There, I said it. I don’t like Tarantino films and
I think he is an untalented hack. Now, clearly I’m in the visible minority
whilst swimming in a sea of Tarantino dick riders.
Firstly, I’m not saying I’m any better than the
man. But I’m not necessarily saying I’m not either, nor am I not saying that a
wet rag couldn’t write a Tarantino script after watching a few Spaghetti
Western flicks with Shaft while eating Sashimi.
I’m merely commenting on how bad of a filmmaker
Quentin Tarantino is; rather than continuing to keep this information bottled
up for fear of being ostracized by 90% of people in this world. Look, there are
things I appreciate about the man. I do applaud some of his early writing.
‘True Romance’, which he wrote, is one of my favourite films. But that’s
neither here nor there.
I don't understand how so many people consider him
a "visionary" or "genius". To me Tarantino is like a mildly
amusing cover band that’s being heralded as the great new saviour of rock n
roll, not to mention that he spends entirely too much time trying to make his
movies cool, stylistic and hip, which dates them almost instantly.
If you consider making movies that are essentially
homages to earlier movies as being genius, then I guess he is, but to me that’s
being a thief and this is a huge gripe of mine as a filmgoer, writer and art
enthusiast.
Tarantino has stolen dialog from Karate Kiba,
The Killers, Band of Outsiders, Lady Snowblood, and he
straight up has taken shot-for-shot “inspiration” from The Graduate and Branded
to Kill. When the list of films you’ve “sampled” is longer than your
resume, you’re doing it wrong.
He stole the theme music from ‘The Good, The Bad
and The Ugly’. The cunt straight up ripped it off.
Now it’s one thing if Tarantino himself loves ‘The
Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ and wants to preserve Ennio Morricone’s beautiful
compositions but it’s another when you take music, from other classic films,
and slap it on your film for use as your own. People are supposed to think to
themselves and say, ‘Oh I love that finale song in ‘The Good, The Bad and The
Ugly’ not ’Oh yeah…..that’s the song from ‘Kill Bill’.It’s awesome’.
You do not simply take another films theme song, no
matter how old the film is.
That’d be like a filmmaker saying, ‘Hey the music
to ‘Star Wars: A New Hope’ is in the public domain now….I’m too lazy to find a
great new composer for my film, so I’m just going to use that music in my film.
It’ll be great!!’.
It’s theft, plain and simple. A movie has many
elements; a script, actors, a director with a vision, producers, a composer etc
and what do most average movie goers remember besides the story and the actors?
The music!
Music can make or break a movie. Part of being a
filmmaker is realizing that you’re creating something original, not hacking
apart other films and pasting them together to make ‘your film’.
Tarantino has even said of film composers, ‘I just
don’t like the idea of giving that much power to anybody on one of my movies’.
So dickhead, it’s ok for other filmmakers to
collaborate with composers, like normal professionals do, and to trust them and
give those composers control over the soundtrack? And when it’s done well, for
instance with films Ennio Morricone composed, you can then steal their hard
work which was meant for another film, because why… you’re ‘special’!?
Special you indeed are, but I’ve never been one for
political correctness so..
Retarded. Mental. Mong. Mental Midget. Spastic..
these seem somehow more fitting. With that box shaped head of yours and that
weather report lisp.
Which brings me to my next point, HE’S THE WORST
ACTOR. He doesn’t speak clearly. He’s too energetic and outrageously
distasteful. Just look at him in ‘Sleep With Me’ or ‘Desperado’.
He’s just a nettlesome cunt who likes to hear
himself speak. Just try and get through that 4 ½ minute interview, you know,
the one where he is wearing a kimono, using a crappy fake Italian accent and
talking about zombie movies and music. It’s harder to watch than the video of
that chick chowing down on her tampon. It feels like its 3 fucking hours long.
This is why he writes asinine dialogue that is
painful to listen to and it seems a lot of the time to go absolutely nowhere,
and this is coming from someone whose favourite sitcom is Seinfeld and one of
my favourite screenwriters is Kevin Smith. The conversations are dragged out
too long, and they rarely add depth to a character or progress the storyline
further. I do dig movies with quite some time in between cuts.
But not when it's 5 minutes of dialogue about milk
in a movie about Nazis.
People will argue tooth and nail that his dialogue
helps build character development, how each line (especially Mr. Pink's speech
in Reservoir Dogs) attributes to the overall story because of the fate of each
character; how about Mr. Brown's 'Like a Virgin' speech? How does this relate
to his death?
When do we ever hear his voice again? Maybe one or
two lines over the course of the next hour and a half. Yet his rant takes up about
three or four minutes of the opening of the film, probably slightly longer than
Pink's speech.
Or how about when Nice Guy Eddie picks up Orange at
his apartment? What does that have to do with anything?
Lady E and Christie Love? This deals with the story
in no way.
And fans will probably say 'Well, their immaturity
and lack of focus on the job illustrates their fates'. (Though that would
contradict your argument on Pink's realist and professional way of thinking.)
Most likely, Tarantino included that dialogue for
none other purpose except to entertain. It was thrown in because Tarantino
loves popular culture and enjoys embracing his encyclopaedic knowledge of film.
Some people view his early work as 'the cool of
cinema'. Because it looks and sounds really cool.
In my opinion, if Pink mentioned an interesting
past job that went awry (much like White had said but with more spice and
depth) this would have been more interesting and possibly more stimulating and
many would better understand his mentality in the warehouse.
A simple rule of thumb people, if someone comes
across as pompous, arrogant and obnoxious on video, how do you think they’ll be
in real life? And more importantly for a filmmaker, what do you think their
films will be like..?
I mean, I've always been a fan of Grindhouse Cinema
and Blaxploitation Flicks, the types of films he pays homage too. I can see why
people let him get away with his shit though.
Because no one watches original movies anymore,
they watch factory bred, studio funded monotonous bullshit. Whatever movie has
Johnny Depp in it this month, or which film has the coolest looking poster
plastered to the side of the bus this week. But if you bothered to skim the
surface just a little bit you’d see that Quentin Tarantino is doing to Sonny
Chiba what NWA did to Ice T and Schoolly D.
Example being Reservoir Dogs, the film most
Tarantino fans use in his defence. When I saw ‘City on Fire’ with Chow Yun Fat,
not knowing anything about the film beforehand, and I got a little bit raw
about the blatant theft of Tarantino’s work. So I did a little reading in to,
turns out five years prior to Reservoir Dogs this flick had came out, a Hong
Kong action movie that had the exact same premise, the exact same fight scenes
and was complete with one "undercover cop" in a Mexican Standoff
ending. On top of that the cop torture scene is a rip off of another movie
titled ‘The Big Combo’. So essentially this movie was a hacked up version and
straight up jack of other films.
When Tarantino is approached about his consistent
theft, he claims that he doesn’t rip movies off, and that they are in fact ”a
homage” to the original. Wow, that’s a pretty cheap copout.
“Oh no sir I didn’t counterfeit this money, it’s an
homage to real cash”. Wanker.
He’s much like Michael Bay, purely style over
substance, and look, it was cool when ‘Pulp Fiction’ came out. The world was
ready for something quirky and different. That style exploded and everyone
tried to copy it. But go back and watch the film now though.
Just like all his other films, it is the ultimate
steroid pumping latent homosexuality film.
Lots of sex, violence and witty pop culture
references that I never know whether they are inserted in there to try and show
his superior film knowledge or whether it is to taunt the people watching his
films who have actually scene the flicks that he is terrorizing and getting
away with .
There are no real complex ideas or concepts, Just
high adrenaline, high tension action movies.
It’s all boring. It was just a fad. There’s a
reason why I only liked ‘Pulp Fiction’ when I was 16 and not when I was 20 or
now almost 25. It’s a childish, funky, single use film for the ignorant
adolescent.
After that, it’s drab, repetitive and stale. In my
opinion it just doesn’t hold up or stand the test of time. It’s like ‘American
Pie’ for grungy, wanna-be violent kids with a lot of pent up anger.
As are all of his films.
First of all Pulp Fiction was heralded as some
breakthrough in cinema because, SHOCK HORROR, it was edited out of order.
Tarantino did that with Reservoir Dogs already and he’s not anywhere near the
first to attempt it. So cross that off your list of shit he invented.
I’ve also left out how clunky, stupid and
unnecessary Bruce Willis’s whole part was, it literally stops the film dead in
its tracks.
The only thing QT’s movies do for me is make me want to watch some real
independent cinema.
Which thanks to him, barely even exists anymore.
With the arrival of Pulp Fiction, Independent Film
went from the melting pot of new ideas to a style, a way of doing things that
made them“independent”. For years after Pulp Fiction we had to deal with pop
culture snappy dialog films featuring a car, a gun, bad guys being funny and
shootouts. It was also the start of high profile celebrities wanting to cement
their“street cred” by being in these lame movies.
Instead of Tarantino renouncing this as any true fan of underground culture
would he embraced his new “Coolest Guy We Know” status with famous people.
Tarantino also managed to kill off Samuel L.
Jackson the actor and replaced him with ‘Jules’ the character from Pulp
Fiction. Jackson has been phoning in some variation of that part in all the
films he’s done since then.
Only one character in all his films (the bondsman
in Jackie Brown) is actually deep. Out of 8 films he's only managed to create
one character that the audience can really identify with. All of his other
characters are just "cool" characters. Think of all the famous
Tarantino characters. They're all very one dimensional “bad arses”. Vincent
Vega is a case in point, all he seems to need is Cheeseburgers, Pussy and
Elvis..
Now I can’t front this as something to want in
life, I feel the same. But I don’t need to pay money to watch some
Scientologist millionaire pretend to have my problems.
‘Inglorious Basterds’ was and always will be a
complete joke. Bastardize, ‘Inglorious Basterds’. Very funny, but no.
It is not historical. Even if I was looking at the
un-historical, hokey comic book style he went for, it’s still a joke and I’m
laughing at the fraud, not with him.
If I were Jewish, I’d be offended. If I were a
Nazi, I’d be offended. If I were Brad Pitt, I’d be offended. This film is a
complete waste of time. The only saving grace is that the world was introduced
to the mind blowing abilities of the Austrian genius, Christoph Waltz.
Mr. Waltz deservedly won the Oscar for his
performance. But do you really think Quentin Tarantino was directing him heavily?
Especially when he acted fluently in French and German..
An actor that good needs to merely be encouraged
not directed. So, with criticizing Tarantino, I give him that minute bit of
credit for giving Christoph Waltz an opportunity to shine, much like writing a
part so perfect for James Gandolfini to fill all those years ago in True
Romance.
Quentin Tarantino is always a bad choice. At the
end of the day, he’s a loaded, commercially viable, familiar face for movie
director who is backed by The Weinstein Machine.
Whether or not he produces flops, he will probably
have opportunities to make more films until the day he dies. If you measure
that as success over a person’s integrity, attitude and talent.. Well then, I
guess your brain is wired to like utter shit and you will continue to make bad
choices.
I give credit to Tarantino’s writing of ‘True
Romance’ again (Which even then is widely questioned how much writing he did in
contrast to Roger Avery). But other than that, No thanks.
One last thing before I go, ‘Django Unchained’
(2012). Let me spoil it for you.
It’s homicidal. People have repetitious, meandering
conversations with an overabundance of words like ‘Nigger’ and ‘Fuck’ for no
good reason. There is some Ennio Morriconne tunes lifted from another movie.
There is some funky music from the 70′s along with jagged editing and Samuel L.
Jackson is in it.
I know all of this to be true. And I’ve seen no
more than 10 minutes of the cunt.
This is why films like Citizen Kane, the first 2
Godfather's and Casablanca will be considered great films while Tarantino's
will only be on the "best movies of all time" list for some want to
be film student or gangster.
Until next time, eat a dick.
28/01/2013
