The Hateful Eight Poster

It's a little strange that there is already an official poster for a film that hasn't begun filming yet, but, who cares, I'm excited. It's a good-looking poster, and since I've read the script, I'm excited about the film as well, which is going to be like an Agatha Christie western. Stagecoach meets And Then There Were None. Can't wait.

PS - Still surprised to see that the title hasn't changed to Hateful Eight, to keep the two-word-title streak going (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Death Proof, Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained.)

Django Unchained

Quentin Tarantino is my favorite living director. Even so, I have been waiting for one of his films to disappoint me, and considered the possibility that this would be the one. I'm happy to say that nothing about Django Unchained disappointed me. Tarantino has made another eccentric, original (how is it possible that some people claim he has no originality?), exhilarating, and emotional piece of cinematic collage.

This won't be a full review because I simply have too many thoughts on this film. But, most importantly, he has managed to graft an entertaining adventure story onto a historical period rife with atrocities, and he has managed to keep the integrity of both. That he does this while also including b-movie tropes, Mel Brooksian humor, rap music, and such a high level of craftsmanship is truly a feat. It's a beautiful film, filled with memorable shots, all rendered, of course, without any computer help.

This is the first Tarantino picture that takes place before the advent of cinema, the first picture in which he cannot directly reference movies (there are endless indirect references). Yet, there is a definite meta-reading of this film in which Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), the German bounty hunter, "directs" Django into his role of a movie hero. Schultz sees it as a re-telling of German legend while the audience sees it as the birth of a movie hero. This has become a constant theme of Tarantino's: this idea that all the characters in his film are battling for center stage, are battling to be the lead role. What makes this movie redemptive is that the black cowboy and the slave girl ride off together in the end, stars of their own movie.

I will admit that I think Sally Menke's unfortunate death last year affected the editing of this picture just a little bit. At least to my eye. Even though the editing booth had a sign up that said "What would Sally do," and even though Fred Raskin did a good job, I felt that Menke would have tightened it up a little. A small quibble.

What's next for Quentin Tarantino? He's talked about doing a 1930s gangster picture but I would love to see him do his 1960s spy caper. He still holds the rights to Modesty Blaise.

What I'm Looking Forward To ...

I've often thought that if no one created any more artwork--no more movies, or books, or music--that I would be fine, that I could spend the rest of my life still finding books to read and movies to watch and old TV series to revisit. I'd be fine.

That said, here is what I am currently looking forward to:

Skyfall

Ben Whishaw as the Quartermaster.

I'd be looking forward to a new James Bond film even if they were bringing back Roger Moore in a leisure suit. But this looks good: a continuation of the Daniel Craig grit mixed with a few Bond tropes, including a new Q.

Crooked House

First edition book cover.

It's been a long while since an Agatha Christie novel made it to the big screen, but director Neil LaBute will be making a version of Crooked House with a script by Julian Fellowes. It's one of my favorite books. I just hope they do it as a period piece.

Django Unchained

Samuel L. Jackson as Stephen, a very evil Uncle Ben.

One of these days Tarantino will make a bad film (no one has a perfect record) but I don't think it's going to happen here. I'll be there opening day.

William Boyd's Bond novel

Nothing to do with Boyd's book except that it's Bond and a book.

One of my favorite contemporary writers, William Boyd, has been commissioned to pen a Bond novel and he'll be setting it in the 1960s. I feel like this is being written specifically for me.

The Hollow Crown

Tom Hiddleston as Henry V.

The BBC has grouped four of Shakespeare's history plays--Richard II, Henry the IV parts 1 & 2, and Henry V--into a television series starring, among many others, Tom Hiddleston, Ben Whishaw, Jeremy Irons, Patrick Stewart, and David Suchet. I don't know if this will be broadcast over here but I'm counting on it, PBS, or if not PBS, then BBC America.

Fall

Yes, the season. Sweaters. Football games. Cool nights. Apple cider. Chili on the stove. Bring it on.

A Modesty Kick

I've been on a little bit of a Modesty Blaise kick lately. She's the character who began her fictitious life in a comic strip written by Peter O'Donnell. I don't read the strips but I am reading the novels, also penned by Peter O'Donnell. They are actually pretty hard to find; they're available on Ebay, of course, but they are not always cheap, and I'm a little picky about the cover art. The 1980s re-issues are particularly horrendous.

I, Lucifer is the third Modesty Blaise novel. The bad guys are ludicrous, especially the title character, a paranoid schizophrenic with a pre-cognitive ability, but the writing is excellent and the action scenes are particularly great.

Cobra Trap is actually the last published Modesty Blaise book, a collection of five long-ish stories from different points in Modesty's career. I should have really waited to read this one last, especially the final story, the one called Cobra Trap, which details the (Spoiler Alert!) deaths of Modesty Blaise and her long-time platonic companion Willie Garvin. I've heard that a lot of fans refuse to read this particular story but I've read it, and it's actually pretty touching, or as touching as the deaths of over-the-top pulp fiction characters can be. The rest of the stories, especially "Old Alex," are top-notch as well.

This was definitely taking my mini Modesty-obsession too far but I watched the 2003 direct-to-video film My Name is Modesty. This film was made for the sole reason of keeping the film rights to Modesty Blaise with the Weinstein Brothers. Apparently they did it as a favor to Quentin Tarantino who has always had an interest in making a Modesty film. Anyway, this low-budget flick is far better than it has any right to be. Not worth seeing really but it comes across as a decent TV pilot.

And lastly, although this has very little to do with Modesty Blaise, I just read John D. MacDonald's On the Run, one of his standalone thrillers. Like most of the Fawcett Gold Medal books this cover has absolutely nothing to do with the book. In fact, this cover, by Robert McGinnis, is a painting of Modesty Blaise that was never used for one of the Modesty books (to my knowledge).

About the actual book, this is one of JDM's worst efforts, in which the cheesy over-talked romance completely destroys the element of suspense. However, and it's not one of those howevers that means you should actually read the book, but after 120 pages of drivel the book takes a sharp and brutal turn, and the last ten pages or so are pretty excellent. I'd read the sequel at the drop of the hat.

Less than a year away ...

Happy Birthday Anna Karina

71 today. Model, actress, novelist, screenwriter, director. But really I'm just posting this as an excuse to post the video below from Bande a Part. I could watch this dance sequence (here it's set to a Nouvelle Vague song, not in the original movie) endless times. Coincidentally, this was the scene that Tarantino showed to John Travolta and Uma Thurman before filming their dance sequence in Pulp Fiction. They were nervous and so he wanted to show them that film dancing didn't necessarily have to be perfect. A Band Apart is also the name of Tarantino's production company. Enjoy.

Django Unchained

Quentin Tarantino is my favorite living director. Unlike other fans, I like his later films better than his earlier ones. While I liked Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, my favorite film in his ography is Jackie Brown. I loved both Kill Bills, Death Proof, and Inglourious Basterds. So even though I would love to go into all of his films cold, it just never happens because his scripts are usually leaked and I can't help myself. I read them.

Which brings us to Django Unchained, Tarantino's next film, a Spaghetti-style Western set in the old south. This is going to be one interesting film. It's essentially a popcorn flick with a freed slave wreaking revenge on slave-owners while attempting to rescue his wife from an evil plantation owner.

Here are ten thoughts on the script:

1. There has never been a film like this (people who think Tarantino does not make original films are not paying attention). The mixture of an entertaining genre film, mixed in with constant horrendous slave imagery--whippings, rape, castrations, auctions--is going to really put some people off. But I think it will work. Why is this period of history off limits in the movies except for incredibly reverent films?

2. The narrative sequencing of the movie is fairly straightforward, and at times it seems to amble a little bit without big set-pieces. But once all the characters are introduced at about the halfway mark it starts to really cook.

3. If filmed as written this will be Tarantino's most violent film by far. Think about that for a moment.

4. Tarantino writes parts with actors in mind and it's clear that King Schultz, the German bounty hunter who frees then mentors Django, is written for Christoph Waltz. It's a great role, funny and dangerous but with a rock-solid moral base, an interesting character for a Tarantino movie. He's a decent father figure. That's like having a decent mother-figure in a Hitchcock film.

5. The plantation owner Calvin Candie's house slave is a character named Stephen, referred to as a black Basil Rathbone, and it was most likely written with Samuel Jackson in mind. He will knock this out of the park.

6. This is the first Tarantino film that is set in a time before movies were made and I missed some of the out-loud movie referencing that is always part of his character's landscape. However, this is a film very much about the movies. It occurred to me that King Schultz (a German) directs (in a sense) the transformation of Django from slave to hero, from victim to bad-ass, and that the film is another meditation (like Basterds) on the the cathartic nature of film imagery.

7. This film is also a mythological tale, a retelling of the Siegfried and Broomhilde myth (I'm not being pretentious here--this is all part of the script). And like Kill Bill (another mythological revenge tale), the emotional pay-off is huge.

8. There are tons of roles for sniggering ugly gun-toting white guys in this film and it's impossible to think that Tarantino will resist casting himself as one of them. But I wish he would, resist that is. (And please don't cast Eli Roth either).

9. There are rumors that Will Smith might play Django. At first I thought this was a terrible idea, mainly because Will Smith is a little tainted for me these days with the vanity projects, the script tampering and the way he's cutting deals left and right to turn his offspring into mini-stars. But then I think back to Smith's early career and how good he was and I think he could play Django. In fact, I think he might be perfect. His star quality would make an interesting counterpoint to some of the degradations he suffers.

10. Django Unchained is not a sequel to the 1966 Django, except for maybe in attitude. If you haven't seen the Franco Nero (picture below) classic, it's worth checking out. Pay no attention to the horrible dubbing and just enjoy the over-the-top Spaghetti Western violence and the beautiful cinematography. Also, one of the best title songs of all time. Maybe not one of, maybe just the best.

Apropos of Nothing

The red-band trailer for Your Highness does not look funny.

The red-band trailer for Bad Teacher does.

Why do people still get excited for new Radiohead albums?

If the Red Sox stay healthy this year I think they'll win the AL East by ten games.

Now that the Coen Brothers have made a straight-up Western, I think they should make a straight-up horror flick.

I appreciate that Quentin Tarantino takes a long time between projects, and wants to make sure that every one of his film is a labor of love, but I wish he were a teensy bit more prolific.

Speaking of Tarantino, if I controlled the movie-universe, I would make him direct an adaption of John D. MacDonald's The Deep Blue Goodbye, set in 1964, with Timothy Olyphant as Travis McGee.

The new Decemberist's Album The King is Dead is the best album they've ever made.

Community is turning in one of the boldest seasons in sit-com history. Not every episode works but every episode takes huge chances.

I enjoyed The Hangover but I don't even want to watch the trailer for the sequel.

She's only been in two episodes so far but when Margo Martindale doesn't win an Emmy next year for her work in Justified it'll be pure robbery.

The Macallan 12 Year Old Fine Oak scotch is like heaven in a bottle (thank you, Charlene). It's been a long winter but you're helping, Macallan. You too, Charlene.

The Mechanics of Pulp

About ten years ago I wrote a series of papers for an excellent class I took at Emerson College called "The Construction of Taste." The professor was Maria Koundoura and I've since forgiven her for making us sit through Salo. Anyway, I thought I'd put the papers I wrote up on this site. They were all about movies, intertwined with the texts we read for class. I don't really expect anyone to read them (they are long and jargon-y) but when has that stopped me before. Here's the first one:

The Mechanics of Pulp:

Narrative Disruption and the Aura in Pulp Fiction

When John Travolta, playing the hit-man Vincent Vega, orders a Douglas Sirk Steak in Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994), it's a further acknowledgment of what is already being rendered visually in the film's text. The two stock characters -- Vince Vega, the hitman/henchman, and Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman), the boss's wife, are eating dinner together at Jack Rabbit Slims, a restaurant decorated and populated by camp approximations of fifties-era movie stars and rock-and-roll legends. The restaurant's host is an Ed Sullivan impersonator; the waiters and waitresses are impersonators of varying dead stars -- Vince and Mia's is a surly Buddy Holly (Steve Buscemi). The stylized setting is, at once, self-reflexive and integral to the plot, such as that plot is. Vince and Mia are subjects to their boss/husband Marcellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), and must play their roles accordingly (they have been ordered to have dinner together), just as Travolta and Thurman are subject to the conventions of Hollywood, and a past that has allowed for them to exist on screen. Tarantino's setting, and the sequence in it, demonstrate the complexity of any text that exists in the age of film, in the age, as Walter Benjamin calls it, of "mechanical reproduction." The layers, intended or not, are inevitable and infinite. When Vincent takes the stage with Mia for the twist contest, audiences are instantly reminded of Travolta's many preserved cinematic moments on the dance floor. For more astute Tarantino fans the fact that Steve Buscemi, who played the waitress-hating Mr. Pink in Tarantino's debut Reservoir Dogs (1992), is playing the Buddy Holly waiter, is a built-in nod that would seemingly come directly from the director. But the reference to Sirk, infamous director of fifties melodramas, seems to resonate most through the sequence. Like Sirk, Tarantino disrupts the narrative of his film through self-conscious and self-reflexive elements that remind the audience that what is being rendered is fake; and as the audience makes this connection, an aura, that element of original art that Benjamin argued is lacking in film-art, exists in the interweaving of the film and its knowing audience.

Benjamin compares film-acting to the factory worker alienated from his or her product:

During the shooting he has as little contact with

it as any article made in a factory. This may contribute

to that oppression, that new anxiety which,

according to Pirandello, grips the actor before the

camera. The film responds to the shriveling of the aura

with an artificial build-up of the "personality" outside

the studio.

(Benjamin, p. 233)

The film acknowledges this contradiction in many ways. The sequencing of the film, with its constant jumps backwards and forwards in time, is both a nod toward an avant-gardiste sensibility and a self-reflexive trick that distances the audience from the narrative. The narrative breaks down into three segments, plus a framing segment that occurs sequentially between the first and third segments. The middle segment, titled "The Gold Watch," is sequentially the last "story" to take place. In that piece, Vincent Vega is narratively a very minor character; he is sent to "pop a cap in the ass" of the traitorous boxer Butch (Bruce Willis) but is himself killed, with his own gun, as he emerges from the bathroom in Butch's apartment. The final third of the film, however, returns to an earlier time to tell a story called "The Bonnie Situation." In that segment Vince Vega is still alive; of course, it is only his image that is still alive, reproduced on celluloid. Because Tarantino allows himself the editing luxury to disrupt the narrative, Vince's death takes on far less significance than say, Jack Dawson's (Leonardo DiCaprio's) death in the more traditionally narrated Titanic (James Cameron, 1997). Like the apparitional impersonating figures in Jack Rabbit Slims, the image of Vince Vega lives continuously, and the audience is made aware that the action unfolding is impervious to time; a few alterations in the cutting room and the final image of the film is of John Travolta replacing his gun into his shorts and exiting a coffee shop (likewise, another twelve bucks at the multiplex and Jack Dawson is alive again, falling in love on the ill-fated luxury liner). Is there conceivably a time when the iconic imagery from Hollywood's Golden Age -- Marilyn Monroe's dress fluttering up above the subway grate, e.g. -- will disappear forever, will cease to be reenacted, replayed, gazed upon? It seems unlikely, especially, as Benjamin states, in this age of mechanically reproduced images.

The opening image in Pulp Fiction is, true to it's title, words. The American Heritage Dictionary, New College Edition definition of "pulp" is flashed on the screen:

pulp -- 1. a soft, moist, shapeless mass of matter.

2. A magazine or book containing lurid subject

matter and being characteristically printed on

rough, unfinished paper.

Tarantino is both foretelling his themes and acknowledging his source. The difference, seemingly, is the mode. What is not being said -- at least directly -- in the American Heritage's definition is that there is a metonymic connection between the mode and the subject matter. Pulp initially referred to the quality of the paper itself, and was only later associated with the subject matter printed on such "pulpy" paper. Tarantino is attaching that realm to film, and by doing so, he's not just referring to the throw-a-way quality of the stories -- the boxer not throwing the fight, the unwanted corpse in the car --, but also the cheapness of the medium, the mass accessibility. Benjamin, talking about photography, writes that "From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the 'authentic' print makes no sense" (Benjamin, p. 226). It is the same with film; Pulp Fiction is as easily reproduced on film-stock as it will later be on video, and its constant replaying emphasizes its own pulpiness, and also its artifice. Tarantino seems unwilling to completely naturalize the imagined world he is presenting. Instead, he inserts instances of recognized artifice, and self-reference. The Jack Rabbit Slims sequence, with its artificial Hollywood setting, is the most instantly recognizable. There are countless other instances, however. Vince Vega says to Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson), "Let's get into character," before the two enter an apartment to perform a hit. Mia Wallace says to Vince, "Don't be a..." and then draws a square with her fingers, creating a superimposed animated square on the screen, a reference from the animated show "Josie and the Pussycats." When Butch takes the taxi from the fight where he has killed his opponent, the backdrop is not only recognizably a rear projection -- it is a rear projection in black and white stock. All of this is reinforced finally by the sequencing of the film, which emphasizes the image of the characters over the imagined lives of the characters. Vince Vega's death is insignificant because it is faked. The reality is that his image (an image that can be moved and placed like a prop) can be replayed again and again, and that is ultimately what pulp is about: the manipulation of images, of stock characters, within given situations.

Of course, such a technique is not new, the most obvious source being Sirk and his films from the fifties, most notably Written on the Wind (1957) and Imitation of Life (1959). Those films, genre-identified as melodramas, or women's pictures, were, at the time, popular explorations of family drama. Embedded in Sirk's films, however, most notably through visual technique, were a constant affirmation of the fraudulent nature of the medium, and hence a criticism of the very ideologies -- capitalism, patriarchy, e.g. -- the films were portraying. Through outlandish color, and purposefully bland acting, and extreme symbolic flourishes, Sirk created a cinematic world that referred most pointedly to itself, and its own artifice. In the article "Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on Family Melodrama," Thomas Elsaesser writes:

When Robert Stack shows Lauren Bacall her hotel

suite in Written on the Wind, where everything from

flowers and pictures on the wall to underwear, nail

polish, and handbag is provided, Sirk is not only

characterizing a rich man wanting to take over the

woman he fancies body and soul...He is also making

a direct comment on the Hollywood stylistic technique

that "creates" a character out of the elements of the

decor and that prefers actors who can provide as blank

a facial surface and as little of a personality as possible.

(Grant, p. 362)

This Sirkian effect is exactly what Tarantino seems to be going for in the Jack Rabbit Slims segment of the film. Just as Travolta is being manipulated as an actor, so is the character he is portraying. Benjamin cites Rudolph Arnheim's quote about actors in film: "the latest trend...in treating the actor as a stage prop chosen for its characteristics and..inserted as the proper place" (Benjamin, p. 232), seems to sum up the situation both in Written on the Wind and Pulp Fiction nicely. Both films critique their own genre while also upholding many of the conventions of those genres; and their critique seems to corroborate the notion that they are merely inserting entries into genres already massively reproducible and reproduced.

So how does Tarantino, or rather, Tarantino's audience, create an aura of originality for a film such as Pulp Fiction that constantly unravels itself as it progresses. Benjamin believed that film, by its very nature, could not contain such an aura, that there was no object that could be ritualized, hence no cultification could exist. Certainly, however, in this day, films are consistently being reinvented by their own cult audiences; these audiences have found a way to turn film into an object. Delving into this subject, I realize that I am about to present an entirely insufficient perusal of cult-movie aesthetics, and that this is certainly a subject worth much deeper digging. That said, I can think of two immediate examples of methods by which cult audiences have reinstated films with an aura of originality. The most instantly recognizable cult-film of today, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975), -- and incidentally one of the characters mentioned frequently in Pulp Fiction is nicknamed Tony Rocky Horror -- is only truly experienced at a midnight showing where it is framed and enhanced by a live show. Because of its appropriation by a cult audience the film itself has almost entirely lost its own identity. The Martin & Porter Video Guide, which catalogues every film available on video, states, "If you're not experiencing this scintillating spoof at a midnight showing, you're missing much of the fun. Audience participation is a key" (Martin, p. 914). The live show means that each viewing is a unique experience that will never be reproduced in exactly the same way, unlike the film itself which is inalterable. Thus the aura of a live experience is transferred to a static film. Another example is when movie revival houses advertise in their programs that they will be exhibiting rare, and particularly fine, prints of old classics. The aura that the reproducible film cannot have is given to a particularly clear print that is then presented to a select few, a cult audience willing to reenter the movie theater to see a film that is no doubt available on DVD. In both of these cases the aura of originality exists not in the film itself but in the interaction between the film and its audience.

This is also the case with the aura of originality in a film such as Pulp Fiction. Mechanically reproduced, existing without an original copy, it must gather any aura it can from the communal cult audience and their particular reading of the text. Some of the reading had its groundwork laid by the film-makers, i.e. references to Sirk, references to other Tarantino films, countless references to the pop-culture iconography that it has sprung from. But some of that reading is original. One theory, born in the cyberspace of web-pages devoted to the film, explains how the glowing entity in the briefcase Jules and Vincent recover is in fact Marcellus Wallace's soul, that he had sold to the Devil for financial success. This theory is explained by the combination on the briefcase's lock -- 666 --, the band-aid on the back of Marcellus Wallace's head -- the Devil removes the soul from the back of the neck --, and the glow of the item in the briefcase, that causes anyone who looks at it to exclaim how beautiful it is. The boys killed at the beginning of the film are the Devil's helpers, and it truly is divine intervention when Jules and Vincent are miraculously not killed when one of the boys unloads a gun directly at them. Tarantino has been asked about this and he states that he, in fact, does not know what is in the briefcase. Such an answer only bolsters a cult-audience's reading of a film-text as an original one. Placed in a new context, Pulp Fiction as a supernatural tale, a battle between God and the Devil, the film regains an aura of originality -- it's been reproduced in a new theoretical light.

When Vince Vega and Mia Wallace first take their seats at Jack Rabbit Slims, Mia asks Vince what he thinks of the place. "A wax museum with a pulse," he replies. It seems an apt definition of film itself. Marilyn Monroe lives on in films via a pulse of electricity but she is no longer flesh and blood. It's the point that's constantly being reiterated in Pulp Fiction, particularly in the restaurant scene, and particularly through the narrative disruptions in time. Unable, and unwilling, to fool the audience with its fiction, the film instead relies on the text that exists with a knowing audience than can see the flow of Hollywood that has culminated in its existence. All that referencing ends up distinguishing itself from others of its genre. In that space between the film and its viewers there may or may not be the aura of originality. If it's there, though, it's sparked by an understanding that nothing can be original in the age Hollywood, Netflix and mechanical reproduction.

Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations.

Grant, Barry Keith. Film Genre Reader II. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.

Martin, Mick and Marsha Porter. Video Movie Guide 1997. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996.

Sally Menke 1953 - 2010

Very sad news about Tarantino's most important collaborator, his editor Sally Menke, who has worked on all his films. She was found dead yesterday, possibly on a hike, with the cause of death possibly the heat waves enveloping Los Angeles. I feel terrible about this news, both because she seemed too young, but also on a purely selfish level that I will not get to see her incredible work on the next Tarantino film. To my amateur eyes she was one of the great editors working today. One of her sequences below.

Slam the Big Door (1960)

Nice to read a wholly successful John D. thriller after reading his horrible sci-fi exercise. This wasn't one of his best but there were lots of great things in it. The hero is Mike Rodenska, a widower who is invited down to his old friend's house on the west coast of Florida for a vacation. What he finds is a crooked land deal, lots of potential bed-mates, lots of drinking, bad behavior, and morally suspect characters. The best thing about this novel was that the hero, Mike, was not the typical MacDonald male. He is often described as overweight, balding and out-of-shape. It was a nice touch, and a bit unusual for the books of this period where the main character is usually a tall, handsome lug in the Don Draper mode.

Other notables: not the best book but the final chapter (or epilogue) is great. Also, the penultimate chapter is all about the demise of a certain character, who dies in a head-on collision. Remember that scene in Death Proof, where Tarantino shows about seventy-three different angles of the head-on that kills all of the first half principals. This chapter is the literary equivalent of that, with MacDonald going over exactly what happens to bodies involved in the worst possible type of car crashes. It's explicit and a little unnecessary, but then again it's pulp fiction, right, emphasis on pulp?

Modesty Blaise (1965)

Peter O'Donnell, who died a few weeks ago, wrote this spy novel based on his own comic book creation. In all there have been about 90 comic strip storylines and a dozen novels. This is my first exposure to Modesty Blaise and why did I wait so long? The book was fantastic, a great combination of over-the-top 1960s spy tropes, brutal action, and genuine emotion.


The writing in this book was really great, and I loved the relationship between Modesty and her long-time best friend Willie Garvin. He's as good a character as she is, a roguish cockney with an undying loyalty to Modesty.



Modesty Blaise is the book that Vincent Vega is reading on the can right before getting knocked off in Pulp Fiction. It's clearly a book that Tarantino is interested in and I think he had Miramax acquire the rights. There's a lot of Modesty characteristics in Beatrix Kiddo, especially the scene where Beatrix breaks down at the very end of Kill Bill Volume 2.



Next up: Sabre Tooth, book two in the Modesty storyline.

Wait for the cream

I found these screencaps on film experience blog and the one above, in particular, made me laugh out loud. There are many things I love about Tarantino's movies but the thing I love most of all is his randomness. Why does this scene work? It does, but I can't exactly put it into words. It's an incredibly tense scene interrupted by the arrival of food (all of Tarantino's films fetishize food at some point with the possible exception of Jackie Brown). What makes this so good is that Landa, of course, is toying with Shoshana, even if he does not entirely know her identity.



Then there's the cutaway close-up to the actual strudel, and then--my favorite shot in the sequence--Shoshana taking a bite and acknowledging with her facial expression for a moment that it tastes good, even though she is sitting across from the man who murdered her entire family.



I know down deep that this won't win the Oscar on Sunday night but if it managed to actually do it then I'd be a very happy moviegoer.

The Lost Art of Inglourious Basterds

The Upper Playground art gallery in Los Angeles is doing a benefit for victims of the Haiti earthquake. Several artists have created imaginary posters for Inglourious Basterds, the lithographs are being signed by Quentin Tarantino, and then sold at a benefit. Details here.

Here are some examples: