I think it made sense when films were more akin to literature, and critics had formal art/educational backgrounds.
I would think they will include it in the Blu-rays/4K with the first release, so next year sounds right. Too bad some will view it for the first time at home...this is a film that really benefits from the big screen experience imo!
I have been buying soundtracks lately but I’m coming to two conclusions: they just don’t come off the same as in the film (well, obviously) and second, it kind of spoils watching the film again as the music is so ingrained. In other words, if you watch a movie too many times it starts to get boring so I try not to overexpose myself (even though I’m going out for the third time to see this Monday) and I think listening to the soundtrack repeatedly takes the impact away from the songs being in the film. Just my take!
Did anyone else find the projection dim/dark? The theater I went to usually shows things properly but I found it hard to make out details. I realize a lot of stuff was shot at 5 AM but isn't that usually brightness corrected? High Noon Chatsworth should have been very bright. If it was just my theater I will complain to the manager before seeing it again next week. I also noticed a few obvious focus pulls but that's a QT trademark.
It seemed brighter the first time I saw it. Cutting down the projection brightness to save a few $$...not cool. Feels like it’s getting more and more like watching at home when they should be going out of there way to give the best possible viewing experience.
I just listened to the Directors Guild podcast interview with Tarantino. Very enjoyable and a quick enough listen to at only 38 minutes. One very interesting thing that he mentioned was that he made sure there was a dog in every single shot on the Sphan Ranch.
I think most auteurs haven't earned the degree of control Tarantino has. If anybody else goes to the studio and says, "I want all the stuff Tarantino got in his deal," the studio would probably just laugh and say, "once you make $768 million dollars across 9 films, then you can talk to us." Quentin Tarantino Movie Box Office Results I noticed that, and I laughed out loud at the number of dog SFX in the background throughout that entire sequence. It's kind of a movie cliche that whenever you show a desolate town, or a gas station, or a group of houses, you hear a distant dog barking. Trains are good, too. It's a cliche, but it works very well, and I've used it myself on freelance projects. I once had a director ask "where is that dog barking from?", and I said "the magic of movies." He bought it and we kept going.
Quinton said it, not me: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood with Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson (Ep. 215) - The Director's Cut - A DGA Podcast
I think you can make a case that an informed opinion about a film is useful because it inspires discussion, it encourages debate, and it acknowledges that different people see different things in the same work of art. As one example: I didn't always agree with noted Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Roger Ebert, but I always enjoyed reading what he had to say about films because he had a lot of spirit and enthusiasm about film, he was enormously well-educated about film and pop culture, and even when he disliked a film I liked (or vice-versa), I could see his point and understand why he felt that way... most of the time. The critic I've enjoyed the most over the years -- who, sadly, is no longer on TV and is not read as much as he used to be -- is Leonard Maltin. His books are backed up by many decades of in-depth knowledge of film history, he puts a lot of what he says in perspective, and he makes a very good argument for believing one way or the other. Most importantly, he really loves film... films of all eras. Generally, on the rare occasions when I've disagreed with Maltin, he's said a film was "disappointing" while I felt the same film was "haaaaaarible," or when he said a film was "pretty good," I thought it was fantastic. So we have similar opinions... I just take it to more of an extreme. I've disagreed with Maltin a few times: back in the day, he thought Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom were terrible films because they were too violent; the violence didn't bother me. (But in hindsight, I think he's right in that Temple of Doom was not a very good film.) So I guess my point is: don't hate a review or a critic simply because you disagree with them. There's always the case of Choice-Supportive Bias, where you want to believe in something simply because you have an investment in it, giving you an emotional attachment. This is kind of like the guy who buys a certain car, then goes online to read the reviews and then gets extremely upset with the critics who point out flaws in the car. They take it personally, whether the review has got the facts straight, and I think that's the wrong way to go. It's just words. It's just one opinion. You can always say...
I miss him and I especially miss all of the competing critics who all had television shows around that time. Kind of a pet peeve all these people who value what's said on Rotten Tomatoes - without ever bothering to read any of the opinions of any of the critics. To me it's only real value is to find links to in-depth reviews. What do I care if 99 people to know nothing about films dislike something, I'd rather read the one person is really knowledgeable about film who liked it.
Yeah, there's an awful lot of armchair critics out there who have zero credentials and very uninformed opinions. It's sad that the internet has given weight to some of these looney-tunes. The other sad fact of modern times is this trend of "Toxic Fandom," where people believe because they saw the film in the theater a couple of times, and they bought the DVD, and they bought the T-shirt, they now have an ownership in the film to the extent that they can outguess the filmmakers and tell them what the film should have been. To me, that's pretty outrageous. It goes back to what I said before: any good instructional book on film criticism (or a class on the subject) will teach you, "don't review the film you wanted to see. Review the film that the filmmaker actually made." It's very tempting to second-guess the director and say, "wow, I wish he had done this or I wish they had done that," but instead you have to concentrate on what they did do. I think it's fair to say, "hey, they really surprised me when this happened," which I think is a fair emotional reaction.
I miss Ebert too. Started watching Sneak Previews as a kid in the late 70s (he could very well be a bit responsible for my love of film), really got into his Sun-Times review columns and books in the 80s (although he really wrote essays not reviews which is why he was awarded a Pulitzer), followed him on At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert and Siskel & Ebert & the Movies through the 80s-90s with Siskel and the aughts with Richard Roeper, with all of that culminating in enjoying his blog all the way through to the end after he had lost his speaking voice but not the spirit of his writing one. Reflections after 25 years at the movies | Roger Ebert's Journal | Roger Ebert Public television in the 70s with no internet!
I loved it whenever Siskel & Ebert would really start jousting with each other, and Ebert would occasionally sock his on-screen partner with, "well, Gene, there's a Pulitzer Prize sitting over there on my desk that says my opinion does actually matter." Unlike Siskel, Roger Ebert had a Master's degree in English and many years of journalism experience, while Siskel had a degree in Philosophy from Yale and kind of lucked into doing film reviews after college. Regardless, I enjoyed Siskel's reviews very much and actually agreed more with his opinions than I did Ebert's... but Ebert was far more interesting to watch, and I was a big fan of his many books on film history and his past reviews.