Tarantino

I'm not a fan, but this is a great point. Jackie Brown is the sort of thing I can imagine an aging alcoholic pulp writer coming up with. I think Tarantino is good at what he does, but his characterizations are so weak (and not helped by "novelty" casting) taht I can't really stomach his films. Definitely a good subject for a "trash-meets-high-art" style discussion though - he "wears all his influences on his sleeve", whether you think that's a good thing or not.

I don't know, life is long, if he doesn't just retire to bathe in his money I think he might have a very interesting late career.

Don't know about the alchohol, but Elmore Leonard is no spring chicken and he has written a bazillion books either about cowboys or criminals. Jackie Brown is taken from his book "Rum Punch". I think Tarantino gets some of his dialog style from Elmore Leonard.

Resevoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction are both quite a bit more cartoonish than most of Jim Thompson's books. I think those movies are more indebted to Starsky and Hutch or Superfly than most would admit. Mind you, the violence is intense as Thompson's books, but the settings are cop show, which is OK with me.

I'd like to see someone with some vision take a shot at Thompson's "The Killer Inside Me", that book could be the basis for a great movie.

Thompson could write for the movies. Check out Kubrick's "The Killing" and you will see what I mean. I thought "The Grifters" was a good adaption of one of his books.

I do enjoy his dialogue, though I think it's funny that after the release of Reservoir Dogs, critics said that his characters talked like some imaginary "everyman". Now, I'm from a white suburban middle-class English family - there's no way I ever speak like a Tarantino character!

Earlnash-you're right about Rum Punch. I totally forgot! :]

I wonder John, what do you mean by this?

There are probably dozens of these I'll remember after I post this.

What about XXX or The Matrix: Reloaded?

It's funny, before Jackie Brown I always thought that QT was doing George V. Higgins dialogue rather than Elmore Leonard, but I guess he's just read a ton of crime fic and a lot of it rubs off. I saw Jackie Brown again recently, and am more convinced than ever that it's his best film - a great romantic comedy, almost.

The director he most reminds me of is Kubrick - the early crime based thrillers, the increasing gap between making films, the problem w/ comedy and overripe performance, the formal symmetry of their shot-making. It's not a perfect match, of course - QT is much more of a humanist, and Tarantino's snobbery is expressed in ubergeek oneupmanship rather than Kubrick's intellectual contempt.

I'd like to think so. Otherwise I'm kind of in trouble.

I couldn't stomach the violence in Reservoir Dogs. I still haven't made it through the whole picture.

i'm not so sure qt's bio is mapped out start-to-finish (tho he is making two things back-to-back right now hmmm) - i think Jackie Brown was as much as anything a "but i can also do THIS" pre-emptive (and smart) response to the backlash that was bound to spring up from all the Boy Wonder hype post-Pulp Fiction. Over the long-term i expect his success/failure will depend almost entirely on this ability to keep ahead of the curve rep-wise, and that having to live down a few of the tricks that made him famous to begin with - the ones his legion of imitators can most easily pick up and possibly outrun him with - will be key. The same could be said of almost anyone obv but i think his particular predicament remains fairly unique right now, hiatus and all.

(i mention this partly cuz i predict the Kill Bill backlash will be enormous. the script is ok but it's an exploitation hommage played pretty by-the-numbers - possibly too nudgenudge genre-conscious for the NoMoPoMo crowd [if this "crowd" isn't just a phantom strawmob i've begun to channel thru ilx] on the one hand, and on the other hand slightly behind-the-times and dull as far as recent genre-commentary goes. Also if the teaser trailers are anything to go by it LOOKS dated - not in a kewl throwback way but in a Charlie's Angels three-years-ago way - the curse of the imitators again maybe)

(then again yes this could all be part of some masterplan designed to divert attention away from the coup de grace of the followup picture, who knows)

J0hn - Jackie Brown is worth renting, esp.if you're interested enough to have bought RD. I totally disagree with the "novelty casting" charge. This has probably been mentioned often enough to have become part of the official hype-parade by now but here goes anyway: the lead casting in JB sez loads more about tarantino's relationship with film than any of his whizkid camera-moves or script-mashups do. Giving enough of a damn abt the wasted potential/overlooked performances/??? of eg.Pam Grier and Robert Forster to write sharp, nuanced parts for them is exactly the kind of thing most of the nu-school film-on-film types can't pull off (well ok haha hello pt anderson i'll be with you shortly) - i mean even the Travolta/PF thing was like that at the time - i.e. totally NOT a "let's dress him up in disco clothes and point and laugh" move - and it's not QT's fault he turned back into a mockery of himself the first chance he got.

(also some of JB's growing-old-in-style theme [which is fun to watch auteur-champs grapple with as QT was positively bushy-tailed by hollywood standards at the time] [yet still managed to turn in a picture that got this element across without being TOTALLY ponderous about it (although hmm yes it sort of was)] can be read as a great big ILM metaphor if you get bored!!)

(ok that last part may not be true but there's a great minor "shopping for new music" scene that sez a hilarious eerie lot to me about my life)

haha in fact let me come at this another way: tarantino sux

this just occured to me: when he allows himself to come across like a COMPLETE filmgeek he lets in better surprises than when he concentrates on being a COOL filmgeek (if there is such a thing)

Plus From Dusk To Dawn IS THE GREATEST FILM EVER MADE.

I missed (Tarantino's) boast about being the owner of the only repertory house in Los Angeles (i.e., the New Beverly) and how he'll "burn the place down" before he shows anything there with digital projection.

YAY, Tarantino = OLDS, you monkeys!

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2010/02/gift_of_gab.php

whos tarantino talking about in the beginning of that clip?

ah pta apparently

I dunno max, can't watch here

he was talking about his 'rivalry' with pta i guess--and told a story about depalma finishing blow-up and feeling like he had really made a masterpiece, and then going to see raging bull

Brett Ratner felt the same way after finishing Rush Hour 2 and then going to see The Fast and the Furious

the programming at the New Bev is kinda weak

I wonder why!

obama probably

haaaaa

i love how amateurist refers to a movie as a "picture." how many people still do that?

my dad

MARTIN SCORSESE

(in the credits and posters of all his pictures)

i'm done w/ IB thread, but

"Here's my problem with this whole influence thing," he told me. "Instead of critics reviewing my movies, now what they're really doing is trying to match wits with me...."

It's NO CONTEST, ASSHOLE

you should go to revival movie screenings in los angeles, morbs, tarantino can be seen hanging near the back at half of 'em just watching some old movies. you guys could bro down!

I've seen Tarantino twice, randomly, in the past 3 years in NYC.

BUT I LIKE GOOD MOVIES

You both can discuss Rio Bravo, Weekend, and Angie Dickison's tittays put your nads in a twister.

*how

“As far as I’m concerned, digital projection and DCPs is the death of cinema as I know it. It’s not even about shooting your film on film or shooting your film on digital. The fact that most films now are not presented in 35 millimeter means that the war is lost. And digital projections, that’s just television in public. And apparently the whole world is okay with television in public, but what I knew as cinema is dead.”

so finally you agree about something? idgi

he & i agree on a TON of shit (Leone, Budd Boetticher, Eric Rohmer), just not on grindhouse garbage and the worthlessness of his own career in the last dozen years. I just thought it was notable that an ILX god could express such caveman OTM sentiments.

Don't think I'd read a word about this till I bought it on impulse today:

https://uncrate.com/assets_c/2022/06/cinema-speculation-tarantino-1-thumb-960xauto-147692.jpg

Suspect I'll end up disagreeing with every third sentence--it's on '70s films (heavily tilted towards American films, I assume, but I'm not sure)--but it should be entertaining.

(ILF...the wilderzone.)

He was on Stern today; haven't listened yet