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Django Unchained


The NZA

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exactly - it's fine if you choose to define the movie that way, but pretending that's the average moviegoer experience is silly. awareness of the evils of slavery went up no more or less than it did for cape-wearing nazies after inglorious: it's not the film's takeaway unless that's your agenda

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It's a fair comparison, both were very broad westerns about freed slaves fucking up dumb white folks. Django, like all spaghetti westerns and exploitation films, is broad and cartoonish. The Southerners are all played as oafish buffoons barely capable of remembering to breathe, even Candie is a fucking idiot without Samuel L. Jackson's direction. They're all easily tricked, clumsy, and outright stupid in comparison to any of the slaves which history shows were intentionally kept dumb by their owners. It was a very good movie, one of my favorite this year, but it's far too silly and fun to have any real cultural impact.

Edited by Iambaytor
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Wooooooow.

 

I hate to get this thread off on a tangent, but that guy's youtube account is a treasure trove of hilarity.

 

Reverse Tool Assisted Speedrun using the hidden version of Sonic 2 on the PC version of Sonic Generations through Mac OS X via wine. I used a variation on the typical Coover shortcut, but was able to skip off the blue emerald into a secret code layer.

 

http://youtu.be/SQbReeKrDjc

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It's still an exploitation movie, you don't hear people touting Boss Nigger as an important movie.

Right, but Boss Nigger wasn't made by a big studio, it wasn't written and directed by one of Hollywood's most bankable and recognizable writer/directors, and it didn't star some of Hollywood's most bankable and recognizable actors. It didn't make $15 million it's opening day.

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Money is irrelevant. There is a scene where night riders complain that the holes in their masks are poorly done and they can't see, 80% of the movie is farcical so the other 20% doesn't have the impact of Roots or Amistad or a myriad of other movies about slavery. No matter how powerful and evil the southerners are it's all going to be okay because Django is going to make them pay for what they did and its going to be a happy ending. It's romantic to a fault.

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This is a really fantastic review: http://blogs.suntimes.com/foreignc/2012/12/django-america.html

 

"We find every type of violence in this film. Sometimes it forces us to cringe; I had to squint to obscure some moments, or look away during others. Sometimes the violence forces us to laugh because it gets so excessive that it becomes cartoonish. Sometimes, however, as a tale of vengeance it invites us to celebrate."

 

"Thus, that culture of mastery also gives us a hint about the roots of our problems of violence. This film loads itself with altruistic violence, if there can be such a thing. But in this film, we watch the clash between those who exercise their masculine mastery over others, against those who exercise their masculine mastery to serve others. Through this film's lens, then, a source of violence in our culture is an innate need to dominate or to refuse domination.

And that appreciation for self-determination also speaks to Tarantino and auteurism. Part of the appeal of Tarantino is that he seems to make his movies his way. His films mimic the movies we often ignore, featuring actors we've discarded, yet we call his films masterpieces. And, how rare is it that we see a movie, aside from documentaries, about American slavery? How bold is it that Tarantino chooses to speak to it!"

"You may have noticed, also, that thus far I've avoided the more common questions explored in essays about this film, those related to slavery and race. "Django Unchained" is so captivating that it will generate a profit, and I hope that it will inspire more films about slavery, race, and their legacies. Otherwise, the conversation will end as soon as we shift to the next big movie. I know racism and bigotry all too well, but as a South Asian, this is a conversation I am part of only secondarily. Similarly, a major reason I have mostly avoided the conversation is that my colleague and dear friend Steven Boone has already written something better than I could have."

:::

And this this is the review he mentioned above, which is also really poignant: http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/quentin-tarantinos-django-unchained-and-the-many-spike-lees

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Money is irrelevant.

I really don't know where to start addressing this statement.

There is a scene where night riders complain that the holes in their masks are poorly done and they can't see.

I thought that scene worked incredibly well, because it served to humanize rather than otherize the mob. As ridiculous and hilarious as the conversation was, they came out of that seeming more like real people than before, and that make the evil of their actions more unsettling. At least that's how it was for me. Some people might have felt that made them more cartoonish, but to be they were less cartoonish.

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The movie starts with illegal being gunned down by border patrol. Jax seems to think that just because Tarantino had the bravery to show the harsh realities of slavery is a choice Hollywood isn't brave enough to make even though it's better Oscar bait than a former comedian that lost 80 pounds to play the role of a mentally retarded cancer patient.

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The movie starts with illegal being gunned down by border patrol. Jax seems to think that just because Tarantino had the bravery to show the harsh realities of slavery is a choice Hollywood isn't brave enough to make even though it's better Oscar bait than a former comedian that lost 80 pounds to play the role of a mentally retarded cancer patient.

Why are you referring to me in the third person?

 

You're right. Every December, like clockwork, we see at least a half-dozen films about slavery made by all of Hollywood's primer auteurs.

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1997's Amistad, a Spielberg directed movie starring Morgan Freeman and Anthony Hopkins, was the last big studio film that prominently features slavery (although the bulk of the movie was about a legal trial), grossed $44M with a budget of about $40M, meaning it lost money. So, yeah the last one flopped.

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