[quote=“HEinDC”][quote=“Sebastian”]<LINK_TEXT text=“http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/08/27/what … tarantino/”>http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/08/27/what-happened-to-quentin-tarantino/</LINK_TEXT>
interesting article. i’m quoted in it a bit… what do u think?[/quote]
The article seems fairly incoherent to me. Like this part:
[quote]And while Tarantino used to be considered a kinetic, fast-paced filmmaker, much of Basterds is deliberately paced, with stately camerawork and carefully composed shots; fast cutting and slow motion are mostly used for brief scenes of violence.[/quote]
When, exactly, has Tarantino been a “kinetic, fast-paced filmmaker” in the way those terms are defined here? Where’s all the fast-cutting in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction? Careful composition and long dialogue sequences were the hallmark of those movies as well. Kill Bill Vol. 1 is definitely kinetic and fast-paced in its editing, but I don’t think his other films can be described that way.
This part doesn’t make much sense to me either:
[quote]The most surprising thing about Inglourious Basterds is that for a director who used to epitomize the future of moviemaking, Tarantino now seems like an Old Hollywood director. Whereas Pulp Fiction used a series of time jumps, making non-linear storytelling the norm for independent filmmakers, Inglourious Basterds tells its story, about two different groups of people plotting to destroy a movie theatre where high-ranking Nazis are attending a premiere, in a very linear way.[/quote]
Non-linearity for its own sake–which seems to be the the way this article understands it–is not what interests QT about that technique. As he put it in a recent TV interview, his preference is to have the story unfold gradually, as opposed to setting up a premise in the first 15-20 minutes and then spending the rest of the film delivering on it. Pulp Fiction does that by spinning around the same set of characters to give you little parts of their stories in different order; IB does it in a different way, by establishing each set of characters separately before bringing them all together.
My point is, IB’s approach isn’t any more “Old Hollywood” than PF’s is. I’ve seen more than enough old Hollywood movies to know that IB’s structure–three separate chapters with minimal overlap that all build to the same climax–is not at all typical of classic Hollywood (nor, really, is it typical of current day films). QT didn’t invent non-linear storytelling with PF, but just because it seemed more unusual at the time than IB’s structure does now doesn’t mean that QT is getting “old” or “stale” or whatever the article is trying to say.[/quote]
I agree completely the article was poorly written and the thesis of its argument is profoundly stupid and misinformed. It was obviously written by someone who know nothing about film. Saying that QT doesn’t have the cultural impact that he had during the Pulp Fiction days is hardly earth shattering, no artist can have that level of influence for more than a couple of years. he’s still the most publicly recognised director after speilberg and scorsese.
