I mean really, people, Tarantino is in large part responsible for Eli Roth entering the main stream.
Clearly not every decision he makes is a good one.
I mean really, people, Tarantino is in large part responsible for Eli Roth entering the main stream.
Clearly not every decision he makes is a good one.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
Can't complain about a thing in Kill Bill. The conversations reveal so much character and history that I dig it the entire time, whereas in Death Proof, the characters were never interesting to warrant that type of talk. Plus, it felt like they already accomplished that while driving around.
With that, the first half of the movie is excellent, and seems to do the same exact thing, just waiting for the time for Stuntman Mike to introduce himself. I don't know why, but I like the bar scenes.
But regarding Mamet, it's also important to remember that he writes plays first and foremost.
Plays are wordy. That's most of what they have to work with.
Tarantino is a screenwriter. They're not the same at all.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
Strictly speaking, yes. But a better analogy would be to say that if Hendrix was only capable of hard rock guitar and if Dali did nothing but surrealism. But they didn't confine themselves to one area and if you look at the arc of their professional careers, you can see a exploration and growth in it.Quoting D_Davis (view post)
Let me give you a (surprise!) long winded explanation as to where I'm coming from.
Years ago I was a big fan of JD Salinger. I went back and read some critical reviews of him from when he was actually publishing, stuff that was published in the early to mid 1960s. At lot of the reviews dinged Salinger for "never growing as a writer." I was kneejerk pissed at that, and for the longest time I couldn't understand what the hell they were talking about.
A few years later I stumble onto a comic by Stan Sakai called Usagi Yojimbo, about a ronin in Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate. For the first few years, the comic is simple -- a few characters per story, single first person point of views, limited plot lines, no sub plots, etc. Then something marvelous happens. As Sakai gets more experience and pushes himself, he grows as a writer. Mid way through the series he's pulling off insanely complex storylines, multiple arcs, a dozen characters and covering events that happen over centuries. If you compare his early books to his later ones, there's an immense difference in size, scope and complexity.
That is what I'm talking about when I talk about ambitious storytelling and growing as an artist. Sakai did it in the same work, writing about the same characters in the same universe. In Sakai's case, it's obvious and palpable. But I think if you went back and looked at any major artist, from The Beatles to Hemingway to Kurosawa, you'd see the same kind of arc to their career.
So it has a little less to do with genre. Genre is an easy way to tell when someone is trying something new (eg: Titanic compared to True Lies).
It took about 10 years for me to figure this out -- what the hell those 1960s critics were talking about -- and then I went back and looked at Salinger again. He's still great doing what he does, but my god, the critics were right. And that's why he's a minor writer at best.
Then I look at Tarantino and .. it's the same old stuff he was doing 15 years ago, but with a costume changes and better locations. There isn't an enormous functional difference between the diner scene in Pulp Fiction and the farmhouse scene in Inglorious Basterds, or the ear-cutting in Resevoir Dogs and the bear-jew baseball bat stuff.
Tarantino isn't pushing himself at all, or trying to explore new ground. (This is, by the way, the same exact problem I have with Hitchcock and Kevin Smith). He's sort of content to wallow in his own small pond and never venture out of it. That's why I think he's an interesting failure and a minor moviemaker at the end of the day.
TL;DR: A comic about a rabbit samurai informed me why Salinger sucks and now I expect more from every professional artist out there.
I did this. I am responsible.
For the record, I meant "action film" in the entirely matter-of-fact, entirely categorical and least judgmental sense.
I know it's a very subjective thing, but it really doesn't.
I think people should give it a second chance. I haven't seen the film in a while, but don't they mention Vanishing Point like once, and then proceed to talk about entirely other things? (Even if those other things include what it would be like to be a stunt person for Vanishing Point, and how badass the car is.) Can it even be dubbed a "car chase discussion" because do they even talk about car chases? I'm really curious, as, like I said, I haven't seen it in a while and meg, you may have it fresh in your brain, but my memory is skeptical.
Similarly, this also is not that bad. Pain is pain. Stuntman Mike has clearly suffered pain before, so instead of just thinking, "Man what a wimp" (he is in his 60s and just got shot for his first time...), think about how the end of the film has sidelined us into some nightmarish femi-revenge film and that his crying like a baby has more to do with the fact of this new tone and how (rather awfully) this is exactly how the women want him.
The Act of Killing (Oppenheimer 13) - A
Stranger by the Lake (Giraudie 12) - B
American Hustle (Russell 13) - C+
The Wolf of Wall Street (Scorsese 13) - C+
Passion (De Palma 12) - B
Oh, Irish. Oh. (in the tone of a proper British lady) :P
The Act of Killing (Oppenheimer 13) - A
Stranger by the Lake (Giraudie 12) - B
American Hustle (Russell 13) - C+
The Wolf of Wall Street (Scorsese 13) - C+
Passion (De Palma 12) - B
No, it's not a car chase discussion, because they talk about guns and safety precautions for women, which ties into the running feminist theme of the movie. I do think people give the dialogue way more flak than it deserves because, as E said, the characters aren't very well defined compared to other Tarantino characters.
Movie Theater Diary
It's also a depiction of Mike realizing that he is out of his element. He is no longer in the boys-world of his past; there is a paradigm shift in the car chase that moves the characters out of Mike's world, the past, into the present, a world in which females also have power. The moment the worlds change is when they come off of the dirt roads and crash through the billboard onto the paved, modern streets. This is something QT touches upon in many of his films.
Agreed and exactly.
The Act of Killing (Oppenheimer 13) - A
Stranger by the Lake (Giraudie 12) - B
American Hustle (Russell 13) - C+
The Wolf of Wall Street (Scorsese 13) - C+
Passion (De Palma 12) - B
Uh huh.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
People who like Tarantino's films like them because they like what Tarantino does in them. You are reading defenses of his work and his choices.
Nothing is more obnoxious in Internet discussion than being labeled a blind fanboy.
This is troll behavior.
inb4 being told I fail or something because I'm taking an argument on the Internet seriously. My bad, I guess.
Analyzing the film for content, allegory, metaphor and thematic elements does not mean we're overlooking apparent, perceived, or real flaws.
Seriously?
I'm a troll because I say it pisses me off that Tarantino can apparently do absolutely no wrong?
That I find it ridiculous that he could fart in a plastic bag and people would say it was the most brilliant thing to hit pop culture since The Beatles?
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
He hasn't done that, so knock it off with your crude, hyperbolic hypotheticals.
This, a thousand times over.
Your "Uh huh" could've been a good-humored push to agree-to-disagree territory, but now you're saying my argument pisses you off? Nigga. PLEASE.
And yeah, what D_Davis said. Sure Death Proof is a bit overload with sassy talk.
The Act of Killing (Oppenheimer 13) - A
Stranger by the Lake (Giraudie 12) - B
American Hustle (Russell 13) - C+
The Wolf of Wall Street (Scorsese 13) - C+
Passion (De Palma 12) - B
I'm increasingly thinking that overlooking apparent, perceived, or real flaws is a really good way to watch moves.
RE: Your first sentence (before the comma), that was the intention.
RE: The rest - I am not saying your argument pisses me off, I'm saying what pisses me off is when Tarantino seems to have any and all flaws in his films overlooked.
D_Davis mentions "perceived flaws", but it seems quite rare that these are ever brought up.
It's always just a Tarantino love-fest and it gives the feeling that he gets a free pass for any mistake he makes, however untrue that is.
Thank you, that's all I wanted.
Tarantino doesn't commit perfection to celluloid. He has moments of brilliance, and surely is someone who will be remembered as one of "the greats". But he gets held on this pedestal like he's a god or something.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
I don't think anyone here has ever said that.
Me, too.
Thirded.
I said it.
QT could fart in a paper bag, and I'd probably still love it.
What are you waiting for, Quentin?
Sure why not?
STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Rian Johnson) - 9
STRONGER (David Gordon Green) - 6
THE DISASTER ARTIST (James Franco) - 7
THE FLORIDA PROJECT (Sean Baker) - 9
LADY BIRD (Greta Gerwig) - 8
"Hitchcock is really bad at suspense."
- Stay Puft
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