tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15283666.post9038795802791422485..comments2024-03-14T03:15:28.803-07:00Comments on The End of Cinema: Best of 2012 Part Two: New MoviesSean Gilmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16124894627028920508noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15283666.post-90119153392916697502013-01-02T15:42:01.611-08:002013-01-02T15:42:01.611-08:00I don't know, they're both really stupid. ...I don't know, they're both really stupid. On the one hand, Lee's talking about a movie he hasn't seen. On the other, Tarantino has presumably seen a bunch of John Ford movies (there are even a couple Fordian shots in <i>Django</i>) and I think you'd have to be really dumb to see a bunch of John Ford movies and conclude he's a white supremacist who likes to seen "Indians mowed down like zombies."<br /><br />Some movies, I think, are like black holes. I think the evils of slavery are a kind of vortex that the movie is crushed by. Tarantino skirts around it for awhile, playing with (Spaghetti) Western tropes, KKK satire, typical Tarantinian cleverness but with DiCaprio's entrance everything is upended, the gravitational pull of the atrocity sucks the narrative in and breaks it apart. The moment Schultz kills Candie is the singularity, the point at which meaning dissolves in a bloody, righteous fury. After that, the normal rules of physics no longer apply and the last 20 minutes or so are truly weird: Django's escape from castration, Tarantino's cameo, Broomhilda's rescue, the destruction of the plantation manor. He even makes a horse dance!<br /><br />Interesting too is the positioning of Samuel L. Jackson as the film's true villain. I can understand the argument, but isn't the Uncle Tom as much the victim of slavery as any other slave? Seems backward to me to direct more fury at the betrayer, the collaborator, than the real enemy. But it's a very real, very human impulse. Who's the more famous figure in American history: Benedict Arnold or Cornwallis?Sean Gilmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16124894627028920508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15283666.post-80934730169605730442013-01-01T22:04:53.003-08:002013-01-01T22:04:53.003-08:00Yeah, that John Ford thing was certainly silly. Wh...Yeah, that John Ford thing was certainly silly. What do you think is dumber, his statements about Ford or Spike Lee's statements about him?<br /><br />I agree with you on his muddled presentation of a genre. He's done the spaghetti western stuff so much better in his other films and this one felt strangely tentative and uncertain. <br /><br />I actually like how unflinching he is with the slave violence. It serves as a real indictment of the atrocities and puts a lot of the subsequent retribution, even if it is cartoonish, in good context. Also, he really gave a large overview to the types of trauma slaves endured, not just whippings but the Mandingo fighting and being locked in the hot box. Just brutal, painful, sickening stuff. To have all that on gruesome display in a Hollywood blockbuster released on Christmas Day is some sort of triumph. <br /><br />For my money, the best scene in the movie is when Django is inflicting the pain upon the Brittle brothers that they inflicted earlier upon him. It hit me hard emotionally and I think may be one of the best things Tarantino has ever done. The other flashbacks in the film didn't work nearly as well, Schultz's reminiscence of the man being ripped apart by dogs interspersed with the Beethoven was all a bit too much.<br /><br />I think that the KKK thing is rooted in some sort of fact. I've read that they were a group that was a prototype for what the Klan eventually became. That doesn't mean squat, however, when it completely kills the pace of the movie. Why, oh why did he show the first two seconds of the raid and then cut back to them arguing about the hoods for like, five minutes?Mikeyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08400927064697543220noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15283666.post-81154714949559616042013-01-01T16:11:48.154-08:002013-01-01T16:11:48.154-08:00Also, Tarantino's performance in Django is eve...Also, Tarantino's performance in <i>Django</i> is even worse than Judd Apatow's in <i>This is 40</i>, with an even more pointless accent.Sean Gilmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16124894627028920508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15283666.post-84224424534520557092013-01-01T16:09:49.541-08:002013-01-01T16:09:49.541-08:00I'm still thinking about it, but I was initial...I'm still thinking about it, but I was initially underwhelmed, at least by Tarantino standards. I thought the slavery stuff was really disturbing, which is fine - it should be, but clashed jarringly with the cartoonish violence of the rest of the film. That kind of thing worked really well in <i>Death Proof</i> and <i>IB</i> which are both critiques of violent cinema in a lot of ways, but those movies are about movies in a way that <i>Django</i> really isn't. The problem, I think, is that Tarantino, for once, doesn't really understand the genre he's working in. It's not a Western, and it's not blaxploitation. I don't really know what it is.<br /><br />I think the Klan sequence is pretty bad. For one thing, it was done better in <i>O Brother</i>, for another, 1858 is about a decade too early for the KKK.<br /><br />I feel like I'm just not looking at it in the right way, though. That I expected it to be one thing and it turned out to be something else. I don't know. Maybe my perception is unduly colored by his idiotic comments about John Ford. That really made me angry.Sean Gilmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16124894627028920508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15283666.post-53472613682298033012013-01-01T11:47:49.497-08:002013-01-01T11:47:49.497-08:00As usual, a far more comprehensive and therefore i...As usual, a far more comprehensive and therefore interesting list than mine. I was surprised by what a populist I've become, my top three films were all released by Disney!<br /><br />I will overlook your egregious choice for number one (we are no longer friends), and get down to brass tacks: what's your take on <i>Django Unchained</i>? I am certainly in the incredibly small minority that thinks it's QT's weakest film, my love of <i>Death Proof</i> proof of my unconventional opinions. I had a talk with Colin yesterday about it and he disagrees completely. He thinks <i>Django</i> is Tarantino's best because it is more substantive, less cartoonish and overly stylish. I liked the movie quite a bit but there were a number of things that just didn't click. For one, the dialogue didn't tickle me like in every other Tarantino film. In a way, by choosing to be less stylish (while remaining incredibly verbose) his dialogue rang less true, it felt more labored. Even a period piece like <i>Basterds</i> allowed him to soliloquize on movies like <i>King Kong</i>. Here he is handicapped. Secondly, this is the first time his soundtrack choices were less than impeccable. There were plenty of good tunes but a lot of them sounded like B-sides to his other great selections. And there was far too much of it. It was overstuffed with songs. Lastly, and this is the biggest problem, the movie is too long. It doesn't warrant its length, there is need for this story to be drawn out, especially when bits like the Klan argument and the Tarantino cameo don't need to be in there at all. And it's all deflation after the epic shoot-out. I understand why the story had to continue beyond that but it just didn't come together.<br /><br />It's still a good film and I am interested to see it again but it was the first time I walked out of a Tarantino film not buzzing with excitement.Mikeyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08400927064697543220noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15283666.post-59259943558078940362013-01-01T10:05:04.836-08:002013-01-01T10:05:04.836-08:00No movies made me happier in 2012 than Moonrise Ki...No movies made me happier in 2012 than <i>Moonrise Kingdom</i> and <i>Damsels in Distress</i> (and <i>In Another Country</i>). "The joy of making cinema" and all that. That's why they're at the top of the list.<br /><br />I liked <i>The Deep Blue Sea</i> the first time though, loved it the second time. I suspect it's the kind of movie Wong Kar-wai would make if he were English.Sean Gilmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16124894627028920508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15283666.post-48300216946254870932013-01-01T09:29:51.325-08:002013-01-01T09:29:51.325-08:00You certainly list a lot of the films from this ye...You certainly list a lot of the films from this year I look forward to catching up with: LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE, MEKONG HOTEL, TABU, LINCOLN, HOLY MOTORS. <br /><br />I've got to say, I'm really surprised by your more conventional 2012 list. I found DAMSELS distressingly uneven after two viewings. I'm willing to give MOONRISE another shot, but still surprised that it would be your #1.I continue to remain baffled by people's love for THE DEEP BLUE SEA, a love affair I find pretty to watch but empty, hollow and uninteresting overall. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com