Inglorious Bastards was great, what are you talking about?

Don't get me started.

Let's just say I came expecting to see Eli Roth kill Nazis, and instead I got some boring hipster chick natering on about interwar German cinema for three hours.

Christoph Waltz was great - his scenes may have been my favorite thing Tarantino's ever done (or at least very nearly tied with the last few scenes of Kill Bill vol 1). But the rest of the movie stunk. It felt like Tarantino had started out with a great idea for a film, got bored with writing it, walked away, then came back to it a decade later and started writing a completely different movie over and around the original idea. Actually, that's exactly what happened, and it shows. Plus, for fucks sake, I get that Tarantino is a filmfag. That's his "thing", it's part of his charm. But when he's making homages to kung fu films or blacksploitation flicks or whatthefuckever, you can tell he has a PASSION for the material he's referencing. But all that German Expressionist crap? The name dropping in that horrendous scene with Austin Powers? The snoozefest that was everything involving that cinema, up to (and very nearly including) the tacked-on Nazi massacre? Ugh. It felt like he was just regurgitating tidbits from his old film school notebooks, just to fill up time and meet the quota for culturally aware postmodern metanarrative that his audience has come to expect. AND THIS is all time that COULD HAVE been spent showing Eli Roth murdering Nazis!!!


blargfgrgarggblargrrarg

Fuck, see, I can't help myself.

Look, I just wanna know if the new Django is worth spending money on, or if Tarantino's gone all George Lucas on us.

I would say it's good; but since I CAN'T FUCKING FATHOM YOUR CINEMATIC IDEALS, I'll say just flip a coin.

Inglourious Basterds works BECAUSE it's a singularly effective bait-and-switch. That and it's a costume flick that actually kills Hitler, which is generally a no-no button.

As I saw a few people opine here and there on the internet, Tarantino had a couple of decent genre efforts under his belt but his output has grown lazier, more self-indulgent and trashier but because of that innate film-nerd connection betwixt film-nerd professional movie critics and QT, you have these people proclaiming his tiresome pastiches to be Important Films About Film, and make no mistake QT is a huge dork, what can you expect from a guy who goes on and on about his foot fetish and how he wishes he were a black man (because you know all black people are innately superfly supercool and like, earthier you know)

So basically, you wanted something dumb and Inglorious Basterds had a little too much depth?

asian hick hits the target

Basically, yeah. I wanted something dumb, and fun, not deep, and tedious.

Tarantino's not Welles or Kurosawa. He works best when he's got some cool, culturally aware quipsters to spread a glossy sheen of DIALOGUE!!! on top of mounds and mounds of so-overblown-it's-ironic violence. It works, there's nothing wrong with that; as BHWW said, he's a dork, and that's cool, cuz so am I. But when you drop you quipsters, and you drop the gratuitous violence, what else is left? Just a bunch of boring, soulless assholes with a lot of expository dialogue trying to drag along this hopelessly absurd plot that goes into convulsions and dies within the first hour or so.

That's odd, because I thought the dialogue in IB was among the best he's ever done. I'd submit exhibit A to be the opening scene with the farmer and Waltz, where he shows just how powerful and lethal language can be in the right hands. And you can't tell me that shooting motherfucking Hitler till his head explodes isn't excessive...

Well anyway, to answer your question about Django then, if you're looking for a film where Foxx and Waltz go around killing slave owners, then the film is not for you. There is violence but it is short and quick (mostly). There is

*spoilers*
an immensely satisfying scene of QT himself literally exploding on screen after donning a ridiculous Australian accent. So, if like me, you hate QT the actor, you may enjoy that.
*end spoilers*

Instead the film is, among other things, a study of language and culture. (One of the running jokes in the film is individuals not knowing what words mean, first with slaves and then with DiCaprio). It's not unique in showing the hypocrisy of southern pretensions to civility and culture amidst utter barbarity, but it does it well, using Waltz's character as a linchpin. Django is the character with the arc, but I'd argue Waltz is the emotional heart of the film and everything leads to a fateful decision he makes towards the end. And it doesn't really pull any punches in showing the horrors of slavery. I can't really think of a film that showed slavery in such a shocking light.

Finally, the performances are excellent. Foxx and Waltz are great. DiCaprio is having so much fun, he probably shouldn't have even gotten paid and SLJ is great in a decidedly non-Jacksonian role.

Hope that helps!

Hold on. You were looking for "quipsters" and instead got "hipsters" and were thus dissapointed. What the fuck?

This thread is like interesting homework.

You're like an interesting cunt.

I can see how, if you thought it was a film about Eli Roth killing Nazis, you would be disappointed (and it was certainly marketed that way, so I guess you're not to blame).

This, however, is where I was coming from when I saw Inglorious: I HATED Kill Bill, which I felt was overlong and disjointed and mainly a film that thought it was being super-clever but to me was super boring. Still, it had a few decent moments, and previous Tarantino films had ranged from good to great, so I thought I should give Inglorious a chance, despite the fact that it looked like a boring "Pissed off Jew Yanks killing Nazis" in scene after scene of "wacky" action (I usually hate action films).
What I got was a great film based on awesome dialogue, very tense scenes (the opening shot and that whole scene in the basement pub, for example, which last about 20 minutes each, which means you already have at least 1/3 of the film that is absolutely great), that treats all of its protagonists with respect (even the superevil Nazis are human and relatable, and never complete morons, with the exception of the Nazi supreme leaders, who are ridiculous disgusting cartoons). Sure, that cameo with Austin Powers was meh, but it lasts what? 5 minutes, 6?
You had cool female leads, you had funny scenes (BUONGEEEORNOW), I don't know, it was fairly crazy and dijsointed, but I always felt that it was going somewhere (and not because I got a little list where they eliminated target after target leaving a last KILL HITLER on the list, but because the whole plot was actually folding onto itself, as a good plot should), and I enjoyed it immensely. I never stopped to think about other film references Tarantino was making or anything like that. I just sat back and enjoyed it.

Considering how hard to get many other italo westerns are, let alone finding a decent looking copy of several of them, Django has always been far more accesible. It already has a BR copy out.