Django Unchained

[mash]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/dec/12/django-unchained-first-look-review

Excellent review in The Guardian.

[Lovelyman]

As soon as a review starts as effusively as that, you know it's going to be actually a bit crap.

[kerraig UK]

Thats an awful review. A return to form? After Inglorious? This isnt a patch on Inglorious, and that had faults

[lordcookie]

Bradshaw gave Inglourious Basterds one star so it is hard to know how to treat his Django review.

[kerraig UK]

Fucking fell did he!? That's mental. Especially seeing how much this and that have in common.

[Grobbelboy]

Inglourious was one of Tarantino's best, up there with Reservoir Dogs, so I have really high hopes for this.

[Vemsie]

Faraci's review is up:

http://badassdigest.com/2012/12/12/movie-review-django-unchained/

This is a movie where bullets hit like meteors, sending oceans of bright red blood splattering over everything in sight. Tarantino isn’t just sticking it to the racists, he’s sticking it to CGI blood.

Good, as CGI blood is fucking awful.

[kerraig UK]

The blood hits in this are insanely visceral. Huge explosions of claret

[SpagMasterSwift]

Yeah, the action is pretty infrequent - but that one scene more than makes up for it. Blood has never looked so wet.

[Graham S]

Fans of Django might want to give Mandingo a try. Tarantino often praises it. Here's a post of mine from the Movie Watcher's blog to whet your appetite.

Mandingo

What an odd film. It's a morally questionable exploitation film, a soft porn fantasy, a seventies soft-focus romance, a film featuring Susan George as a drunk Southern belle and a memorable James Mason turn as an ageing slave owner riddled with the rheumatiz, a searing indictment of slavery, a ... I don't know what. It's watchable, even compelling, at times a laughable mess and the mistreatment of the slaves is hard to see and unlike anything else I've seen about slavery on film. Maybe I haven't seen many slavery dramas, but I was shocked. I don't think I should assume documentary accuracy from a dubious Dino De Laurentis-produced blaxpolitation film, but it's quite something. There's infanticide, miscegenation (plenty of this), murder, torture, poisoning, boiling, hanging, whipping, flogging, no holds barred fighting (featuring Ken Norton, the boxer who broke Muhammad Ali's jaw), euthanasia, rape, sado-masochism. It's directed by the guy who did The Narrow Margin. I think it's pretty good, pretty interesting but it's certainly not politically correct. I think I need someone to tell me what to think about this movie, because I've got nothing.

[Steve McQueef]

So, does this play better as a proper film, as opposed to the cobbled together bollocks that he normally peddles?

If it's anything like Inglourious, I'm not going near it. That and Death Proof were like a tag-team of shitness and boredom.

I haven't enjoyed anything he's done, since the first part of Kill Bill and even there, the cracks were beginning to show, IMO.

Dogs and Pulp I love deeply, (Jackie Brown, less so, but it's still a great movie), I'll even overlook his 'acting' in From Dusk Till Dawn, as it's another film I love, but the dude needs some new schtick.

The wheels haven't fallen off the wagon, so much as the wagon's been reduced to firewood.

[kerraig UK]

This plays out in a very similar way to fashion to Inglorious. I think they're very much cousins

[Jonathan_Kerr]

Well yes. Kill Bill is also bloated and slow IMO. Especially the terrible 2nd part

Probably not worth having this conversation again, is it?

[Capwn]

Saw this tonight. I enjoyed his older classics but felt his post Kill Bill era has provided the most entertaining movies. Django certainly fits into the latter but overall for me it didn't quite have the build up or tension of those films, Inglorious despite it's flaws was a more bombastic edgy movie with dark undertones. Django feels more like a cartoony feel good buddy movie for the most part. I never really cared about any of the characters but they were entertaining to watch.

It's a solid experience, feels like a traditional and strong movie experience which can be rare for such a popular movie. It was enjoyable but for me also one of Tarantino's most underwhelming stories.

[rumblecat]

Urgh, this isn't out where I live until March. I'm hoping it's better than his last three- I thought the opening scenes of both Kill Bill and Inglorious Basterds were great (and sort of similar- a tense situation made even more tense by the reveal of an innocent party / parties halfway through...) but didn't get on so much with the rest of them.

Anyway, here's quite a lengthy interview with him about making the film, and about the plans for a third film to round off the 'history' trilogy- Killer Crow- which goes back to WWII and crosses over with IB.

I don't know exactly when I'm going to do it, but there's something about this that would suggest a trilogy. My original idea for Inglourious Basterds way back when was that this [would be] a huge story that included the [smaller] story that you saw in the film, but also followed a bunch of black troops, and they had been f--ked over by the American military and kind of go apes--t. They basically -- the way Lt. Aldo Raines (Brad Pitt) and the Basterds are having an "Apache resistance" -- [the] black troops go on an Apache warpath and kill a bunch of white soldiers and white officers on a military base and are just making a warpath to Switzerland.

So that was always going to be part of it. And I was going to do it as a miniseries, and that was going to be one of the big storylines. When I decided to try to turn it into a movie, that was a section I had to take out to help tame my material. I have most of that written. It's ready to go; I just have to write the second half of it...

...That would be the third of the trilogy. It would be [connected to] Inglourious Basterds, too, because Inglourious Basterds are in it, but it is about the soldiers. It would be called Killer Crow or something like that.

Interview is in three parts- although it does go into some incidents in Django so there are spoilers, especially after part one.

http://www.theroot.c...-django-trilogy

http://www.theroot.c...d-part-2-n-word

http://www.theroot.c...3-white-saviors

[papalazarou]

saw this last night and loved every minute of it - a great balance of action ( a lot of it is OTT but in a good way) and the now usual Tarantino witty dialogue and monologues though none went over long (like in the case with some from inglorious - which is still one of his best movies)

[SMD]

Cross posting from the GIFs thread, just seen this and grabbed two bits which are slightly spoilerish but damn, so cheesy it's good:

[Ben]

Saw it earlier and its supremely entertaining. However, its weirdly paced and bloated - more so than any of his other films really.

[PopeSmokesDope]

What an amazing film.... And the music!!!

[Silent Runner]

I saw the poster for this on the side of a bus this morning. It had the strapline ‘The D is silent’. I’ve watched the trailer a few times and I thought he was saying ‘I’m Django, the deicidal’ as in the killer of a God or something.

[SpagMasterSwift]

More like the killer of devils. *raises fist*

[Omizzay]

I think this is Tarantino's third best movie after Pulp and Dogs...I absolutely loved it. Also, I think this is my favourite Leonardo di Caprio character. Must rewatch tonight.

[schmojo]

I had a lot of fun watching this, but it's certainly subject to the usual Tarantino criticism of being overlong, meandering, and a bit pandering. Genuinely entertaining, though the initiation of the ending was a bit of an anticlimax.

I'm not a Jamie Foxx fan at all, but found him very watchable in this.

[Ben]

Apparently the ending has been chopped and change around a lot since the original script, I didn't find the last 30 minutes or so particularly satisfying.

Tarantino should really stop trying to pretend he can act too. Only a small role but wow, he stinks.

[dataDave]

Awesome so far, 1/3 of the way in and then had to get back to work. T_T

Was thinking of skiving.

[SpagMasterSwift]

You work on the popcorn stand?

[kerraig UK]

I think this is Tarantino's third best movie after Pulp and Dogs...I absolutely loved it. Also, I think this is my favourite Leonardo di Caprio character. Must rewatch tonight.

My biggest problem with it, aside from the unusual pacing, was that it basically set up how the film was gonna play out, and then played out in exactly that way, without any surprises or twists. I kept waiting for a big reveal or shock left turn that would kick things up a gear but it never came. That and the fact that the German was the most one dimensional, characterless of all of QT's brilliant creations.

That being said though, it is always watchable and some of it is tremendous fun

[SMD]

I thought it was refreshing that Tarantino didn't bother to make it deep and meaningful, or some elaborate plot which didn't really add anything to the film. His strength is in writing dialogue and this film nails that.

[kerraig UK]

I actually find a lot of QTs dialogue exhausting, it takes him an age to reach a point and his scripts are overloaded with repetition. Also, everybody speaks with the same voice.

I think QTs real talent is in creating characters that you enjoy watching and then putting them in familiar situations that twist away from your expectations. Unfortunately this was his most predictable outing yet. Still really enjoyed it, but I still think reservoir dogs is his only truly great film.

[hoot]

Watched it last night, the plot is definitely the weak point of the film and it does sag a bit in places, but it's still very watchable. There's some very funny scenes early on involving Waltz, he pretty much steals every scene he's in, although DiCaprio was very good too.