QT has been going down hill since Jackie Brown, i mean post JB not from JB, which personally i think was his most mature film and is a film i love more every time i see it.
Yesterday the teaser trailer for his later ego-trip Inglourious Basterds came out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbX6XtyPaeY&fmt=18
Personally i think this is the worst looking crap i've seen in a while. What I find disappointing is that with his first three films i thought Tarantino was improving his craft and the marriage of the cool dialogue and great characters he displayed in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, combined with the maturity of Jackie Brown and the movie knowledge shown in all his films would lead to a fantastic filmmaker. Instead it has become clearer (Kill Bill) and clearer (Death Proof) that he is just an immature geek.
I read the screenplay for Inglourious Basterds last year and found it embarrassing. If the name Quentin Tarantino had not been on the front of it no script reader, let alone producer or studio exec, would have got past page 5 before laughing it out of the room. You know the scene in Tim Burton's excellent Ed Wood when the exec sits down to watch Glen Or Glenda and at first thinks it's terrible and then loves it because he thinks a practical joke has been played on him? Well that is how i felt reading this script - either Tarantino has irrevocably damaged himself in my eyes with an appallingly written, childish, ugly film or he has deliberately played the biggest practical joke on Universal by seeing just how bad a film he could make and still get people to pay for just because his name is on it.
Sadly i suspect from his delusional quotes about this being his masterpiece and his determination that is had to be ready to screen at Cannes in May this year that he sincerely believes this trash to be intelligent and witty. Harry Knowles on AICN claims, having come off a set visit and having been typically effusive about the poor footage above, that QT absolutely sees this as set in the real world. That it is his characters in a real world setting. Well, i'm sorry but the script doesn't have an ounce of the real world in it, it is totally absurd, tonally like From Dusk Till Dawn (which i love) and Death Proof (which i liked the shorter Grindhouse version of). If QT thinks this is real then it only goes to highlight that his assertion that working in a video shop was all the education he needed to be a filmmaker was as misguided and immature as this film looks. He has clearly no sense of WW2 and the real-world of 1940s Europe beyond what he has seen in movies.
It is a shame. There are good moments in the script. Flashes of the Tarantino that i hoped we'd get after Jackie Brown. In fact had he wanted this to be his masterpiece and a possible Palme d'Or expectant it could have been - he just needed to forget about the whole Basterds thing and make the haunting story of Shoshanna which is actually a quite beautifully written character and story-arch for much of the time before being thrown away. There is also one dynamite piece of classically QT dialogue. However generally i found the script offensive rubbish and hugely disappointing in that it destroyed any respect i had had for QT. I haven't been able to watch one of his films since - much in the way that i can't watch The Matrix anymore, as it is too tainted by the sequels. And i see nothing in this teaser to convince me i'm wrong. I never thought i'd get to the point of actively not wanting to see a new Tarantino film but i honestly can't see myself watching this unless enough people whose opinions i hold some truck by can convince me. otherwise.
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