chaos have decided to get the ball rolling on those end-of-decade lists by shoveling out what they believe are the
Top 50 Movies of the 2000's. Usually these kinds of things start to gain in popularity towards the end of the year, but I guess the early bird does get the worm, so let's get right to the chase and find out who made the cut.
When you've got a a list of 50, there is plenty of wiggle room, and it's a pretty comprehensive list that manages to find room for cult faves and foreign flicks. But I'll admit, even though Chaos has put together a solid list, I was a little surprised that the #1 film for this decade is Quentin Tarantino's Samurai/Cowboy epic,
Kill Bill -- though that's the beauty of a list, everyone wants to have a little friendly debate, I guess. You can read the entire list over at Chaos, but rounding out the top five are
The Dark Knight,
No Country for Old Men, and Kinji Fukasaku's adaptation of
Battle Royale.
The great thing about a long list like Chaos' is that it makes room for all kinds of movies that sometimes you just don't have room for in streamlined lists of five or ten entries. But I love a challenge, so I decided to put together a list of my top films of the 2000s ... although I've cheated just a little.
After the jump: my nominations for the top films of the 2000s...Continue reading Now It's the 50 Best Movies of the Decade!
Posted Sep 21st 2009 5:18PM by Jenni Miller
Filed under: Box Office, Exhibition, The Weinstein Co., Brad Pitt, Quentin Tarantino, Movie Marketing
In what could be read as a big "nyah, told you so" press release, The Weinstein Company would like you all to know that
Inglourious Basterds has not only grossed over $108M* in North America but has now out-earned
Pulp Fiction, which was previously Tarantino's biggest money-maker to date.
But what's strange is that TWC is giving some of the credit to "an innovative marketing plan. The film was the first to make use of Twitter and other social networking sites in such a direct fashion, even involving Twitter in the film's LA premiere," according to the press release.
Harvey Weinstein is even quoted as saying, "It was great working with Biz Stone at Twitter on Inglourious. It took the campaign to another level."
Okay, what have I missed? How was the Inglourious campaign different from any other of the studios' use of Twitter or Facebook to promote movies through links, contests, and meet-ups? I don't even recall seeing anything on Twitter about it, other than the normal studios using Twitter to cross-pollinate coverage.
Continue reading 'Inglourious Basterds' is Tarantino's Top Earner - Because of Twitter?
Posted Sep 1st 2009 12:02PM by Jessica Barnes
Filed under: Classics, Fandom, Quentin Tarantino, Comic/Superhero/Geek
Let's face it; none of us would be here if we didn't like talking about movies. If you are anything like me, you spend your days scouring for movie news, reading about your favorite films and directors, and sometimes even getting into the odd heated argument. So while most of us play armchair quarterback when it comes to the art of movie making, there are plenty of honest to goodness artists who love to talk about movies just as much as we do, and one person who needs no such prompting is Quentin Tarantino.
The director recently filmed an introductory clip to
There Will Be Blood for Sky Movies and despite being a little surprised at the idea that Tarantino and
P.T. Anderson are movie BFF's, it did get me thinking about some of the other directors who love to talk about the movies. The rise of the DVD commentary opened up a whole new world to movie geeks like myself, giving us the chance to learn more about the movies we love. But as interesting as it is to hear a filmmaker talk about their work -- sometimes I think it's even better to hear them talk about somebody else's movie.
After the jump; Tarantino's TWBB review, and more movie-making chatterboxes..Continue reading Filmmakers Who Love To Talk About Movies
Posted Aug 30th 2009 5:02PM by William Goss
Filed under: Action, Thrillers, Fandom, Brad Pitt, Quentin Tarantino, Lists, War
I always trust that there are far more references crammed into a Tarantino film than I could ever acknowledge, and the extra wink-wink workings of
Inglourious Basterds made that all but a guarantee. Luckily, the "video store nerds" (their words) over at Seattle's
Scarecrow Video not only have
their own extensive and ongoing catalog of films that are either referenced or given homage in
Basterds, or are just fitting companions, but they've all been placed in their own section in the store, which just really makes me more jealous of the locals than anything, seeing as all the independent video joints in my own neck of the woods have either gone belly-up or have scaled back their selections.
(Really, it's a shame. Netflix may be convenient, but it will never have that personal touch -- a note that Scarecrow's lengthy list happens to conclude on.)
Do you guys and girls agree with like-minded recommendations like
Black Book? (I do.) Is there anything you think is missing? (Comment away, here or there.) And more than anything, what one film do you have a hankering to see, or see again, in the wake of QT's latest?
Posted Aug 25th 2009 3:02PM by Jeffrey M. Anderson
Filed under: Fandom, Quentin Tarantino
If not everyone loves
Inglourious Basterds, at least we all agree on one thing: it's pretty dense, and it probably needs more than one viewing to pick up all the little layers and jokes and nuances.
MTV.com has assembled a list of five interesting factoids, that, even if they're not in the movie itself, are pretty revealing.
1. Possible sequel. As of now, Tarantino has pretty much filmed all of the crackpot projects he has ever announced over the years, with the exception of two
Elmore Leonard novels (
Freaky Deaky and
Bandits) and his prequel
The Vega Brothers, which would "reunite" Michael Madsen's Vic Vega (from
Reservoir Dogs) and John Travolta's Vincent Vega (from
Pulp Fiction). In reality, it doesn't look like any of those things is going to happen, but actor Omar Doom revealed that Tarantino has some "500 leftover pages" from
Basterds, and could very well do a prequel explaining the origin of Aldo Raine and his group. I'd see that, just to hear Brad Pitt pronounce the word "Nah-zees" again.
Continue reading Bizarre 'Inglourious Basterds' Facts
Posted Aug 24th 2009 12:32PM by Elisabeth Rappe
Filed under: New Releases, Fandom, DIY/Filmmaking, Quentin Tarantino
The past two weeks, we've had two big movies come out that revel in all the things they don't tell you.
District 9 was full of grainy, second-hand reported mystery and
Inglourious Basterds is full of the tiny details only
Quentin Tarantino knows. (Even the deliberate spelling is left for us to wonder -- and for those of us who had to type it so often, to be
really annoyed about.) But it seems as though viewers fall into two camps -- those who revel in the unexplained and call them Easter eggs, and others who just consider them sloppy plot holes.
I realized there was a gulf of divide after my sister and I left
Basterds. She was furious that the origin of Lt. Aldo Raine's scar was unexplained, no matter what Tarantino may have specified in the script. "I wanted to know what it was and why! It drove me nuts!" "It's a hanging scar. You don't explain a hanging scar. It's cooler if it's just
there." But she was unconvinced*, and while she knows and loves her Tarantino (oh, how I remember when she pointed out
all the Red Apple cigarettes to me), she couldn't forgive him this one. She was equally furious that Donny Donowitz's bat didn't receive its origin story, but I have to confess to being disappointed by that one too. (Hey, I read
the comic version!)
Continue reading Do the Unexplained Details of Movies Annoy You?
Posted Aug 21st 2009 9:02PM by Todd Gilchrist
Filed under: Brad Pitt, Quentin Tarantino, Interviews
Like the rest of the entries in
Quentin Tarantino's eclectic filmography,
Inglourious Basterds is a pastiche of different influences combined in some kind of cinematic bouillebaise, and somehow made original in that unholy union. Appropriately, the film also came together in disparate parts over several years, which is why
Basterds is as much a deconstruction of genre conventions as it is a rousing tale right out of the same war-torn landscape as classics past and present. According to Tarantino, however, making the film wasn't merely an assembly of ideas, but a bit of movie mountain-climbing that was essential for him to see what's on the other side.
Cinematical recently sat down with Tarantino for a roundtable interview at the film's press day, where he discussed the process of giving birth to
Basterds. In addition to discussing the general dynamics of his creative process, Tarantino talked about what war movie moments he did and didn't want in the film, and examined the way in which even doing interviews allows him to look at his own work differently. Cinematical's questions are noted.
Was this movie worth the wait for you, taking the time over so many years to develop it into what it became? Continue reading Interview: Quentin Tarantino
Posted Aug 20th 2009 9:02PM by Jessica Barnes
Filed under: Music & Musicals, Fandom, Quentin Tarantino, Cinematical Seven
There are very few directors who know how to use music as well as
Quentin Tarantino -- I can only think of
one who might be just a little bit better. So while some directors let the music guide their editing process and others like to play the soundtrack while they shoot, Tarantino uses music in a completely different way. His use of music goes beyond just making a kick-ass soundtrack (which he usually does) and the song becomes another layer of movie history and reference that can inform what is right in front of your eyes.
As we all know,
Inglourious Basterds is hitting theaters this week, and even though this might be one of Tarantino's first films without a 'popular' soundtrack, it did get me thinking about all the other great songs that he has included over the years. It seems that when it comes to music and Tarantino, obscure is the name of the game. The man likes to dig out those hidden gems, either to give them new life for a younger generation of fans, or maybe he just likes to show off a little -- come on, it's not like he's known for being humble. But one thing is for sure, the guy must have one hell of a record collection, and that's why today's Cinematical Seven is about my favorite songs from the films of Quentin Tarantino.
After the jump: find out which tracks made my top seven...Continue reading Cinematical Seven: Quentin Tarantino's Greatest Hits
Posted Aug 20th 2009 8:02PM by Todd Gilchrist
Filed under: Foreign Language, The Weinstein Co., Brad Pitt, Quentin Tarantino, War
Starting with a gobsmacked VHS screening of
Reservoir Dogs way back in '92, I've seen every
Quentin Tarantino movie dozens upon dozens of times, but
Inglourious Basterds is the first I will have seen only once before writing about it. Like the absolute best entries cinema history has to offer, his work demands repeat viewing, as much to catch all the in-jokes, references and homages as to see their cumulative, strikingly original impact. All of which is why I can only try to sufficiently deconstruct, classify and characterize Tarantino's latest, a wartime opus whose shortcomings upon first viewing are as immediately recognizable as the fact they will after many more of them prove to be virtues, ultimately creating a singular tribute to WWII movies done in the writer-director's signature, genre-bending style.
While the star of the film is really the story, there are three characters who cement together
Inglourious Basterds' unwieldy but surprisingly even-weighted chapters. First, there's Colonel Landa (
Christoph Waltz), a Nazi officer who earned the nickname "the Jew hunter" thanks to his indefatigable, shoe-leather-and-shark's-grin persistence. Next, there's Shoshanna (
Melanie Laurent), one of Landa's few targets who escaped, who lives under an assumed name and manages a French cinema. And then there's Aldo Raine (
Brad Pitt), an American soldier who recruits a rabid team of Jews to hunt down Nazis and strike fear with their exploits.
Continue reading Review: Inglourious Basterds
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