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So I still can't see the version the director kept hyping up for years.

He wants you to see this one at home

Quentin Tarantino wrote:It was awesome in the bigness of 70, but sitting on your couch, maybe it’s not so awesome. So I cut it up a little bit. It’s a little less precious about itself.

Considering that when I saw Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair the only time it ever screened in or near my city it was still Tarantino's own French-subbed print from Cannes, I think this is a situation where the director is going to want to keep the 70mm floating around, but unique to that experience and that experience alone. It sucks about the UK distribution, but I'm sure you'll be able to see it eventually - having seen the Kill Bill films a dozen times before seeing the full cut didn't detract from either of those experiences one bit.

And I don't say that lightly: The Whole Bloody Affair actually makes a huge difference in the way that film plays, namely that

Spoiler

There is not one iota of a hint that Beatrix's daughter is still alive until she sees her in person at Bill's estate, and it's much more emotional, even if you know it's coming, because, well, you've seen it a dozen times

And like Dom mentions below, there's not anywhere approaching that degree of a difference here.

Honestly, the differences are extremely minor and do not detract from or alter the central pleasures or value of the film. The only thing that really stings is the musical number is presented differently in both versions, but it's still present in the standard version. I think Tarantino just threw in the little extra scene extensions in the Roadshow to give people more of an impetus to see it in 70MM, not because they were necessary to enjoy the film.

Tarantino clearly is a talented and skilled filmmaker. He has a unique voice and knows how to spin a good yarn. I found "The Hateful Eight" entertaining, though I agree with a few of the criticisms here, like the very awkward voice-over exposition. The film could have been edited down a bit as well.

But the question that is on my mind is: What is all of this in service of? All these talents and skills, all this money, all these superb actors, beautiful landscapes and camera work... what is it all for? What is the purpose? I guess if the answer is "Entertainment", then I cannot argue against it. But then, that's all it is. I have seen people in this thread alluding to some veiled deeper meaning or themes or political message. If that is the idea, then then results are sophomoric at best.

Aside from a few well-framed vista shots, does the film add anything to our society in terms of inspiration, love, art, humanity, philosophy, metaphysics, spirituality, a lifting of the soul? Just the opposite. In many ways, I think with its vile ugliness, hate and violence, "Hateful Eight" is actually degrading to the human soul.

Well, this thread talks about that question quite thoroughly. The conclusion seems to be to reduce it a little much race and women which frankly have been ideas of his going back to at least True Romance.

Trees wrote:Aside from a few well-framed vista shots, does the film add anything to our society in terms of inspiration, love, art, humanity, philosophy, metaphysics, spirituality, a lifting of the soul? Just the opposite. In many ways, I think with its vile ugliness, hate and violence, "Hateful Eight" is actually degrading to the human soul.

Revealing the degradation of the soul is not the same as degrading it.

Tarantino is not a filmmaker of ideas. If you go to his work looking for big ideas about love, fate, eternity, spirituality, philosophy, you will be disappointed. Tarantino is not in a dialectic with the history of grand thoughts, and has famously spurned filmmakers who are (Kubrick comes to mind). Tarantino dialogues with film itself, so any meaning you're going to get out of his films has to come in the context of what he's revealing about how films, genre films especially, organize the world. Even his last two films are not dealing with racism on its own; they're dealing with how genre films have, or famously haven't, depicted a certain kind of racism.

That said, The Hateful Eight is full of knotty moral and psychological problems. It doesn't work these problems up into a larger idea of how humans function on a moral or metaphysical plane; but the specific problems it develops between these people regarding how they handle certain concepts (truth, vengeance, race, war) and why they do so is meaty and requires unpacking. You just have to accept that these problems are specific to the context Tarantino creates and not a wider representation of something more abstract, like a historical debate between two philosophical or theological schools.

You just have to get away from the idea that movies ought to reduce to an intellectual generalization. Some movies just are things rather than about them.

It looks like the road show is being "digitally re-issued" to theaters, for whatever reason, beginning this weekend. At my theater, at least, it's a limited, daily late show. The e-mail blast from Weinstein gave me a chuckle:

Show Quentin's film with all the footage he wanted you to see!
Hear the Oscar winning score by Ennio Morricone!
Sell extra concessions during the intermission!
Contact your sales person and reserve yours today!

If anyone is interested, QT's podcast with Elvis Mitchell is especially insightful to those who like the movie. I thought it was frivolous as most everything else since 1997, but he's always a good interview.

On a side note, Mitchell's interview with Illiana Dougless has some great stories too.

I wish you'd stop being coy and would just tell us what you thought of this movie already!

The distribution of this film has been an utter mess from start to finish.

What now?

That now the road show is coming out digitally after all the nonsense of restricting it to a few cinemas in 70mm. Farcical that the road show was made exclusive to Leicester Square in the UK on the basis of self-inflicted technical reasons, which ultimately made Cineworld, Curzon and Picturehouse wash their hands of it entirely.

The roadshow was neat and I was happy to see it but like... it's not like you're losing a whole lot if you see the regular movie in dcp instead of the roadshow, the whole point was to create a particular and special experience for some screenings

matrixschmatrix wrote:The roadshow was neat and I was happy to see it but like... it's not like you're losing a whole lot if you see the regular movie in dcp instead of the roadshow, the whole point was to create a particular and special experience for some screenings

...and effectively so, I'd say...which sort of makes this feel like a cheap trick in order to inflate (ever so slightly) its disappointing box office return.

This also makes the blu-ray disc's "standard release only" a bit more puzzling.

This thread feels like a giant hamster wheel.

Those of you who don't hate slipcovers should not hasten to pick this up, it's a real beaut-- fold-out cover with heavy embossing

No fake bullet holes, no sale

I got the BestBuy Steelbook, and I just wanted to say that it was so ironic to see a 3rd disc slot containing the circular cutout for the digital HD code. They should have included the roadshow version.

Mr Sausage wrote:

bearcuborg wrote: I think he could have scrapped the whole flashback to be honest.

I don't know why people keep saying either this or that the scene was unnecessary. It's structurally necessary in order to create tension and expectation through delay. Without it, the scene where allegiances and secrets are exposed and violence erupts would transition right to a scene of people sitting or lying around explaining things quickly. That'd be too immediate a release; the surprise wouldn't be allowed to linger and build emotion. By delaying the follow up scene, Tarantino builds further tension by withholding explanations and outcomes. The flashback gives some necessary plot explanations, but mostly we're being made to wait and stew. It's a common structural device from novels, or at least older novels. That delay is important and effective.

The flashback also gives a lot of important character work to the General who would be a total enigma and far more pitiable without it. The contrast between him in the flashback and Mannix at the end allows the final shot to be all the more terrifying. I'm not sure if I'm entirely with how Tarantino tells the General's goodbye, but the flashback allows some tennis action on thinking back to it knowing how little regard for anyone else's skin the General has.

Finally got around to this last night. I'm in the "loved it despite flaws" camp, but the one thing that seriously bothered me that I haven't seen addressed is

Spoiler

the way Chris Mannix went from being great admirer and defender of the general one minute, and yet was apparently indifferent to his murder by the guy in the group he hated most of all. Even if the reason Mannix hated M. Warren had more to do with his murderous ways than his race, I can't figure out how it makes sense.

But maybe it's not supposed to make sense, anymore than having Tim Roth do a Christoph Waltz impression does.

Did he? The narration mentions a heated argument about the legality of the shooting, and one can stand to reason the only reason those tensions die down is because the much more pressing issue of the coffee emerges.

Cold Bishop wrote:Did he? The narration mentions a heated argument about the legality of the shooting, and one can stand to reason the only reason those tensions die down is because the much more pressing issue of the coffee emerges.

I'll have to watch that part again. When the narration started my mind kept going "oh, fuck, is he seriously doing a voiceover?" so I was a little distracted. I don't think anything in the narration is going to cover my objection, though.

Spoiler

Mannix went from just about to kill M. Warren even before he shot the general to seeming as if he'd completely forgotten the general existed in a very short amount of time, even before anybody realized there was a problem with the coffee. It makes no sense that Mannix would respond dispassionately to a logical argument about the legality of shooting the general, given everything shown about the character to that point.

The film does seem to indicate that it was many minutes of arguing and one could if one needed to assume that it was intensive arguing, but since it does little to help the narrative and themes move forward Tarantino just skipped over it.