Indieville : Quentin Tarantino

Roger Avary pioneers jail-tweeting.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:36:00 GMT

Until recently, Roger Avary was a respected if controversial writer/director, best known for "Rules Of Attraction" (easily the best of the Bret Easton Ellis adaptations) and for breaking up with video store-days friend Quentin Tarantino over accusations he was shafted on credit for the "Pulp Fiction" screenplay (he only got a story credit). On the geek side, Avary worked on "Silent Hill," "Beowulf" and a proposed upcoming adaptation of the "Return to Castle...(read more)

When indie studio heads direct.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:00:16 GMT

On the press tour that will not end, Quentin Tarantino took a break from dishing about his favorite films and talking up "Inglourious Basterds" to shed some light on the lone film directed by his bosses, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, on last night's episode of Craig Ferguson. Following an amusing anecdote about strong-arming an Italian film festival jury into giving a 1994 Russian film called "The Dove's Bell-Ringer" a prize (and then subsequently getting snubbed by the film's...(read more)

"Inglourious Basterds" promotes English language domination.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:20:00 GMT

Over the weekend, "Inglourious Basterds" went from a film with a mixed Cannes reputation as Tarantino's least-productively talky to being a box office conqueror. If critics are still split, the general public seems surprisingly united in loving it. As Sharon Waxman reports, the Weinsteins marketed a kick-ass action movie, and somehow, remarkably, didn't alienate theatergoers who actually got two-and-a-half hours of subtitled conversations. CinemaScore (which polls crowds on their...(read more)

A few of Quentin's favorite things.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

So far over this press tour, we've learned about his 20 favorite recent films (including Woody Allen's "Anything Else"!) and 20 favorite movie posters, but Quentin Tarantino still saved plenty of his top fetishes for the film itself, finding unexpected ways to insert Samuel L. Jackson's baritone narration and linger on Diane Kruger's feet. There's another notable nod in "Inglourious Basterds" that's been less discussed: the one to Rod Taylor and his 1968...(read more)

Quentin Tarantino makes war fun again.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:15:00 GMT

Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" comes out next Friday, but the deluge of negative advance press seems to indicate we should be bored already. Quentin! Always with the talking and the self-indulgence and the references. He doesn't make it easy on himself; unlike Wes Anderson, who went from bad-haircut-geek to styled-out, blazer-wearing fashion template in under a decade, Tarantino hasn't learned anything about dealing with the press over his career. He's still...(read more)

Cannes 2009: "Inglourious Basterds."

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Wed, 20 May 2009 10:08:07 GMT

Quentin Tarantino's a great writer of dialogue, and no one's more convinced of the fact than Quentin Tarantino. The ratio of talk to action -- not gun fights or explosions, but just people doing stuff -- in "Inglourious Basterds" is, generously, nine to one. Again and again, characters sit down over drinks (whiskey, champagne, milk), and the stakes may be high, but the conversations are meandering and lengthy, and no matter how clever they may get, they end up defeated by their...(read more)

Cannes do.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:17:02 GMT

The competition line-up for this year's Cannes Film Festival has been announced! A fair amount of Euro provocateurs -- Lars von Trier, Gaspar Noé, Michael Haneke -- and France in general, and only two American films, the expected Tarantino and the unexpected Ang Lee comedy, which hopefully has more to it than its trailer would indicate. New films from Jane Campion and Pedro Almodóvar and Ken Loach, plus Park Chan-wook's vampire drama (left), whee! Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium...(read more)

August is finally over, and other bits and pieces.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:29:27 GMT

August, it's been real. Jim Ridley on "Disaster Movie" at the Village Voice: "Best text message sent from my screening (it wasn't me, but I certainly sympathized): 'I want to die.' " But he's outdone by Nick Pinkerton, reviewing "College" at the same publication: "Nearly justifies traveling back in time to pre-emptively kill Edison, Muybridge, and the Lumière brothers." Steven Zeitchik at the Hollywood Reporter's Risky Biz blog suggests...(read more)

Remakesploitation.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:36:12 GMT

I'm catching up from a few days off the grid, so it's still news to me that the Telegraph reported last week that Britney Spears may or may not have been picked by Quentin Tarantino to play Varla in a remake of the Russ Meyer's 1965 "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" that may or may not be happening: A source said: "Quentin is convinced Britney will be brilliant. She's delighted. She thinks it could turn her career around. It is perfect Tarantino material. He wanted to...(read more)

Ingloriously yours, possibly even by Cannes 2009.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:27:36 GMT

"Universal Lands Tarantino's 'Inglorious Bastards' Despite Hatred Of Harvey" headlines Nikke Finke at Deadline Hollywood Daily. And that's all she's got as I'm posting this. Still, yay....? Over at the New York Sun, Grady Hendrix compares Enzo Castellari's 1978 film with Tarantino's proposed remake, writing: Mr. Tarantino is said to be courting Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio to play the leads in his film about a group of Jewish soldiers who parachute into...(read more)

Odds: "I broke the code Tarantino invented."

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:17:14 GMT

To watch -- "Tarantino's Mind," a short from Brazilian directing duo 300ml in which a man (Selton Mello) explains his unified field theory of Quentin Tarantino to a skeptical friend (Seu Jorge, of "The Life Aquatic" and "City of God"). It all takes place, naturally, in a diner. (Hat tip -- Fimoculous.) Wong Kar-wai goes unsunglassed to Tony Leung and Carina Lau's wedding -- Movie City Indie has the picture, which is curiously deflating -- I'd always imagined...(read more)

Trailering: "W."'s wonderful world.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:57:01 GMT

Dailymotion has a teaser trailer for Oliver Stone's "W." here. I... have no words. Other than that I find myself suddenly and unexpectedly looking forward to the film -- October 17th is the release date. From everything I've heard about "Sukiyaki Western Django," designating it "Takashi Miike's English language masterpiece," per its new trailer, is a bit of an overstatement. There's no doubt that the film is directed by the prolific Miike, and it is,...(read more)

"It's not finished... It's finished."

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:42:53 GMT

"Spaced," the grandly geeky British sitcom about two North London roommates and their friends that Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright and Nick Frost created before moving on to "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz," is out on region one DVD today and is well worth convincing someone else to purchase for you. As Sam Adams writes at the LA Times: "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" are "Spaced" writ large, more elaborate homages crafted with more precision...(read more)

Trailering: "Thunder" goes meta.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:28:27 GMT

Meta-marketing: "Rain of Madness" is a purported documentary about the disastrous making of the movie they try to shoot in the upcoming comedy "Tropic Thunder"... got that? It's a perfectly po-faced parody of "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse" and its behind-the-scenes brethren, claiming to document the cast and crew as they "attempted to make the most expensive war movie ever attempted... to make." There's a trailer here on iTunes,...(read more)

An Inglorious day.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:08:35 GMT

"Inglorious Bastards" is Quentin Tarantino's "Chinese Democracy," the World War II epic he's been working on forever, dropping mentions of it in interviews dating years back when it threatened to be a 600-page behemoth screenplay with enough material for three features, the film he's always claimed to be on the verge of working on next. In late June, Tarantino, who claimed to have recently finished the "Inglorious Bastards" screenplay, said he was going to...(read more)