i just finished 2012 watching this movie. it was my first tarantino film, and it was very entertaining. i wanted to like it more, but it felt so drawn out. i think i should watch pulp fiction and inglorious basterds to assess this movie, but nonetheless, it was a good first impression on me i would rate it 7.5/10
My goodness...Tarentino is one of the all time greats. The fact that you haven't seen Pulp Fiction is borderline criminal. You got some catching up to do! Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Reservoir Dogs, Inglorious Bastards, and Kill Bill Volume 1 and 2 are all just fantastic films.
And after you're done catching up with the greats and find yourself fiending for more QT material, depending on how bad the itch is, check out: Death Proof (written/directed), True Romance* (wrote), Natural Born Killers* (wrote), From Dusk Till Dawn (wrote), Four Rooms (he at least wrote/directed his "segment".. interesting movie) *Once familiar with his work, I always get a kick out of seeing QT's work projected from someone elses eyes Honestly, there are few writers/directors that I can watch anything new and old and enjoy every bit.
Somethings I can appreciate about Tarantino: 1. He writes and directs ... at times I think directors are over credited for an "masterpiece" when they were handed a winning script. Tarantino may take pieces and elements from other films that have influenced him, but there's a lot of originality too. 2. Style ... you can easily tell a Tarantino movie, and all his movies have his signatures.
I bet that this is selective appreciation. Not really picking on your post per say, but I often wonder why Tarantino's "signature" is accepted while M Night Shyamalan is crucified for making any movie that even resembles what he's done before. My theory about this is that, in a Tarantino film, the audience member doesn't feel manipulated in any way. While Shyamalan's films can and do liberally manipulates the audience member. Conclusion: people don't like to feel manipulated. This doesn't make Shyamalan a back director, it just makes his style harder to digest. In fact, it is my opinion that Signs, for example, is the only movie that has come close to replicating the wonder of a Steven Spielberg style movie in an original way.
I think your assessment is spot on. M Night kinda pigeonholed himself with his major flip/twist....audiences expected it, in fact audiences started looking for it. And as you stated, M Night has to lead the audience down one or more paths, and then redirect that path towards the finale. With Tarantino, it's more of a ride, you're not challenged to figure things out and nor do you typically want to while watching. Edit: Case in point, I saw the Django Trailer...and watching it, it pretty much gave away the whole movie, beginning to end. But still I enjoyed the movie watching it whole.
I think people like Tarantino's films more because his tend to be better. M Night Shyamalan's have tended to suck. It's not about manipulation. Tarantino's films have better scripts and are better constructed.
Film was great, laughed a bunch. Keeps you intersted the whole way through, even though it is long. Tarantino does a great job telling stories.
This two songs is stuck in my head. <iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/LIROhlBnjuo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>' <iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/OhlVBpEnjig" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I saw it this evening and felt it was good but not great. It was entertaining, well paced, and well acted especially Waltz's character but I didn't feel like it was something ground breaking or deeply thought provoking. In terms of an honest portrayal of slavery it was probably the most graphic but there are many other movies that have also showed the brutality and dehumanizing nature of slavery. The middle passage scene in Amistad was much more haunting. The problem is that Tarantino seems way more interested in making movie references than a deeper message so the violence of it seems more like slasher p*rn than it does about an unflinching view of the slavery. Further his dedication to recapturing the feel of classic westerns, spaghetti and otherwise, removes any realistic feel of plantation life. This is one of the main reasons why I am not much of a fan of Tarantino in that so much of his work is about cramming in references to other work.
I disagree. IMO Tarantino's movies are as much if not more manipulative than Shyamalan's. For example Kill Bill I and II were very manipulative regarding how the audience should feel about the bride. His use of references to other movies draws upon cultural cues about how the audience should feel and when almost like cue cards, such as now you should be angry, now you should laugh, now you should cry and etc.. Shyamalan want's to misdirect an audience and surprise them with a twist but Tarantino wants lead the audience by playing upon previous movies. The problem with that is while Tarantino is able to craft very clever stories in most of his movies he has sacrificed complexity of his characters so that they often become merely references themselves. Spoiler Django Unchained is very much in this pattern of Tarantino clubbing the audience over the head with references and making it abundantly clear how you should think about them. These characters have moral ambiguity based upon the violence they wreak but it is very clear that you are supposed to root for them and moral failings they have is fully justified. Django wreaks bloody vengeance but you will like him because he is Shaft combined with every Clint Eastwood Western character. There is really nothing subtle about him or even the slightly more developed Dr. Shultz. Even though on the surface he is an amoral bounty hunter it is abundantly clear he is one of the good guys in the story and will act that way.
It's because Tarentino's "signatures" are appreciated. He's received massive acclaim for these, and they are partly what make his films great. Shyamalan's "signatures" are simply just bogus twists that either lead up to nothing, end up not making sense, or simply being a letdown. This is not the case for all of his films, but for a majority as of late, they just haven't been good. It's not selective, it's just a matter of appreciating what's good and what's not.
