Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

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waitingforgodard
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#851 Post by waitingforgodard » Sat Aug 24, 2019 4:35 pm

Nasir007 wrote:
Fri Aug 23, 2019 2:27 pm
Dare I say it, it is the same argument Zack Snyder made about 300. His response was and I am paraphrasing... That he could give a fuck about what it politically or sociologically means, he just thinks its part of his art and is cool and awesome.

I have no problem with that worldview. But it is essentially the film-maker asking specifically to be put in a box. Meaning they want the movie to be enjoyed within the very specific construct of cinema and storytelling. What it can do is, while liberate the film-maker to some extent, it also means that the film will struggle to have or will not have any real-world resonance. Which is also okay.

If anything, the filmmakers' words would mean that the only people making a mistake are those trying to read too much into it at all. It is just basically to be consumed as an entertaining and enjoyable narrative and then be done with. Nothing more. And there is value in that too. Some filmmakers don't have anything much to say at all. But they have a story to tell. Tarantino might be one of the latter.
"Never trust the artist. Trust the tale." - D. H. Lawrence

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R0lf
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#852 Post by R0lf » Sat Aug 24, 2019 8:01 pm

waitingforgodard wrote:
Sat Aug 24, 2019 4:35 pm
"Never trust the artist. Trust the tale." - D. H. Lawrence
“The patriotic and social bolderdash retailed daily in the newspapers would exaggerate the significance of the plaudits which a sovereign public always reserves for works deficient in ideas and style.” J. K. Huysmans

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mfunk9786
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#853 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Aug 26, 2019 2:03 pm

Soundtrack getting a 2LP vinyl release in late October, including an exclusive colored vinyl from Turntable Lab - includes a movie poster and a Hollywood map, and it's really one of the best soundtrack albums in years, can't overstate that enough


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Never Cursed
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#855 Post by Never Cursed » Tue Aug 27, 2019 9:07 am

Greil Marcus wrote: Los Angeles, 1969 — when, according to this movie, there wasn’t a single good song on the radio.
Uh, no.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#856 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Aug 27, 2019 10:35 am

My man would prefer to have some Doors on the soundtrack - you know, good music

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hearthesilence
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#857 Post by hearthesilence » Tue Aug 27, 2019 10:58 am

For one LP side - the very first one put out - the Doors were indeed a great band. Then as soon as you flipped that record, it was downhill from there, for the rest of their career.

(Actually, that's too facile. There were some great recordings later on, like the title track "L.A Woman" and "Roadhouse Blues," which was often better live. And I'll add that negligible and even terrible songs like "Moonlight Drive" and "The End" played great as soundtracks to Two-Lane Blacktop and Apocalypse Now.)

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knives
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#858 Post by knives » Tue Aug 27, 2019 11:22 am

I don't know what planet you folks are living on, but I'm glad I'm not on it.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#859 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Aug 27, 2019 11:45 am

I 100% assure you I was being sarcastic, because Greil Marcus wrote a book about The Doors, which makes it extra funny that he's talking about none of the songs in this movie being any good

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knives
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#860 Post by knives » Tue Aug 27, 2019 11:51 am

Yep, us being on different planets still checks out.

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whaleallright
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#861 Post by whaleallright » Fri Aug 30, 2019 1:03 pm

I don't think I'd seen a Greil Marcus byline in 15 years. There's something both depressing and reassuring about him doing the same labored shtick for the past five decades.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#862 Post by hearthesilence » Fri Aug 30, 2019 3:33 pm

whaleallright wrote:
Fri Aug 30, 2019 1:03 pm
I don't think I'd seen a Greil Marcus byline in 15 years. There's something both depressing and reassuring about him doing the same labored shtick for the past five decades.
It's the same column he's been doing for decades, but it's been hosted by several different publications you may not read unless you're in the U.S. (Salon.com, the now-defunct Village Voice, the American edition of Rolling Stone). He's published quite a few books in the interim, and he continues to update Mystery Train which may be the only great book of rock criticism that isn't an anthology of previously published material.

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Black Hat
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#863 Post by Black Hat » Sat Aug 31, 2019 6:07 pm

hearthesilence wrote:
Tue Aug 27, 2019 10:58 am
For one LP side - the very first one put out - the Doors were indeed a great band. Then as soon as you flipped that record, it was downhill from there, for the rest of their career.

(Actually, that's too facile. There were some great recordings later on, like the title track "L.A Woman" and "Roadhouse Blues," which was often better live. And I'll add that negligible and even terrible songs like "Moonlight Drive" and "The End" played great as soundtracks to Two-Lane Blacktop and Apocalypse Now.)
Like a lot of teenagers I thought The Doors were incredible, they just had a way of making you feel like you were always one bong hit away from turning into an all consuming Love God Genius, but then one afternoon a bunch of us were hanging out with our Anthropology professor and when The Doors came up a shit eating grin came upon his face. He started to recite Mr Mojo's lyrics out loud, you could tell he'd not only done this to students before, but very much enjoyed doing so. By the time he was finished it was pretty much a wrap for that band and I've never quite enjoyed or even been able to take The Doors seriously since, nor as far as I know, has anyone who was there that day. Hilariously, as if this professor was a counterbalancing force necessary to expunge The Doors from our otherwise intelligent young minds, the man did this while smoking a joint, as if to say 'yeah Jim Morrison's dumb when you're high too".

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whaleallright
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#864 Post by whaleallright » Sat Aug 31, 2019 8:38 pm

hearthesilence wrote:
Fri Aug 30, 2019 3:33 pm
It's the same column he's been doing for decades, but it's been hosted by several different publications you may not read unless you're in the U.S.... He's published quite a few books in the interim, and he continues to update Mystery Train which may be the only great book of rock criticism that isn't an anthology of previously published material.
Oh, I know he's been around, I just hadn't been tempted to read one of his bylines for years, and was struck by how little his basic schtick (and his favored bands/artists) has changed in the interim. His "Real Life [Rock] Top 10" column seems to have a much lower profile than it once did, or maybe it's just that I haven't cared about rock criticism for years.

I really liked Mystery Train once upon a time, but I'd have to revisit it (nearly 30 years later) to see if it holds up. I remember it inspiring me to check out a lot of interesting music and writing at a time (before the internet) when that sort of thing was more at a premium. I was wary of the flakiness of In the Fascist Bathroom and got off the bus altogether with the purple prose of his Basement Tapes book, which struck me as verging on self-parody.

The last time I recall seeing his name, it was as an advisor/reader for a dissertation-turned-book of extremely dubious Hollywood history. It struck me that if you're going to publish on a subject, especially as a scholar and especially something "shocking," you'd best have your work vetted by people who know what they are talking about (which Marcus evidently didn't, at least when it came to the Hollywood studios in the 1940s). See https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/article ... the-nazis/, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ ... ion-595678, etc.

I'm tempted to bring this back to Tarantino by saying something about Inglourious Basterds and historical revisionism, but I'll stop there....

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barryconvex
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#865 Post by barryconvex » Tue Sep 03, 2019 3:50 am

It’s easy (and usually pretty fun) to rag on Jim Morrison and the Doors as a whole but credit where it’s due: he more or less patented the charismatic frontman archetype in rock music. Mick Jagger might have a couple years on him but he had yet to Settle into his role. One could even make the argument that Iggy Pop couldn’t exist without Morrison. I wouldn’t make that argument but somebody could.

quim_font
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#866 Post by quim_font » Tue Sep 03, 2019 11:12 pm

I’d give a pretty penny to know Godard’s thoughts on Tarantino’s recent treatments of history. For someone who regarded Citizen Kane as “mocking history”, I could only imagine what he has to say.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#867 Post by hearthesilence » Wed Sep 04, 2019 12:12 pm

barryconvex wrote:
Tue Sep 03, 2019 3:50 am
It’s easy (and usually pretty fun) to rag on Jim Morrison and the Doors as a whole but credit where it’s due: he more or less patented the charismatic frontman archetype in rock music. Mick Jagger might have a couple years on him but he had yet to Settle into his role. One could even make the argument that Iggy Pop couldn’t exist without Morrison. I wouldn’t make that argument but somebody could.
Iggy has gone on record on how Morrison/the Doors inspired him. Same with Patti Smith. I love both artists, and others (I think X?) who I believe are far better artists have cited them as a major inspiration, so I can't ever dismiss the Doors outright even if I find much of their work ridiculous.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#868 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Sep 05, 2019 5:58 pm

LOOK AT ME, I have a source. Anyway, birdie says December 17th for a Blu-ray and 4K UHD release. And if they're wrong, I'll go back to having absolutely zero sources.


Jack Kubrick
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#870 Post by Jack Kubrick » Mon Sep 09, 2019 5:14 pm

Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote:I actually bothered to see this film a second time to try to figure out what I might have missed. The answer: even more dullness, more emptiness than my first look at it. Maybe because in August 1969 I was preparing to move from New York to Paris and the Manson murders, however awful, had no mythical or historical or sociological significance for me, unlike (say) Woodstock. I still find them devoid of much interest, especially for someone like QT who has no curiosity about them. Ergo, I’m inclined to think that those who assume otherwise, like those who keep harping reductively on 9/11, are simply looking deperately for ways to substitute sound-bites for thought, or cheap journalism for life. This time, Tarantino wants to arouse our reverence and nostalgia for musical and cinematic crap along with journalistic crap—in short, all forms of media crap, mysteriously reconfigured as Our Sistine Chapel—and, like Trump, accept him as something other than a redneck
in spite of all his redneck tastes and values, the same way that Sharon Tate accepts Dalton. The eagerness of the public to embrace this abject plea for affection and respect continues to baffle me.

Rosenbaum coming for the swing against this film, echoing the same sentiment as Richard Brody criticism of it being a product of Donald Trump MAGA agenda.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#871 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Sep 09, 2019 5:28 pm

Rosenbaum's assertion that mass media wasn't precisely that (media being consumed en masse by a society that had far fewer entertainment choices) in the era in which the film is set seems like he's trying to be defensive about his own champagne tastes 50 years ago, which is one form of strange - but the Trump stuff is borderline crazy. In criticizing this film for Tarantino patting himself on the back for his wealth of historical pop cultural knowledge, he seems to be projecting a great deal about how we should feel about his own.

Nasir007
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#872 Post by Nasir007 » Mon Sep 09, 2019 8:18 pm

Jack Kubrick wrote:
Mon Sep 09, 2019 5:14 pm
Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote:I actually bothered to see this film a second time to try to figure out what I might have missed. The answer: even more dullness, more emptiness than my first look at it. Maybe because in August 1969 I was preparing to move from New York to Paris and the Manson murders, however awful, had no mythical or historical or sociological significance for me, unlike (say) Woodstock. I still find them devoid of much interest, especially for someone like QT who has no curiosity about them. Ergo, I’m inclined to think that those who assume otherwise, like those who keep harping reductively on 9/11, are simply looking deperately for ways to substitute sound-bites for thought, or cheap journalism for life. This time, Tarantino wants to arouse our reverence and nostalgia for musical and cinematic crap along with journalistic crap—in short, all forms of media crap, mysteriously reconfigured as Our Sistine Chapel—and, like Trump, accept him as something other than a redneck
in spite of all his redneck tastes and values, the same way that Sharon Tate accepts Dalton. The eagerness of the public to embrace this abject plea for affection and respect continues to baffle me.

Rosenbaum coming for the swing against this film, echoing the same sentiment as Richard Brody criticism of it being a product of Donald Trump MAGA agenda.
That's a devasting review. And elements of it have already been discussed here. That, that which Tarantino is nostalgic about is nobody's loss more or less and the event which he uses to signify his nostalgia might have been a supremely insignificant event in the history of culture with little impact on much of anything.

Tarantino is thus asking us to feel nostalgia about an artificially created past that the audience is supposed to yearn for based on what he presents on screen. It is so specific to himself that it is offputting if not completely alienating. Curiously, that itself is not arrogant and was actually attempted in another film not that long ago. In the end, at its conclusion, Wes Anderson also asks us to feel nostalgic about an imaginary past that he conjures up in The Grand Budapest Hotel. And that somehow works. There is the pull of emotion for an entirely imagined milieu and country and society. Because what shines through is the decency and humanity of people, the largesse of their inclusion.

No such luck here. Instead, we are left to humor the fetish of a film-maker essentially masturbating in public and asking to be patted on the back for that. So no tears at the end of the movie but pass the tissues, please.

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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#873 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Sep 09, 2019 8:21 pm

Tarantino was a young child when the events of this film occurred (and not alive yet when others did). Also, when he has certain opportunities to fetishize objects like brands, he creates his own instead as he often does. He has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of films of this era, but that goes for a lot of other eras too. To call it "nostalgia" is a stretch, nearly as much as it would be levy that charge against any of his other period films.

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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#874 Post by quim_font » Mon Sep 09, 2019 8:54 pm

All his films are made with a nostalgia for the feeling of viewing films in childhood/adolescence, more so than a period. So when we get nostalgia for a period, it’s filtered through media.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

#875 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Sep 09, 2019 9:21 pm

Good way of putting it. I think Rosenbaum resents someone feeling warm toward media he had already begun to criticize on merit by then, which is somewhat petty and seems beside the point considering that in no way is Tarantino claiming that the work Dalton does is some sort of cultural high point

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