Pulp Fiction alone gives him a place in history alongside Godard. What he did with that film in 1994 broke new ground. Everything after that was horseshit.
Here’s my thing about Tarantino. Some movies he does are great some kinda are lackluster. But when he starts abandoning his great dialogue (some people don’t really like it, I do) and begins to go into his fascination with torture porn i’m not that into it. Anyway i’m curious to see how inglorious bastards turns out.
Yeah the torture porn isn’t my thing at all either; i really didn’t like Kill Bill. David Carradine has died, the news reminding that at least QT helped resurrect some careers (not that DC was exactly out of work!) and also made some very interesting and sometimes unexpected casting choices, conjured up from his geek’s box of tricks and memories.
depends on which ones.
I’ve been spitting a lot of words about QT lately through the forums,like I said before his movies are cool in the sense of style,but while growing up,learning more about films throughout the years, I found out that his films are overrated,why?-well to begin with didn’t he become popular with reservoir dogs?,yes ,so!?,well didn’t he credit himself for it being original,when someone pointed out that it was a rip off of a Chinese film city on fire,he claimed he never seen the movie before,not to mention that the movie was very similar adding another “homage” in there from the big combo[he did infact credited but it was two years later],there are thousands of great films out there ,movies that other new coming fans don’t know about.the rest of his films do the same homage here, homage there, homage everywhere!=a Tarantino film,then he was mentioning how hard it was for him to write his new upcoming film which is based on another film.I don’t hate him ,i dislike him,for those major reason,we can debate if cinema is dead because there’s no more originality but i consider it false,cinema gets a little weak through pools of remakes,sometimes remakes are worthy if the first one sucked that is,but movies are meant to entertain ,enjoy and questioned,question is ….is he trying to be cool or is he trying to make films?,but still i like his writing skills [the dialogues are rather entertaining to hear] and his films are entertaining.
perhaps what made me dislike him more is his ego.
coming back a forward i read a post very interesting on a imdb board by the user gwailo247
Of course he steals from other movies. Before the advent of the Internet and the availabilty to buy foreign movies easily, the only way you could see a lot of these obscure movies is on video. And a lot of these movies you could not get at the Wherehouse or Blockbuster. So he took a lot from asian cinema and the old movies of the 70s that the people in the 90s did not see. So his ideas and shots were hailed as clever and original because few people saw the movies that he stole from.
Tarantino was a product of a time and a place. Could you imagine Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction if there was an IMDB to discuss those? These movies would be hacked apart instantly for all the things that were stolen from other movies.
But in the early 90s the internet was still in its infancy, and few people heard of Chow Yun Fat or John Woo. But Quentin spent years bored at the video store and he got to watch all those movies and “borrow” from them.
But that aside, I think that Quentin is one of the first mainstream “DJ” directors. I haven’t really studied post modern art etc, to be able to explain my thoughts on it clearly, but just like a DJ takes already made songs and mixes them into a unique musical product, so do directors like Tarantino take already made up scenes, plots, dialogue and shots and remixes them into a unitque product. Kill Bill was a copy of scores of movies and genres, but Tarantino “mixed” them into something new and interesting.
Nay. It’s okay to borrow from other filmmakers, but you should acknowledge the debt. My understanding is that to this day he denies having seen Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black, but boy, if that’s the case, Kill Bill’s plot is uncannily similar to that of the Truffaut flick.
A HUGE YAY
Lets see… in cronological order.
1) Resevoir Dogs is really well done and written. As Tarantino likes to say its “a heist movie without the heist.” I really don’t know of any director that would have been able to do so much with such a minimalist script- a script that he wrote!
2) Pulp Fiction… nough said.
3) He writes Natural Born Killer & From Dusk Till Dawn.
4) Jackie Brown: A Classic that many people do not get! This is not a remake of anything. To put it in a way that you can understand it; Jackie Brown is a “where are they now” movie about the characters from the blacksploitation movies. But its more than that… its also a great love story—- you didn’t see it? Look harder!
5) Kill Bill 1 & 2 pure enterntainment. What other American film/filmmaker has made use of gore as well as KB1?. The Oren Ishi animated sequence alone puts KB1 above MANY recent so called “films.” And KB2: you have to know not the reference material but GENRE.
6) Death Proof: it is what it is Butterfly.
Tarantino is not interested in originality like Hitchcock was not interested in originality. Tarantino is interested in expanding the universe of filmmaking trough the use of genre like Hitchcock did. Jackie Brown expends the universe of blacksploitation movies. Pulp fiction expands the world explored in “A Band Apart.” Tarantino loves cinema and he’ll be the first to tell you what movies he is “quoting” from. If you sometimes have those “got cha” moments when ur watching his movies is because you haven’t done ur research to know ahead of time.
His movies are not about depht but so what, most movies that try to be deep fail miserably. Tarantinos movies succeed in whatever little ambitions they might have. But even then… doesn’t the Bride show more heat that many female character you’ve seen in film recently.
And what about the Death Proof girls? Tarantino works with WOMEN like very few directors can.
And his soundtracks are great, man, don’t even get me started with those.
I believe Tarantino is yet to create his best work. I hope Inglorious Bastards flops so that he can finally leave his “homage” stage and move on to the Tarantino stage. He needst to stop quotting others films so much and make something people can quote him for.
In a sense this is Tarantino’s film school but he’s like that slaker genius that stays in college for 10 years, maybe like the way doctors do… isn’t film a science?. I hope he graduates soon, so far he’s been a damn good student.
Nay.
Big mouth — no ideas.
“The guy’s an interesting filmmaker, even if one doesn’t like him or his movies. There’s no reason to “nay” him or any other filmmaker. Cinema shouldn’t be a yes or no option—there’s just varying degrees of interest, entertainment, beauty, meaning, etc.”
Very well put Mr. Kasman. Conveys my feelings perfectly… although, there is a certain beauty is Mr. Ehrenstein’s, “big mouth — no ideas.”
I love Dogs, Pulp and Jackie Brown but I think he’s lost his way of late. The biggest problem I have with him though is that HE’S A LAZY BUGGER! If Woody Allen can put out a film a year I don’t see why he can’t up the pace a bit.
yay or nay…
more like a “sure, why not?”.
Yay. Because of Jackie Brown.
Nay. Turdantino makes films for teenagers.
Nay.
Back in his early days, there was an article about him in the Baffler magazine called “The Dream of Perfect Reception.” It was about how the problem with QT is that there is no analogue to the real world—the only universe for him is comprised of bad 80’s music and films, Saturday morning cartoons, ShawScope flix, forgotten breakfast cereals and pilots that never got picked up. Like his hero, Godard (Band Apart films, anyone?) his films are non-stop culture references, but whereas Godard will drop names like Velasquez, Renoir, Mozart, Faulkner and any clever Maoist thinkers who happen to be passing by, QT’s universe is all Fruit Brute and the Delfonics. At some point, the man really does have to stop hanging out in Austin hosting Sybil Danning festivals in his garage, lose Rodriguez’ phone number, stop smoking weed, put out more than one film every six years and grow the fudge up.
And yet…
The man is the stickiest writer who ever lived. My wife, who cannot remember dialogue or song lyrics or anything like that, was able to quote whole chunks of Kill Bill years after she’d seen it for the first and only time. He has a phenomenal gift, and I for one am going to give the man the benefit of the doubt and stick around for Basterds and whatever comes next. If he is our best, then he’s the only “best” we deserve.
Somewhere closer to yay than nay, but not all the way there.
Between nay and yay: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction (yeah, I know that sounds crazy, but Pulp Fiction is just too brazenly hipster).
Definite yays: Jackie Brown, Kill Bill Vol. 2 and — my favourite — Death Proof!!
Tarantino is a biter of blaxploitation film.
Yay for the way he mixes references to B-movies and nods to the classics.
Yay for the way he utilizes soundtracks like mixtapes.
Yay for Kill Bill Vol.1 and Jackie Brown.
Yay for watching tons of movies when he used to work in a video rental store.
Yay for turning a hobby into a profession (which most of us couldn’t do if we dreamed!).
There’s some nays too, but I thought I’d keep it positive.
It’s been fun trying to find all the films that inspired his films and then finding the films that inspired those films and on and on. Most of all that was well worth watching. Someone could start a thread of a list of all the films that inspired the Tarantino films like Master of the Flying Guillotine, I Spit On Your Grave, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, Django, Lady Snowblood, The Bride Wore Black, Navajo Joe, Hard Boiled, Seven Men From Now, Inglorious Bastards, White Line Fever, Kiss Me Deadly and dozens more. Each of his films has how many other films in them? I don’t think even he knows.
He tells us that his films are inspired by other films or scenes from other films. He gives tribute in the form of homages. He’s not the only one. How many filmmakers are totally original? I do think he goes too far with this at times like when he “borrows” parts of scores from the same films he “borrows” scenes from like the Morricone score from Navajo Joe and the Flower of Carnage from Lady Snowblood. And others.
He is a good writer. The dialogue is the best part of his films. Someday, maybe he will come up with something original, or mostly original, but, if not, I will probably enjoy his films for what they are: entertaining and well crafted stories.
Yah, because I go into his films knowing what I’m going to get; a bloody, action, thriller, of epic proportions, and because he is living my dream, basically the Cameron Crowe life, growing up loving Film, and becoming a rich, womanizing, sum bitch, making films he love, and directing famous actors that you look up to, personally my dream.
Tarantino is one of the worst directors to ever get a big name.
Pulp Fiction is a horrible film with horrible dialogue.
“The guy’s an interesting filmmaker, even if one doesn’t like him or his movies. There’s no reason to “nay” him or any other filmmaker. Cinema shouldn’t be a yes or no option—there’s just varying degrees of interest, entertainment, beauty, meaning, etc.”
Hard to argue with this unless “nay” means no interest. “Yay” would mean I would be excited over seeing his films and make a point to see them. I’ll see IB, but only because of Friends. He certainly knows how to create suspense and how to pace dialogue. His writing is really no deeper than a hollywood blockbuster. As has been stated over and over, from his films you can tell he has watched a lot of movies. What’s missing is the spark of real experience, lived or learned. The pop culture references are meant to be a subtly intentional masking of emotions on the part of his macho hitman characters. This works for the most part but what do we see under the mask when it is removed? Nothing. Vincent is angry with his macho pose and when he is supposed to be vulnerable with Mia he is still macho, still angry. Jules revelation based on surviving the attempted shooting teaches him that he should stop doing what he is doing and makes him reach out to “Ringo.” He is sure of his decision. Are we supposed to believe that Jules has never faced death before. Does he not waffle over this decision a bit more because the film really believes that these hitmen are above waffling like real human beings? Tarantino’s beliefs seem to mirror Vincent’s when he warns Jules against ending up like all the losers that cower in the diner. Fear equals being a bitch. Being the “sherperd” is honorable because you prevented a lesser being, a bitch like Tim Roth, from getting in over his head when he clearly isn’t ready to work at the exalted level Jules is on. What a hero.
This is all fun nonsense for teens, like Twilight or whatever, but there are far too many adult films to see for me to have much interest.
“But the way I see it is, why bother watching Tarantino mash all these idea together when I can just watch the real thing? Nowadays you don’t have to work in an independent video rental store to have access to all the old exploitation and B-movies that Tarantino gets 100% of his ideas from.”
Because most people don’t want to see those movies, because they are bad. Some people here might have truly omnivorous appetites for movies, but I, for one, have no interest in watching crappy B-movies. One of QT’s real talents might be his understanding of how to extract the good ideas from the morass of movie mediocrity. That’s fine with me.
Also, I noticed that some say that QT is for immature teenagers. I’d be curious to see if there really is a generation gap on The Auteurs between the QT lovers and the QT haters, specifically how he fares with the under-30 crowd vs the over-50 crowd.
Tarantino is interested in expanding the universe of filmmaking trough the use of genre like Hitchcock did.
Yup. And that’s cool. Unlike Hitch, however, Tarantino continues only to riff upon genre. Hitch went further. Genre was a doorway to further expansion. For Tarantino, it’s a cement wall that he amuses himself by banging his head against, after which he shows us the bloodied pulp.
The myriad references and the rip offs homages as foundation for his own work. Tedious. Where is the real Tarantino, that’s what I want to see someday. The bizarre funhouse that is his brain is entertaining up to a point. With each film I ask, has that point been reached?
I guess that’s a “Nay”.
“He is not good for the same reason Green Day is not good.”
That’s funny.
Hitch doesn’t foreground genre like Tarantino does.
well,at least he’s not as stupid as Rodriguez is :P
Thankfully “Inglorious Basterds” seems ready to tank and that should be the end of him.
Fuck all of you, you just got a vendetta on Hollywood (rightfully so), but Tarantino is not one of those Michael Bay types, he doesn’t try to be serious, and that is what makes his films so entertaining, no he doesn’t make good films, not at all, but he makes entertaining films; for good films, just watch Bergman or Tarkovsky. I like Tarentino films, not because their good, but because he is entertaining, with a hint of intelligence, and he is one of thee few that can still do that in Hollywood today, now say what you may, but Tarentino is slowing the sinking of the shit-hole ship of Hollywood, or at least not moving, while it sinks even deeper; anyway when I go watch Tarentino films, I expect exactly what I get, a Bloody, Over the top, un-believable shit going down, that is thee whole point to his films (If any), they are not taking them self’s seriously, its like Sean Connery in The Rock, I can’t believe I’m getting paid for this shit, Tarentino, does that with every films he does, like it or hate it, you have to admet that he is better than Michael Bay and Friends.
P.S. Sorry for thee rant
Daniel Kasman
The guy’s an interesting filmmaker, even if one doesn’t like him or his movies. There’s no reason to “nay” him or any other filmmaker. Cinema shouldn’t be a yes or no option—there’s just varying degrees of interest, entertainment, beauty, meaning, etc.