Michael Madsen says too much time passed with Quentin Tarantino working on other projects, and the actors got too old to reprise their parts as the Vega brothers (who were both shot to death in their respective films), so the filmmaker floated a new idea by him recently about the twin brothers of Vic and Vincent meeting after the deaths of their siblings. (Image Courtesy: The Hollywood Reporter).
After making news over the weekend for posting a video to social media encouraging people to self-quarantine by recreating the ear-cutting scene from Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992), Michael Madsen sat down with The Hollywood Reporterto discuss the Vega brothers. Madsen played Vic Vega (better known as “Mister Blonde”) in Reservoir Dogs, while John Travolta played Vincent Vega in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994), a role which helped revitalize the star’s career. Madsen says the prequel was supposed to begin with the brothers getting released from prison in separate states before opening up a club together in Amsterdam.
Because Quentin Tarantino only has ten directorial credits to his name, ranking his films per their user ratings on IMDb divides the five “best” from the five “worst,” according to Screen Rant. Indeed, Dan Peeke writes that Tarantino fans tend to love his whole filmography, and the filmmaker has yet to release one “bad” movie. From lowest to highest, the IMDb scores for Tarantino’s pictures are as follows: Death Proof (2007), at seven-point-five out of ten; Jackie Brown (1997), at seven-point-five; Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), at seven-point-seven; The Hateful Eight (2015), at seven-point-eight; Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004), at eight-point-zero; Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003), at eight-point-one; Reservoir Dogs (1992), at eight-point-three; Inglourious Basterds (2009), at eight-point-three; Django Unchained (2012), at eight-point-four; and Pulp Fiction (1994), at eight-point-nine.
Film has the power to misrepresent history in the collective memory of its audience, especially for younger generations who have not lived through any past events portrayed onscreen, according to Psychology Today. Indeed, studies show how believable misinformation can change memories, and in persuasion and social psychology, the “sleeper” effect is able to make people believe something they didn’t agree with or believe earlier. Doctor Alan D. Castel writes that in a perfect world, a recent example of alternate history like Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) would inspire viewers to research the facts behind the fiction.
If you don’t know what to watch next, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009) is available to stream on Netflix. The war film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Christoph Waltz won Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of SS Colonel Hans Landa.
The movie strings three storylines like Christmas lights around the premiere of a fictitious National Socialist propaganda piece in World War II Paris.
A Jewish American paramilitary group called “the Basterds,” led by First Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), scalps German soldiers.
British Royal Marine Lieutenant Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) rendezvouses with the Basterds as part of his government’s plan to assassinate the Nazi leadership in attendance at the showing of Doctor Joseph Goebbels’s (Sylvester Groth) Stolz der Nation (1944).
And Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), a French Jew whose family was massacred by Hans, masquerades in Paris as the gentile theater owner hosting the Nation’s Pride debut, plotting her own justice against the Third Reich.
If Kill Bill (2003-2004) is a revenge fantasy for women and Django Unchained (2012) is the same for Black Americans, then Inglourious Basterds and its alternate history of Jewish vengeance makes up something of a trilogy with these two companion pieces.
Tarantino is a master of this subgenre, and the grand finale of Inglourious Basterds exhibits his genius for this niche at its most cathartic.
There is something to be said, however, about his attempt at empowerment through aestheticized violence. Such exploitative filmmaking can horrify the audience with images of fascists getting burned alive, when the narrative is intended to dramatize a triumph over their ideology.
It’s not that they don’t deserve it – it’s that the wrong crowd could sympathize with them.
Furthermore, the twice-nominated auteur (Best Director and Best Original Screenplay) indulges in some of his more infamous weaknesses as a filmmaker and screenwriter, such as inconsistent pacing and self-gratifying dialogue.
Notwithstanding, Tarantino inspires in Waltz a star-making performance, which, together with his other Oscar-winning turn in Django Unchained, testifies to his range as an actor, from unlikable characterizations to the likable.
But the star who shines brightest in Inglourious Basterds is Laurent. Shosanna is one of the director’s finest creations, and though her screen time runs brief relative to her castmates, she steals the show.
She is a tragic figure who deserves better, an intersectional survivor of racism and misogyny (which go hand in glove in far-right zeitgeists like Nazi Germany) who wins in the end anyway.
Her arc towers at the center of Tarantino’s theme of reclaiming cinema to literally destroy the Nazis after they appropriated and perverted the art form to construct Nazism through their propaganda machinery.
Shosanna speaks to the hearts of Tarantino’s fellow cinephiles with a power unlike any other monologist throughout his filmography, and even though she doesn’t get her happily ever after in this quirky fairytale of Hitler’s France, she still gets the last laugh.
At a press conference in Moscow for his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), Quentin Tarantino said Wednesday his tenth and final film will function as a “show-stopping climax” if you read his other nine movies as one story, according to Uproxx. Describing his filmography as “boxcars connected to each other,” the auteur did not mention whether his R-rated Star Trek screenplay will mark his grand finale, or if he will bow out with an original idea. In an interview with GQ Australia, Tarantino told the publication that while he plans to retire from theatrical filmmaking, he will still write books and plays.
The Wrap reviewer Steve Pond celebrates Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio’s performances in their first time onscreen together. (Image Courtesy: The Wrap).
Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood had its first official press screening Tuesday at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, according to The Wrap. Reviewer Steve Pond writes that the Croisette was swarmed with passholders scrambling to get into the premiere after the film was infamously excluded from the April 18 lineup announcement, a decision Cannes chief Thierry Fremaux says was made to give Tarantino more time to finish the movie. As for the picture itself, Pond criticizes its length (the runtime clocks in at over two and a half hours), but ultimately praises Once Upon a Time… for the personal, semi-autobiographical flourishes the aging director brings to this story of a successful 1950s television actor named Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), fighting to stay relevant in a feverishly stylized vision of 1969 only Tarantino could dream up.
Life After Death 