tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post5700213160431892432..comments2024-01-30T04:32:47.585-05:00Comments on The Cooler: Classic Tarantino; Typical, TooJason Bellamyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-34743211155745750602008-07-25T08:30:00.000-04:002008-07-25T08:30:00.000-04:00You say:The Tarantino characters once lauded for t...You say:<BR/><I>The Tarantino characters once lauded for their originality and uniqueness have fast become redundant … Swap the dialogue of Sydney Tamiia Poitier’s Jungle Julia with that of Rosario Dawson’s Abernathy and you’d detect nothing astray. Tarantino doesn’t actually create characters, it’s becoming clearer by the movie, he just changes settings, conversation topics and costumes.</I><BR/><BR/>I think this really only applies to <I>Death Proof</I>, and it's a quite conscious choice since the film is aping the disposable characters of grindhouse B-movies. <I>Death Proof</I> is, to me, a really marvelous structuralist film, a proclamation that tends to make people look at me like I'm crazy. But the film is all about its formal properties, its obsession with halving. It's the ultimate point/counterpoint film. Point: a bunch of chatty girls are stalked by a killer in the stereotypical B-cinema plot. Counterpoint: a bunch of chatty girls are stalked by a killer but turn the tables and emasculate him. The characters and dialogue are, in this sense, irrelevant. They're filler, only there to fill in the film's rigid formal structure, which also mirrors on a micro-scale the halved structure of <I>Grindhouse</I> as a whole. <BR/><BR/>To me, the characters in Tarantino's other films are rich and highly individualized even when their dialogue all falls into those distinctive rhythms. The Bride, Jules and Vincent, the characters in <I>Jackie Brown</I>, the hoods in <I>Resevoir Dogs</I> -- they may sometimes talk in similar ways, but in deeper ways their characters are as different as they come. And they're all <I>interesting</I> characters, too, regardless of whether their dialogue is recognizably Tarantino or not.Ed Howardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18014222247676090467noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-41200101039511179892008-07-12T05:27:00.000-04:002008-07-12T05:27:00.000-04:00Mark: "Pulp Fiction" ain't ordinary yet, especiall...Mark: "Pulp Fiction" ain't ordinary yet, especially in the wide view. But if you shuffle up Tarantino's films and show them to someone who hasn't seen them, I'm not sure it would seem much different than the rest.<BR/><BR/>I think Max Cherry is the extreme exception to the rule, as is "Jackie Brown" as a whole (though I haven't seen it in a while). I still go back to the idea that most Tarantino characters go on cool-speak rants that could be traded among the characters and across the films with no noticeable effect.<BR/><BR/>What was so great about the fast-food conversation when "Pulp Fiction" came out is that you watched it and said, "Wow, I've never heard characters talk like that." But now the vast majority of Tarantino's characters talk just like that. So when I revisit the movie I feel less like 'This is how Jules and Vincent talk,' but 'This is how Tarantino talks ... whether he's writing a black hitman or a white stunt driver or anything in between.'<BR/><BR/>Your Sinatra point is a good one, and on that note: mofo makes interesting films (I can think of few scenes from the past decade that gripped like the ship's mast sequence from "Death Proof," or the buried-alive sequence from "Kill Bill").<BR/><BR/>But Tarantino is talented enough to go a new direction and I wish he would. His supporters would say "Kill Bill" was a new direction, but not really. The mood and dialogue are so typical QT that all that really switched was the genre. By contrast, Scorsese has made a bunch of gangster movies, but at least when he made "Age Of Innocence," for example, he didn't have some short Italian character dropping f-bombs and asking how he was funny.<BR/><BR/>Someone else jump in here. Like Mark, I'm surprised at the lack of debate. People always seem to have an opinion on Tarantino -- that's one of my favorite things about him, alright...okay...Jason Bellamyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18150199580478147196noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1163321594858726822.post-42734520163243792902008-07-08T21:30:00.000-04:002008-07-08T21:30:00.000-04:00Expecting this post to generate a big conversation...Expecting this post to generate a big conversation I "held back" for a while, as Jules and Vince might say, and I'm surprised that a week-plus later there are no comments.<BR/><BR/>I don't think I can agree with you this time, my friend. True that there are common cadences to Tarantino's dialogue, and that he has borrowed from himself. But I think it's overstating the case to say he's undercutting his brand or that his "classic" is becoming retroactively ordinary.<BR/><BR/>We just watched "Pulp Fiction" again last night and "Jackie Brown" again a few days ago. Both are among my favorite movies and I remain just as enthralled by the storytelling, the characters and the speeches in both as I was when I first saw them. I'm also a big fan of the "Kill Bill" movies.<BR/><BR/>Look at the character of Max Cherry or the ATF agents in "Jackie Brown" and show me a precursor (or postcursor) in Tarantino's other pictures. I can't think of any. <BR/><BR/>He's a little full of himself, I'll grant you that. We made the mistake of watching a Tarantino Q&A on the Jackie Brown DVD; <I>"I'm not saying my dialogue is </I>poetry<I>, allright, but Sam (Jackson) captures the poetry.</I><BR/><BR/>Even so. Sinatra was a jerk, so they say. But the mofo could sing. I feel the same way about QT. <BR/><BR/>His films may someday strike me as ordinary, but it's going to take many, many more viewings before I get there, I suspect.Markhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07735634558776498316noreply@blogger.com