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The Trademark Cleverly Written Predictable Schmaltz of Aaron Sorkin
The "Amiable" Family Plot Has Something Terrifying In It
David Fincher to Direct Remake of "Strangers on a Train" for Netflix (FOR REAL THIS TIME?)
OT: David Fincher to Direct New Strangers on a Train for Netflix(FOR REAL THIS TIME?)
"A Woman is Just a Woman but...."
Kevin Costner...right before the "Yellowstone" Comeback
Buddy Ebsen in "Breakfast at Tiffany's"
Psycho (1946)
The Voices of Psycho PART TWO
The Set-Up for "Road House 2" at the End (MAJOR SPOILERS)
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PS. How come QT never counts Four Rooms as one of his 10 movies? UPDATE: I looked it up. He didn't direct it. Though he is IN it, in a tale based on the Steve McQueen/Peter Lorre Hitchcock episode "Man From the South"(about the bet that McQueen's cigarette lighter will light 10 times to win a luxury car -- or his finger gets cut off if he misses. SPOILER: QT's guy sees his lighter fail on the FIRST TRY. Chopped finger. Ha.)
As another article pointed out, what QT is doing here mirrors what happened with The Hateful Eight: he said somebody leaked the script and so he was NOT going to make the movie./
Buit then he staged it as a PLAY to an elite Hollywood crowd AND some entertainment reporters -- who LEAKED the plot -- and then he made it anyway.
He's earned it, but there is touch of a spoiled child in how QT likes to prank his fanboys(OK, I'm one but with limits) and act all indecisive and then pull things away from us.
A new tantalizing clue about The Movie Critic emerged: it wasn't ONLY about the movie critic, it would be more of the story of Brad Pitt's Cliff Booth(and he tentatively signed on ) and I guess I'm glad THAT didn't get made. Cliff Booth is perfect in OATIUH and that's why he won Brad Pitt an Oscar. Cliff Booth is pretty horrific in QT's novelization of the movie so I wouldn't want to see THAT on screen.
No, if The Movie Critic had to die so that Cliff Booth could remain perfect in one movie only...I'm for THAT.
But c'mon QT, stop jerking us around. It backfires eventually. Case in point: The Sopranos creators kept that show on hiatus for a couple of years to peak interest and by the time they came back -- they weren't so cool. Though they GOT cool again.
Watcha gonna do, QT?
CONT
We know from Kill Bill, for example, that QT loves Black Sunday.
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Yeah. And so do I. My favorite movie of 1977 -- the year of Star Wars, Close Encounters, Saturday Night Fever, Smokey and the Bandit and Annie Hall. But I like thrillers. And: Bruce Dern!
I LIKED that Black Sunday elected to take up the Palestine/Israeli situation THEN, today I surely think it would be NOT be made THAT way again. The politics almost didn't matter to me. Just the thriller construction and the action mattered -- and the climax right up to is disappointing finish(and truly thrilling final stuntman shot.)
CONT
For myself I wonder whether living in Israel during the current conflicts has influenced QT away from making another self-excavating, Hollywood hangout movie.
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Its a real twist in his career. He marries a supermodel. So far so typical (get as rich and famous as QT and you are SUPPOSED to marry a supermodel.) And she has given him a child or two(thus joining up with Bob Dylan and Keith Richards in creating kids from interesting sources -- a beauty and an "ugly." OK maybe not THAT ugly, but ...)
But she's Israeli, and he elected to move there -- at least some of the time -- and to some extent he was now LIVING in his blood and guts world. And now the conflict has mutated in various directions and...what will he do?
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Maybe he's being drawn towards more realistic even contemporary political concerns as a topic.
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This would be a surprise. I don't think he's ever made movie with much of a poltical view at all -- EXCEPT The Hateful Eight, which made a very dark case for everybody hating everybody else: white, black, Mexican..Yankee. Rebel. British.
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Goodness knows that the '70s were full of real-politik/gritty thrillers often with a mid-east focus.
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And Hitchcock, even in his immobile old age, was OFFERED them to direct. He wrote Truffaut that he would never and could never make a movie about Middle East conflict because "there is no humor" there. If he was offered Black Sunday -- which REQUIRED a younger, vibrant director -- I'm glad he didn't get it(though the movie WAS half written by Ernest Lehman of North by Northwest and Family Plot.
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CONT
Lets look at Hitchcock in comparison.
I'll paraphrase an interview he gave when Family Plot came out. He was asked if he was done and going to retire(after all The Exorcist and Jaws had been released to megacrowds.)
"I shall never retire. What would I do, sit in a corner and read a book? I intend to go on forever."
And indeed he did. Rather like QT now, Hitchcock teased an Elmore Leonard novel(Unknown Man Some Number) intended to star Steve McQueen or Burt Reynolds. He kept working on The Short Night and convinced folks like Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery, Liv Ullman and Walter Matthau to say that they MIGHT be in it.
He didn't work til he died. He DID retire(he couldn't work anymore) in 1979 and died in 1980. But he never told anybody he retired in 1979, so it FELT like he was working right up til he died.
THAT is the model QT might better emulate.
Here's a memory that materialized out of nowhere:
I recall when Hitchcock announced Frenzy going into production -- with its weird cast of British no names -- I sort of felt: "Naw, Hitchcock isn't REALLY making a movie called Frenzy -- not with THAT cast."
But lo and behold, he did, and it came out and got those great reviews and i was shocked.
When he announced a film of The Rainbird Pattern in 1973, I REALLY didn't think it would get made. And it took until 1975 to go before the cameras and I STILL didn't think he would make it. But he did (Family Plot) and it got SOME good reviews(not as good as Frenzy) and THEN he KEPT announcing new films and I KEPT thinking he would never make them but -- I was right this time, but very grateful he kept the charade up to the end -- the very end. Again, nobody knew that he had retired when he died in 1980.
C'mon QT, it isn't too late -- tell us all that you were joking and there will be plenty more movies from ya.
Or tell us that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood(with three superstars if you count Pacino, plus Margot) WAS the last one and don't make anymore.
CONT
At the end of the day, I don't think QT cares what anybody says about him-- or he cares so MUCH that he tells his critics to get the f away from him anyway -- but perhaps, deep down, he knows that his "old director" rule has come back to bite him in the ass.
Or has it?
I love The Wolf of Wall Street and The Irishman but...are they just too LONG? I don't love Killers of the Flower Moon and people say I is too long. I say(again) those movies are as long as Scorsese wanted them BUT...are their overlength part of HIS old age?
And Spielberg is just in a weird place. He makes whatever he wants now and most of the time, not only does no one come(where once EVERYBODY came) but it seems he really doesn't care. The studios will let THIS multi-billionaire work and work to the end. (For me, only Lincoln was really engaging in the last 20 years.) HIS "Van Sant's Psycho" -- West Side Story -- got Oscar noms and key wins but -- it WAS Van Sant's Psycho.
But back to ol' QT -- the commentary nails him on the "false alarms" of a Star Trek movie and Kill Bill 3 and rather exposes the childish side of his promotional gimmickry. Those ideas just weren't original enough to sound like anything much(even if he makes one of them.)
And that IS massive pressure that his "final film" HAS to be great(it will be, he'll get a cast of stars in it, you know, like Don't Look Up. Ha.)
CONT
See also their commentary:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/quentin-tarantino-10-final-movie-retirement-1235876755/
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It is this commentary that hits all nails on the head and digs in nice and deep on how QT's famously pronounced theory is..in many ways..but not all...just flat out wrong.
Chiming in with the commentary and revisiting my own here -- QT's theory about "final films of directors being bad" seems to fit more directly to the oldsters of the 'Golden Age --Hawks, Ford, Capra and...least of all...Hitchcock(because, two from the end, he got great reviews and decent box office for Frenzy.)
Health, and health care was different back then, and THOSE old men had to face down "hippies," the counterculture and a New Hollywood out to bury them. Today, old men Scorsese and Spielberg remain beloved and capable of getting big budgets(if the go to Netflix) and great stars.
And the commentary nails the "ten movies" rule -- Oppenheimer was after 10, Goodfellas was after 10, etc.
(Hell, try Hitchcock...does 10 end around The Lady Vanishes?)
Scorsese was asked about QT's "10 and out rule" and graciously noted "Well, he writes his own material" and -- agreed, its hard to keep up the writing. (As "all time great" screenwriter Billy Wilder found out when he and IAL Diamond wrote The Front Page(a re-write) and Buddy Buddy.)
CONT
Madsen, interestingly, has really got a boost from the recent Dune and especially Dune Part 2. Florence Pugh now plays the Princess Irulan/Narrator character that Madsen played, and book fans aren't happy..
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Well, I'll assume that makes the original Dune the most famous Virginia Madsen movie and now...she's BACK.
Me and Dune:
Once a year, I go to a distant small town location for an event. eOn business. Just me. They have one multiplex in town and I amuse myself by seeing a movie there. In that distant godforsaken locale, I have seen Zodiac, La La Land, Captain Marvel, and THE Batman. (I recall walking into the theater in pouring rain, sopping wet, to watch the opening bright-sky "Sunny Day" number in La La Land and being self-amused.)
Anyway, this year, same town, same theater and the only non-animated movie on the marquee was "Dune Part 2."
My thought processes included:
But I haven't seen Dune Part 1. Can I figure it out?
Come to think of it, I never saw the original David Lynch Dune(with Virginia Madsen.)
Come to think of it, I never READ Dune (though I recall copies all around me in high school and college.)
So...I can't see Dune Part 2. (I found a local pub instead.)
I suppose my SciFi fantasy taste is as lacking as my thriller taste isi strong. Its MY fault. But this should not rule out Dune in the future. I have time left and I DO think from time to time that I SHOULD catch up on the event book/movies of my time. So Dune is still possible! But I have to see Dune Part 1 first. Anyway, I must have a real problem with Dune if I refused to watch it when nothing else could be seen.
Sidebar: So this Timothy Chalamet kid is in Dune 1 and 2. Big hits. And he is in Wonka. Big hit. But I can't bring myself to LIKE him as a star (I saw him in "Don't Look Up.") No matter, he truly IS for a generation several removed from mine. I've read he's quite the entitled brat given these successes, but that's Hollywood. Or just Hollywood gossip.
(Virginia Madsen's) basic willowy blonde, big hair look was close to Nancy Allen, Sharon Stone, Nancy Travis - in certain shots Madsen can look almost identical to each of them and I suspect that that was a problem for her.
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Hollywood always has a bunch of handsome guys and a bunch of beautiful gals and...some break through, some don't.
Nancy Allen, Sharon Stone and Virginia Madsen did some nude scenes to help break through(Stone biggest of all) but after awhile, that's not enough. (I don't remember seeing any Nancy Travis nude scenes.)
CONT
But late in the film, in the courtroom drama phase...they bring in Virginia Madsen for a cameo as a key witness against a villainous insurance company than never pays claims. Madsen was "down the road" from her sexpot period, but still striking(to me) and very sympathetic as a beautiful woman still drawn down low and forced to work for crooks and now positioned to get her revenge. I remember the character, and I remember that Virginia Madsen was STILL...pretty hot to me.
You'd think that maybe her turn in The Rainmaker landed Madsen her Oscar-bait role in Sideways but I dunno..that was 7 years later. You just have to keep working in this movie acting business. Madsen was great in Sideways -- still a beauty, but a bit more mature and able to connect with Paul Giamatti's sad sack character if only because well, sometimes very beautiful women become more accessible to less attractive men when the women are aged past peak youthful beauty. AS LONG AS the less attractive man has other things going(smartness, wine knowledge...pathos.)
So: The Hot Spot. The Rainmaker. Sideways. That's enough to make Madsen memorable for me. And I"ve never even seen her in Dune.
PS. Virginia Madsen's brother is cool, mumbly Michael Madsen, who memorably cut off a cop's ear in QT's Reservoir Dogs, did two more QT films and has the memorable Reservoir Dogs line: "You gonna bark all day little doggie -- or you gonna bite?" And from the same movie: "You're a tough guy. I'll bet you like Lee Marvin movies. I LOVE Lee Marvin movies."
Brother Michael said he would watch his sister's movies -- except he would walk out during her nude scenes and then walk back in.
CONT
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