Qt3 Movie Podcast: Django Unchained

Oh Mr. Chick, why you got to hate on everyone's favorite movie posters? It's "favorite". Not "best"!

:P

I would've added my (belated) voice to the outcry over the missing Djangopsis, except that Kelly spends most of the 3x3 doing my second favorite podcast segment, "Bait Tom into Describing in Detail the Crappy Movies He Mentions".

Why does everybody keep insisting that Tarantino "make a movie in earnest" when that's exactly what he's been doing; making the films he himself would like to see?

It's funny that Tarantino is proving the disingenuity of the statement people love to make toward those who point out the problems they have with Hollywood films, namely "If you think YOU could do better . . . " Well that's basically what QT has done, and certain people want his stuff to confirm more to the Hollywood standard. Sorry, but the majority of Hollywood studios would have passed on a film like Django, had it not been a QT film, and if they had decided on it from any other director, it certainly wouldn't have been given the budget QT spent on it.

The disingenuity comes from the stance that when we tell someone to do better if they can, we consciously believe that they do not have the ability to do better. QT has proven that to be false, and he's making the pictures many American's have been inculcated by Hollywood to be uncomfortable with.

"The disingenuity comes from the stance that when we tell someone to do better if they can, we consciously believe that they do not have the ability to do better."

Actually, no. The very opposite is true. It is precisely because I believe Quentin Tarantino has the ability to do better that I raise this point about doing a movie in earnest. I remember seeing Reservoir Dogs for the first time and just being blown away. Same with Pulp Fiction. And to a lesser extent Jackie Brown (not that it's a lesser movie necessarily, it just didn't blow me away the way RD did).

I think now that we are at Django, however, he is spinning his wheels. Yes we know you can do this trick, this trick of doing the homage. Fine. We get it. Now show us what you can really do. Take a shot. Make your United 93. Or your Moon. Or your You Can Count on Me.

And I say that because I believe he has the ability to do it and say something fresh and exciting, and it's frustrating to see someone with that kind of creative power turn in something like Django, which is bloated and derivative and obviously easy for him.

I'm taking it that saying "You wished C Waltz was the lead character in a film titled Django was a joke. You guys don't appear to have watched many of the films of Sergio L, because Django is at least as focused as any of those films and certainly more focused than How the West Was Won, which while hailed as a classic is certainly less focused than this.

I think the problem a lot of people have with this picture is that you were expecting this film to be something that it had no intention of being. You're "assuming" Tarantino was making a statement on slavery just because it's set in 1861 in the South. That's the geography, and you have to acknowledge it, but that's not what the film is ultimately about. It's the problem that all pictures with Black protagonists, or that touch on Black issues face. Because Hollywood does so few quality films with Blk protagonists, every film has these huge set of expectations that people feel it needs to address. So EVERY Black film in set in the inner city HAS to deal with the gang problem and drugs, EVERY Black film set in the 1860's HAS to deal with slavery.

No they don't. The only real problem I had with Django is that there weren't more films attempting to do what this film is trying to do to follow it up with.

Well, you've made your position clearer, but your wanting Tarantino to "do his own thing" is assuming that evolving fairly dead genre's to the next level is not what Tarantino's "thing" is. Though his films harken back to film styles of the past, these aren't necessarily stories that would have been told at the time these cinematic conventions were being utilized. It's rather like a musician trying to decide how classical musicians would have composed music with the elements of electricity and synthesizers. Sure it's still classical in sound, but nothing like you'd have heard in the 1700's. It is a new creation.

Also Tarantino is essentially only derivative to film enthusiasts like himself who even remember those films. You'd be hard pressed to find many film goers from the last few generations who've ever seen a 70's kung fu film, or a spaghetti western, let alone ever read a pulp novel, nor could you ever get the majority of them to do so. To them Tarantino is a breath of fresh air (also to us old timers who miss well written dialogue in films).

Sorry, but I just think that people who are in this holding pattern for Tarantino to pen something completely original are on the same train as people waiting for the rapture. If you want to see those films, you'd better start signing up for film school, because you're the ones who are going to have to make those films. Like it or not Tarantino just doesn't seem to be that interested at present.