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Django Unchained


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I like Tarantino, but agree that his movies are overindulgent. Tarantino pays homage to everything, as I think he knows more about movies than almost anyone else on the planet. That sort of why I like and dislike him. He'll do something amazing and then because he feels bound by the films he is referencing he'll do something that doesn't feel original or bogs the film down.

I thought the Johnny Cash song was great in the trailer. I'm not sure what I was expecting but the James Brown track seemed like a standard for a blaxploitation film. It fit the tone, but I sort of wanted something different.

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I read about this earlier today at Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog.

Way back when this was first announced, I remember Coates saying that the notion of Django Unchained as Inglorious Basterds for black people was a little off the mark. Basterds was about subverting the notion of the passive Jew who went quietly into the death camps, replacing it with Jews who went against their stereotypes, who were tough and not to be trifled with. But that, in some ways, IS the black stereotype, and Coates memorably said that the black revenge fantasy wasn't Shaft, but Cliff Huxtable - becoming not feared, but perfectly Americana.

Navel-gazing out of the way, though, I've felt that Tarantino's high level of craft was often offset by his obsessions with pop culture trivia and movies. In an era without any such fallback we might really see what he's capable of without his crutches.

There is an amazing theory about how all of Tarantino's films take place in a skewed, desensitized-to-violence, pop-culture-obsessed universe, however. If this was intentional, I have to clap pretty hard.

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