criterionforum.org

As to the earlier "Brunhilda" / "Broomhilda" discussion, the latter was devised as pun on the former since "Broomhilda" was a witch who rides on a broom. That Kerry Washington's character is named after a 20th century comic strip character is either a conscious joke by Tarantino or he was ignorant of the origin of the name.

As to the film, I don't have much to add to the views already stated. I didn't find the film as uneven as INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, but that was because the bar was set lower. A fairly straight genre send-up with some clever dialog, cartoon-y violence, BLAZING SADDLES-like interludes and a free reign for most of the cast to chew the scenery to their heart's content. Still too self-conscious and overlong, but that's part of the package when you buy a ticket to a Tarantino film.

matrixschmatrix wrote:I think I would argue that the purpose of Django's exceptionalism is to allow for the narrative to happen while still providing an answer to Candie's question of why the slaves don't just rise up and kill all the whites:

Spoiler

In effect, if the narrative is just a black man bootstrapping himself from slavery to murderous badass, there is an unfortunate implication that all those other slaves could have done the same, if only they weren't so stupid and lazy. As it is, it's fairly clear why so many were stuck in that position, because the system that keeps them firmly in place is very well outlined. Django can resist and overturn the system, not because any man could have if he simply bothered, but because Django is Siegfried, a man of superhuman ability who can do the impossible.

It's not that all the other black people we see are stupid (whatever Jackson's character is, he is certainly not that) or lazy (self evidently untrue) or cowardly, or anything along those lines, nor are they necessarily inherently submissive or servile; in the first scene, the other slaves who'd been chained to Django are obviously going to kill the slaver. While we do not get much of the perspective of the fieldhands, we see quite a lot of the mechanisms that keep them where they are- implicitly, those mechanisms are needed, because the people they are keeping in place are fully human and would break out if they had any real hope of succeeding. They don't, because the system is efficient. Django does, because he has the first few steps made possible externally, and because he's exceptional.

As I think I have said earlier, I would have liked to see the movie end with Django raising a mass uprising against the plantation, if only because that would have been that much more cathartic- but as a Siegfried, he is the hero and the champion of his people, and to me his exceptionalism works as a culmination of their strength, rather than a counterfoil to their weakness.

That's a great analysis. It's probably the only interpretation that would make the moral anything less than reprehensible.

I won't go into much detail I'm afraid, but I didn't really like this much. I think it's because

Spoiler

once Christoph Waltz dies, everyone else in the film, Django included, isn't particularly likeable. He really is the best thing in it by miles

.

knives wrote:Also I imagine he's just tired of that question after hearing some variation of it over nearly the past two decades.

And he's been getting bombarded with it in nearly every interview since Newtown. Even Terry Gross, one of the best interviewers in modern media history, couldn't help herself. To QT's credit, I think he comports himself much better in this case, calling the connection disrespectful and inflammatory. And I agree with him.

The part about his mom being "hot" with hot mexican and black roomates is a bit weird, but certainly explains quite a bit about QT's quirks

Sonmi451 wrote:Thats certainly a valid interpretation Anhedionisiac, though of course it would entail its own set of troubling implications regarding the benevolent white savior needed to lead the oppressed black man out of bondage and reach his full potential. That said, I think it is rather overtly implied in the film that Django is a "natural", that he is indeed an aberration and that, whether helped on his journey or not, he is a truly one-in-ten-thousand specimen. Now that interpretation might be tempered a bit by the fact that Django was playing a role for the majority of the film, so it could be argued that it was all an act. But I think his own affirmation at the end leads the audience to assume he is actually exceptional.

I'm sorry, but I have to strongly disagree with this. Given the enmeshed system of abuse and disempowerment in the South - ESPECIALLY in the decade leading up to slavery when the confederacy was really digging in their heels and passing laws forbidding blacks to read, etc etc, who else BUT a white mane could assist a slave into freedom and beyond? How did Frederick Douglass become the man we know? Because he had a mistress who felt for him and secretly taught him to read in defiance of the law - which gave him the tools to continue to learn and later teach other slaves to read via sunday services and then on into freedom. None of which would have been possible without the sympathy and kindness of Lady Auld.

When you have such an entrenched system of power that denies one group the slightest hint of freedom then someone has to assist from the ruling class to get the ball rolling. Django would not have become Django without his "savior" - just as Douglass would not have been Douglass without his kind mistress. That doesn't in the least detract from their remarkable characteristics as a person, it merely acknowledges the importance that one person could make in providing a sliver of freedom to an oppressed person and encouraging them to slip through to the other side. How anyone could mistake that reality as some kind of disenfranchisement or denial of agency is beyond me. Those who made it still had to persevere in ways we can't comprehend after getting a hand out of the deep pit of despair the system had contrived to keep them enchained.

matrixschmatrix wrote:I think I would argue that the purpose of Django's exceptionalism is to allow for the narrative to happen while still providing an answer to Candie's question of why the slaves don't just rise up and kill all the whites:

Spoiler

In effect, if the narrative is just a black man bootstrapping himself from slavery to murderous badass, there is an unfortunate implication that all those other slaves could have done the same, if only they weren't so stupid and lazy. As it is, it's fairly clear why so many were stuck in that position, because the system that keeps them firmly in place is very well outlined. Django can resist and overturn the system, not because any man could have if he simply bothered, but because Django is Siegfried, a man of superhuman ability who can do the impossible.

It's not that all the other black people we see are stupid (whatever Jackson's character is, he is certainly not that) or lazy (self evidently untrue) or cowardly, or anything along those lines, nor are they necessarily inherently submissive or servile; in the first scene, the other slaves who'd been chained to Django are obviously going to kill the slaver. While we do not get much of the perspective of the fieldhands, we see quite a lot of the mechanisms that keep them where they are- implicitly, those mechanisms are needed, because the people they are keeping in place are fully human and would break out if they had any real hope of succeeding. They don't, because the system is efficient. Django does, because he has the first few steps made possible externally, and because he's exceptional.

As I think I have said earlier, I would have liked to see the movie end with Django raising a mass uprising against the plantation, if only because that would have been that much more cathartic- but as a Siegfried, he is the hero and the champion of his people, and to me his exceptionalism works as a culmination of their strength, rather than a counterfoil to their weakness.

bravo!

April 16th, from Sony:

HistoryProf wrote:

Sonmi451 wrote:Thats certainly a valid interpretation Anhedionisiac, though of course it would entail its own set of troubling implications regarding the benevolent white savior needed to lead the oppressed black man out of bondage and reach his full potential. That said, I think it is rather overtly implied in the film that Django is a "natural", that he is indeed an aberration and that, whether helped on his journey or not, he is a truly one-in-ten-thousand specimen. Now that interpretation might be tempered a bit by the fact that Django was playing a role for the majority of the film, so it could be argued that it was all an act. But I think his own affirmation at the end leads the audience to assume he is actually exceptional.

I'm sorry, but I have to strongly disagree with this. Given the enmeshed system of abuse and disempowerment in the South - ESPECIALLY in the decade leading up to slavery when the confederacy was really digging in their heels and passing laws forbidding blacks to read, etc etc, who else BUT a white mane could assist a slave into freedom and beyond? How did Frederick Douglass become the man we know? Because he had a mistress who felt for him and secretly taught him to read in defiance of the law - which gave him the tools to continue to learn and later teach other slaves to read via sunday services and then on into freedom. None of which would have been possible without the sympathy and kindness of Lady Auld.

When you have such an entrenched system of power that denies one group the slightest hint of freedom then someone has to assist from the ruling class to get the ball rolling. Django would not have become Django without his "savior" - just as Douglass would not have been Douglass without his kind mistress. That doesn't in the least detract from their remarkable characteristics as a person, it merely acknowledges the importance that one person could make in providing a sliver of freedom to an oppressed person and encouraging them to slip through to the other side. How anyone could mistake that reality as some kind of disenfranchisement or denial of agency is beyond me. Those who made it still had to persevere in ways we can't comprehend after getting a hand out of the deep pit of despair the system had contrived to keep them enchained.

Sorry for the delay, haven't checked in in a while. I find that argument, especially the bit that "someone has to assist from the ruling class to get the ball rolling", quite troubling. Now of course there are examples of members of the ruling class helping those of the oppressed class. In this context of American slavery, Lady Auld is one, William Garrison is another. But are you actually arguing that, by definition, an oppressed group must rely on the benevolence of the ruling group in order to break free of their oppression? If so, most of humanity - from wage slaves to child prostitutes to 99% of the developing world - would be doomed. Anecdotally we can come up with individual examples, but structurally speaking, the ruling class has never relinquished power voluntarily. Douglass said so himself.

mfunk9786 wrote:April 16th, from Sony:

That art doesn't look like it's for the U.S. release. Besides the inverted spine, this should be coming from Anchor Bay in the U.S. and Sony in the rest of the world.

You were right! This is the U.S. cover (the VUDU thing is just a sticker of course):

Man, that is ugly.

Ennio Morricone says he won't be working with Tarantino again.

“I wouldn’t like to work with him again, on anything,” Morricone told students in a music, film and television class at Rome’s LUISS University, according to Italian media reports Friday. “He said last year he wanted to work with me again ever since Inglourious Basterds, but I told him I couldn't, because he didn’t give me enough time. So he just used a song I had written previously.”

Tarantino is frustrating to work with, Morricone said, observing that the two-time Oscar winner “places music in his films without coherence" and "you can't do anything with someone like that."

On a side note: THR seems to be a little confused (or is it me?) about their previous working relationship. As far as I know, they only talked about working together on Inglourious Basterds, and didn't work together at all on Kill Bill, unless they actually had discussions about which pieces Tarantino was going to use.

Morricone is an old school guy, and it's no secret that Django Unchained's editing process was a bit of a rush job.

I wonder how much time he asks for these days. I mean sure, he's an old school guy, but he still has seven new credits to his name in 2011, and in the 1970's he was scoring 20 movies a year, so it's not like he's not used to working quickly. And he's also no stranger to mixing wildly different kinds of music into the same soundtrack. I'm probably speculating too much, but I'm guessing their personalities are just sort of incompatible, and maybe Morricone wasn't all that interested in being asked to copy his own work from 50 years ago as closely as Tarantino might have wanted him to.

Considering how much of an idol Morricone is to Tarantino, this must be a pit of a punch to the gut for him, especially since Morricone didn't even like the film.

Kirkinson wrote:I wonder how much time he asks for these days. I mean sure, he's an old school guy, but he still has seven new credits to his name in 2011, and in the 1970's he was scoring 20 movies a year, so it's not like he's not used to working quickly. And he's also no stranger to mixing wildly different kinds of music into the same soundtrack. I'm probably speculating too much, but I'm guessing their personalities are just sort of incompatible, and maybe Morricone wasn't all that interested in being asked to copy his own work from 50 years ago as closely as Tarantino might have wanted him to.

And it's not like Morricone didn't work on his share of rapidly shot low-budget exploitation films, either, most of which I doubt had a schedule longer than Django Unchained's, to say nothing of general professionalism.

Calling Morricone 'old school' is odd to me. Has he ever been a rigid traditionalist? He's made a career out of being adaptable and eccentric.

I meant in terms of professionalism of his collaborations - Tarantino seems like a guy who frequently changes his mind during the shooting/editing process to me. I might be wrong of course.

mfunk9786 wrote:I meant in terms of professionalism of his collaborations - Tarantino seems like a guy who frequently changes his mind during the shooting/editing process to me. I might be wrong of course.

Morricone was never a strictly high-brow film composer. He worked with everybody, including tons of European genre directors. Working for a major Hollywood filmmaker backed by a Hollywood studio is still a huge step up in professionalism from the majority of the productions he worked on in Italy. I'd guess this all stems from an issue with Tarantino personally rather than from a generational clash.

Finally got to see this movie yesterday, and it's been interesting to read this thread in relationship to the picture I saw. My own feeling is that Tarantino makes movies either with either a postmodern remove--a la Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Inglorious Bastards--or submerged in the picture as a kind of genre mixtape--as with Kill Bill, Reservoir Dogs, and Death Proof, to a certain degree. For my money, the more postmodern the film, the more moving and effective. I think Django falls into the latter category; its pastiche of spaghetti westerns is superficial and its apparent subject matter is its actual subject matter. The movie plays an awful lot like an actual Sergio Corbucci movie, with the same uncomfortable mixture of jokey/trashy action and drama and an earnest approach to social issues which hardly seem appropriate to the violently exploitative material.

I don't think Tarantino really sees the difference between these two variety of movies he makes. To him I think Kill Bill is as worthwhile and profound as Jackie Brown. That Jackie Brown might be seen as a humane film, and that Kill Bill might be almost the opposite, I think wouldn't even occur to him.

I actually found myself wondering if Django Unchained might have played better if Will Smith had been in the lead role. I really like Jamie Foxx, but he does his best to act very well. And he does act well. But Will Smith would have been Will Smith in the part, and I think the Django character would have been better served by being more of an anachronism--not a character to be acted so much as an icon to be represented. In a way the film would be more palatable if Django were fully emancipated right when he was freed--if his resolute self-determination was primed like a pistol from the get-go. Then Django would be free--such as he was in the original Django--to be simply a force rather than a character.

Also I read a criticism that mentions the absence of Sally Menke as editor. And as I have thought about the film, that absence has come across full-force. The tone, the mood, the perverse and emphatic structures that Menke could make of Tarantino's writing just are not present in this picture. It's a rougher, cruder picture than Tarantino's other movies because it's missing so many of those attributes. To me Inglourious Basterds was made remarkable by those incredible structural arrangements and contrasts Menke brought out in the film. Without those touches, Django seems a much coarser film, and it really bothers me.

Will Smith on why he turned down Django role.

While many might perceive his remarks to be the result of ego, I can't help but tie it back to some of the posts in this thread....that the character of Django was poorly fleshed out and basically played second fiddle to the Schultz character until that messy, chaotic third act.

Yeah, the guy who most likely regrets turning down the role and who is looking for excuses is right

Well, I can see how it would be difficult if he was insisting on Django getting to kill Candie. Candie really is Schultz's natural enemy, whereas Django should be killing every other villain. That's basically what happens in the film as it is, but having Django kill Candie is pretty ordinary and lame.

I suppose if you want to see what Will Smith in the role would have been like, there is always Wild Wild West! A film which I remember being aghast by when I first watched it for the rondelay of insult humour between the three guys at the centre of it (Smith, Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh, for their sins) - it got to the point where it was almost a "Rock, Paper, Scissors" contest between racial insults, disability jabs and gay panic moments to see which would beat the others to win in the offensiveness stakes!

Target will have an exclusive steelbook with an exclusive bonus disc (with one feature: an hour long interview with the cast from Comic Con).

Huh. I rarely buy non-MoC steelbooks, but that one looks a lot nicer than the normal cover, and Target steelbooks are usually only like $5 more than everyone else.