Admittedly, I’m not the greatest fan of Quentin Tarantino’s work. He definitely knows how to put a film together, but I’ve always found him self-indulgent, too much in love with his own dialogue, and all his films have been nothing but pastiches, made entirely up of scenes from other movies. Everything in his movies is blatantly stolen from other films going back to even the 1940’s. And since he knows that his main audience basically only knows movies from Star Wars on, his films look totally original to them.
That being said, I, however, confess that I’m dying to see his new western film which will begin shooting sometime this year Django Unchained. Now first of all Django was a series of violent Italian made “spaghetti” westerns made during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Franco Nero played the lead in the first few Django pictures, but afterward, the role was assumed by various actors. (How do I know that? Because I’ve seen most of them. I’ve been seeing movies even before Star Wars believe it or not.)
This time, Tarantino takes the Django character in a whole different direction. In his film, according to one source who has read the script, “Django is a freed slave, who, under the tutelage of a German bounty hunter (played by Christopher Waltz the evil Nazi officer in Inglorious Basterds) becomes a bad-ass bounty hunter himself, and after assisting Waltz in taking down some bad guys for profit, is helped by Waltz in tracking down his slave wife and liberating her from an evil plantation owner. And that doesn’t even half begin to cover it! This film deals with racism as I’ve rarely seen it handled in a Hollywood film. While it’s 100 percent pure popcorn and revenge flick, it is pure genius in the way it takes on the evil slave owning south. Think of what he did with the Nazis in Inglorious and you’ll get a sense of what he’s doing with slave owners and slave overseers in this one.“
Now I don’t know about you, but that’s one movie I’m standing in line to see RIGHT NOW! Though, of course, I wish it was a black director making this film, but I’ll take it regardless of who makes it.
Waltz and Nero himself are already attached to the film. However the one big question is who’s going to play Django?
No doubt casting is going on right now. But you would need a tough masculine black actor to play that role, and since Jim Brown is now in his 70’s, that pretty much narrows down the choices considerably. One thing for sure is that, neither Tyler Perry or Terrance Howard are being considered, so that’s a relief. But who’s out there? I’m assuming it’ll have to be an unknown.
You have any suggestions?
