Django Unchained Is Rivetting Cinema

[TeddyBallgame]

- Yesterday we saw the latest Tarantino film, "Django Unchained", which is about slavery and racism and love and determination in the 1858 southern US.

- The film runs about 2 hours and 40 minutes and at my age hardly any film or anything else holds my attention this long. But "Django Unchained" certainly did and I recommend it to everyone with the caveat that you not bring anyone under 17 to see it inasmuch as it has the usual Tarantino quota of gratuitous violence plus much really disgusting racist behaviour and speech including more use of the N word than at a black stand up comedy club and not in an affectionate or jocular fashion.

- The acting is exceptionally strong in all the lead roles including Fox and Dicaprio and Samuel L. Jackson and in the numerous cameos including Don Johnson and Bruce Dern and Don Stroud and many, many others. Stealing the show in this brilliant cast is a guy whose name I can't remember but who rightfully won the Golden Globe the other night for best supporting actor and who plays a very liberal and resourceful and lethal German bounty hunter who transforms Jamie Fox from slave to freeman and bounty hunter and makes it possible for him to reunite with and rescue his wife from slavery.

- Lots of violence but yet lots of laughs in the movie, especially in relation to some of the amazingly dumb white southern racists and slave masters, the pompous A-Hole Dicaprio who inherited a large plantation with hundreds of slaves and thinks this makes him intelligent and justifies his disgusting exploitive behaviour and asinine comments about blacks as sub-humans, and the ancient black manager of the main estate house and staff who maintaIns his position by speaking and acting more racist and anti-black than the whites do and by kissing the owner's a$$ more often and more assiduosly than management trainees on Trump's The Apprentice. Probably the funniest scene concerns the KKK vigilantes who are gathered together and all set to do a raid until they discover that they have too much trouble seeing through the mismatched eyeholes of their masks shoddily sewn by one of the clansmen's wives and call the whole thing off amid bickering and accusations.

- Anyhow, if you like a film with exceptional acting, lots of action and humour and suspense, and if you need reminding as to why slavery was such a disgusting and degrading and exploitive and odious system that had to be abolished, this is a film you should see.

 

[talloola]

- Yesterday we saw the latest Tarantino film, "Django Unchained", which is about slavery and racism and love and determination in the 1858 southern US.

- The film runs about 2 hours and 40 minutes and at my age hardly any film or anything else holds my attention this long. But "Django Unchained" certainly did and I recommend it to everyone with the caveat that you not bring anyone under 17 to see it inasmuch as it has the usual Tarantino quota of gratuitous violence plus much really disgusting racist behaviour and speech including more use of the N word than at a black stand up comedy club and not in an affectionate or jocular fashion.

- The acting is exceptionally strong in all the lead roles including Fox and Dicaprio and Samuel L. Jackson and in the numerous cameos including Don Johnson and Bruce Dern and Don Stroud and many, many others. Stealing the show in this brilliant cast is a guy whose name I can't remember but who rightfully won the Golden Globe the other night for best supporting actor and who plays a very liberal and resourceful and lethal German bounty hunter who transforms Jamie Fox from slave to freeman and bounty hunter and makes it possible for him to reunite with and rescue his wife from slavery.

thanks for a good review, i've been wondering how good this film might be, now I will go and see it.

not very many good films being made these days, seems most of them are for special effects and immature
dialogue.

 

[karrie]

I was absolutely dying to see this movie. Then I made the mistake of watching a wee bit of an interview with Tarantino about said film. Now I'll have to wait until his insanity fades from my mind a bit in order to enjoy it.

 

[petros]

Django Unchained Is Rivetting Cinema

My mom liked it.

 

[Goober]

Dicaprio has turned into an amazing actor. Titanic well not my fav - But he played Howard Hughes to a t- Blood Diamonds was incredible-an amazing actor- To Catch a Thief was also a great movie.

I heard that S Jackson was clear to DiCaprio on how he could not be seen as talking with a slave and he had to get that mentality down pat - Next day Dicaprio comes on the set and - set in character - walks by Jackson like he did not exist - looked right thru him and walked on.

 

[TeddyBallgame]

I was absolutely dying to see this movie. Then I made the mistake of watching a wee bit of an interview with Tarantino about said film. Now I'll have to wait until his insanity fades from my mind a bit in order to enjoy it.

- K ... I understand your reaction but my advice is to forget about Tarantino (yes, he does a cameo in the movie but only for about ten minutes) and just go to enjoy the movie. An alarmingly high percentage of the most talented and successful people in entertainment, sports, politics and business are personally reprehensible with serious character flaws and behavioural quirks and giant egos but you don't go to see them as human beings you go to see their talent. Tarantino is certainly eccentric and perhaps even a giant A-Hole but he does make mostly excellent films (the one I saw most recently before this one was another winner titled "inglorious Bastards"). This is one of them.

Dicaprio has turned into an amazing actor. Titanic well not my fav - But he played Howard Hughes to a t- Blood Diamonds was incredible-an amazing actor- To Catch a Thief was also a great movie.

I heard that S Jackson was clear to DiCaprio on how he could not be seen as talking with a slave and he had to get that mentality down pat - Next day Dicaprio comes on the set and - set in character - walks by Jackson like he did not exist - looked right thru him and walked on.

- G ... It is an exceptionally strong cast and Tarantino like all great directors gets the best out of them.

- The guy who tutors and transforms Django/Jamie Fox from slave to bounty hunter that I had said stole the show but whose name I couldn't remember when I worte the review is a german actor named Christoph Waltz. He deservedly won an Oscar last year for Tarantino's excellent film "Inglorious Bastards" in which he plays a sociopathic SS officer whose evil literally sends chills down your spine. It is always tough to repeat back to back but I think he may deserve another Oscar for this one.

- Yes, DiCaprio has evolved into a first class actor who is believable across a whole range of characters.

 

[karrie]

Well by default I'll wait a while anyway. I refuse to volunteer to get bent over in public, so new release movies are out of the question. lol.

We sprang for a huge entertainment system for the house (and recently a new house to put it in), and part of our justification was that it would replace the high cost of taking the family to a movie. So it will be a couple months before Django hits my screen.

 

[Tonington]

Teddy, the actors name I'm presuming is Christoph Waltz. He won the Oscar for Best Male Supporting Actor in 2009 for his work in another Tarantino film, Inglorius Basterds.

It was a great film. I personally think Tarantino should have been nominated for a Best Director Oscar, but he was snubbed yet again.

ETA: I see you tracked it down. Really another great performance. His delivery is awesome, from the serious lines to the funny stuff.

 

[TeddyBallgame]

Teddy, the actors name I'm presuming is Christoph Waltz. He won the Oscar for Best Male Supporting Actor in 2009 for his work in another Tarantino film, Inglorius Basterds.

It was a great film. I personally think Tarantino should have been nominated for a Best Director Oscar, but he was snubbed yet again.

ETA: I see you tracked it down. Really another great performance. His delivery is awesome, from the serious lines to the funny stuff.

- T ... No question in my mind that Tarantino deserved an Oscar nomination for "Inglorious Bastards" which I saw last year on The Movie Network at home.

- And I agree with you that Walt's delivery and timing is awesome. Somehow he seems to effortlessly command the screen in every scene he is in and I even rate him above another great contemporary character actor, Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

- NOTE: "character actor" in this context is a euphemism for a nondescript looking guy who would not normally be noticed in a crowded room or even in an uncrowded room. I guess I would have fitted that desciprtion, too, in my lengthy acting career which consisted of exactly two parts - MacBeth in Shakespeare's MacBeth as a high school senior and Nathan Detroit (the role played by frank Sinatra) in Dalhousie University's 1963 production of "Guys and Dolls". The latter was much fun with rehersals four or five nights a week for three months fortified by drinking a 40 ouncer of apple cider (90 cents) each night, appearances on both local TV channels, three sold out performances at the Capital Theatre and a cast party to end all cast parties! We all felt like movie stars and three of the four leads went on to successful careers in entertainment, one in theatre management and two in TV, theatre and movies acting and in commercial voice overs. I was the fourth and I didn't choose to persue the acting bug but I often think back and wonder "what if?" Oh well, at 69 I can still go into any karaoke bar in Toronto and get all my drinks for free which is still a kick and one that I indulge myself every month or so.

- Here's a story that might amuse you about one of my fellow cast members in "Guys and Dolls". Peggy Mahon (sic) was the buxom beauty with the big soprano voice who played Sister Sarah the female lead and who went on to a successful Canadian career in acting. About seven years after we did the play at Dal, I heard Peggy doing radio commercials as teller Mary in a major advertising blitz for the Royal Bank. This went on for about three years and was a nice chunk of cash for Peggy and one day I turned on the TV and there was teller Mary and Peggy's voice but not Peggy's unforgetable body. So I called her about it and she told me that they had focus grouped the TV commercials with her in them and that too many of the males felt intimidated by her bodacious bod and raw sex appeal and that the agency decreed they go with a more "wholesome" and ordinary looking young woman as teller Mary. So they used Peggy's voice overs and the other woman's body in the TV commercials for a couple of years and then "Mary" went off to college and they were able to change their ads and use the same person to do both voice and body. But I certainly would have voted for Peggy if they had focus grouped me on it!

 

[darkbeaver]

Inglorious Bastards was inane rubbish. You're right, it was vile enough for that Oscar Nomination. American films suck, all of them. If I see "nominated for a Academy award" I start to hurl a little bit and put the disc back. Shop indy films people that's where the real value is.

 

[karrie]

Hipster

 

[Retired_Can_Soldier]

Inglorious Bastards was inane rubbish. You're right, it was vile enough for that Oscar Nomination. American films suck, all of them. If I see "nominated for a Academy award" I start to hurl a little bit and put the disc back. Shop indy films people that's where the real value is.

Indy was where Tarantino started and having remembered where he started has continued his support. I didn't like Inglorious Basterds that much, but I do enjoy Tarantini Films as a whole. Reservoir Dogs is still a fav and watching UMA slice up the Crazy 88's was awesome cinema.

 

[darkbeaver]

Indy was where Tarantino started and having remembered where he started has continued his support. I didn't like Inglorious Basterds that much, but I do enjoy Tarantini Films as a whole. Reservoir Dogs is still a fav and watching UMA slice up the Crazy 88's was awesome cinema.

Hollywood was foremost in my entertainment package for too many years. They simply can't do anything new just the same old faster and bloodier. Last week I watched Jackie Chan in a Chinese action film, even with subtitles it was way better than Holly wood. Maybe I got old maybe my glasses ain't no good no more maybe the new bagOgreen is too good. I just can't get excited about movies.

 

[karrie]

Hollywood was foremost in my entertainment package for too many years. They simply can't do anything new just the same old faster and bloodier.

Nah, they do other stuff too. Its just that it's become a carbon copy of our grocery store shelves. Stocked mainly with convenience food, not substance, you've got to seek out the good stuff. It doesn't mean it's not there, it's just easy to get distracted by the fifty kinds of chips and the 70 varieties of chocolate.

 

[darkbeaver]

Nah, they do other stuff too. Its just that it's become a carbon copy of our grocery store shelves. Stocked mainly with convenience food, not substance, you've got to seek out the good stuff. It doesn't mean it's not there, it's just easy to get distracted by the fifty kinds of chips and the 70 varieties of chocolate.

I know what yer sayin antis true. I just want to know who paid you to use the two trigger words "chips" n "chocolate", it is after hours out here on the coast and some of us do get the munchies, I think I have some hidden in the shed. she you later

 

[spaminator]

‘Django Unchained’ a bloody masterpiece

By Bruce Kirkland ,QMI Agency

First posted: Friday, December 21, 2012 12:58 AM EST | Updated: Friday, December 21, 2012 01:16 AM EST

Actors Jamie Foxx, left, and Leonardo DiCaprio are shown in a scene from director Quentin Tarantino's film 'Django Unchained' in this publicity photo released to Reuters November 14, 2012. (REUTERS/Andrew Cooper/The Weinstein Company/Handout)

Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained is a bloody masterpiece about American slavery.
Think of it as the gore-filled antidote to the old-school melodrama of Gone With the Wind. That 1939 picture may be a Hollywood classic, but it still treats the pre-Civil War south with reverence. Django Unchained rips away the lace veil and shows the reality of slavery as a malignant tumour.
Yet Tarantino is taking an enormous risk. Not politically but cinematically. Django Unchained may repel the squeamish with its operatic violence and frequent N-bombs. The film will freak out racists who hate Tarantino's take on the subject. But it may even disgust or confuse Americans from any heritage who want a conventional drama on such a serious historical subject.
Instead, we get Tarantino's gleeful mashup of spaghetti western, blaxploitation cinema, bounty-hunting buddy movie, sardonic comedy and unabashed romantic melodrama. Bring it on! This is brilliant filmmaking. It is even better than Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino's re-imagining of World War II, with Hitler consumed in hellfire.
Taking place in the Antebellum-era of American from 1858 into 1859, with story elements set in the Old West and in the deep South, Django Unchained is a pure Tarantino original. His expansive script puts two men into an unholy and unlikely partnership that leads to astonishing and cathartic results. Tarantino's filmmaking techniques make everything look heightened, surrealistic, even fabulous.

Christoph Waltz (the despicable Nazi from Inglourius Basterds) is now a German dentist who has taken up bounty hunting in the American West. He captures outlaws on wanted posters, finding it easier to take in corpses, given the dead-or-alive option. In 1858, he "buys" an African-American slave named Django. While he has ulterior motives, Waltz is also an abolitionist. He frees and befriends Django.
Jamie Foxx plays Django as a combination of Moses, Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name and a black avenging angel. Fortunately, in league with Tarantino's direction, Foxx also gets to humanize him as an oppressed man who relishes his sudden, unexpected emancipation. It is exhilarating to watch as he evolves into an iconic figure in this epic film.
Together, Waltz and Foxx eventually face down the spectre of slavery in the Old South. The film changes tone but it still has attitude. Circumstances put our unusual heroes up against two powerful plantation owners. First, they face off with a hide-bound traditionalist (Don Johnson). Then, as part of a rescue quest, they enter into business with a "charming" psychopath (Leonardo DiCaprio).
Johnson is fun to see vanquished. But DiCaprio represents a different breed. Even while playing out the stylistic flourishes of his genre mashup, Tarantino vividly shows the reality and brutality of real slavery. DiCaprio's character indulges in "mandingo fighting" in which slave combatants fight to the death. By the time the disguised Waltz and Foxx ride into DiCaprio's plantation, Candieland, we are ready for action and vengeance.
The stakes are raised even higher when we meet Samuel L. Jackson as the elderly house slave Stephen. He is now the rancid power broker behind DiCaprio's throne and willing to both sacrifice and savage Django's loved one (the wonderful Kerry Washington) in the deal.
Yes, the dial on your morality compass will spin crazily. But that is what a masterpiece should do: Engage the viewer in a powerful story well told. Django Unchained does just that -- with style!
bruce.kirkland@sunmedia.ca

Django Unchained - Official Trailer (HD) - YouTube

Django Unchained

4.5 stars

Starring: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Duration: 2 hours, 45 minutes

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/12/21/django-unchained-a-bloody-masterpiece

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[darkbeaver]

That review seals the deal, I ain't going to see the flick, but I will buy extra snacks instead and smoke a joint. I have very entertaining walls. Maybe I will use the window as well.

 

[spaminator]

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