A Hardcore obsession with Star Wars

As you recall, I've been reading through Quentin Tarantino's Cinema Speculation since around the start of November. Tarantino's conversational book, a recollection of movies from the late 1960s to the early 1980s that he saw when he was too young, would not have taken me so long, except that I decided to watch all the movies I hadn't seen that he talks about in depth -- which has added eight viewings at a very busy time of year for viewings, with one still to go. I'll try to fit that last viewing in before the end of the year, and also finish the book before we roll over to January.

The penultimate film he discusses at length is Paul Schrader's 1979 movie Hardcore, which has that memed scene of George C. Scott looking increasingly distraught and anguished as the chracter watches images of his daughter in a porn movie, culminating in him screaming "TURN IT OFF!!!"

Instead of this salacious subject matter, today I'm going to discuss how many times the movie references Star Wars. 

It's three, by my count. Which seems like it must be intentional, though given the prevalance and popularity of the movie at the time this movie was made, it could have also just been that it was inescapable background material that was impossible to shoot around. 

Of course, we know that's never the truth with any filmmaker who puts an ounce of care into the movie they're making.

The first reference that I caught was when Scott's character is in his daughter's bedroom, back in Grand Rapids, Michigan, after she has already gone missing from her church trip to California. I believe this is after Scott has already contracted Peter Boyle's seedy private investigator but before that investigator has returned with the porn scene featuring his daughter. (Tarantino rightly wonders in the book how Boyle managed to find this movie, which I wondered at the time I was watching, but that's hardly his only criticism of the film. In fact he may be harder on this than any of the other films he's discussed.)

Anyway, in Kristen Van Dorn's bedroom there is a Star Wars calendar on the wall. The picture this particular month is near the start of the movie, the iconic image where Darth Vader has lifted one of the rebel soldiers off the ground and is on the verge of suffocating him. 

Then later, when her father Jake is out in Los Angeles trying to find her, the camera pans along a Los Angeles street from the building above, and catches a Star Wars billboard on its path.

But the one that really drove it home was when Jake finds himself in one of several dens of inequity searching for his daughter, and in this one, there are two half-naked women on stage, engaged in a lightsaber battle. Of course, it's not a realistic lightsaber battle, but more of a cheeky ballet in which lightsabers happen to factor in.

I decided to write this much about this post before seeing what the internet has to say about this, but I'm going to go check that right now. 

I found a video where Schrader talks about it on stage in a Q&A, and he says "I was having fun sort of tweaking George [Lucas]." And then "And years later George said to me 'I don't know why I ever agreed to that.'" Much laughter from the audience.

I guess it was nothing deeper than that.

I don't know if I will write one more Cinema Speculation post when I watch the last film, The Funhouse, but if I don't, I'll say that it has been a fun and instructive exercise to watch along with this book, but I don't think it's a standard I could maintain in any future similar scenario, while also hoping to get through the book at a decent clip. 

To spoil or not to spoil?

As you would know from this post, I have recently begun reading Quentin Tarantino's Cinema Speculation, a sort-of memoir in which he mostly just talks about a dozen films from the 1970s that he saw when he was too young and loved, though more as he would analyze them now than much of the experience of seeing them then. Okay I guess there was one from 1968, as he starts with Bullitt.

The first three of these I had seen. After Bullitt he talks about Dirty Harry and Deliverance. 

But then the next was Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway, another Steve McQueen movie and a blind spot for me. I decided to watch it before I read the chapter on it, in a way similar to how you watch a movie when you know it's going to be discussed on a film podcast. I'd certainly get a lot more out of the chapter if the text were known to me, like it was with the other three, but even more than that if it were fresh. Dirty Harry is the most recent of those other three I've seen, and it's been seven years.

The viewing of The Getaway, which I liked but which has some parts about it that have aged very poorly -- Sally Struthers' whole character is incredibly problematic -- did give me a lot more than the previous three chapters. But I quickly realized that movies I had not seen would be the norm for the rest of the book, and I don't know if it's sustainable to keep watching these 1970s movies I haven't seen in order to keep getting the most out of Tarantino's book.

Then again, if I read his soup-to-nuts discussion without seeing the movie, I'll spoil any future attempt to see the movie, assuming I remember any of what he talked about.

I'll give you an idea of what I'm up against. The next chapter -- which I am now ready to start -- is about John Flynn's 1973 film The Outfit, previously unseen by me. After that I get a little break for some mid-book essays, but when those essays are over, we resume with a bunch of others I haven't seen: Sisters (1973), Rolling Thunder (1977), Paradise Alley (1978), Escape from Alcatraz (1979) and The Funhouse (1981). (Okay so there's one from the 1980s too.) In fact, the only remaining film in the book I've actually seen is Taxi Driver (1976), which I've seen twice. 

So my choices seem to be:

1) Watch a half-dozen film from the 1970s (and one from the 1980s) during a time of year that I am usually focused on collecting up films to rank from the current year, jammed together in a short period of time if I want to keep reading the book at a decent clip, or

2) Find out who lives and dies and who gets killed in creative ways that made an impression of Quentin Tarantino when he was a kid in a half-dozen movies I might like to see one day under friendlier circumstances.

Tough choice.

Some people would solve the problem by reading a second book alongside Cinema Speculation, but that's not how I roll. I like to dedicate myself to one book at a time. I guess you can call me a literary serial monogamist. (With apologies to Richard Curtis for borrowing his line from Four Weddings and a Funeral.) 

The decision on The Outfit, of course, will be due first. 

One way to think about it is that I can buy myself a little time by skipping The Outfit, knowing I then have another couple chapters that are extended essays rather than focuses on a single film. So when I resume with Sisters, at least it won't have just been a few days earlier that I watched The Getaway. Then again, I could think of that the reverse way as well -- all I have to do is see The Outfit and then I'll have earned myself a break, and I can keep alive the possibility of taking a completist approach to the films discussed in Cinema Speculation.

Of course, the freewheeling nature of Tarantinto's writing -- which sounds basically exactly like you've heard him talking in interviews, abundant with enthusiasm -- means that he's already touched on plenty of other films, possibly even revealing spoilers about them. And there was no warning for those discussions in the form of chapter headings.

Then there's the fact that memory is poor. Even if I hear Tarantino spoil the shit out of The Outfit, what are the chances I remember what he says when I get to the movie organically, maybe 15 years from now, or maybe never? 

Well, I won't have to make the decision tonight. I've already decided I'm going to watch a Greek film, She Loved Blossoms More, that I was eyeballing at MIFF 2024 but didn't get a chance to catch then. Since it was only released in the U.S. in 2025, it counts for this year.

So I'll kick the can down the road on the great Cinema Speculation spoiler debate by at least one more day.

A speculative initiative

There comes a point where you're not getting better at the thing you're doing just by doing it. You have to apply additional thought and training to it, if you want to see markedly better results.

I sometimes feel this way about watching movies, or more to the point, reviewing and writing about movies.

I can watch as many movies as I want, delve into the classics as regularly as I am able to find them, but those experiences are not fuelling my greater film knowledge unless I am supplementing them with something else. Something more.

And more, I have determined, means reading.

When the Filmspotting podcast spotlights new monthly subscribers on each episode, an incentive for creating more of us, it will run down that person's answers to a variety of questions. And one of them is their favorite book on film. 

I don't have a lot of favorite books on film. Because I don't read a lot of books on film.

And that, I have determined, is about to change.

A couple years ago, I don't remember exactly when, someone gifted me Quentin Tarantino's film memoir? is that what it is? called Cinema Speculation. It was probably for Christmas. I remember thanking whoever it was, assuming they were present in the room with me, and thinking "That's cool. I like Quentin Tarantino, but I don't really read books about film."

And why don't I do this, exactly?

For one I am a slow reader. I read about six to eight books per year. I might be able to get through more, but I do tackle some long ones -- the one I read in Europe was 650 pages. The bigger problem, though, is that if I'm not liking a book, I don't stop reading it. I just read it very slowly, so that I might end up wasting four months on a book I didn't like very much, when I could have been reading three others.

As a result of this slow pace, there are so many classics I've never read, plus I'd like to keep up on my share of new fiction. Then there are potentially biographies or other non-fiction books. To say nothing of the fact that in theory, I'd like to re-read some personal favorites. I re-watch favorite movies all the time, but due to the far greater time commitment, I almost never re-read books that I love. 

Doesn't leave a lot of time for reading books about movies ... especially when I'm already devoting so much of my time to movies. 

But am I losing out? Is there some indefinable part of my knowledge as a cinephile that is incomplete because I'm not getting deep, academic dives into the texts of these films, and into their making? And wouldn't I like to be just a bit more conversant about the origins of Hollywood and those who ran it a hundred years ago? To say nothing of all the greats who came after that, even ones from my own time about whom I can and probably should know more?

I'm not sure that Cinema Speculation will give me a huge amount of that. But I've got to start somewhere.

And once I've started, I'd like to make every second book I read a book about movies.

I don't think this is a sustainable pace in the long term. But I think it's something I can try to carry out at least for the next year, and see if I feel, I don't know, more complete as a cinephile after that period. 

If I don't, I can just go back to reading whatever, whenever.

I also think that if I am always trying to get to my next book that is not "homework" -- enjoyable homework, mind you, but homework of a sorts nonetheless -- it may increase my overall pace of reading. Which I think would be a good thing in my general quest to read more. 

I don't know that I will report on these books to you here on the blog. I certainly won't commit myself to doing it. I suppose it depends on whether something I've read inspires me to write.

But I think this is worth doing, and I think I will do it, and we'll just see how I go. 

What does Quentin Tarantino plan to say about us?

As you would have heard if you've been following movie news this week, it's come out that Quentin Tarantino is planning to start filming on his tenth and final film this autumn. The script, whose plot details are under wraps, is called The Movie Critic.

While I can't necessarily see that title sticking, it did fill me with a sudden sinking feeling.

"Oh no," I thought. "Quentin Tarantino is about to tear the entire profession of film criticism a new one."

Then immediately I thought "Wait no he won't. Quentin Tarantino likes film critics, or at least he should anyway. Because they love him."

If Michael Bay were making a movie called The Movie Critic, I'd get it. Jon Favreau clearly has some issues to work out toward critics, as seen in Chef.

But Tarantino? He's a critical darling.

So what is he going to say about us?

It has also been revealed that the protagonist is female and that it is set in the late 1970s. So what is this, a Pauline Kael biopic?

I checked quickly to see if Kael might have had anything bad to say about Tarantino, but she retired from The New Yorker a year before Reservoir Dogs. That probably rules out some sort of fevered revenge fantasy against Kael. Even if she had dropped some attitude toward him in retirement, I suspect he'd be over it by now.

But there's some sort of revenge fantasy in almost every Tarantino movie, so I don't know why I should expect The Movie Critic to be any different. Will the titular character be the avenger, the avenged, or the one who knows his name is the Lord, when vengeance is laid upon her? Because we don't even know if the lead is the same as the character referenced in the title.  

With someone like Tarantino, speculation likely gets us nowhere. He'll purposefully zig when we expect him to zag. Whatever the movie is, it will feel like it came from the brain of Quentin Tarantino even if we never ultimately could have guessed what it was about. Maybe that's the mark of a great auteur -- you always know they made the film, but that doesn't mean you predicted how it was going to unfurl.

If it shoots this fall, I'm guessing maybe it'll unfurl at the end of 2024. 

Tarantino's whole "ten movies and then I'm done" thing is admirable, in a way, and I suppose if anyone would stick to such a pledge, it would be him.

But I'm sure we won't be done with him yet when he leaves -- audiences and critics alike.  

Not an anomaly, unfortunately

It's that time of year again -- the time when the buzz is coming on strong for certain awards contenders and potential year-end critic faves.

It's also the time of year when I realize which ones I won't be able to see before my ranking deadline, because I live in Australia.

Tops on that list this year: Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa.

It seems like barely a month ago, I was not even aware this movie existed. As you can see, it doesn't even have a proper poster yet. When I did learn about it, I heard that it would be popping up in a few film festivals here and there, but still seemed destined for a 2016 wide release. Now it's getting that New York and Los Angeles release before the end of the year, expanding wider not long after the start of the new year. A definite 2015 film.

And a real contender for the top spot in my 2015 rankings, if Kaufman's history is any indication. Two movies he's written (Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) have topped the years they were released in my personal rankings, and the one movie he's directed -- Synecdoche, New York -- would have been a contender for my favorite film of 2008 if I hadn't allowed some of the more befuddled reviews to scare me off. Now that I have seen it, something I finally accomplished back in 2011, it's in my top 100 movies of all time.

So it will be a gaping wound in my 2015 rankings indeed when I don't get to consider Anomalisa alongside all the others.

Up until a couple hours ago, I was hopeful that it not yet having an Australian release date meant that it could still end up coming out before January 14th, when I need to sign, seal and deliver my rankings. (That's the morning the Oscar nominations are announced.) Unfortunately, at that point I found a February 4th, 2016 Australian release date listed for the movie.

For my personal tastes, that's going to be my most regrettable miss this year, but there's one that would be more shocking to most people: The Hateful Eight.

That's right, Quentin Tarantino's ninth feature releases a week after my rankings close, marking the first time I won't have seen a Tarantino movie in its ranking year since Jackie Brown.

His recent history is a little more uncertain in terms of being a contender for my top slot. While Inglourious Basterds was in my top ten of 2009, Django Unchained came in at only 30th for me in 2012. Either way, it will be a bummer not to have it up for consideration.

Also not getting Thomas McCarthy's Spotlight or Lenny Abrahamson's Room, though maybe Room will be getting released early enough in the U.S. for me to rent it on iTunes before my deadline.

All this said, there's cause for some end-of-year optimism, as there are a couple of movies I was sure I'd miss that will indeed be accessible to me before the 14th of January.

One of these is The Revenant, directed by the director of my #1 film of 2014, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Inarritu will indeed get a chance to repeat the #1 showing he earned with Birdman, as The Revenant makes its Australian bow on January 7th. I'm excited enough about this one that I have been steadfastly refusing to watch the trailer.

Then there's David O. Russell's latest, Joy, which hits theaters on Boxing Day. Boxing Day is also when we get The Danish Girl (awards bait, but I'll still watch it) and The Good Dinosaur (delayed from the American Thanksgiving release date, as always happens with the big animated Thanksgiving release -- Big Hero 6 and Frozen in each of the past two years).

What may have surprised me the most was that it seems like I'll be able to squeeze in Todd Haynes' Carol, which releases here on the day my rankings are due -- in other words, some 12 hours before the actual Oscar nominations are announced, meaning I can squeak it in. I figured this one would be a definite February release, just because I don't know.

Goosebumps also, inexplicably, does not come out until that day, but I probably won't try to cram in a double feature. (Next issue to tackle is to get Australia to care about Halloween, so Halloween movies actually come out in October.) If Carol is to have a double feature partner, it probably has to be Steve Jobs, which I've learned only during the editing phase of this piece is also coming out on January 14th. Danny Boyle just so happens to be another guy who's directed a year-end chart topper (2010's 127 Hours).

As for The Hateful Eight and Anomalisa, I'll have to do a better job prioritizing an eventual viewing than I've done for some of the other late-release casualties since I've been in Australia. One year later and two years later, respectively, I still haven't seen either The Wolf of Wall Street or Inherent Vice. That's Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson we're talking about there, people.

There is one ray of hope: the critics screening. In neither of my previous years in Australia was I regularly attending critics screenings, and it's very possible one or both of these movies will screen for critics well ahead of their theatrical releases.

Then I just have to convince the editor at my website to let me go to those screenings instead of him.

He just so happens to consider Adaptation his favorite movie of all time, so that's going to be a tall order indeed.

The dawn of a name

Remember when you first heard the name Quentin Tarantino? Didn't it just sound like a name you needed to remember? Or perhaps more accurately, a name you would not need to remember, because it would soon become unforgettable and possibly inescapable?

The last few weeks, I've been tossing the name "Nicolas Winding Refn" around in my mind in the same way.

I don't know all that much about Drive, which comes out today -- I've seen the trailer once and I have a basic idea of the premise. However, there's something so invigorating about the footage, and something about the fact that Refn won best director at Cannes for this film, that fills me with hope that this could be the dawning of a new auteur. Maybe a good Tarantino imitator for once.

Nicolas Winding Refn. It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, unfortunately. (The guy's Danish, what's he gonna do.)

Now, it's not accurate to say that Refn is new. His name may be new to me, but he's already directed seven films, dating back 15 years. Most notably Bronson, which received some positive critical attention a couple years ago. (Though the only person I know who saw it was left cold by it, and as a result I haven't considered it more seriously.) However, Drive is his first American film, his fourth in the English language.

After I'm done seeing it -- most likely this weekend -- Drive may not remind me of a Quentin Tarantino film at all. But we know that Tarantino has a fetish for heists, guns, shady characters, fast cars and stunt drivers, so it's most likely it will.

The real question is, will it be good Tarantino or bad Tarantino? There's a lot more of the latter than the former. Then again, Cannes -- where Tarantino is a favorite son -- is not known for giving out best directing awards to bad Tarantino impersonators.

Obviously, the buzz for Drive is quite good. However, on one of the podcasts I listen to, they quoted what director Rian Johnson said about it -- he enjoyed it, but we should temper our expectations. Too late! (Besides, Johnson is overrated.)

Say it with me ... "Nicolas Winding Refn. Nicolas Winding Refn."

Eh, we'll get used to it.

Breaking up the pair

Quentin Tarantino just can't seem to keep things simple when it comes to whether his movies are parts, or wholes.

First it was Kill Bill. He wrote such a long script and had so much good material -- at least, according to him -- that he had to divide the movie in two. Kill Bill Vol 1. came out in October of 2003, then Kill Bill Vol. 2 followed six months later.

While this was a little ungainly, it was manageable. The films had two distinct release dates and were quite clearly two different movies. Even the tone was markedly different between the two volumes. Steven Soderbergh used the same trick again last year with Che.

But then Grindhouse came along to really muck things up. Grindhouse was always completely up front about the fact that Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez each directed one half of the material in this intentionally z-grade celebration of exploitation movies, while providing secondary input on each other's work. It was a double feature, to be sure. In fact, fake movie trailers, directed by some of the directors' disciples/colleagues, provided a buffer in the middle. But unlike most double features, it wasn't possible to see one movie by itself, at least not in American theaters. For a single admission price you got both movies, plus all the fake trailers, at least one of which actually proceeded the first feature. Together they made one "film" called Grindhouse.

I was very comfortable with this, and I enjoyed the "movie" overall. I vastly preferred Planet Terror, the Rodriguez zombie movie that kicked things off, to Tarantino's Death Proof, a car fetishist's fantasy about a murderous stunt man. Planet Terror put Death Proof on its back and carried it, translating to a fun three hours at the theater.

But things got a little fuzzy when the Siamese twins were surgically separated. For both the international and DVD releases of Grindhouse, one "film" became two, and Grindhouse itself sort of ceased to exist. I understand this was done for a number of reasons: 1) Most foreign countries don't understand the "grindhouse" concept (as if most regular Americans do); 2) Most foreign countries don't have the double feature tradition (this I didn't know); 3) The three-hour-plus running time was considered a box office deterrent and would further hamper sales on DVD; 4) Tarantino wanted his film to qualify for international film festivals as an independent entity (though I can no longer find verification of this rumor I heard at the time). Tarantino's film also received an additional 27 minutes of footage. I think Planet Terror was largely unchanged.

For most everyone, this amicable divorce was probably well and dandy. But for a person like me, who likes things in neat little boxes and doesn't know how to cope with changes to the very classification of a piece of art, it was troubling. I ranked Grindhouse as one movie on all my lists, and I have since refused to adjust that ranking on any of them. And I'd have liked that to be the end of it.

Except it has come up again, which is why I'm writing about it today, in case you're wondering.

When I first started with Flickchart, it classified Grindhouse as one film, the way it was originally released, the way I preferred it to be classified. In fact, I remember getting a little thrill that they had endorsed my perspective on the subject.

But a few days ago, I first noticed Death Proof come up for a separate ranking. Then Planet Terror. The administrators of the Flickchart website must have reevaluated their own stance on the issue. Instead of ranking a film I did not acknowledge to be a film, I exited the program and went back in.

The strange thing is that when these films come up for duels, I am in the midst of ranking only films that Flickchart knows I've seen. Surely, I've seen both of these "films," but never did I officially accept either of them onto the list. They just started coming up. Which leads me to believe that the site's programmers have determined that Death Proof and Planet Terror should be included in this category by default, since anyone who has seen Grindhouse has necessarily also seen Death Proof and Planet Terror.

I might have been forced to accept this new classification if they had just removed Grindhouse from the list. But they didn't. I can still find Grindhouse as a "film" in their database. In fact, for me, it's been in 63 separate duels, 55.56% of which it has won. Meanwhile, both Planet Terror and Death Proof are still officially listed as unseen films -- even though they are coming up for duel. When you go to their home pages, the link that says "Add to my Flickchart" is live.

So now I'm confronted with a situation where instead of one film, instead of two films, Grindhouse actually constitutes three separate films that I have supposedly seen. I can't say for sure that Grindhouse is still coming up randomly for further duels, but I believe it is.

Quite simply, I don't know what to do.

Death Proof came up again today, and I liked the other film better. Without thinking about it too much, I dropped my objection to ranking Death Proof and impulsively gave the win to the other film. This meant now that Death Proof had officially been added to my rankings, that it had been ranked exactly one time. Not knowing what to do, I removed it. But I feel like it will come up again. I feel like this issue needs to have some kind of resolution I can live with.

So what would you do, dear readers? Would you remove Grindhouse and banish it from existence, so you could rank the two films separately going forward? And if so, what about all those duels Grindhouse has already won/lost? What happens to them, to those rankings?

Or would you continue to work around having to rank Planet Terror and Death Proof? Continue to quit the program -- or really, just click to some other part of the site -- every time it comes up?

Or would you leave all three of them, on the theory that they really are three distinct viewing experiences with three distinct qualities? Keeping in mind that this could result in duels between them, where I would have to choose Planet Terror over Grindhouse because the inclusion of Death Proof hurts Grindhouse, or choose Grindhouse over Death Proof because the inclusion of Planet Terror helps Grindhouse?

I depend on you to help me see things clearly, dear reader. No pressure. Just keep in mind that my lists -- even my very understanding of how to classify my world -- hang on your response.

The Coen brothers' latest film

Welcome to the first of two posts timed for the release of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.

Few would argue that Quentin Tarantino is one of the most influential filmmakers of the last 20 years. Even though his own work is highly influenced by others -- a fact this one-time video store clerk and devout hero worshipper would immediately acknowledge -- there's little doubt that Tarantino's approach to filmmaking engendered a whole generation of imitators, some good, some terrible.

So it's a bit of a surprise, when I watch the trailers for Inglourious Basterds, that I see two of his contemporaries in this footage: the Coen brothers, and Steven Soderbergh.

It's probably Brad Pitt's fault. In fact, for a moment I considered titling this post "The chicken or the Pitt?" Darn it, maybe that would have been more clever.

See, Pitt has appeared prominently in films by each director and/or creative partnership: Burn After Reading for the Coens, Ocean's 11, 12 and 13 for Soderbergh. And it just so happens that all of these films, including Basterds, involve boatloads of quippy dialogue, slapstick criminal activity, winking humor, and a generally buoyant comic sensibility.

When Pitt talks about "killin' Nat-zees" or answers Hitler's "Nein nein nein nein!" with "Yes yes yes yes!," it screams Coens. When he's drinking a flute of champagne in a white tuxedo, and is tackled by a half-dozen guards, it's something straight out of Ocean's 11.

The part where one basterd uses a baseball bat to bash in the head of a defiant Nazi? Well, that one's all Tarantino.

But it does make me think about how actors, and specifically the way they're directed, call to mind the works of other directors. Because this is Pitt being cheeky, and we've seen Pitt being cheeky for the Coens and for Soderbergh, I think of their oeuvres when I see this trailer. However, what if it weren't Brad Pitt, but, say, Clive Owen? Owen hasn't worked for either the Coens or Soderbergh. Would I still see the similarity?

Then there's another question. Is the fact that the movie reminds me of the Coens and Soderbergh a good thing, or a bad thing? I've had my issues with both over the years, though I certainly say that on the whole, I love their work. The same is true for Tarantino. There's something to be said for having a distinct look that is recognizeable as one's own, and there are some directors that clearly have that, for better or worse: Martin Scorsese, M. Night Shyamalan and Woody Allen, to name a couple that come to mind. And when I first saw the trailers for the Kill Bill movies, Tarantino oozed out of every frame.

But maybe it's a good thing when you can't immediately identify a movie as belonging to a particular director. That's kind of why I want Tim Burton to surprise us eventually, instead of doing the most obvious thing in the world by making his own version of Alice in Wonderland (even as long-overdue for a cinematic update as that story is). And kind of why I am constantly impressed by a guy like Ang Lee, whose Taking Woodstock (out next week) will be as dissimilar to all this other films as every other film he's directed.

And so maybe this is growth for Tarantino, even though calling something derivative, as I basically have, generally tends to constitute negative commentary. After all, it's his first real period piece. It's also his first movie not set primarily in the United States. Thirdly, it's his first movie in which a person who really existed (Hitler) appears. Maybe these firsts will force him to switch up the musical stylings that have also been his trademark. We'll see how he mines kitsch from period-appropriate 40s music, rather than Kool and the Gang and Stealers Wheel.

And if in the end, it does remind us of the Coens and Soderbergh, well ... there are worse people to be compared to.

Tune in tomorrow for Inglourious Basterds, Post II.