Showing posts with label Quentin Tarantino. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quentin Tarantino. Show all posts

Tuesday 2 July 2019

Yes, amazingly did not see Reservoir Dogs (1992) at the time¹

Reservoir Dogs (1992) - so what was all the fuss about... ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


1 July

Reservoir Dogs (1992) - so what was all the fuss about... ?


On this showing, it is less clear what in it caused the clamour for QT, but the story goes that Tony Scott directed Tarantino's screenplay for True Romance (1993), because the latter only had the chance to make one of them, and he chose Dogs : #UCFF thinks Scott's film far superior











Except for those who like painting in blood – actually, a slick of it (do we question that ?), or so that, we are to believe (or are we ?), it perfectly soaks into one or two white shirts, to leave them uniformly dyed (with no streaks or other colour-variation) – it may not be immediately clear what, after the opening scene in the restaurant / diner, Dogs newly offered audiences that did not routinely depend on shock for effect.


Maybe it is that, as heralded or betokened by that opening (which therefore acts as a kind of synthesis of the elements of blood and brain ?), Tarantino seeks to set up a kind of bi-polar opposition to all this bloody physicality : maybe we also see these considerations applying in Kill Bill : Vol. 1 (2003) and Vol. 2 (2004) ?



For the life of the flesh is in the blood : and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls ~ Leviticus 17 : 11a [KJV]




Considered in this way, Tarantino's aim may be akin to the purpose of the phlegmatic ‘calm before the storm’ in films made by The Allies during World War II (or to promote their messages afterwards) – or even the mysterious (dis)quietude of the mise-en-scène of Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter² [1957] ?


There is, for example, the highly protective tenderness of Mr White (Harvey Keitel) towards Mr Orange (Tim Roth), or how the latter’s throaty shouting³ is in contrast to moments of quieter conversation (when, for example, Mr Pink (Steve Buscemi) arrives, and White and he go aside to talk). Yet too much else, as we wait around in this space for 'something to happen'⁴, feels located - as in Beckettt's fame-making play⁵ En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot) - in an excessively heady mood, as if it were a text-book on epistemology, or on irrationality in decision-making⁴.




Lacking the cunning and panache of Pulp Fiction (1994), Dogs still clearly does what Tarantino wanted – making a statement [of intent] and / or his mark. However, in later films under his direction, he has much better handled issues that are important to him, such as that of trust and its basis, and, in scripting them, the role of flashback and how to use it innovatively, which we see him rather noisily and boisterously trying out here.




#UCFF has some other things to say here about Tarantino and Kill Bill : Vol. 1 (2003) and Vol. 2 (2004)


Yeah, you made me feel
Shiny and new :






Whenever Tarantino imagines us thinking Reservoir Dogs set, on its release, the notoriety around Madonna in 1992 was not these initial hits (on which the breakfast club egotistically dilates), but the music-video (lesbian kiss, S&M, etc.) and lyrics - Put your hands all over my body ? - of 'Erotica' (and, that year also, the publication of Sex)




End-notes :

¹ The Arts Picturehouse (@CamPicturehouse) was preparing for Tarantino's Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood (2019), all 2h 39mins of it, by reprising his film career.

² We should recall that part of the Zeitgeist, into which both films were feeding, was Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) – with the edginess of the situation of Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon. (A film that, amongst other names, also boasted Alec Baldwin, Kevin Spacey and Jonathan Pryce.)

³ Which, at least, seems verging on homo-eroticism ?


Apart from ‘Nice Guy’ Eddie (Chris Penn) in particular, so many of the characters present as very hoarse, gruff, or both, as if thereby asserting – beyond (reasonable) question – their hard-ball, masculine status ? So much of this guff about the lyrics of 'Like a Virgin', or Larry grabbing / confiscating Joe's pocket-book, is really just posturing about 'Who's got the biggest dick ?'...



⁴ At times, do the reasons for any of the Reservoir Dogs, notably Mr Pink (Steve Buscemi), to stay where they are and / or their irresolution about doing so seem as flimsy as those of the two principals in Godot (i.e. that they are waiting for Godot) ? :

Vladimir : Well ? Shall we go ?

Estragon : Yes, let’s go.

They do not move.


Artistically, as learnt from cinema, Tarantino has an attraction to stand-offs (and Reservoir Dogs finally resolves with / in one), but he uses this one in a stylistic way, without resolving it : that does not work as an unresolved chord would in music, because he gives the impression of having started that which he cannot (plausibly) finish by scripting - unlike a killer chess-move, or maybe Buscemi taking the legs from under Keitel (though, in this still, all the energy is in and from Keitel's stance)


⁵ One of the two posthumous biographies of Beckettt is called Damned to Fame.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Tuesday 4 July 2017

Edgar Wright's Baby Driver : A musical, in a Tarantino sort of way ?

This is a review, partly by Tweet, of Baby Driver (2017)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


3 July

This is a review, partly by Tweet, of Edgar Wright's Baby Driver (2017)




Baby Driver (2017) palpably cannot be about what it seems, any more than is writer / director Edgar Wright's The World's End (2013), but did the audience seem to be missing that* ?


Here, there is a quantity of humour - wry, grim, and worse - that, if one is too believing of the film as story, will perhaps not have one snorting, or shaking one's head, at the audacity of the film-making (i.e. concept / script / delivery)... which is unfortunate, because these shots, the quality and precision that Edgar Wright gives us in the framing, wording, and editing, deserve our respect for what they are, i.e. not just part of, say, another 2 Guns (2013).



By contrast, Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive (2011) really does take itself so seriously [as does [ ] The Neon Demon (2016) ?], with Ryan Gosling (credited only as Driver, though one choice of garment** suggests that he models himself elsewhere) as the man who can not only be wholesome to Carey Mulligan*** (Irene = Greek for 'Peace'), but buck an approach to and use of violence based on retribution.



Nerdist also picked up on that use of colour(s) in its posting about the film's trailer(s) :

If the trailers are any indication, it would seem Wright’s been itching at giving us some beautiful shots with vibrant color palettes and, in the moment Baby and his girlfriend are talking, a shot that just screams 'EDGAR WRIGHT NEEDS TO BE DIRECTING EVERYTHING !'


Centre right, Edgar Wright evokes a grander place than My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)


[...]



[...]


End-notes :

* In Screen 1, at 6.30 on a Monday evening.

** As mentioned in the #UCFF review.

*** Also known as Mary Culligan... :







Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Monday 13 February 2017

Love film, and love a real projection from 35mm : True Romance at The Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge (work in progress)

Love film, and love a real projection from 35mm : True Romance (1993) in Cambridge

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


14 February

Love film, and love a real projection from 35mm : True Romance (1993) at The Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge [script by Tarantino, directed by Tony Scott]









See also Jack Toye (@jackabuss), at / for TAKE ONE (@TakeOneCinema) : www.takeonecff.com/2015/interview-david-boyd







Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Thursday 21 July 2016

In a few sentences, casting out NWR¹'s The Neon Demon (2016)

In a few choice sentences, casting out NWR¹'s The Neon Demon (2016)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


21 July


In a few choice sentences, casting out NWR¹'s The Neon Demon (2016)



Martin Creed ~ Work No. 232 (2000) at Tate Modern (@tate)



With a film, some will want to go into it, already knowing everything about it...




Or having (in its proper sense of reading every word) perused what Little White Lies (@LWLies) – or even Picturehouse Recommends – had to say (or did say, without ‘having to’ say it), and which will have determined them to watch - or to shun².





'when you were young, you dressed yourself and walked where you wanted'
John 21 : 18


Nicolas Winding Refn's (NWR¹'s) The Neon Demon (2016) is very deliberately mannered, and to the extent that his dialogue desires - in massive swathes of overly-delayed reaction - to be portentous. However, alongside its mise-en-scène³, instead it ends up just feeling very ponderous : nigh tediously so, with an affect that aims at insightful awkwardness, but largely conveys leadenness.

Music choices, as ever, are strong, but, having made a graphic point of doing so in Drive (2011), NWR seems unable to do other than try to shock his audience, as if crediting that it will have a lack of interest in the first-blush, well-worn premise of the traps of (the topos of) a beautiful young girl, come to California to trade on attributes that she knows herself to possess.





Prey on her what may - which, of course (and in order to provide the shocks), it duly does...



This is what [some] others said, at more length… :






[...]










End-notes :

¹ Winding Refn is now monogrammed, with the claimed status of the royal or the regal, at the head of his films. (Although, according to Wikipedia®, A series of uncombined initials is properly referred to as a cypher (e.g. a royal cypher) and is not a monogram.)


² Maybe it is the bane of many a film-maker (or distributor) that a book is judged by what is not even its cover, though those in the latter category do not entirely help their cause when a trailer makes an excellent film seem weak, or a poor film worth the watch, because of how scenes, snippets and elements of dialogue have been unrepresentatively mixed up and divorced from their filmic setting, in favour of creating an impression that the work itself does not substantiate (let alone footage that is in a trailer, but did not make the cut to appear in the film itself…).

³ Which obviously heavily evokes Tony Scott's Tarantino-scripted True Romance (1993) (whose being shot by Scott left Tarantino himself free to direct Reservoir Dogs (1992)).




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)