To understand the wild new movie from co-directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez first you have to understand the premise. They have made a good old-fashioned exploitation movie double bill, complete with scratchy film and missing reels. They’ve recreated the grind house experience for an audience that may be too young to remember the days before multi-plexes dotted the landscape and people went to local theatres where movies were two for the price of one.
What is a grind house you ask? You may have been in a grindhouse theatre and not even known it.
If the ushers in the theatre carried a flashlight in one hand and a two by four (known as the “peacekeeper”) in the other, chances are, you were in a grind house.
If they played Santa Claus Conquers the Martians in July, that’s a grind house.
If there were gaps in the story, or if the reels were out of order, you were in a grind house.
Most of those seedy theatres are gone now, but you can relive the experience in the new film Grindhouse, a double feature of two new films aged to look like classic exploitation fare, complete with coming attraction trailers. The only thing missing is the usher with the two by four.
The first film, Planet Terror is Robert Rodriguez’s riff on the zombie genre. Set in a small, dark Texas town on the edge of nowhere the story begins when a toxic bio-chemical weapon that turns God-fearing citizens into flesh-starved zombies is unleashed on the public. The fate of the world rests in the hands of band of vigilantes led by a plucky Go-Go dancer named Cherry (Rose McGowan) and her mysterious companion, and former boyfriend, Wray (Freddy Rodriguez).
Director Rodriguez kicks out the jams, layering one over-the-top exploitation cliché over another. Where else would you see a one legged Go-Go dancer with a machine gun prosthetic who uses stripper moves to avoid getting shot? McGown plays Cherry as the ultimate b-movie babe—beautiful, dangerous and just slightly silly (although you wouldn’t tell her that, she’d likely blow you into a million pieces). With her is Wray, the enigmatic hero, whose back-story is cleverly omitted because of a missing reel. Together they battle creatures that resemble past their expiration date versions of The Toxic Avenger. It’s gooey, ghastly and gross and darkly funny.
Between the first and second features are trailers for make-believe movies. Splat Pack directors Rob Zombie and Edgar Wright contribute funny and outrageous promos for Werewolf Women of the SS and Don’t! respectively. Eli Roth contributes a third twisted trailer that is exactly what you would expect from the warped mind that gave us movies like Hostel and Cabin Fever.
Filling out the bottom of the bill is Quentin Tarantino’s tribute to the killer car movies of the 1970s, Death Proof. Kurt Russell dusts off his badass image, retired after making a string of movies like Escape from LA, to play Stuntman Mike, a psychopath with a 1972 Chevy Nova. The stuntman’s MO is simple; he befriends and stalks women before using his car to commit vehicular murder. When he targets a couple of female stunt drivers, however, he may have bitten off more than he can chew.
Tarantino’s film is the more textured of the two. Whereas Rodriguez’s film takes off like a rocket, Death Proof takes its time. Like its Austin locale, the movie is laid back and just a little quirky. We meet radio DJ Jungle Julia (Sydney Poitier) and her friends who are chillin’ out, getting high and making girl talk. When Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito) agrees to give Stuntman Mike a lap-dance, she inadvertently seals the fate of her and her friends.
From there Mike turns his attention to four gal pals who are working on a nearby movie set. They literally give him a run for his money in one of the most exciting car chases in recent memory. The movie’s languid pace evaporates like water in the hot Texas sun as Tarantino skillfully turns Death Proof into an action packed revenge drama.
Despite some star power—Sin City’s Rosario Dawson is the above-the-title name—it’s a relative new comer who steals the movie. Stuntwoman Zoë Bell, who doubled for Uma Thurman in the Kill Bill movies, plays herself and it is her presence that lends the movie much of its oomph. The realism of her dangerous looking stunts—Tarantino filmed all her dialogue scenes first just in case she was hurt (or worse) during the elaborate car chase scene—kicks the movie up a notch and drew cheers from the audience I saw the movie with.
Planet Terror and Death Proof are both clearly labors of love for the directors. From the insane plots to the faded film stock to the missing reels, they have nailed the look and feel of 70s exploitation flicks. Both directors are smart enough not to take to the mickey out of the movies. The outrageous material is played straight, with the actors and directors taking the story seriously. The result is a certain earnestness in the performances that transcends campiness.
Grindhouse succeeds because it creates an entire atmosphere, whisking the viewer away to a different time and place where ushers carried two-by-fours.
Quentin Tarantino was in town today to promote his movie “Django Unchained” and I was lucky enough to grab an interview. Many cool things happened in the brief time I got my geek on with him.
First he remembered my Son of the 100 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen book, which I gave him the last time we met. So, of course I gave him a copy of my new one, Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils. “I’ve heard about this,” he said. “I actually saw it in Fangoria; they had a piece on it. I’m really looking forward to reading this!”
At the end I asked him this question:
RC: “How do you expect people to react to the film? It’s visceral. It’s funny. It’s gritty. It’s fun. It’s all those things, but some of the whipping scenes are brutal.”
QT: “It’s brutal. It’s going to be interesting. Right now you can call it a controversial movie. But it’s controversial because it is coming out right now and there’s a magnifying glass on it. You wrote a book about The Devils, alright. There is a point when Ken Russell makes The Devils, and it’s released and EVERYBODY’s talking about it. And EVERYBODY’s writing about it, but then you get past that and then it just exists and from here on in you live in a world where The Devils already exists. Then people take it and accept it or reject it or whatever.”
Wrapping up we chatted about my favorite parts of “Django Unchained” and he added that I have “the coolest socks in Canada, always.”
The last words of “Inglourious Basterds”, the new film from director Quentin Tarantino, are “I think this just might be my masterpiece.” The words aren’t spoken by Tarantino (I’m not going to give away anything and tell you who says them), but they did flow from his pen and it isn’t hard to imagine him claiming them as a comment on his own work. After all he did spend more than a decade working on the script, so long, in fact that “The Irish Times” wrote that the film “has been predicted more often than the second coming of the Lord.” It’s meant to be the director’s magnum opus; a sprawling film that has been gestating inside him for years. I’d like to be able to report that it is his masterpiece, but it’s not, that’s the impossible to better “Pulp Fiction”, but it is as combustible a movie as will be released this year.
Borrowing the title from a little seen 1978 Enzo Castellari film, (the second word is spelled differently, inserting an “e” where the “a” usually sits), Tarantino has created a violent WWII fantasy that rewrites history.
The Basterds are a group of Jewish-American Allied soldiers led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt). Think of them as the Dirty Half Dozen. Their mission is to hunt down, kill and scalp at least one hundred Nazis. The rare Nazi who escapes a nasty death at their hands—left alive to tell others of the Basterd’s ruthless tactics—is marked for life by a swastika carved deep into his forehead. Running parallel is a story thread about movie theatre proprietor Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), a young Jewish woman, aching for revenge against SS colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) A.K.A. the Jew Hunter. In Tarantino’s bloodthirsty world it’s inevitable that Raine’s band of brothers, Shosanna and Col. Landa will cross paths.
The films of Quentin Tarantino deeply polarize people. For every person who quivers at the thought of a new film from the “Reservoir Dogs” director there is another who thinks his movies are too long, too self indulgent and too derivative. Despite those criticisms, fair or not, there is almost no argument that of all the brand name directors working today, Tarantino is the most audacious. His films are a singular vision and “Inglorious Basterds” is no exception.
It opens with an almost unbelievably tense scene, spanning the first twenty five minutes of the movie. It is a tour de force of razor’s edge filmmaking, sadistic and twisted, all without a drop of blood or a raised voice on display. It’s pure cinema, and as a set piece is the best filmmaking I’ve seen this year.
The opening sets a high standard and Tarantino does his best to live up to it, taking his time unfurling the story in chapter form. Unlike bombastic directors like Michael Bay, Tarantino understands the ebb and flow of the storyline. His movies don’t clobber you over the head with every frame, instead he calibrates the story to include deliberately paced scenes which create a sense of anticipation for the next crescendo of violence or plot.
The movie is, as I said, deliberately paced, but never feels slow. Tarantino weaves together the disparate storylines, and styles—everything from spaghetti westerns to 70’s exploitation and über violence—into one seamless package.
The bow on top of the package has to be the performance of the Austrian-born Christoph Waltz. As SS colonel Hans Landa he is pure evil; a slimy villain for the ages.
“Inglourious Basterds” won’t be for everyone, it’s too extreme for casual viewers, but the film lover in me is tickled that the heroine is a cinema owner who literally uses film to bring down the Third Reich. Love him or not, you can never accuse Tarantino of being boring.
In a movie ripe with film homages, one stands head and shoulders above the rest as the film’s best meta-moment. In Quentin Tarantino’s unhinged Spaghetti western “Django Unchained” Jamie Foxx plays the title character, a slave-turned-bounty-hunter on a search for his wife.
On his journey he encounters a slave trader played by Italian star Franco Nero. Over a drink, Nero’s character asks Django his name. “Django,” comes the reply. “D-J-A-N-G-O… the D is silent.”
“I know,” says Nero.
The sound you are hearing is the squeal of film nerds. It’s a high-pitched grunt mixed with a sudden intake of air, the gasp of a movie fanatic whose mind has just been blown.
You see Nero (whose credits reads: “With the friendly participation of Franco Nero”) originated a gun slinging character named Django in a legendary 1966 eponymously titled movie.
“Django Unchained” is heavy with references, both visual—lots of zooming cameras a la Sergio Leone—location wise—he borrowed the snow setting from The Great Silence—and even just a little bit silly—Kerry Washington’s character’s last name is Von Shaft in tribute to Richard Roundtree’s most famous character—but only King of the Film Geeks, QT, would think to have two worlds collide by presenting dueling Djangos.
Tarantino brings his unique sensibility to every frame of “Django Unchained.” It’s an uncompromising film, violent, grimly funny, and one in which the “n” word is as prevalent as any other noun. Like him or not, there is no denying that he is as true to his singular vision as any of the great filmmakers he pays homage to.
Set two years before the Civil War, the film begins with Django (Foxx) in chains, being transported deep inside the Deep South by vicious slave traders the Speck brothers (James Remar and James Russo). On a remote country road they meet Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a courtly German bounty hunter—so courtly he even has a horse named Fritz who bows— who has been tracking Django. There’s no reward for the slave; what he has is more interesting to Schultz—information.
The bounty hunter is looking to hunt down and kill a ruthless band of killers called the Brittle Brothers. Trouble is, he doesn’t know what they look like, but Django, who was beaten by them and whose wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), was taken by them, does. They forge a deal. In return for his help Django will earn his freedom and Shultz will help find and rescue Broomhilda.
Django agrees to go into business with Shultz—“Kill white folks and get paid for it? What’s not to like?”—which leads them to Candie-Land, the plantation of the charming but vicious Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). Despite the name, there’s nothing sweet about him or the place.
Tarantino is one of the handful of over-the-title directors who name is as big a draw as the story or actors. Even though there are big stars here like DiCaprio and Foxx, “Django Unchained” is first and foremost a Tarantino movie, with all that implies.
His trademarked anachronistic soundtrack—mixing 60s pop with religious music and rap—butts heads with violent but beautiful flourishes—like blood splattered cotton blossoms—in a movie that blends Spaghetti westerns with German fairy tales, revenge flicks and Hollywood history.
It a high wire act, tackling issues of the US’s relationship with slavery, racism and the exploitation of women with equal parts earnestness, style, violence and humor.
As satire a scene involving hooded white supremacists arguing over the placement of the eyeholes on their homemade cowls–“I can’t see **** out of this thing!”—is a pure Tarantino moment—acerbic, ridiculous and fearless.
The flamboyant filmmaking seems to have freed the actors.
Waltz and DiCaprio have the showiest roles. Waltz is a bounty hunter with a conscience—he doesn’t want to take advantage of Django’s status as a slave, but “for the time being I’m going to make this slavery malarkey work for me,” he says. “Still, I feel bad.”—a former dentist who “kills people and sells their corpses for cash,” which is in direct opposition to the slave traders—who buys and sell live people—he hunts and kills.
DiCaprio’s rotten tooth grin belies how much fun he’s having playing a Southern gentleman who is anything but.
Foxx is more stoic, a coiled spring eager for revenge on the people who have done him and his wife wrong. The role isn’t without humor, however. Just check out the suit Django chooses when he is allowed to pick out his clothes for the firs time ever in his life.
“Django Unchained” is bloodier than you’ll expect—with a shootout as violently gratuitous as any gun battle ever filmed—and funnier than you think it is going to be. It’s a message movie and a pulpy crowd pleaser. In other words, it’s a Tarantino film.
Yesterday we were fortunate enough to attend the Canadian premiere of Quentin Tarantino’s highly anticipated WWII romp Inglorious Basterds. Security was intense–all cellphones with camera capabilities were checked upon entrance–and metal detectors greeted us at the door. Clearly, this wasn’t just another screening. Buzz about Tarantino’s presence was fierce, and after learning that he had done Canadian press earlier that afternoon coupled with a security guard’s mutterings–”the director really wants to get started by 7 PM”–our anticipation had reached a fever pitch. Thirty minutes after the scheduled start time, Canada AM’s resident film geek Richard Crouse took hold of a mic and stood before a packed-to-the-brim theatre, to introduce a very special guest. “I remember when I first saw Pulp Fiction….”
Tarantino was greeted with a no-brainer standing ovation, and was joined by fellow director Eli Roth–who plays basterd Donny Donowitz in the film–two giants of modern cinema standing before an adoring audience. Clearly these men have little to no self-esteem issues. After the obligatory bigging up of Toronto (Eli Roth called it his “home”), Tarantino opted out of the requisite “bonne cinema” and instead belted out “ARE YOU READY TO WATCH SOME NAZIS GET THEIR ASSES KICKED?” And with that, the lights dimmed…
It’s easy to describe Inglorious Basterds as a film about Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine and his team of rough-and-tumble Nazi killers (who also happen to be Jews), as they plow and pillage their way through occupied France, but it’s so much more than that. It’s an homage to the cinema of the 1940s, to noir films, and it’s classic QT. Long, tense scenes of surgical dialogue are punctuated with explosive, whip-quick instances of extreme violence, orchestrated by a director who has checked into his comfort zone, and shows no signs of vacating anytime soon. Giving major plot points away would spoil all the fun, but let’s just say Tarantino takes a few liberties with historical facts, especially in the film’s blazing final act. I’ve already said too much. Inglorious Basterds opens wide on August 21st, and in case you’ve been hiding out under a floor board (too much?) for the last year, check out the trailer below.
Quentin Tarantino called Django Unchained, his new revenge film starring Jamie Foxx and Leonardo Leonardo DiCaprio, a spaghetti Western set in America’s Deep South. He’s even coined a name for it—”a Southern.”
The inspiration came from wanting “to do movies that deal with America’s horrible past with slavery but do them like spaghetti westerns; not like big issue movies.”
The director has already explored many of the genres that fired his imagination as a clerk at Video Archives, the store in Manhattan Beach where he got his informal movie training. He covered off kung fu in Kill Bill, grindhouse in Death Proof and war movies in the Oscar winning Inglorious Basterds.
Each of his movies has contained classic western themes— ultra violence, codes of honor and revenge—but this is the first time he’s attempted an all out oater.
The obvious starting place when looking at inspirations is the work of Italian director Sergio Corbucci, most notably Django, a spaghetti Western from 1966. This violent (body count is 138) movie’s style and take on race clearly had an influence. “His West was the most violent, surreal and pitiless landscape of any director in the history of the genre,” he says.
Though it clocks in at number 3 on the director’s all time favorite spaghetti Western list (topped by For a Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly), QT obviously loves the movie. He echoed Django’s ear severing scene in Reservoir Dogs and five years ago appeared in a Japanese tribute called Sukiyaki Western Django directed by Takashi Miike.
Also influential was The Great Silence, a violent 1972 Corbucci about a mute gunslinger facing off against a gang of bounty hunters. Set in the snowbound Nevada mountains, the look of the movie impressed Tarantino. “I liked the action in the snow so much, Django Unchained has a big snow section in the middle of the movie.”
Number seven on his favorites list is Tonino Valerii’s Day of Anger starring spaghetti superstar Lee Van Cleef as an aging gunman taking on a young protégé. Tarantino used Riz Ortolani’s main title theme in Kill Bill Vol. 2 and looked to the film’s climatic shootout as inspiration for Django Unchained.
The director proudly wears his influences on his sleeve. “When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, ‘No, I went to films.’”
Quentin Tarantino doesn’t care if you like him or his movies.
“My films are unabashedly about myself and you’re either going to like them or go against them,” he says, “but that’s OK because I like me.”
Tarantino’s films — Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown and Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2, to name a few — sharply polarize people. For every person who gets all aquiver at the prospect of a new picture from the Reservoir Dogs director, there’s another who thinks his movies are too long, too self-indulgent and too derivative.
Despite those criticisms, fair or not, there can be no argument that of all the brand name directors working today Tarantino is the most audacious. His films are a singular vision and this weekend’s Inglourious Basterds is no exception.
His films are unapologetically bloody, in-your-face talky and ripe with larger-than-life characters, and perhaps it’s those qualities that rub certain people the wrong way.
He refuses to play it safe and take the Michael Bay road churning out Hasbro movies. He’s told interviewers he would die to make his movies perfect, and I believe him, but I’m a fan.
Not all critics are. Writer Ryan Gilbey said Death Proof represented “a sort of embarrassment of riches, only without the riches,” and more recently the Guardian called Inglourious Basterds “an armor-plated turkey.” Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, but I think the Tarantino hecklers miss the point.
Tarantino is a provocateur who excels when he doesn’t play nice with the audience. Unlike the vast majority of films at the local bijou, his films demand something from an audience; they demand to be noticed and argued about over coffee (or something stronger) afterward. Many films fade quickly from memory, but, like them or not, Tarantino’s don’t.
When he’s at his best—Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds — the movies are transformative cinematic experiences, but even when he’s not in top form — say, Death Proof — his work is, as critic Peter Bradshaw said, “more interesting than the successes of dullards and middleweights churning out Identikit films by the truckload.”
Tarantino’s films aren’t for everyone, but it’s undeniable that he takes movies seriously.
So seriously in fact, that the heroine in Inglourious Basterds is a cinema owner who literally uses film to bring down the Third Reich. I love that.
Say what you will, you can never accuse Tarantino of being boring.
To understand the wild new movie from co-directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez first you have to understand the premise. They have made a good old-fashioned exploitation movie double bill, complete with scratchy film and missing reels. They’ve recreated the grind house experience for an audience that may be too young to remember the days before multi-plexes dotted the landscape and people went to local theatres where movies were two for the price of one.
