Cinematic Grammar [Or: How I am Finding It Harder and Harder to Respect Homage]

No, then I would have championed Spielberg the most important filmmaker ever. What the IMDB thing demonstrates is that 82,330 of the people registered on the Internet Movie Database graded The Godfather to an average of 9.0/10.0, which ranks it as the most popular film among the filmloving members of that board. Nothing else. And I believe that The Godfather has had an enormous effect on cinema as a whole. In the beginning of the 70's it was one of the first films of The New Hollywood, or what is sometimes called "The Hollywood Renessaince", which was films influenced by stuff like european art cinema and indie pioneer John Cassavetes but that was told in a classical Hollywood narrative. And I don't think I have to point out what it did for the gangster/mafia genre.

I don't measure the "importance" of film by how many people like it. But it is one of the parameters that you have to take in consideration when discussing it. Another one and perhaps the most important one has to be the kind of impact the films have had on other filmmakers following films. As for Tarantino's impact I would say it is similar to the one that The Godfather and other 70's films had on cinema. There are a lot of films that can thank Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs for its success, and sometimes the fact that they were even made in the first place. The 90's were completely packed with neo-noir and/or heist movies with focus on cool characters and sharp dialogue told in flashbacks after Tarantino had entered the stage.

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

I suppose at this point I'm just arguing about what we should be arguing about.

Still, I agree with most of your points, but should we credit Tarantino for inspiring a style in others if it was just one he had popularized, as opposed to originated?
Perhaps, in a way, we should, but I'm only saying that his measure of influence should be considered with that in mind.

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"We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glow-worm."
--Winston Churchill

See Two Days in the Valley for proof of that.

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My lord that was awful.

He he... I think that in Silver's initial post he addressed a lot of different things and it raised a number of questions: What makes a great director? How much in the films of P.T. Anderson and Tarantino is the copying of previous directors' work and how much is really "cinematic evolution"? Where do we draw the line between "borrowing", "paying homage" and "stealing" or "copying"?

I don't think we should credit Tarantino for creating the style neo-noir or any other style for that matter. But I think he definately deservs some credit for redefining it and for making something personal of it. I haven't seen every single film he has seen so I can't say whether he has stolen Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs completely. I know that he simply must have seen Kubrick's The Killing a few times and that he has watched a lot of Blaxplotation, Hong Kong movies, Spagetti Westerns, Cartoons, Heist, Noir and B-movies in general. I know for example that the use of music in Spagetti Westerns and Ennio Morricone has influenced him a lot, but I wouldn't say that he has copied Morricone or Sergio Leone.

I think one should always bear in mind what the sources to the directors influences are, but knowing the sources to Tarantino's influences doesn't really make the significance of his films lesser. And it is really not that surprising that he is borrowing heavily from other films. That's the way he knows how to make films - by watching other films. Not by being trained in a film school.

Sorry, Gollum. I didn't see this one until now...

Sure, I think you are right. In a way. But in Tarantino's case I think it says more about things of our time than most art films because his films are more part of our time than a comment on it. I think Tarantino's films are pop art, if any art genre at all. His films are filled with information about attitudes and trends of the 90's and the mouths of the future historians will be watering when they are faced with Pulp Fiction as an object for their analysis.

Ah, that is true, very true. Those films are made from social glue (those words go together far to easily - at least within my precious rhyming scheme ) And the "grammar" he uses is a fitting hammer for driving it all home i guess

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

Kong completely missed the irony of this thread's title until just now!

A true stroke of genuis, SilverBullet.

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Kong's Reviews:
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Ah, but if an author happened to learn how to write novels by reading them, would you say that it's okay for him to plagiarise Great Expectations or Wuthering Heights? I don't think so.

Like PTA and QT, I've learnt how to make films by watching them [or rather, I've learnt what makes them work or not], but I'm not going to pay homage to them just because I can. I'm not going to steal for the sheer cleverness of it. I'm going to try and make what I've seen better, try and fix or the flaws – and even more drastically, I'm going to try to do something different, that hasn't been seen before at all.

It's not a matter of taking into account how a person learnt to make films, it's a matter of how they use or abuse that knowledge.

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I don't believe I have said anywhere here that it is okay to plagiarise. And even if I did it wouldn't matter since I don't think Tarantino does plagiarise. Finally, I think a comparision to literature is not very accurate since plagiarised literature is not very hard to reveal since it is done word by word. It is far more complicated, if not even impossible, to plagiarise another movie.

To me that is what Tarantino is doing. But I guess I haven't seen the films he stole from or plagiarised. And what you consider to be flaws are probably not flaws to the filmmaker who made the film. There may be a lot of things I would like to change in a Spielberg film but then it wouldn't be a Spielberg film anymore.

Your ambition is admireable. Personally, I would rather go for a very personal film than trying to make the best film ever made.

Absolutely. And I think Tarantino is using his knowledge brilliantly, so far. (Haven't seen Kill Bill yet).

Of course not, yeah, don't let me be misunderstood. In trying to find something new, I've got no desire to give up the personal aspect of filmmaking. Punch-Drunk Love and Lost In Translation are two of the most refreshing and different movies of the decade thus far and both of them are extremely personal.

Anyway, I was just replying to get a reaction of sorts. See what you had to say and all that jazz.

I have just seen Kill Bill vol. 1 and I have to say that I thought it was eaily Tarantino's poorest film so far. It was pretty spectacular and violently entertaining, but it totally lacked substance. If all Tarantino's films was like this, I would probably have agreed with Silver.

For sure.

I'm still hoping he might pull something out of the bag concerning Samurai-ethics/mind-set, but it looks like it's gonna be mainly plastic fantastic with nothing new to say.

Yeah, and Jim Jarmusch has allready made this film you're wishing for, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, which kicks Kill Bill's ass. Even RZA:s music was better in Ghost Dog. Allright now, enough! Kill Bill was a 3/5 for me and not as crappy as it might appear when I talk about it. It just wasn't great...

When I see Tarantino's thrown around with Scorsese, Ford, Bergman, Bunuel, Fellini, and so on, I have to laugh.

Quentin Tarantino is to directing what Andy Warhol is to art.

He's a Campbell Soup can compared to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

P.S. Thoughs of you that believe Kill Bill is one movie, can I ask you something?

How much did you pay to see it at the theater?

I bet it wasn't four dollars twice.

Wise Words of the Day:

"Directing" and "art" aren't even similar words. Maybe if you'd said "cinema" or "film" as opposed to "directing," or "painting" as opposed to "art," it would have made sense.

And besides, you're wrong.

How many times have you told me, when I say you're wrong, that our opinions are different and neither are right or wrong? Bad Bullet.

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

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Review: Cabin in the Woods 8/10

Can we finally get off this Tarantino argument. this whole thing has been done on so many threads, and the argument is becoming quite repetitive and tiresome. I realize Qt has become one of the most polarizing forces in the world of cinima today, but this has to stop. Nobody seems to be bringing anything new to this, already overhyped, debate, and it is thus becoming pretty boring.

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