E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

It is perhaps no surprise that most ( not all, thankfully ) film critics have praised Tarantino's latest (9th) film Once Upon A Time In Hollywood... as a masterwork - I have seen it even called Shakespearean - a term that comes from a scene in the movie; but he is more a Jacobean Middleton. Tarantino's late career has been focused on revenge - one of the primary staples of drama and melodrama in all English literature; it is also, of course, the staple of Nicholas Cage's late career, so it is not an inherently perfect one. Violence is to Saint Quentin what bars are to San Quentin - the raison d'etre. I cannot think of another director - not even Peckinpah or de Palma, Hitchcock or Scorsese - so cocked and aimed in one direction - that of setting up and paying off scenes and situations so that 'all hell breaks loose' and terrible violence ensues. Tarantino has argued - often publicly and coarsely - for an art for art's sake separation between reel violen...

Is there a person over the age of 18 alive who hasn't seen Pulp Fiction - or some offshoot of its pop culture impact? Like exploding brain splatter, Pulp Fiction became the film hit of 1994, and is, arguably, the greatest American film of that decade - perhaps of all time (in a short list that includes Blue Velvet and Apocalypse Now and Taxi Driver , to be sure). A sort of sexier, even darker Touch of Evil for our time. Soundtrack to our twisted dreams Tarantino , despite or because of seeming to be a nerdy creep in "real life" is, in reel terms, a cinematic genius of B-thrills and Cannes insight - a rare balance.  Indeed, only a few other Western directors have ever managed to fuse art and thrills better or as well - Welles, Hitchcock, Spielberg, Scorsese  are peers. That poster!  That gimp scene! That watch monologue! That dance! That heroin! That soundtrack!  That amoral ultra-violence! I still remember seeing it with a friend.  When it ended...

James A. George, our Film Critic, on the most controversial film of the year The controversy surrounding Django Unchained is far from simple, but allow me to give brief context. The African Holocaust/the enslavement of around forty million American-born African descendants took place from 1555 (often denied by America as actually 1619), through to December 1865, when it was legally abolished.   There is nothing funny about America’s history with slavery, and perhaps Tarantino has jumped the gun. Other than the series Roots , and perhaps Daughters of the Dust , film has not particularly explored the harsh reality of what happened. Can we trivialise the issue with cathartic violence, visual stylisation and humour? Maybe a more appropriate question, is why have such issues come to the forefront because of a period-piece Western by the ever-creative Tarantino? What is offensive is the negligence concerning the treatment of the African-American community and the lack of repara...

Speaking of prisons, the latest online sensation is the nine-minute trashy video from Lady Gaga , riffing off of Natural Born Killers and Pulp Fiction . It is also a knowing wink to girls behind bars movies, and employs a number of porn tropes, too (not least the sadomasochistic outfits and situations). Beyond blue, this sort of thing would have been banned a few years ago, and is surely a new low in terms of exposing young people to mind-poison, and the glamour of evil. That, or it is hyper-cool, po-mo fun. In the digital age, even the identity of genres and their ethical implications are fluid and fastly-shifting. One thing is for sure. Watching and listening to the kooky, sexy Telephone , it is more than ever clear that the Wilde-Madonna template has been lifted and learned exquisitely. Using decadent costumes and witty cultural inversions that shock and expose masks and facades, Lady Gaga is now the 21st century Madonna - a pop culture instigator of artistic purpose and ge...

The recent statement made by Tarantino in London that violence is what the cinema is for and about, will not surprise either his detractors or fans, though it is a sad aesthetic limitation; I suspect it is a red rag to a bull or red herring: QT's work is as verbal and musical as it is visual. Indeed, if he ever makes a non-violent film (well) he can rest on his laurels. I find it intriguing that two of the best American films of the year are violent Westerns by other names - Basterds by QT and The Hurt Locker by Kathryn Bigelow . QT's film is a contrast to the Iraq bomb disposal film in almost every way: one is comedic, falsifies history, and flamboyantly cinematic; the other is tragic, attempts to be cinema verite, and uses documentary style - but both are about bands of wild (and less wild) American soldiers fighting on the margins of the acceptable. The Hurt Locker is one of my favourite films in a long time, mainly for how its main character mushrooms from villain to en...

Sight and Sound's latest issue features a wild bunch of out-there auteurs. Also, a fawning interview with director Quentin Tarantino . I haven't been to Cannes or seen his latest Nazi hunter film, though I know his production company once expressed interest, about ten years ago, in a Nazi hunter screenplay I'd co-written. I'll be interested in seeing his movie. I actually think Tarantino has done some expressive, stylish and startling work of importance, especially in Kill Bill 1 , and he seems a key cultural figure of the 1990s. I also think it is a sad reflection on the decline of the arts, and the auteur, that, in 2009, as significant an arthouse journal as S&S should be hanging on this indie maverick's every word. The problem, it seems to me, is that QT's ideas - if translated into a literary or literate medium (and he often speaks in terms of novelistic devices, like chapters) - would be sub-par, or even old-hat. Apart from his explorations of g...