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Last Updated: Tuesday, 12 November 2013 05:30
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Written by Lupe Haas
Known for his memorable character monologues in True Romance, Pulp Fiction, and Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino the writer constantly competes with himself to outdo his previous work. Tarantino has finally arrived at that moment in his opinion for his latest cinematic effort INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, his first period film starring Brad Pitt and newcomer Christopher Waltz who steals the show from Pitt’s Lieutenant Aldo Raine. 
While most filmmakers cannot pull off long character speeches, Tarantino often excels in this department with lengthy character exposition within his films. In INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, the first scene is a 20 minute introduction to the Nazi Jew Hunter - Colonel Hans Landa (Christopher Waltz) who makes polite conversation with a French farmer possibly harboring Jews. Colonel Landa or Detective Landa, as he refers to himself, breaks the French farmer not with interrogation style tactics but with a rational explanation to why he must do the right thing for his family. This chilling speech from Col. Landa sets apart this character from any Nazi portrayal ever written for cinema.
“When I wrote him, I was aware enough to know that not only is he one of the best characters I’ve ever written, he’s one of the best characters I will ever write.”
As far as his writing, Tarantino feels his scenes are meant to “stand alone” and compares them to listening to a greatest hit album. Although “self-aggrandizing” according to Tarantino, he says his greatest hit would be the Sicilian speech in the Tony Scott directed True Romance starring Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, and a cameo by Tarantino’s head basterd Brad Pitt as a pothead.
“That was my best scene. I’m not saying it’s the best scene the way it works in the movie but as far as a stand-alone scene, that was probably my best work. And I knew I would never top that. “
Tarantino felt he had come close with his other work but he didn’t reach that level of excitement until recently. “When I wrote the opening scene in this movie with the Jew Hunter and French farmer, I go ‘I think I’ve finally topped it.’ “That’s up to you to decide but I think I finally kicked it up.”
Christopher Waltz who won the Best Actor Prize at the Cannes’ Film Festival for his role as Colonel Landa, agrees with Quentin’s assessment and describes his role as the “best part ever written in the history of drama” comparing it to Greek drama and Euripides. However, he does admit he didn’t understand Quentin’s talky scenes until he saw Death Proof. He describes the scene with Rosario Dawson and her gal pal’s long and pointless dialogue that proved very interesting. That’s when he says it “clicked” and understood how Tarantino “takes a genre and lifts it into a level of art.”
Actor, writer, and comedian B.J. Novak from TV’s The Office stars as one of the basterds in Tarantino’s film and describes Tarantino as hard working and in direct competition with himself.
“I always felt Tarantino the filmmaker was trying to outsmart Tarantino the film fan. He was playing chess with his young self.”
Michael Fassbender (300, Jonah Hex), a film critic and British soldier in the film, can also attest to Tarantino’s work ethic and impressed most by his “wealth of knowledge.” “There’s no element left unturned. Every tiny character, he (Tarantino) has has a backstory. It’s incredible.”
Regarding the director’s love of filmmaking – “The great thing with Quentin is that he comes everyday with so much enthusiasm, so much love and passion for the work – it’s so infectious.
German-born actress Diane Kruger (Bridget Von Hammersmark) who almost didn’t get the role because Quentin didn’t believe she was German, said of the INGLOURIOUS BASTERD director, “he was like a child next to the camera – yelling ‘more blood, more blood’.
And those who have worked with him say his enthusiasm doesn’t wane when off set. According to B.J. Novak, Tarantino is always the life of the party.
“We would be out until 4 or 5 in the morning in Berlin eating, drinking, talking about movies, or in my case, listening about movies, and the next day, there he is - first guy on the set with 25 shots he wants to add to the list that day. For a guy who seems to have so much fun, it’s really incredible how hard working he is.”
Tarantino admits to not only competing with himself but with other filmmakers as well. His buddy system includes Robert Rodriguez, Rick Linklater, and Paul Thomas Anderson who all share a similar aesthetic but it is with Paul Thomas Anderson in which he shares a friendly and healthy rivalry. They try to outdo each other constantly.
When asked what he counts as his proud moment and his biggest disappointment, Tarantino names winning the Palm D’Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival for Pulp Fiction as a triumph but his saddest moment which “hurt his feelings’ was the box-office flop of Grindhouse, the double feature bill of his Death Proof and Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. But he takes comfort in that the theatrical double feature will soon be released as Grindhouse on special edition DVD (each film was released separately).
Tarantino is not losing sleep over his last film but he doesn’t get more than five hours sleep at night when directing.
“As a director – anybody who gets more than 5 hours of sleep at night must not be so passionate. It’s just the job. You’re not going to get more than 5 hours sleep. I mean if you can sleep like a baby, you’re doing something wrong.”
Tarantino is obviously doing something right and INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is sure to make up for his last disappointment. TheINGLOURIOUS BASTERDS go after some Nazi scalp starting Friday, August 21.
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Last Updated: Tuesday, 12 November 2013 05:29
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Written by Lupe Haas
The internet is abuzz about District 9, a new groundbreaking sci-fi film from South African director Neill Blomkamp and produced by Lord of the Rings’ Peter Jackson. The film is not only getting great reaction from those lucky enough to see it at 2009’s Comic Con in San Diego last month but more surprisingly, the independently made film about alien refugees (from outer space) living in a South African slum, only cost $30 
million to make. Watch trailer
Thirty million dollars to us regular folks is a lot of money and could probably feed a small country but in Hollywood – it’s chump change. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince cost $200 million to make, while Star Trek’s production cost is rumored to be near $150 million.
District 9’s visual effects and CGI rival the fancy eye-popping footwork in the aforementioned films and I will dare to say that District 9’s alien robot put to shame the Decepticons and Autobots.
So how was Neill Blomkamp, the thirty year-old visual effects artist and director of music videos and commercials, and his team able to achieve such a feat with $30 million dollars?
CineMovie sat down with the first-time feature film director and District 9’s unlikely hero - Sharlto Copley to find out.
Q: This film works in all aspects - story, characters, and most noticeably the realistic visual effects. How did you accomplish that with such a small budget?
Neill: Well, we don’t have real expensive actors for one. We have no massive Hollywood stars so that helps right there.
Q: Why was Sharlto the one for the job of Wikus van der Merwe, the field agent exposed to the alien virus who slowly transforms into one?
Neill: The reason I picked him is because he’s extremely talented. And if you don’t want any stars, you got to make sure you pick someone who’s really going to carry the film.
Because of the nature of the film, a massive component of the film would be improvised so that it feels like your watching a documentary.
We had a script but he would have to throw the lines out and make it his own. I started thinking who that could be. He (Sharlto) is my high school friend from Johannesburg and I thought he would be the person to do that.
So I flew him to New Zealand to shoot a test but he didn’t know that. He’s like 
Borat. He becomes different characters. So I told him to become this African bureaucrat and go around these shacks and evict people. Then I showed it (screen test) to Pete Jackson and asked if I can use him in the film and Pete said, ‘Go for it’ because he could see how talented he was.
Q: So you didn’t audition any other actors?
Neill: I didn’t audition anyone.
Once Neill picked his leading man, his other concern was keeping the cost of the special effects within his budget.
Neill: The single contributing factor is probably keeping the number of visual effects down and the way you deal with the effects shots you have. We had just under 600 shots which in a $30 million film is pretty good. You have to use techniques and use things in the way that makes them easier to achieve. So if you set out to make something difficult, then you know it’s going to cost more.
(For example) I specifically made them (the aliens) insect-like so they’d have a hard
shell surface which reflects light better and can get to a photo real result faster.
I think my style also helps with the price too. I like the idea of filmmaking being fantastic and magical like this one but it feels more real because there is an exercise in restraint. You’re restraining yourself and it’s like ‘don’t show all the stuff, just show a little bit.’ You don’t have to have millions of effects shots. So if you keep restraining things, which is my natural style, I think it brings the price down.
Sharlto Copley (Wikus) whose not only an actor but a filmmaker and visual effects expert, isn’t surprised Neill pulled it all together for District 9.
Sharlto: Neill has such a high-end understanding of visual effects. He didn’t give me a restrictive environment. It wasn’t green screen. He gave me the freedom to move around and put the CG around what I was trying to do instead of dictating what our movements had to be.
My (alien) hand, however, was a prosthetic and there was no CG except to enhance my enlarging (alien) eye in the end but I experienced the alien transformation four to five hours in the make-up chair.
Sharlto also explains that the film’s set also kept things very real. The production took over a real shanty town near Johannesburg (Soweto) which was used as District 9’s alien community. Ironically, the South African government removed residents from this area and started to dismantle it when the production came in and bought the place as a set.
Sharlto: The main set was a twenty to thirty year-old landfill that had layers of trash. The smell in the place was very intense. It definitely made a difference to the character to be in that actual real environment.
Neill also chose to film in the winter months in South Africa to add to the bleak look of District 9.
Neill: South Africa in the winter looks like a nuclear wasteland. So locale definitely hlped with the look of the film.
Neill further explains that to keep costs down, they edited the footage first and then sent it to the special effects house WETA, Peter Jackson’s company for the CG process but there were problems along the way which jeopardized the budget.
Neill: Because we had different formats (documentary, news footage, film), it took us longer to edit. Once we had what definitely was going to stay, we handed it over to WETA. But we handed it over late so they had less time to work on it which wasn’t good. It could’ve increased the price of the film.
Q: Since WETA is Peter Jackson’s company and he’s your boss on District 9, did you get a discount?
Neill: WETA did give us a discount.
A little goes a long way and District 9’s Neill Blompkamp knows how to make it stretch. This new visionary promises if there’s a District 10, he will make it independently again instead of going Hollywood. But that won’t stop Hollywood from calling on this new talented and practical filmmaker.
District 9 is in theaters August 14.
last time in SHREK 4: THE FINAL CHAPTER but Eddie Murphy's Donkey might have another career ahead of him.
