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Free Flick of the Day: For A Few Dollars More
Filed under: Classics, Quentin Tarantino, Home Entertainment, Western
I think the mania for Sergio Leone is stronger than it's ever been. It's undoubtedly due to the championing of Quentin Tarantino, and films like Sukiyaki Western Django and The Good, the Bad and the Weird, which are driving fans to seek out where they borrowed their serapes and squints from. There also seems to simply be a hunger for good adventure stories and rugged antiheroes, and there's no better place to get sated than Leone's films. If you feel like spending two hours in the broiling sun with a man who'll shoot you as soon as look at you, then you'll love today's free flick: For A Few Dollars More.For A Few Dollars More might be my favorite of the Dollars Trilogy. I love them all on their own merits, but this installment stands on its own (I hate saying it, but Fistful is decidedly less cool after multiple viewings of Yojimbo), and is less operatic than The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. More also tips the balance thanks to the way it adds a little to the Man with No Name. Here, he's dubbed Monco (Spanish / Italian for maimed) due to the way he keeps his right hand hidden, and he doesn't just ride quietly out of the dust. Now he has a trail in a score of bloody newspaper clippings which suggests he could afford more than one serape. Ennio Morricone fans will also appreciate the little flourish he gave to Monco's gun hand
Even if you hate Westerns, you should watch it. Leone called his films "fairy tales for adults," and that's really what they are. They feel like every genre rolled in one, and have been borrowed from 1965 onward. Fans of everything from Tarantino to Pirates of the Caribbean will see something they recognize here.
Watch For A Few Dollars More on SlashControl!
Watch and Listen: 'Pulp Fiction' Remix
Filed under: Fandom, DIY/Filmmaking, Quentin Tarantino
Some super-fan made a crazy audio/video remix of scenes and sounds from Pulp Fiction that you have to check out. It's so good that it could be confused with an underground techno mash-up. The remix uses multiple split-screens with the sounds from the scenes remixed to a beat, like Jules's delicious shake, Butch's getaway, Jimmie Dimmick slapping soap into Jules's hand, Zed slapping the Gimp's head and shushing his victims, and Marsellus Wallace grunting behind a ballgag. The detail on this is impressive, especially the remixing of the different scenes. The person's YouTube channel is otherwise made up of music performances, so I'm very curious if there's a collaborator involved or what. There's a lot of Pulp Fiction mashups on YouTube that pale in comparison, although this one is pretty cool. The music mashup culture is a fascinating one; it seems more underground than the video mashups, probably because of how easy it is to share things via YouTube and perhaps how much more litigious the music industry is. Personally, I love music mashup artists like A Plus D and think that creating new forms of art through pre-existing work, like the source files offered by Sita Sings the Blues creator Nina Paley, will become more acceptable as artists realize the potential of sharing their work.
Then again... everyone's got bills to pay.
Watch the Pulp Fiction Remix after the jump ...
Villains We Love: Angel Eyes
Filed under: Quentin Tarantino, Western, Scenes We Love
Great villains are scattered throughout the Westerns, but some of the most memorably savage come from the films of Sergio Leone. While Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West gets a lot of props for the way he mows down the McBain family (including its youngest and most adorable moppet), it was nothing that Lee Van Cleef hadn't already done in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Angel Eyes seems to be dismissed as something akin to Leone fan fiction, and it's his relation (or lack of) to Van Cleef's Col. Mortimer in A Few Dollars More that people find to be more interesting than his villainy.
But he's a great villain, mostly because he's absent for much for so much of the film. Leone gives him a ruthless introduction (a scene Quentin Tarantino mirrored perfectly with Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds) and promptly yanks him out of the narrative. As Tuco and Blondie torture each other for an hour, Angel Eyes is doing his own thing and it's a wonderful shock when he shows up running a Civil War prison camp. In today's cinema, no one could resist giving Angel Eyes a prequel and a spin-off relating the trail of bodies that led to that alias and that prison camp. But Leone allowed a squint to speak for itself, and told you everything you needed to know by the way men like Blondie and Tuco squirm around him. Considering that no one in this film is exactly good, and they're all a little bit ugly, it takes a lot to convince us that a man is worse than all the others. Van Cleef and Leone did that, and few villains can match his nastiness even when they've got double the screen time.
Go below the jump -- they don't call him Angel Eyes in here!
Tarantino Teases 'Kill Bill 3' - Here's Five People Who Should Star
Filed under: RumorMonger, Fandom, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand, Quentin Tarantino, Remakes and Sequels
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The energetic Quentin Tarantino was out and about promoting Inglourious Basterds in Italy, and seeing as he was in the homeland of his hostess spaghetti western, he teased everyone by promising Kill Bill 3. Again. Bad Taste reports that while on Italian talkshow Parla Con me, he prompted his hostess, Serena Dandini, to ask him whether there would be a continuation of the Bride's saga. When I say prompted, I mean it literally. "You didn't ask me whether there will be a third installment, a Kill Bill Vol 3!" Dandini obliged him by asking, and Tarantino said "Yes! The Bride will fight again ... I want ten years to pass between the second one and the third one. Two reasons. I think Uma [Thurman] and I needed a ten year break because the first one was so hard. The second one is that I love the character a lot. I just really really love her. And I think she deserves ten years of peace. ... I put her through a lot in those first two movies, and I wanted her to have a nice, peaceful life for ten years. I want her to put up her sword, and have some peace. And in ten years, something will happen to make her fight again."
Tarantino has been teasing us with a continuation for awhile now (usually themed around the daughter of Vernita Green), so it's hard to get too excited. It's also awfully hard to make predictions as to who or what would cause the Bride to fight again as she did leave most of her enemies in pieces. But we can cast our votes as to who we would like to see as the Bride's villains. Here's five of the people I'd like to see in a Tarantino flick, and I hope some of you have even cooler suggestions ...
Now It's the 50 Best Movies of the Decade!
Filed under: Fandom, Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Lists, Trailers and Clips
Earlier today we brought you Rotten Tomatoes' list of the 100 worst reviewed films of the decade. Now, though it might be a little premature (considering that we still have a little while to go before we hit our next decade), the good folks over at I Heart Chaos have decided to get the ball rolling on those end-of-decade lists by shoveling out what they believe are the Top 50 Movies of the 2000's. Usually these kinds of things start to gain in popularity towards the end of the year, but I guess the early bird does get the worm, so let's get right to the chase and find out who made the cut.
When you've got a a list of 50, there is plenty of wiggle room, and it's a pretty comprehensive list that manages to find room for cult faves and foreign flicks. But I'll admit, even though Chaos has put together a solid list, I was a little surprised that the #1 film for this decade is Quentin Tarantino's Samurai/Cowboy epic, Kill Bill -- though that's the beauty of a list, everyone wants to have a little friendly debate, I guess. You can read the entire list over at Chaos, but rounding out the top five are The Dark Knight, No Country for Old Men, and Kinji Fukasaku's adaptation of Battle Royale.
The great thing about a long list like Chaos' is that it makes room for all kinds of movies that sometimes you just don't have room for in streamlined lists of five or ten entries. But I love a challenge, so I decided to put together a list of my top films of the 2000s ... although I've cheated just a little.
After the jump: my nominations for the top films of the 2000s...
'Inglourious Basterds' is Tarantino's Top Earner - Because of Twitter?
Filed under: Box Office, Exhibition, The Weinstein Co., Brad Pitt, Quentin Tarantino, Movie Marketing
In what could be read as a big "nyah, told you so" press release, The Weinstein Company would like you all to know that Inglourious Basterds has not only grossed over $108M* in North America but has now out-earned Pulp Fiction, which was previously Tarantino's biggest money-maker to date.
But what's strange is that TWC is giving some of the credit to "an innovative marketing plan. The film was the first to make use of Twitter and other social networking sites in such a direct fashion, even involving Twitter in the film's LA premiere," according to the press release.
Harvey Weinstein is even quoted as saying, "It was great working with Biz Stone at Twitter on Inglourious. It took the campaign to another level."
Okay, what have I missed? How was the Inglourious campaign different from any other of the studios' use of Twitter or Facebook to promote movies through links, contests, and meet-ups? I don't even recall seeing anything on Twitter about it, other than the normal studios using Twitter to cross-pollinate coverage.
Filmmakers Who Love To Talk About Movies
Filed under: Classics, Fandom, Quentin Tarantino, Comic/Superhero/Geek
Let's face it; none of us would be here if we didn't like talking about movies. If you are anything like me, you spend your days scouring for movie news, reading about your favorite films and directors, and sometimes even getting into the odd heated argument. So while most of us play armchair quarterback when it comes to the art of movie making, there are plenty of honest to goodness artists who love to talk about movies just as much as we do, and one person who needs no such prompting is Quentin Tarantino.
The director recently filmed an introductory clip to There Will Be Blood for Sky Movies and despite being a little surprised at the idea that Tarantino and P.T. Anderson are movie BFF's, it did get me thinking about some of the other directors who love to talk about the movies. The rise of the DVD commentary opened up a whole new world to movie geeks like myself, giving us the chance to learn more about the movies we love. But as interesting as it is to hear a filmmaker talk about their work -- sometimes I think it's even better to hear them talk about somebody else's movie.
After the jump; Tarantino's TWBB review, and more movie-making chatterboxes..
Dying to Know All the 'Basterds' Movie-Geek References?
Filed under: Action, Thrillers, Fandom, Brad Pitt, Quentin Tarantino, Lists, War
I always trust that there are far more references crammed into a Tarantino film than I could ever acknowledge, and the extra wink-wink workings of Inglourious Basterds made that all but a guarantee. Luckily, the "video store nerds" (their words) over at Seattle's Scarecrow Video not only have their own extensive and ongoing catalog of films that are either referenced or given homage in Basterds, or are just fitting companions, but they've all been placed in their own section in the store, which just really makes me more jealous of the locals than anything, seeing as all the independent video joints in my own neck of the woods have either gone belly-up or have scaled back their selections.(Really, it's a shame. Netflix may be convenient, but it will never have that personal touch -- a note that Scarecrow's lengthy list happens to conclude on.)
Do you guys and girls agree with like-minded recommendations like Black Book? (I do.) Is there anything you think is missing? (Comment away, here or there.) And more than anything, what one film do you have a hankering to see, or see again, in the wake of QT's latest?
Bizarre 'Inglourious Basterds' Facts
Filed under: Fandom, Quentin Tarantino
If not everyone loves Inglourious Basterds, at least we all agree on one thing: it's pretty dense, and it probably needs more than one viewing to pick up all the little layers and jokes and nuances. MTV.com has assembled a list of five interesting factoids, that, even if they're not in the movie itself, are pretty revealing.1. Possible sequel. As of now, Tarantino has pretty much filmed all of the crackpot projects he has ever announced over the years, with the exception of two Elmore Leonard novels (Freaky Deaky and Bandits) and his prequel The Vega Brothers, which would "reunite" Michael Madsen's Vic Vega (from Reservoir Dogs) and John Travolta's Vincent Vega (from Pulp Fiction). In reality, it doesn't look like any of those things is going to happen, but actor Omar Doom revealed that Tarantino has some "500 leftover pages" from Basterds, and could very well do a prequel explaining the origin of Aldo Raine and his group. I'd see that, just to hear Brad Pitt pronounce the word "Nah-zees" again.
Do the Unexplained Details of Movies Annoy You?
Filed under: New Releases, Fandom, DIY/Filmmaking, Quentin Tarantino
The past two weeks, we've had two big movies come out that revel in all the things they don't tell you. District 9 was full of grainy, second-hand reported mystery and Inglourious Basterds is full of the tiny details only Quentin Tarantino knows. (Even the deliberate spelling is left for us to wonder -- and for those of us who had to type it so often, to be really annoyed about.) But it seems as though viewers fall into two camps -- those who revel in the unexplained and call them Easter eggs, and others who just consider them sloppy plot holes.
I realized there was a gulf of divide after my sister and I left Basterds. She was furious that the origin of Lt. Aldo Raine's scar was unexplained, no matter what Tarantino may have specified in the script. "I wanted to know what it was and why! It drove me nuts!" "It's a hanging scar. You don't explain a hanging scar. It's cooler if it's just there." But she was unconvinced*, and while she knows and loves her Tarantino (oh, how I remember when she pointed out all the Red Apple cigarettes to me), she couldn't forgive him this one. She was equally furious that Donny Donowitz's bat didn't receive its origin story, but I have to confess to being disappointed by that one too. (Hey, I read the comic version!)
I realized there was a gulf of divide after my sister and I left Basterds. She was furious that the origin of Lt. Aldo Raine's scar was unexplained, no matter what Tarantino may have specified in the script. "I wanted to know what it was and why! It drove me nuts!" "It's a hanging scar. You don't explain a hanging scar. It's cooler if it's just there." But she was unconvinced*, and while she knows and loves her Tarantino (oh, how I remember when she pointed out all the Red Apple cigarettes to me), she couldn't forgive him this one. She was equally furious that Donny Donowitz's bat didn't receive its origin story, but I have to confess to being disappointed by that one too. (Hey, I read the comic version!)
Robert Pattinson Talks 'Breaking Dawn' & 'Unbound Captives'
Gwyneth Paltrow Joins Nicole Kidman in 'The Danish Girl'
Discuss: The Movies That Haunt You_thumbnail.jpg)
'Yogi Bear' Will Cry Me A River With Its Cast
Watch This: Movie Titles That Slip Into the Dialogue
