Quentin Tarantino Articles
-
Notable Festivals: Cannes It’s often said that the 1960’s came to an end, not on New Year’s Eve 1969, but several months earlier, on August 9th— the night that film actress Sharon Tate and her houseguests were murdered in her home in the Hollywood Hills. The shocking event signified a collective innocence not so much…
-
Sometime after the runaway success of 2012’s DJANGO UNCHAINED, director Quentin Tarantino was taking in a viewing of John Carpenter’s horror classic, THE THING (1982). He came away from this particular screening with complicated feelings– an impression that compelled him to take to his writing as a way to process his reaction (1). The idea…
-
Academy Award Wins- Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Screenplay The success of 2009’s INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS sent director Quentin Tarantino off on another career high. It was the realization of an idea that had been a long-time coming, with Tarantino purportedly first conceiving the idea around 1994, after the production of PULP FICTION. In 2012, he…
-
Notable festivals: Cannes (Best Actor) Academy Award Wins: Best Supporting Actor Director Quentin Tarantino’s seventh feature film, 2009’s INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, is a very personal film for me, in that various facets of its existence coincided with my own at the time. I had moved to Los Angeles in the summer of 2008, and my first…
-
The series of collaborations between directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez reached their apex in 2007 with the release of GRINDHOUSE. The project was an ode to a bygone era from their youth, where cheesy genre and exploitation films where shown on a double bill in cheap art-house theatres. As the megaplex and the blockbuster…
-
The crime procedural is a staple of primetime television. There’s at least three different shows focused on criminal investigations for every major broadcast network. As someone who doesn’t regularly watch these shows, much less primetime broadcast TV, I frequently joke that they’re all the same show. One of my best friends works on USA’S BURN…
-
In 2005, filmmaker Robert Rodriguez and comic book auteur Frank Miller collaborated on a film adaptation of Miller’s seminal work, “Sin City”. Shot digitally entirely against a green-screen virtual “backlot”, the film told three lurid stories in the tone of classic noir and pulp fiction. The film was released to critical and audience acclaim, and…
-
Notable Festivals: Cannes (Out of Competition) Director Quentin Tarantino returned to cinemas with a vengeance with his 2003 hit, KILL BILL: VOLUME 1. A scant six months later, he capitalized on the film’s shocking cliffhanger ending by releasing the finale to his blood-soaked saga, KILL BILL VOLUME 2. Originally conceived as one epic film, an…
-
Notable Festivals: Stockholm The 4th film by Quentin Tarantino (as it reads in the film’s advertising copy), KILL BILL: VOLUME 1, was released during an odd time in my cinematic development. The year was 2003, and I had just entered my senior year of high school. By that time, I was of age to see…
-
Notable Festivals: Berlinale- Best Actor Three years after his breakout hit, PULP FICTION (1994), set the cinema on fire, director Quentin Tarantino returned with a follow-up feature that again confounded his audience’s expectations. Primarily known for directing his own material, Tarantino found himself adapting pre-existing material for the first time. He had always been a fan and kindred spirit…
-
Every director experiences a misfire at some point in his/her career. Even Stanley Kubrick, widely considered to be one of the greatest directors that ever lived, felt the bitter string of failure once or twice. It’s as inevitable as the sun coming up each day. For a director as strong-minded and controversial as Quentin Tarantino, it was only…
-
I remember E.R. as a zeitgeist show, a conceit that strikes me as odd since I never watched it. Hospital procedurals were all the rage in the late 90’s/early 2000’s, but there was just something so off-putting about the entire concept to me. I hate spending time in real hospitals, so why would I want to spend an hour each week…