Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Started by jenkins, December 03, 2017, 05:47:53 PM

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Robyn

Almost every single part of that film should have been more fleshed out. The pacing is so weird, although it creates an excitement because you are never sure where the film will take you (and that's the best thing with a Tarantino film). Still, the script works better. The final cut feels like a highlight reel. 

Quote from: eward on May 23, 2019, 08:15:05 PM
truncated

^this, I guess. I've learned a new word!

csage97

Well, it's about time for me to start getting hyped for this one. Admittedly, I'm not to keen on the trailer that was released a few days ago, but thinking about Tarantino films, I've never paid too much attention to his trailers (I don't really know why). That said, after seeing that the film is getting tons of praise after the Cannes screening, I'm starting to get overwhelmed with excitement. I've never disliked a Quentin movie, and I completely trust him to make something that I'll, at the very least, like. It's just that the trailer doesn't give too much of the story away (ultimately a good thing), but his stories are always so magnificent.

I would be all for Tarantino going back and re-cutting the film .... For me, the more, the better when it comes to his stuff. And, again, I'd trust him to do an extraordinary job. I mean, Kill Bill is probably my favourite of his. His films could use a lot of time, with all their references, recreations of scenes/bits from past movies, and overflow of character exploration and interesting scenarios. The thing is that it never gets boring because it's all interesting.

Am I worried about the Sharon Tate/Manson background? Not too much. The way that Pynchon handled it was somewhat indirect, to show that the hippy era ended with paranoia and the negative side of things coming to the forefront. I do hope that Once Upon A Time doesn't end with ... you know ... given Tarantino's penchant for violence. But even if it did, I'd again probably trust him with it. What other filmmaker could handle that sort of thing?

Anyway, to sum up my thoughts, I'll say that I've been starved since around the release of Phantom Thread for something that comes from a person who has cinema history in their DNA. Something with the sensibilities of The Old Man and the Gun but with greater scope and a bigger budget, with more cinematic history woven into it. Something that doesn't just give in to the style of modern movies and combines great actors with an amazing story and a deeply informed sense of direction. The subject matter of this film, the rave reviews, the descriptions of it being more of a "mature" style like Jackie Brown, and Tarantino himself .... I can't wait to see this.

csage97

Actually ... I watched the trailer a few more times and it looks so good. Oboy oboy oboy oboy oboy ....

Alethia

Dude, your post alone has seriously amped my hype. Almost as good as PTA season!

csage97

Quote from: eward on May 24, 2019, 09:03:11 PM
Dude, your post alone has seriously amped my hype. Almost as good as PTA season!

Haha, most of my posts here are long-ish and I tend to really air all of my thoughts out, so I'm glad you've found it valuable rather than it just being all drivel. But yeah ... I remember PTA responding to a question about The Revenent and how it was having production issues, the rumour being, if I recall correctly, that it might not work out. You've probably heard the interview, but in case you haven't, PTA's response was to say that of course he was rooting for it to be successful, and he always wants projects to succeed so that these movies are able to be made. That's how I feel about a film like Once Upon a Time, that it's a bit of a minor miracle in today's movie climate for a director with Tarantino's deep enthusiasm and integrity to put out something like this. I mean, not that Tarantino's movies don't make money and that he hasn't had past success ... but the fact that the infrastructure is there for someone of his ilk to continue to do what he does with quite large budgets makes me happy.

So yeah, that's also a part of what makes me so excited about this new film. I went back and watched the trailer a bunch of times as mentioned, and I started noticing the small details too: The labels on boxes or cans of beer that the actors are surrounded by, the cigarettes, the outfits .... All of it looks so incredibly well done. I mean, the Tarantino stylings of Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction, or even the conversational elements in Reservoir Dogs, in painstakingly well crafted late-60s setting!? Sign me up!

wilberfan

Maybe this goes without saying, but the word is out to avoid the Wikipedia page for this film.  Full plot and ending is allegedly been posted.

Something Spanish

if you've read the reviews, they don't spoil the ending but have no qualms revealing an abrupt spat of violence enters the equation, so you can imagine. the majority is supposedly a hangout movie that doesn't really go anywhere, long stretches where nothing happens, and to me, that sounds very exciting, considering the crowd you're hanging with. it's dialogue heavy, like all tarantino movies, that is one of the main draws when watching a tarantino movie. i'm going to do my best to avoid reading anything further than what was written in cannes until watching it for myself, but i have a feeling this may be one of his best.

trailer is one of his best. second to this one, which was included on the Vol.1 soundtrack : (even has the crazy 88 fight in color, as in the Asian release, which is hands down my favorite sequence he's ever directed. shelled $50 bucks at Kim's for a Region 3 dvd around 2004. not only is it in color, but it's more violent than the us release)

when pitt is on the roof and manson throws him the creepy wave as the chorus smacks in, i get chills every time.

Alethia

I had forgotten all about that trailer and it just sucked me right back to 2003. Chills, etc.

Lottery

Quote from: Something Spanish on May 25, 2019, 06:51:19 AM
the majority is supposedly a hangout movie that doesn't really go anywhere, long stretches where nothing happens,

Quote from: Robyn on May 22, 2019, 12:11:50 PM
I've seen a few tweets that has compared the film to Jackie Brown and called it more mature and lowkey than Tarantino's latest efforts.

Oooh, that's the good stuff right there.

Robyn

Quote from: eward on May 25, 2019, 09:54:39 AM
I had forgotten all about that trailer and it just sucked me right back to 2003. Chills, etc.

Was that the first trailer for Kill Bill? Must've been pretty cool to watch that trailer in 03, after waiting 5 years since Jackie Brown.

I think Kill Bill has aged very well. This are his best ones imo, his "masterpieces" if you like;
Jackie Brown
Kill Bill
Pulp Fiction
inglourious Basterds

Death Proof is a personal favorite of mine, but only because it was the first movie I obsessed over before it came out. I wasn't aware of directors before that one, so it has a special place in my heart.

csage97

Quote from: Something Spanish on May 25, 2019, 06:51:19 AM
trailer is one of his best ... when pitt is on the roof and manson throws him the creepy wave as the chorus smacks in, i get chills every time.

I don't know what I was thinking when I first said I wasn't keen on the trailer. It's actually amazing .... I've watched it maybe ten times now and can't get enough of it.

I think I just needed to view it two or three times and notice what was going on. For example, when I first watched it, I didn't:
-catch that Al Pacino was Al Pacino right away
-notice the Spahn Ranch sign at first
-hear Margaret Qualley say, "Charlie's gonna dig you"
-see Margaret Qualley sitting with her feet up, right in the camera, in Brad Pitt's car
-see all the small period details, like when Leo DiCaprio is sitting at a dressing mirror and there's an old 60s-style hair dryer there, old 60s chairs, a vintage box of band-aids, old "Vam" and "Vitalis" bottles

The cinematography looks great too .... Robert Richardson, celluloid, wide angles .... I can't get enough.

Alethia

Quote from: Robyn on May 25, 2019, 10:43:43 AM
Quote from: eward on May 25, 2019, 09:54:39 AM
I had forgotten all about that trailer and it just sucked me right back to 2003. Chills, etc.

Was that the first trailer for Kill Bill? Must've been pretty cool to watch that trailer in 03, after waiting 5 years since Jackie Brown.

I don't believe it was the first (I think there was a teaser with Battle Without Honor or Humanity playing, and it featured footage from a cut sequence where Bill kicks ass in B&W) but once discovered it was my favorite.

Seeing this again honestly made me well up a bit, as it brought me back to a very nice time in my life. I was but a lad of 16, had my first girlfriend, I'd lost like 150 lbs the year before so I was lookin prettay prettay prettay good, and I was full of energy and enthusiasm and was madly in love with cinema. Not much has changed, it's just...harder now, I suppose. Though I have relatively few complaints, all things considered...

Also I worked at a movie theater, and this was back when 35 projection was the norm, so I used to take home all the trailers on celluloid, several Kill Bills among them. I still have them somewhere.

Okay, nostalgia trip done.

csage97

Quote from: eward on May 25, 2019, 01:11:56 PM
Quote from: Robyn on May 25, 2019, 10:43:43 AM
Quote from: eward on May 25, 2019, 09:54:39 AM
I had forgotten all about that trailer and it just sucked me right back to 2003. Chills, etc.

Was that the first trailer for Kill Bill? Must've been pretty cool to watch that trailer in 03, after waiting 5 years since Jackie Brown.

I don't believe it was the first (I think there was a teaser with Battle Without Honor or Humanity playing, and it featured footage from a cut sequence where Bill kicks ass in B&W) but once discovered it was my favorite.

Seeing this again honestly made me well up a bit, as it brought me back to a very nice time in my life. I was but a lad of 16, had my first girlfriend, I'd lost like 150 lbs the year before so I was lookin prettay prettay prettay good, and I was full of energy and enthusiasm and was madly in love with cinema. Not much has changed, it's just...harder now, I suppose. Though I have relatively few complaints, all things considered...

Also I worked at a movie theater, and this was back when 35 projection was the norm, so I used to take home all the trailers on celluloid, several Kill Bills among them. I still have them somewhere.

Okay, nostalgia trip done.

150 lbs .... That's insane! Wow. A late congratulations to you. It sounds like it vastly improved your quality of life. I know what it's like to be at that age and just be full of energy, but I've never accomplished anything physical on that level. That's seriously a huge thing to do.

I was born in the early 90s, so hearing about 35 mm artifacts like that is very interesting to me. Were there extra copies for you to take home? I'd imagine that the production companies would send your theatre a surplus and you'd yoink the extras. Very cool.

I'll add that I came of age during the cusp of Napster and that era, and music was and has been my first point of artistic pull. I think that music has borne a massive portion of that change. It's a big part of why I'm so interested in that era (the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s), when things were recorded to 4- and 8- and 16- track tape. There was a transition in those days from trying to capture live recordings to experimenting with mixing things in the studio. But still, the emphasis was on capturing live sounds first.

These days, recording is so expedient and young people tend to not care about the source (where the sounds originate from). It's so easy to program a digital beat and then put vocals over it. On the one hand, it empowers people to create, but on the other, it embodies what Pynchon (my favourite author and of course initial author of PTA's IV) was getting at when he explored information entropy. Media and art start to becomes noise as it's so much easier to create, record, and distribute. At the risk of getting very, very personal and too heavy here ... these are the things that keep me up at night. On the one hand, it's good that people are empowered, but on the other, I wish the process were more stringent, demanding, and for those who are into the craft enough to see out a process that presents challenges to the intellect and problem-solving capabilities. And unfortunately, there are the un-discerning masses who will gulp up the lowest common denominator without concerning themselves with things that are produced with thought and utmost craft.

This is all why I'm so obsessed with Kubrick's productions. I'm currently reading Michael Benson's Space Odyssey, which goes in depth about the production of 2001. If I could distill the importance of the production of that movie from what I'm reading, it's that Kubrick and co. leaned against the boundaries of film infrastructure of that time, and challenged the technological and philosophical limits of the medium. I mean, the production went on for about three years, overtook nine stages of MGM's London studio, and Kubrick pushed his producers and his team to do things that hadn't been done to produce something that dared to transcend the artistic medium. The point there is that they had to face limits which demanded a serious and skilled creative process, one which rewarded reflection and sustained effort.

The greater point is that I fear production has maybe become too easy. It's empowering, yes, but it increases the noise of things out there. But to get back on topic, this is all why I'm so fascinated with what you said about that era of cinema and being able to snag physical prints of trailers ... and a director of the old guard who is making a movie in this era that's set during the turn of the old Hollywood to the new, using some old film techniques at the highest level of artistic application, with his knowledge and experience of film background.

Robyn


csage97

https://www.scmp.com/sport/mixed-martial-arts/article/3013667/bruce-lees-daughter-upset-quentin-tarantino-didnt-consult

What's with the "need to be consulted" that keeps popping up in the news? First Roman Polanski's wife's tweet -- which was ludicrous and probably got too much media attention for the clicks -- and now Bruce Lee's daughter. If you were a famous person who was part of the history of Hollywood (the key being a part of history), you or your relatives shouldn't really need to be consulted about being fictionalized or represented in a work of art.

Tarantino DID consult Sharon Tate's sister and got her blessing, but that makes sense because of the sensitivity surrounding Tate's story. And anyway, I've heard Sharon Tate is represented in a positive light here, and Margot Robbie said recently that her role is a celebration of Tate's life. So what's with controversy arising over representing or exploring such a story? It's a part of culture and it shaped the American past. I also don't buy the whole assumption of "sensationalizing/using a touchy subject for monetary or story profit." Tarantino could make a completely different film with Pitt, DeCaprio, Robbie, Pacino, Perry, etc., and it would likely do well in the box office.

I guess I'll see how Tarantino handles the material when the film comes out.