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| The Hateful Eight | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 3 2016, 08:53 AM (1,324 Views) | |
| Mister Jiggy, Esq. | Jan 8 2016, 08:00 PM Post #31 |
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Swingin' on the Flippity-Flop
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I love when critics conclude what I think and feel about a film based on the colour of my skin - it's real endearing. |
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| Shay Casey | Jan 9 2016, 11:44 AM Post #32 |
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Blingin' for Our Savior
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??? |
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| YancySkancy | Jan 9 2016, 01:29 PM Post #33 |
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Administrator
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I think he means the way Faraci suggests that Django was a black revenge story to make white people feel good, or however he put it, and that H8 is more troubling and complicated for white viewers. I see the objection to that, but I kinda glossed over it because I agreed with Faraci's other points. |
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| YancySkancy | Jan 9 2016, 02:47 PM Post #34 |
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Fun excerpt from Kim Morgan's 10-page Sight and Sound interview with Tarantino: http://sunsetgun.typepad.com/sunsetgun/201...d-excerpt-.html |
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| Mister Jiggy, Esq. | Jan 9 2016, 04:59 PM Post #35 |
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Swingin' on the Flippity-Flop
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Ya pretty much. I am glad Shay posted and enjoyed the read but there are a lot of broad brush strokes and unsupported assertions/conclusions (even if they seem sensible on the surface). |
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| Shay Casey | Jan 10 2016, 12:26 AM Post #36 |
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Blingin' for Our Savior
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I take this as his interpretation of Tarantino's intent: he made Django as a kind of celebratory tale, while Hateful Eight is intended to produce more discomfort in the audience. Not sure I see where he's actually casting aspersions on the audience, white or other. |
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| YancySkancy | Jan 10 2016, 03:53 AM Post #37 |
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Administrator
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Well, there's this: Django Unchained (and Inglourious Basterds, to an extent) is a historical revisionist film that makes white people feel good. There’s a lot of terrible brutality and evil white people on screen and we get to cheer on the black man who stands up and destroys it all. It’s exhilarating and it’s fun and you feel like a good person for doing nothing more than rooting for Django to raze Candyland to the ground. |
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| Shay Casey | Jan 10 2016, 09:02 AM Post #38 |
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Blingin' for Our Savior
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Sure, taken on its own that sounds like a "white people do this" kind of argument, but in context I think one can infer that it's a description of Tarantino's intent with the two films (as Faraci sees it) and how that affects audience response. The paragraph immediately preceding and immediately following explicitly talk about Tarantino's intent. |
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| Kevin Harvey | Jan 11 2016, 09:52 AM Post #39 |
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Another deserter....
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And Faraci is writing very nearly in the "think-piece" tradition, which necessarily demands some hypothetical abstraction. It's not prescriptive, hell, it's not even descriptive, exactly -- it's thoughtfully open to certain possibilities. Anyway, my two favourite pieces on the film so far are Richard Brody's, at his blog for the New Yorker, and, for a slightly less morally-aesthetically condemnatory flavour, Glenn Kenny's, over at SomeCameRunning. The latter is particularly fluid, sinuous and, like the film, hard to draw conclusions from. In any case, neither are written in the same clear, rhetorical, "A-ha!" style of Faraci at Birth.Movies.Death., which makes for a nice contrast, perhaps allowing room for some of the discomforts and uncertainties of the movie to creep back in (after Faraci tries to blow them away). Also, there's Jaime Christley's damn fine review for Slant, which is nice to have. |
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| Continental Op | Jan 11 2016, 02:02 PM Post #40 |
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Fugee Emeritus
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I don't think Faraci is giving the character of John Ruth a fair shake...felt like a lot of over simplifying there. Yes, the letter helped Warren get on that wagon, may have even been the tipping point...but we are to believe they had also previously met, and this merely served as a reminder. Furthermore, Ruth is just as questioning of Mannix (if not more), and only lets him on because he trusts Warren to keep Mannix in check. When Ruth finds out the letter is a lie, sure he lashes out in a broad, racist manner...but not necessarily because he is simply a racist. He was genuinely hurt, because at that point, Warren was perhaps the closest thing he had to a friend. Furthermore, as Faraci mentions himself, that letter represents more than just "good white guy stuff"...it has a historical significance, even then, that carried real weight, with either side. Of course he's gonna be pissed and hurt. When I get a chance to see it again, maybe I'll be able to better describe what I'm getting at here. Anyway, I guess like Jiggy said, felt like a lot of broad strokes, and for me, with weak foundation (especially the supposed connection between QTs last two films, and what they are saying to each other and the audience). |
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| Shay Casey | Jan 11 2016, 02:24 PM Post #41 |
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Blingin' for Our Savior
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Hm. I'm surprised some of you find this foundation "weak." I mean, sure, there are more nuances to both films, but in a broad-strokes kind of way it seems pretty self-evident to me that Django is a feel-good movie while Hateful Eight is a more cynical one. Is that in dispute here? And yes, I mean this entirely outside of a judgment of quality or how well they are made. I'm talking more about the general aim, what they are trying to say. |
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| Mister Jiggy, Esq. | Jan 11 2016, 02:54 PM Post #42 |
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Swingin' on the Flippity-Flop
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Not to me. That's clear enough. To be honest the "think piece" (and I agree Dr. R - that is the tone/approach), despite some interesting points, isn't really meaty enough to debate much more. I think what I was questioning was not whether or not Django is a feel-good movie (it is an unapologetic revenge fantasy) - but whether Django is solely, or at least primarily, a feel-good movie for white people. And if so, what type of movie is it to the various non-white audiences? Or does the author not feel qualified to weigh in. Anyway, it was a small point that jumped out at me that I don't want to belabor or blow out of proportion. |
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| Kevin Harvey | Jan 11 2016, 02:59 PM Post #43 |
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Another deserter....
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One difficulty, Shay, might be that Django, though obviously feel-good on the surface, with a positive, even triumphant ending for the lovers, leaves a much different impression on the inside. This is true of the previous three QT pictures for me, from Death Proof to Django. Sure, the narrative concludes with a moment of success for the ostensible heroes in each case, but the route there, or the means to that end, if you like, is so gruesome, brutal and retributive that it poisons something in the whole endeavour for me. I've often wondered if that's entirely the point and QT's been pranking us the whole time, but I'm never quite sure because he indulges himself so freely, so gleefully, that it's hard to gauge his level of irony. In any case, I think many viewers may well have reacted precisely the way Faraci suggests, or at least found some pleasure in seeing retribution delivered at the hands of the oppressed, and Tarantino, too, may be responding to this at last. But for this viewer, all three films leave me either brutally chilled, creeped out or unhappy, dismayed that perhaps the only possible moral response to events on the scale of the holocaust or black slavery is one of blinding, hate-filled, malevolent rage ... a feeling that's entirely immoral, destructive and inhuman. So they all play as a kind of socio-historical/-cultural nightmare to me. And this latest film is simply doing it more honestly, without the patina of triumph or success. Or rather it's still there, but it's so self-evidently empty and despairing that few will be fooled into thinking it's sincere. |
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| Kevin Harvey | Jan 11 2016, 03:04 PM Post #44 |
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Another deserter....
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Just missed you, Jigs, but I think the answer might be: Django is (ostensibly) a feel-good picture, whoever you are, but it lets its white audience off the hook, by allowing them to identify with the oppressed heroes and take part in their cathartic quest. The Hateful Eight doesn't allow that (no heroes) and maybe works harder at forcing each of us to confront our own biases and the results of our self-interest. |
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| Continental Op | Jan 11 2016, 03:39 PM Post #45 |
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Fugee Emeritus
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Jiggy say words better. I'm also still the guy holding out to the potential uncynical views in Hateful...for instance, back to the whole ending and crumbling of the letter. And there being something more to Ruth than just a racist exposed once a lie was discovered. Also, per the Brody piece, I can't say I agree with his assessment that "a bland visual delivery of his [QT's] own script mechanisms" or that QT forgot to "make images images". It stinks of someone who's just sick and annoyed of QT the man, or his "voice"...which I totally get. Hell, Ive already been open about the fact that I have very little interest in anything the man has to say via interview or acceptance speech. But via screenwriting and directing? He's still at the top of his game...and when I eventually have the Blu Ray at my house, I'll be able to speak more, if not more eloquently, to some of these dissenting claims. |
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